CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mark 2:14. Receipt of custom.—Toll-house. “Capernaum was the landing-place for the many ships which traversed the lake or coasted from town to town; and this not only for those who had business in Capernaum, but for those who would there strike the great road of eastern commerce from Damascus to the harbours of the West.”
Mark 2:15. Publicans.—Tax-collectors, the local agents of the Roman “publicani” or revenue officers, who farmed the taxes from the government. Everywhere throughout the Empire they were hated for their rapacity and dishonesty; but among the Jews especially were they abhorred, as being the representatives of a heathen, hostile, and victorious power.
Mark 2:17. To repentance.—Omit these words, imported from Luke 5:32.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 2:13-17
(PARALLELS: Matthew 9:9-13; Luke 5:27-32.)
The call and feast of Levi.—
I. A seaside walk hallowed by sacred instruction.—Christ never wasted His time or opportunities in idle reverie or sentimental contemplation of the beauties of nature. He made every scene yield food for mind and soul. And, asks Mr. Spurgeon, can we not do something for Jesus on the sands? If so, let us not miss such a happiness. What situation and surroundings can do better for earnest, loving conversation with our friends concerning the welfare of the soul? A few words about the sea of eternity and its great deeps, a sentence or two upon the broken shells and our frailty, upon the Rock of Ages and the sands of time, may never be forgotten.
II. A gracious call met by unquestioning obedience.—It is said that the publicans had tenements or booths erected for them at the foot of bridges, at the mouths of rivers, and by the seashore, where they plied their detested craft—levying from their countrymen the dues of the conqueror, and adding insult to injury by the extortions they commonly practised. Doubtless the tax-office by the seashore of Capernaum was a very important one, and Levi by this time a wealthy man adding daily to his gains. We need not suppose this was his first encounter with Christ; he may already have been a disciple in a general sense. But now the time has come for him to break away from his old life altogether, to abandon his business and his riches, and to adopt voluntary poverty for the rest of his life. It was a great sacrifice that was demanded of him, and few who heard the call given would be prepared to witness his ready obedience. From his case we may well learn to be very slow in passing judgment on others: however unlikely their character and position in life may appear to us, we know not what methods Christ may be employing to lead them to Himself. From the example of Levi we learn also, that we must be prepared to find our religion a costly thing. Had Levi replied, “Lord, let me continue my profitable business for a while; be satisfied with the homage of my heart,” surely Christ would have answered, “Whosoever there be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, and followeth after Me, he cannot be My disciple.” Now what was required of Levi is required, in a certain very real sense, of all. In every heart of man there is by nature the love of riches, or of what riches will purchase: covetous desires; love of self-indulgence in some shape or other; longings after something which is just beyond our reach; allowing our minds to run upon schemes which we would carry out if greater means were allowed, rather than reflecting what sort of use we make of what we have already. These are the things we are required to renounce (as Levi to give up his rich profession) for Christ’s sake.
III. A social meal marred by ignoble objections.—Levi’s first act is a manifestation of gratitude. He is eager to extend to others a share of the blessedness that has befallen himself. Accordingly he makes a great feast, and invites his old associates and friends to meet the Master at his house, earnestly desiring that they also may become followers of Christ. And the Master understood and appreciated his motive. As the physician is found where pain and sickness are, so Christ came to the dark, dull, ignorant, lost corners of the earth. Anywhere would He sit down, in any company eat and drink, especially in that of the most despised, because there He found those very souls, the lost and the rejected of men, whom He came expressly to seek, and, if they would, to save from themselves, and their own corrupt and miserable condition. But certain “scribes of the Pharisees,” who, intent to pry into Christ’s private life, had followed the guests into the dining-room (a common custom in the East), were filled with indignation at His sitting down to meat with a whole company of publicans, and that too (see Mark 2:18) on one of the fast days of the week. They must needs interpose with their crude criticisms. What cared they that His very presence was medicinal—banishing foul words and thoughts from all breasts save their own—bringing pure air and sunshine into the fetid atmosphere—an outward and visible sign of Divine grace and love? All they concerned themselves with was the maintenance of the barriers erected by their narrow-minded, self-satisfied exclusiveness. They could not conceive of any one sitting at meat with publicans and sinners from higher motives than the mere enjoyment of social intercourse; it never occurred to them that what Christ sought was not viands, but hearts—not to receive the meat that perisheth, but to bestow the true bread from heaven which endureth unto eternal life. Crafty cowards that they were, they uttered their cavil to the disciples rather than to the Master Himself; but Christ at once accepted the challenge and set the matter in the right light. Where else should the physician be found but in the hospital? what else should he be doing but attending to the ailments of his patients?
