Scripture Daily

Context No. 1978 of 4322 · Matthew

Context · Reflection

Matthew 9:12-17: in context

12When Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick do. 13But you go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” 14Then John’s disciples came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples don’t fast?” 15Jesus said to them, “Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. 16No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch would tear away from the garment, and a worse hole is made. 17Neither do people put new wine into old wineskins, or else the skins would burst, and the wine be spilled, and the skins ruined. No, they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”

When the religious criticize Jesus for eating with tax collectors and sinners, he answers with an image: those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick do. Go and learn what this means, he says, I desire mercy and not sacrifice; for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. He came, in other words, as a physician for the sick, seeking out those who know they are ill, not those who imagine themselves well.

Jesus' image is illuminating: he is the physician, and he comes for the sick. A physician does not seek out the healthy, who feel no need of him; he comes for the sick, who know they are ill and need his help. And Jesus applies this to himself: he came not for the righteous, those who imagine themselves spiritually well and in need of no help, but for sinners, those who know they are sick with sin and need the physician. The door to Christ, then, opens not through pretending to be well but through admitting our sickness. This overturns a common assumption. We might think that to come to God, to be acceptable to Christ, we must present ourselves as good, righteous, spiritually healthy, having our lives in order. Jesus says the opposite: he came for the sick, for sinners, for those who know their need. The one who pretends to be well, who imagines himself righteous and in need of no help, shuts himself out, not because Christ rejects him, but because he sees no need of the physician. But the one who admits he is sick with sin, who knows his need, is exactly the one Christ came for. The tax collector who beat his breast and prayed, God be merciful to me a sinner, went home justified, Jesus said, rather than the Pharisee who thanked God he was not like other men. This is deeply freeing for those who feel unworthy, sinful, spiritually sick. Your sickness is not a barrier to Christ; it is the very thing he came for. You do not have to make yourself well before coming to the physician; you come because you are sick, and he is the one who heals. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, Paul says, of whom I am chief. The way to Christ is not to pretend to be righteous but to admit we are sinners in need of the physician; and those who know their sickness, and come to him for healing, are precisely the ones he came to call. The healthy feel no need of the physician; but the sick who come to him find that he came for exactly them.

Do I imagine I must present myself as good, righteous, and spiritually well to come to Christ, or can I hear that he came as a physician for the sick, for sinners who know their need, so that my sickness with sin is not a barrier to him but the very thing he came for, and come to him not pretending to be well but admitting I am a sinner in need of the physician?

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