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SermonIndex.net : Christian Books : Section 141. Matthew the Publican called from the Custom-house.--Familial Intercourse of Christ with the Publicans at the Banquet.--The Pharisees blame the Disciples, and Christ justifies them.--|The Sick need the Physician.|

The Life Of Jesus Christ In Its Historical Connexion by Augustus Neander

Section 141. Matthew the Publican called from the Custom-house.--Familial Intercourse of Christ with the Publicans at the Banquet.--The Pharisees blame the Disciples, and Christ justifies them.--|The Sick need the Physician.|

What surprise and offence must the Pharisees have felt when they saw Christ admit even a publican into the immediate circle of his disciples.

As he was walking one day along the shore of the lake, he saw a publican sitting in his toll-booth, named Matthew; a man who had doubtless, like Peter, received many impressions from Christ before, and was thereby prepared to renounce the world at his bidding. Jesus, with a voice that could not be resisted, said unto him, |Follow me.| Matthew understood the call, and did not hesitate to follow, at any cost, Him who had so powerfully attracted his heart. He left his business, rejoicing that Christ was willing to take him into his closer fellow ship. This decisive event was celebrated by a great entertainment, intended also, perhaps, as a farewell feast to his old business associates. Christ, in whose honour the entertainment was given, did not disdain this token of grateful love, but took his place at the feast with a set of men who were regarded as the scum of the people, but to whom his saving influences were to be brought nigh.

Shortly after, some of the Pharisees took the disciples to task for their free and (as they thought) unspiritual mode of life, in eating and drinking with degraded sinners and tax-gatherers. It is evident that the attack was intended for Christ, though they hesitated, as yet, to assault him openly. He, therefore, took the matter up personally, and justified his conduct by saying, |They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.| Indicating that he sought, rather than avoided, degraded sinners, because they, precisely, stood most in need of his healing aid, and were most likely, from a sense of need, to receive it willingly.

But he certainly did not mean to say that he came to save only those who were sunken in vice. He was far, also, from meaning, that though all have need of him, all have not the same need of him; that any were excluded from the number of the |sick,| who needed him as a |physician.| But he taught that as he had come as a physician for the sick, he could help only those who, as sick persons, sought healing at his hands. He sought the tax-gatherers rather than the Pharisees, because the latter, deeming themselves spiritually sound, had no disposition to receive that which he came to impart. Undoubtedly, he did not mean to grant that they were sound, or less diseased than the publicans.

Indeed, he pointed out their peculiar disease by saying to them, |Go ye, and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.'| On the one hand, by this quotation, he pointed out the feeling that inspired his own conduct, the love which is the fulfilling of the law; and, on the other, he indicated their fundamental error of making religion an outward thing, while they totally lacked the soul of genuine piety. This was to convince them that they themselves were sick and needed the physician. Dropping the figure, he gave them the same thought in plain terms: |I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.|

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