IV. A great claim advanced by the criticised Teacher.—“In calling Himself the Physician of sick souls,” says Dean Chadwick, “Jesus made a startling claim, which becomes more emphatic when we observe that He also quoted the words of Hosea, ‘I will have mercy, and not sacrifice’ (Matthew 9:13; Hosea 6:6). For this expression occurs in that chapter which tells how the Lord Himself hath smitten and will bind us up. And the complaint is just before it, that ‘when Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to Assyria, and sent to King Jareb: but he is not able to heal you, neither shall he cure you of your wound’ (Hosea 5:13 to Hosea 6:1). As the Lord Himself hath torn, so He must heal. Now Jesus comes to that part of Israel which the Pharisees despise for being wounded and diseased, and justifies Himself by words which must, from their context, have reminded every Jew of the declaration that God is the Physician, and it is vain to seek healing elsewhere. And immediately afterwards He claims to be the Bridegroom, whom also Hosea spoke of as Divine. Yet men profess that only in St. John does He advance such claims that we should ask, ‘Whom makest Thou Thyself?’ Let them try the experiment, then, of putting such words into the lips of any mortal.”
V. A pertinent question raised by puzzled friends.—It was a very different spirit from that of the scribes which prompted John’s disciples (Matthew 9:14) to ask, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but Thy disciples fast not?” They were perplexed to find Jesus, whom their master had taught them to regard with the deepest reverence, feasting on a fast day. They remembered, perhaps, that in the Law the Day of Atonement was the only fast prescribed; and it may have begun to dawn upon them that there was more genuine religion in the non-observance, on the part of Christ and His disciples, of the elaborate system which had by this time degenerated into a pure formality, than in their own strict adherence to it. In reply Jesus takes the opportunity to lay down the principle which should regulate all religious life and its expression—the principle of naturalness, and not artificiality. “There is a time to every purpose under heaven: a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” The Baptist himself had said, with reference to Him, that “the friend of the Bridegroom, which standeth and heareth Him, rejoiceth greatly because of the Bridegroom’s voice.” To make that a time of fasting—when they were basking in the sunshine of the Bridegroom’s presence—would have been quite incongruous, if not hypocritical. And after all no one need grudge them their day of gladness, for it would soon be succeeded by the night of bereavement—“and then shall they fast.” So, we know, it happened in the Church’s earliest and purest time. When, e.g., Paul and Barnabas were separated for the work to which the Holy Spirit had called them, the word came to those who were “ministering to the Lord and fasting” (Acts 13:2). St. Paul ordained presbyters, after prayer with fasting (Acts 14:23); speaks of himself as being “in fastings often” (2 Corinthians 11:27); and speaks of ministers commending themselves to God “in labours, in watchings, and in fastings” (2 Corinthians 6:5). And ever since fasting has been enjoined by the Church as the natural expression of heartfelt contrition for sin, and a fit instrument for the subjection of the lower to the higher nature; but not as a meritorious act entitling him who practises it to the favour of God. This latter was the idea with which fasting had become associated in the minds of the Jews; and in order to stamp it with His disapproval Christ adds the parables or similitudes of the piece of new cloth, and of the new wine that must not be poured into old bottles. Christians were indeed to fast, as Jews had fasted; but with them the ordinance was to have a different and far higher significance. It was no longer to be regarded as part of a law of works, part of a servile duty rendered to a despot; it was now to be a spiritual sacrifice offered by spiritual men to a spiritual Father, capable with His blessing to be the means of strengthening and purifying the soul. Fitly, therefore, do we pray in the Collect for the First Sunday in Lent, that God would give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey His godly motions in righteousness and true holiness, to His honour and glory.
