The Sick, the Unrighteous and the Sinners

Matthew 9:9 & 12-13

As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him. . . . Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)

[Here] we find Matthew, the tax-collector, telling the story of his own calling in the middle of a long list (two chapters in all) of healing miracles. Why would he do that?
In Matthew’s world it was assumed that tax-collectors could be lumped together with “sinners,” as in verses 10-11. This was because, first, they collaborated with the hated authorities, and, second, because they made extra money for themselves by collecting too much. . . . [W]hat would it be like having a young prophet with a spring in his step and God’s kingdom in his heart coming past one day and simply asking you to follow him? Yes: it would feel exactly like a healing miracle. Actually verse 9 hints at something even more: it would be like a resurrection. “He arose,” says the passage literally, using a regular “resurrection” word, “and followed him” (102).

A. Orendorff

Matthew 9:12-13 (along with its parallel passages from Mark 2:17 and Luke 5:31-32) has always been, for me, a powerful text on both the nature and the objects of Jesus’ call. Many times I have prayed (with desperation and joy), “Lord, it is not the well who you have called, but the sick, the unrighteous and the sinners. I am sick. I am unrighteous. I am a sinner. These are conditions I can meet. So to you I come.” What is so powerful about these verses is that they swing wide the narrow door and essentially say, “The more you understand how terrible you are, the more ready to follow Jesus you become.” This is, of course, completely backwards from the way I expect God’s call to operate. What I expect is that my fitness, my abilities, my morality, my uprightness, my fill-in-the-blank will be what ready me to approach Christ. But no, what Jesus says is it precisely our need—our desperate, guilty, culpable need—that readies us to draw near him. I am all at once floored, humbled and exhilarated to be called by a God like this.