Paolo Veronese (1528-88), The Feast at the House of Levi, Accademia, Venice, ItalyContrary to cultural sentiments, Christ did not come so we could get a few days off school and work. He did not come to boost the economy. He did not come so we could plunge ourselves into debt to buy gifts for a bunch people we like and not a few we don’t. He didn’t come to give us an excuse to overindulge. So why did He come? In the passage before us today, He tells us why He came: I did not come to call the righteous but sinners. In that statement are two facts of Christmas that I want to expand upon today as we examine these verses.
I. Christ Came to Call Sinners
This was His mission. This was why He came. And in the context of the passage we see how He did this.
A. Who He Called
In v14, Jesus approaches a tax-collector called Levi, elsewhere in the New Testament called Matthew. It is likely that his post (literally, perhaps, a toll-gate) was situated on the caravan route that passed through
He had already called a few fishermen to follow Him. No problem. Most of the people in that region were involved in the fishing industry. They were decent folk in the eyes of most in
This ought to be of great encouragement for us today. The fact that Jesus came calling sinners, even the likes of despised tax-collectors, means that there is hope for all of us. It doesn’t matter what you have done, if you are a sinner, Christ came for you.
B. How He Calls
It seems that everywhere Jesus went, crowds came to Him. But they came for various reasons. Some came out of curiosity, others were coming for selfish reasons – to receive a healing or a miracle, or just to observe it. Others came to criticize. But in v13, as usual, Jesus taught everyone who came. But, though this is the way He taught, it was not the way He called. In calling, Jesus takes the initiative. He goes to Levi – He doesn’t wait for Levi to come to Him. This is a microscopic portrait of what He has done for all of us. He came to us while we were yet sinners. He did not wait for us to clean ourselves up or to develop a religious hankering before He came. He came to us that first Christmas on His own initiative. Out of divine love and grace, He stepped into this world to call sinners.
And when He calls, He issues a directive – “Follow Me.” He does not call us to perform a ritual or observe a regulation, but to enter a relationship. Follow
Like the fishermen before him, Levi did not take time to deliberate about it, or to get his affairs in order first. According to v14, “he got up and followed Him.” Leaving behind a lucrative career to follow Jesus would have raised many eyebrows in the eyes of his peers. But, so radically was he affected by the call of Christ that he called together his friends – fellow tax-collectors and other sinners – and he threw a party for Jesus at his home. Some commentators have suggested that this was a farewell meal, where he would part company with those from his former way of life. Maybe, but certainly it was more than that. When you follow Jesus, you want others to follow Him too. And you do whatever it takes to bring them together. Levi opened his home for what probably amounted to an evangelistic crusade, to give his friends an opportunity to meet Jesus so they could follow Him too. He was following Jesus by going to the lost with the gospel.
Jesus said to Simon and Andrew in Mark 1:17, “Follow Me and I will make you become fishers of men.” He said that because they were fishermen. Perhaps to Levi, He would say, “Follow Me, and rather than collecting taxes, I will make you a collector of souls.” And this is what He did. He followed, and He shared the good news that changed his life with others. According to v15, many of the tax-collectors and sinners were following Him too. After all, that is why He came. That’s good news for you and me. If you are a sinner, Jesus came for you.
II. Christ Did Not Come to Call the Righteous.
If you aren’t a sinner, Jesus didn’t come for you. He wasn’t interested in calling the righteous. But here’s the catch – there is none righteous. That is what Paul said in Romans 3:10. We are all sinners. None of us can stand before God claiming a righteousness of our own. The prophet Isaiah said our righteousness is but filthy rags in the sight of God. Every single one of us is a sinner, both by nature and by practice. We aren’t sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners. We inherited from Adam a fallen nature that inherently desires that which is beyond the boundaries of God’s standards. We crave to pursue our own desires rather than the glory of God, and we act the way we do because of our sinful nature. So radically are we affected by sin that we cannot climb into God’s presence on our own efforts. But in Christ, God came to save those who rightly recognize that they are sinners.