Mark 2:17. Not the righteous, but sinners.—A motley crowd met at Levi’s feast. There were men of his own class—“publicans”: the small district officers who collected the tolls and customs for the great officials over them, who farmed the taxes from the Roman Government; a greedy, extortionate set, whose main object in life was to fill their own pockets by cheating those above and blow them alike. There were others present even less savoury than these to the nostrils of the of Capernaum—“sinners”: open transgressors who made no pretence of virtue, but sinned as it were “with a cart-rope.” With such companions, we are told, “Jesus sat at meat.” It was, then, we may be sure, no riotous feast. Jesus was not lending His countenance to their sinful ways. They had been induced to come to see and to hear this wonderful Teacher, and in His presence (depend upon it) they were subdued, restrained, softened. No one would take a liberty or say a vile word before Him. Christian charity would have rejoiced to see these people so changed, even if but for the time. Yet there were some near by who were terribly shocked at the sight. Instead of feeling glad that so many sinners were on the road to amendment through intercourse with Christ, they could only wonder that One so excellent would adventure Himself into such evil company, and run the risk of legal pollution in consequence. The great aim of most of these scribes and Pharisees, in passing through the world, was to hold aloof from everything and everybody that could contaminate them and render them ceremonially unclean. No wonder they were scandalised at the scene in Levi’s house, and exclaimed, “How is it that He eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?” They put their angry question to the disciples, but the Lord Himself took up the challenge and gave them their answer. “They that are whole have no need,” etc. They were silent. What could they reply? He whose conduct they presumed to criticise had come as a Physician of souls: the idea was quite new to them; they had never looked on publicans and sinners as people who could be cured: of course it was just such depraved persons that were most in need of a Physician. He had “come to call sinners to repentance”: certainly it was just people like those around Him that were most in need of such a call. They, the scribes and Pharisees, were “the whole,” “the righteous”: the Physician and the call were useless to them!
I. Who are the “righteous” whom Christ did not come to call?—
1. The expression has been taken to denote those who had truly reformed their lives, and who carefully endeavoured to abstain from all known sin. But though this may be a very correct definition of righteousness in general, it scarcely applies here. Our Lord cannot have meant that there were persons living at that time to whom the call to repentance—the very watchword of Christianity—was altogether unnecessary; for we know that “the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins” was ordained to be preached to all men without exception.
2. There are two meanings which may be attached to the word “righteous.”
(1) It may have been used by Christ in a figurative sense, without any reference to the actual state of the world, and without even the supposition of there being any such persons as “the righteous” really in existence. Thus His meaning may have been: “You ask Me why I associate with sinners. I answer, that My commission is to sinners. To them, and for them, I am sent. Righteousness is not the qualification required in those to whom I am carrying relief. The righteous, therefore, if such there be, are not included in My charge.”
(2) It may have been intended to carry a reproachful admonition to the hearts of the self-justifying Pharisees. “Yes, I do eat with publicans and sinners. Amongst them, whose guilt is confessed, and who make no pretence of sanctity, I may perhaps find the willing hearer, the patient learner, and the penitent disciple. But upon you whose hearts are blinded by conceit—upon you whose minds are so fully occupied with admiration of your own perfections that there is no room for anything else,—upon you My calls to repentance would be lost; and therefore to you they need not be addressed.” Such an interpretation may seem inconsistent with the usual mildness of our Lord’s discourse; but it corresponds with the style which He seems to have invariably adopted in addressing the scribes and Pharisees, whose duplicity of character and affectation of sanctity excited His constant displeasure and drew down upon them His severest reprobation.
II. What is the “repentance” to which Christ came to call sinners?—
1. Repentance is sorrow for sin. The true servant of Christ must ever feel a regret, a deep, abiding regret, that by his transgressions he has offended a God to whom he is so greatly indebted. This feeling will accompany him through life. He will never be found feeding his imagination with the fancied virtues of his heart, or the supposed graces of his conduct. If he does well, he thanks the God who enabled him to do it, and leaves it to that God to accept his humble service—never forgetting that he has been, and is, a sinner.
2. Repentance is also amendment of life. He who regrets that he has sinned will follow up that regret with endeavours to sin no more. Fixing his gaze on the Divine standard of purity, he will strive unceasingly to attain to it. By that standard he will repress his passions, model his desires, guide his judgment, and correct his practice.
