I knew a man who returned to Christ after decades of drugs and dealing, trafficking girls, violence, theft, and homelessness. Raised in church, he came back on fire for Jesus, witnessing openly and boldly everywhere he went.
His life choices had a body count. He was diminished in his mind, and had an unsettling mania about him. He was overflowing with spiritual generosity and hope for the worst kinds of people, but shared his dark testimony not with sorrow or regret, but with effervescent joy… shameless before merciful God.
He did express scorn for some people, however. No, not mass murderers, serial killers, or pedophiles. He reserved his scorn for those terrible people that fed him in homeless days with premade sandwiches. PREMADE if you can believe that! They should have brought a sandwich cart and made them to order. How could anyone ever receive the love of Jesus from people who brought premade sandwiches???
I’d never seen the like of it until just recently when pastors across the Western world took to social media to attack other Christians outraged by the vile mockery of Christ on the world stage of the opening ceremonies of the 2024 Olympics.
Were they concerned that predators who recently marched through our streets chanting “We are coming for your children,” were given the spotlight by national leaders? Don’t be absurd. That so many cheered for the cause of sexual perversity and the undoing of the whole natural order of the world through the destruction of family and male and female? Egad, of course not. Concerned that Critical Marxists, who seek to unravel the world’s economic systems, disrupt markets (ahem… food supply), and eradicate culture, values, and all other norms of human civilization, were so brazen in their hatred? Yawn, NO! Worried that Open society organizations like the WEF[2] were using perverts to shoot a cannonball over the bow of every nation’s ship, telling them that a one world humanist government is coming for them and their people? Why should they?
No… their big concern is that Christians made a peep about it instead of worrying about the potentially hurt feelings of individuals in the LGBTQ+ community.[3] We just need to get out of the way and let sinners be sinners while we hide in the bushes picking off stragglers for Jesus… which, in their program, oddly enough, does NOT seem to include a condemnation of sin and a call to repentance.
No! Nothing to fret here. Did not Jesus Himself dine with sinners?
Now THIS is an assumption that few on either side of this issue would challenge, but that both sides should challenge. One side says, “Jesus wasn’t worried about the sin of sinners; He just loved people.” The other side says, “Well, yes, Jesus did dine with sinners, but He didn’t sin with them!”
Me? I ask, “DID Jesus dine with sinners?”
You laugh?! You wonder if I’ve read the Gospels?[4]
The real issue is that I have, and actually paid attention to the details.
In biblical times, dining with someone was a covenantal act. It was serious. So any time Jesus sat down to a meal with people it was a big deal, whether it was with a Pharisee[5] or inviting himself to Zacchaeus’ house.[6] So when we consider the thrice repeated tale of Jesus dining at Matthew’s/Levi’s house with “sinners and tax collectors,” we should understand the concern of religious leaders.
But we must also read the text in context. Mark uses two vocabulary paradigms. He uses Pharisee terms for labeling the room, but also uses the specialized vocabulary of discipleship developed previously in his own book.
The Pharisees were admired by the Jewish community as strict keepers of the law, including a tenacious fixation on remaining ceremonially clean as often and for as long as possible. “Sinners” was an official term for those less fixated on such things. When Mark describes the room according to their labels, it is full of sinners and tax collectors. Just so, when Jesus describes the situation according to their view, He labels the Pharisees “righteous,” as in “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”[7]
So, we should ask, “Were these Pharisees righteous?”
No, and that’s a clue. Things here are not as they appear.
When Mark first introduces Peter and Andrew, James and John, he also introduces a vocabulary of discipleship. Jesus says, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men,” and Mark tacks on, “And immediately they left their nets and followed him.”[8] Two verses later we read, “And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.” So, leaving, calling, and following are signals of becoming Jesus’ disciple.
When Mark introduces Levi, we see a direct replay of the scene with Peter and friends. “And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.”[9] That’s leaving and following. Then at the house with the crowd, we read, “And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners (Pharisee labels) were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him,” (Mark’s label). Jesus adds to it, saying, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” Leave, follow, & call all used for those dining with Jesus.
Jesus was not hanging with the brew boys popping back a few, he was dining with his followers whom he had called away from their past and on to His future. Jesus was not breaking social paradigms to reach down into the gutter where the worst of the worst did what such people do in order to shine in that dark place,[10] rather He was covenanting in meal with those who had come out of darkness into His glorious light and had become His disciples.
Jesus always embraced the repentant and always resisted the proud. And so should we.
~Andrew D. Sargent, PhD
[1] Psalm 1:1 opens the book of worship declaring, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers.”
[2] World Economic Forum.
[3] Who, in spite of the false shielding by leftist fact-checkers, do support “minor attracted” people openly, and the grooming of children into the queer fold. Can you say, “Drag Queen Story Hour”?
[4] Matthew 9, Mark 2, Luke 5.
[5] Luke 7:36-50.
[6] Luke 19:1-10
[7] Mark 2:17.
[8] Mark 1:17-18.
[9] Mark 2:15.
[10] Which we might discuss as a tenuous but righteous ministry in another context.
