But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.
Jesus is challenged by the Pharisees for interacting with sinners and Matthew 9:13 is His response to them.
There is quite some significance to the first five words of this verse – A call by Jesus to understand something vitally important. To better grasp His words, we need a bit of understanding of the context.
To the Jews (and that includes the Pharisees) there were two primary religious traditions which they strove hard to keep: Righteousness and Justice. In pursuing righteousness, even mundane acts such as eating, dressing, marrying, and transacting were of religious significance. When it came to justice, it was an eternal religious obligation to them, at the very core of what it meant to be a Jew.
An invitation to everyone
To the Jews, sacrifice was an issue of purity, a matter of justice, a vehicle to atone for sin. Acts of righteousness and justice were the sacrifice needed to atone for intentional sins (Jews believe blood atonement is only for unintentional sin). However, in the eyes of the Pharisees, there were little or no acts of righteousness amongst the tax collectors. Because of their ‘intentional’ sin of skimming their fellow Jews under the authority of Rome. They were quite simply a hated bunch!
But we have Jesus seemingly enjoying a tax collectors party. Not just with Matthew, the tax collector but with his buddies as well. These were people who did not keep to the standards of righteousness and justice demanded by the Jews. However, Jesus had a very radical point of view, not only to be understood by the Pharisees of the day but also by us today.
“For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners”
The Gospel is an invitation to everyone no matter who they are or what they have done, to come back to God. It is not our prerogative to make a call as to who is eligible to receive that invitation. We were not called to be gatekeepers but workers in God’s fields of harvest (Matthew 9:37).
We must be careful not to abandon the gospel of Christ for a message of hatred, bitterness and judgmental accusations. The love of our God is not exclusive; instead, it’s inclusive, and He desires mercy not sacrifice.