3. Repentance is, in short, a change of heart. The whole tide of the penitent’s affections is reversed. He loves what he formerly hated, and abhors that which was formerly his delight. Was he but lately captivated with the charm of sinful pleasures? They are now his abomination. Did he dislike and loathe the reasonable service of his Maker and Redeemer? He now finds in it his solace, his hope, and his ground of rejoicing.
4. But is repentance the same in all minds? Far from it. To him who has long held out against the kindly warnings of conscience, and resisted the gentle solicitations of the Spirit of grace, which would have led him into the path of peace—to him, in truth, repentance is a contest, a trial hard and sore, which may more appropriately be called a “conversion.” His very principles of action, and the whole temper of his mind, must undergo a complete transformation. But to the avowed and sincere servant of Christ, who has never broken loose from the hallowed circle in which he was placed at baptism, repentance is not a work of so violent a nature; it rather proceeds with the quiet tenor of a gentle stream, ruffled by an occasional unevenness. The mind of the faithful Christian needs not the severe penance of the hackneyed sinner; yet has it reason to be often looking back, confessing its errors, rectifying its conduct, and taking refuge in the “Fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness.”
III. Consider the necessity and reasonableness of repentance as a condition affixed to salvation.—
1. God could not, consistently with every part of His Divine character, bestow eternal life on sinners without repentance. Wisdom, justice, compassion, holiness—all the attributes of Deity—are equally concerned in this work. No measure, therefore, however gracious in its tendency, must be adopted at the suggestion of one of these attributes which may by any possibility interfere with the free exercise of another. A God of mercy may forgive; but a God of wisdom, justice, holiness, must (so to speak) deliberate as to the manner and measure of His forgiveness. Scripture, therefore, in declaring repentance to be indispensably necessary to salvation, declares that which we can ourselves see to be alone worthy of the Great God, the Giver of all law, and the Just Judge of all the earth.
2. Could we conceive the Son of God, in His capacity of Mediator, interposing His merciful intercession between offended Majesty and unrepentant sinners? A mediator is bound as much to protect the honour of one party as to promote the interests of the other. How then could Jesus, with due regard for His Father’s dignity, plead for creatures who still persisted in their rebellion against Him? How could He present His own blood and His own righteousness in behalf of those who still delighted in the enormities which brought Him to the Cross? What would this be but to betray the honour of the Eternal Father, to prostitute the merits of His own death, and to defeat the whole end and purpose of His atonement?
3. The same truth is equally manifest with reference to the sinner himself. For without that alteration and improvement in temper and habits, which by the Holy Spirit is wrought in us through repentance, heaven itself would possess no attraction for fallen man. There would be an absolute contradiction between the nature of the happiness and the person to be admitted to it. The future life of glory is no scene of carnal or corporeal delights—no place of enjoyment for the senses. Its beauties are all of the moral kind; its pleasures such as the spiritually-minded, and none others, can appreciate. The objects of those pleasures are God, ourselves, and our fellow-creatures made perfect with us. The state of the soul will then be such as results from a virtuous and well-governed will, and a noble command of all the inclinations and affections—from an exalted understanding, an enlarged knowledge of God, His attributes and works, and a perfect perception of His wonderful dispensations of wisdom and mercy towards His creatures—from the love of Him, and the ever-pleasing sense of being beloved by Him. This is to be happy, because this is to be good. The contrary state—the state of unrepented sin—is misery, be one’s outward circumstances what they may. Heaven itself could not remedy the evil. The one and only source of relief is a change of disposition, of principles, of practices—in one word, repentance.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mark 2:14. Levi—Matthew.—There can be no question that the “Levi” of the Second and Third Gospels is the “Matthew” whom the First Evangelist mentions so modestly (Matthew 9:9). The previous occupation is the same; the call is the same, in time, place, manner, and result; the feast is the same, the guests and spectators, the questions and answers. That our Lord should have bestowed upon Levi the additional name Matthew—“gift of God”—is in accordance with what we are told of most of the other apostles. Respecting his previous history we know nothing; but it is reasonable enough to suppose that, like Peter, Andrew, James, John, and Philip, he had been under the instruction and discipline of the Baptist, and so was not by any means indifferent to religion. For indications that there had been some unusual religious movement among the publicans as a class, see Matthew 21:31; Luke 3:12-13; Luke 7:29.