Even though there are none righteous, there are many who claim a self-righteousness. The scribes and Pharisees were among these. The group Mark describes here are the scribes of the Pharisees. Not all scribes were Pharisees, not all Pharisees were scribes. The Pharisees were a group of Jewish lay-people who devoted themselves to the observance of the Law as it was interpreted through their oral traditions. Their name means “separated ones,” for they believed that they were elite in their spirituality, set apart from the common, unclean folk. They believed that their rituals and their regulations, which were far more rigid and many times in contradiction with the written Word of God, would make them righteous. They would not admit that they were sinners in need of a Savior. And therefore, Christ could offer them no help in that state.
This speaks to us today because, while the Pharisees disappeared long ago, their legacy endures in those who believe that they will be counted righteous because of what they do and don’t do. When asked what their basis for entry into the
Jesus said in v17 that the healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. Many people are dying spiritually because of their sin-sickness, and rather than turning to the Great Physician for healing, they pretend to be well, and walk proudly into an eternal separation from God in hell. Warren Wiersbe says, “There are three kinds of ‘patients’ whom Jesus cannot heal of their sin sickness.”[1] The first are those who do not know about Him. That is why this time of year it is of the utmost importance for us to remember the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering which supports our more than 5,000 Southern Baptist missionaries who are taking the message of Christ to those who have never heard of Him. Secondly, Wiersbe says Christ cannot heal those who know about Him but refuse to trust Him. A person who acknowledges Jesus in a historical or sentimental way, but refuses to turn to Him in full faith and repentance for salvation has yet to comprehend why He came, and prefers to cherish those aspects of Christ which appeal to them, while rejecting the rest. Third, Wiersbe says are those who will not admit they need Him. These are the self-righteous ones who think they are going to make it to heaven on the basis of their own works. There will be no greater disappointment in all eternity than when these hear the Lord say those tragic words found in Matthew 7 – “Depart from Me, I never knew you.” Christ came to call sinners to follow Him, and those who refuse to acknowledge that they are sinners will neither hear nor heed His call.
Listen to the words of C. S. Lewis, writing in his classic work Miracles:
In the Christian story, God descends to re-ascend. … One may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through the green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to color and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping precious thing that he went down to recover.
My friend, what this image of the diver says to us is that Christ stripped Himself of His heavenly glory to step into this world in human flesh – entering into this life as the Christmas baby, and then going deeper, encountering sin at its depths, willingly facing death for us out of His great love, and rising again clutching the thing precious to Him which He came down to redeem. And what is that precious thing? It is the sinner. If you are a sinner, then He has come to save you, to take you back to the place of real life and real existence above the plane of this world and into His kingdom. Refuse Him if you will. Resist Him if you dare. Say to Him that you have no need of Him, and that you will be just fine on your own, trusting your own merits instead of His grace – and you will perish in the depths of darkness. But say to Him, “I am a sinner in need of saving,” and to you He will say, “For this reason I came.”
Perhaps here today there are those who have been trusting in the checklist of their own good deeds. Today, you can receive God’s Christmas Gift of Grace – the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior. Acknowledge your need for Him today – admit to God the sin in your life and be saved. Whether you have heard the call a million times before, or if today is the first, it does not matter. What matters is that He says to you now, “Sinner, follow Me. Receive My grace. Be forgiven and saved and enter my Kingdom.” It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, how vile you have been. You have not gone so far as to exhaust the limitations of God’s love, and you can receive it today in your life if you turn to Him repenting and believing and follow Him.
Maybe today there are those who are following Him, and like Levi, the desire of your heart is to bring others to Him. Perhaps this holiday season, you will have the opportunity to do just that. Commit it to God today and ask Him to lead you, and you follow, bringing others to Him as you go.
[1] Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Diligent (
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