Calling Sinners to Repentance
In Luke 5:32, Jesus declared, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” That statement expresses the essential uniqueness of Christianity and concisely summarizes His mission. It sums up the whole glorious scheme of salvation: the Lord Jesus Christ came to save repentant sinners (Luke 19:10).
Thus Jesus centered His ministry on people who understood their lost condition. Often, these were the outcasts of society, which earned Him a reputation as “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7:34). Because such people were willing to come to grips with their true condition as hopeless sinners, the Lord was able to minister to them.
On one occasion during His earthly ministry, Jesus had a divine appointment to keep with a tax collector named Levi, better known as Matthew, the author of the Gospel that bears his name. His occupation as a tax collector made Matthew one of the most hated and despised men in Israel.
Undeterred by Matthew’s status as a social outcast, Jesus stopped at his tax booth and said to him, “Follow Me” (Matthew 9:9). The Lord knew his heart. He saw that Matthew was wretched and miserable; that he was distressed and burdened by his sin and hungering and thirsting for righteousness.
Matthew’s immediate response revealed the genuineness of his desire for righteousness and salvation: he left everything behind, and got up and began to follow Jesus.
The traitor, extortioner, robber, and outcast sinner became an apostle and evangelist of Jesus Christ.
The Pharisees, however, rebuked Jesus for eating and drinking with the tax collectors and sinners.
God seeks the truly repentant heart, not the hardened, self-righteous one. It was the humble, repentant tax collector, not the self-exalting, self-righteous Pharisee who Jesus said was justified (Luke 18:14).
The truth is that God cannot save those who refuse to see themselves as sinners, who ignore, gloss over, or trivialize their sin. Only those who understand by the grace of God and the convicting work of the Holy Spirit that they are blind and oppressed, headed for a Christless, Godless eternity in Hell, and trust in Christ’s work on the cross as payment in full for their sins can be saved (Colossians 2:13-14). As James wrote, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).
—Condensed from The MacArthur New Testament Commentary by John MacArthur.