“Sitting at the receipt of custom.”—
1. In business.
(1) Exacting more than is fair from employees.
(2) Bestowing too great assiduity on the amassing of wealth, to the detriment of both body and soul.
2. In general behaviour. Pride and ambition—demanding obeisance and deference, instead of practising the virtues of humility and meekness.
3. In domestic concerns. Expecting all household arrangements to fit in exactly with one’s own convenience or caprice.
4. In pleasure. Greedily pursuing things that cannot bestow lasting happiness.
Incidental services to men.—There is here a lesson to us, that we are to be always on the outlook for the good of men whom we are passing by in the various ways of life. Whereever we see a man we see an opportunity of speaking a word for Christ, and of calling men to a higher life. Courage and prudence are equally required in the discharge of these incidental services. There is a modesty that is immodest, and there is a forwardness which is but the courage of humility.—J. Parker, D.D.
The greatness of Divine grace, which can make of a publican an apostle.
1. According to Jewish traditionalism, the publican was an excommunicated person; but he is now called to assist in founding the communion of Christ.
2. He was an apostate from the people of God; but called to be one of the pillars of the Church of God.
3. He was an instrument of oppression; but becomes an instrument of glorious liberty.
4. He was a stumbling-block and a byword; but becomes a burning and a shining light.—J. P. Lange, D.D.
Christ’s diligence an incentive to us.—Gracious Lord, how diligent art Thou in doing good! how negligent are we in receiving it!—who art fain to look us out, and often makest that which seems mere chance to be a blessed occasion to us of spiritual improvement and of eternal assurance, and turnest accidents into special instances of love and intimacy, if we do but as we should do, regard Thy goings, observe Thy looks, and obey Thy calls.—A. Littleton, D.D.
The Divine call.—God has created us by His power, and designed us by His wisdom, and preserves us by His mercy for greater and nobler ends than to serve the wicked world and sinful flesh; nor is He wanting by His grace to afford every one sufficient means for his spiritual conduct. He passeth by us often when we are not aware of Him; He looks upon us and we see Him not; and He calls us by checks of our own conscience, by motions of His Holy Spirit, and by the preaching of His Word: but we stop our ears against Him, and will not hear; and when He cries to us, “Follow Me,” we sit still and mind Him not. Oh, let us open our eyes to behold Him, our ears to hear Him, and our hearts to receive Him!—Ibid.
Mark 2:15. Levi’s feast.—
1. The gratitude of the believing heart for the blessings of salvation will manifest itself in gifts to the Lord:—Zaccheus; Mary of Bethany; the woman that was a sinner; Lydia; the converts on the day of Pentecost.
2. The earnest believer will not be ashamed to confess Christ before his former associates and fellow-workmen. The Church has great need of men like Hedley Vicars, who laid down his Bible on the mess room table in the presence of his brother-officers, as an unmistakable token of the change that had come over him.
3. The converted man will be anxious about the conversion of others. He goes forth as Christ’s soldier to win captives from the enemy. Naturally he begins the campaign nearest home.
4. The Christian religion, in order to accomplish its glorious mission, must descend to the most degraded, and by its own inherent power raise them up.
Mark 2:17. Who are “the righteous”?—A glance at a concordance will prove that both Old and New Testaments constantly speak of men as “righteous.” God loves to give us credit for being that which He foresees us capable of becoming, even though we have got only a few steps on the road as yet. “The righteous” are simply those whose intention is pure. Sinners we all are, and must be; but wilful sinners we need not be. We may have been thoughtless many a time, and, in consequence, surprised into folly and sin; but if we at once own and lament our frailty, He is not extreme to mark what is done amiss; and whilst by His grace we keep ourselves from presumptuous sin (Psalms 19:13) our names are enrolled among the righteous, and He imputes not our iniquities to us.
The Divine Physician.—
1. Sin is sickness of the most dangerous kind.
2. Repentance is the first step towards the healing of the soul.
3. Christ is the soul’s Physician, for whose skill no case is too hard.
4. The more grave our state, the more anxious is Christ to restore us to spiritual health.
How to do good.—From this answer we may see—
1. Duty of doing good avowedly—not going about it in an indirect manner, as if we were making an experiment, but boldly and distinctly, approaching it with a set purpose of spending our best energy upon it.
2. We may see it to be our duty to go to those who are least cared for. We are only working in the line of the Saviour’s mission as we begin at the very lowest point in the social scale. We cannot do fundamental and permanent good by beginning at the top or in the middle; we must get down to springs and causes, we must begin at the very deepest point of human apostasy and work our way steadily upward; there is a temptation even in Christian work to stop short of the lowest depth of human necessity.
3. Jesus Christ shows it to be our duty to associate with those whom we seek to save: He sat with them, He talked to them, He asked them questions, He made Himself their personal friend, and so attained over them personal supremacy. This practice levels a deadly blow at the theory of doing good by proxy. It is comparatively easy to send other men on errands of mercy, but we are only working in Christ’s spirit in so far as we are prepared to go ourselves and openly identify our whole influence with the cause of fallen men. Where there is this intense personal consecration, there will, of course, be a disposition to engage as much co-operation as possible; our duty is to see that we do not find in co-operation an excuse for personal negligence.—J. Parker, D.D.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2
Mark 2:14. Attractive power of Christ.—If steel filings be mixed with dirt and a magnet be applied, it will attract the steel to itself, and draw it away from the grosser particles. Thus does Christ draw men from that which is earthly and polluting.
Christ our Guide.—With my brother I was once climbing the Cima di Jazi, one of the mountains in the chain of Monta Rosa. When nearly at the top, we entered a dense fog. Presently our guides faced right about and grounded their axes on the frozen snowed slope. My brother, seeing the slope still beyond, and not knowing it was merely the cornice overhanging a precipice of several thousand feet, rushed onward. I shall never forget their cry of agonised warning. He stood a moment on the very summit, and then, the snow yielding, he began to fall through. One of the guides, at great risk, had rushed after him, and seizing him by the coat, drew him down to a place of safety. So Christ is our Guide amid the mists and the difficult places of life. It is not ours to go before Him. Where He leads we may go. When He stops, we should stop. It is at our peril if we go a step beyond.—Newman Hall.
God often calls men in strange places.—Not in the house of prayer, not under the preaching of the Word; but when all these things have been absent, and all surrounding circumstances have seemed most adverse to the work of grace, that grace has put forth its power. The tavern, the theatre, the ball-room, the gaming-house, the race-course, and other similar haunts of worldliness and sin, have sometimes been the scenes of God’s converting grace. As an old writer says: “Our calling is uncertain in respect of place, for God calls some from their ships, and some from their shops; some from under the hedges, and others from the market; so that if a man can but make out unto his own soul that he is certainly called, the time when and the place where matter little.”
Christ’s effectual call.—We read in classic story how the lyre of Orpheus enchanted with its music not only the wild beasts, but the very trees and rocks upon Olympus, so that they moved from their places to follow him; so Christ, our heavenly Orpheus, with the music of His gracious speech, draws after Him those less susceptible to benign influences than beasts and trees and stones, even poor, hardened, senseless, sinful souls. Let Him but strike His golden harp, and whisper in thy heart, “Come, follow Me,” and thou, like another Matthew, shalt be won.
“Follow Me.”—Aulus Gellius tells us a story of one Protagoras, who, being poor, was forced for a livelihood to carry burdens. One day he had got some chumps on his back, which he was bringing to town for fuel. Democritus, a famed philosopher, meets him; admiring his contrivance, how he got that rude parcel of stuff together in that order, for his further satisfaction bids him lay down his bundle, untie it, and do it up again. He does so, and that with such method and artifice, that the philosopher perceiving by this essay he had a logical head and an ingeny fit for science, told him, “Come, young man, you must along with me; you are fit for greater and better things than this you are about.” He takes him along with him, maintains him, breeds him up in philosophy, wherein he proved subtle, and in some degree eminent. It was the same case with Matthew here, if I may make comparison. He was puzzling and pelting himself in a sorry employment. Our Saviour comes by and finds him sitting at it; He fetches him off with a gracious call, as if He had said, “Come, leave this sordid and scandalous employ; I have greater and nobler service for thee. Follow Me.”—A. Littleton, D.D.
Mark 2:15. Sinners drawn to Christ.—Travelling along a country road on a hot summer’s day, you may have noticed the people before you turn aside at a certain point and gather around something that was yet hidden from you. You knew at once that it was a clear, cold spring that drew them all together there. Each of them wanted something which that spring could supply. Or you have seen iron filings leap up and cling to the poles of a magnet when it was brought near to them. The attraction of the magnet drew them to itself. So sinners were drawn to Jesus; they felt that in Him was all fulness, and that He could supply their need.
The converted seeking to convert others.—It is thought that Matthew wished to introduce his friends and old companions to Christ. Colonel Gardiner, after his conversion, finding that his former friends considered him mad, invited them to meet him, and pleaded the cause of religion with such force and strength of reasoning, that one cut short the argument with saying, “We thought this man mad, and he is in good earnest proving us to be so.”
Mark 2:16. Religious prejudice.—Happily, in our age and country, though prejudice of class is not yet done away with, there is not much left to give an idea of the intensity of the religious prejudices and sectarian divisions of the ancient East. Giant Prejudice now can do little more than sit grinning at the pilgrims and biting his nails at them because he cannot come at them; and it is hard for modern occidental imagination to conceive of him as he moved and acted in full social and political power. But one example will do. Read Leger’s Histoire de Piémont, and learn the cruelty, brutality, and obscenity practised on the poor Waldenses; and then imagine how the Pharisees felt toward Jesus, who received sinners and ate with them. The lower the grade of knowledge and culture (and most of the Pharisees were probably illiterate), so much the more savage were the feelings and actions of the persecutors, though their cruelty was not refined in proportion to their savageness. In modern times this religious prejudice exists, and strongly too. There are certain sects still in Palestine and Syria who will buy and sell with you, but not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you. They are often the dirtiest of the dirty, but they hold your clean touch defilement. As when, in certain parts of India, one ventures to clear his throat in the street, all the shops near by are immediately shut up; so, in some places, an unlucky touch by a Christian will defile a handful of figs, a bunch of grapes, a melon; or perhaps even a whole basket of fruit.
Mark 2:17. God welcomes sinners.—As the story goes, a certain generous but eccentric nobleman sometimes asked not only the high-born and wealthy but the squalid and poor to his feasts. Previous to one of these occasions, a courtier had the misfortune to tear or to stain his dress. How was he to appear now at his benefactor’s table? After some thought he came to a wise conclusion. These were his words, “If I cannot go as a nobleman I will go as a beggar.” Say the same to Him who spreads the gospel feast. Never mind though you cannot go as a saint; go as a sinner. You will be welcome.
Christ saves sinners.—Luther says: “Once upon a time the devil said to me, ‘Martin Luther, you are a great sinner, and you will be damned!’ ‘Stop stop!’ said! I; ‘one thing at a time. I am a great sinner, it is true, though you have no right to tell me of it. I confess it. What next?’ ‘Therefore you will be damned.’ ‘That is not good reasoning. It is true I am a great sinner, but it is written, “Jesus Christ came to save sinners”; therefore I shall be saved! Now go your way.’ So I cut the devil off with his own sword, and he went away mourning because he could not cast me down by calling me a sinner.”
All are sinners.—I remember a gentleman taking exception to an address based upon the words of God concerning Jew and Gentile, that both are guilty before God. I remarked, “But the Word of God distinctly says, ‘There is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God’ ” (Romans 3:22-23). My friend replied, “Do you mean to say that there is no difference between an honest man and a dishonest one, between an intemperate man and a sober man?” “No,” I remarked; “I did not affirm that there was no room for comparison between such cases; but my position is, that if two men were standing here together, one an intemperate man and the other a sober man, I should say of the one, ‘This man is an intemperate sinner, the other is a sober sinner.’ ” My friend did not know how to meet the difficulty, but answered, “Well, I don’t like such teaching.” Very quietly I replied, “Then I will make some concession, and meet your difficulty. I will admit that many are ‘superior sinners,’ and that you are a superior sinner.” I shall not soon forget my friend’s expression of countenance when he had taken stock of the argument.—Henry Varley.