But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. But go ye and learn what that meaneth (Hosea 6:6 ), I will have mercy, and not sacrifice - that is the one rather than the other. "Sacrifice," the chief part of the ceremonial law, is here put for a religion of literal adherence to mere rules; while "Mercy" expresses such compassion for the fallen as seeks to lift them up. The duty of keeping aloof from the polluted, in the sense of "having no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness," is obvious enough; but to understand this as prohibiting such contact with them as is necessary to their recovery, is to abuse it. This was what these pharisaical religionists did, and this is what our Lord here exposes.
For I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners [to repentance]. The words enclosed in brackets are of doubtful authority here, and more than doubtful authority in Mark 2:17; but in Luke 5:32 they are undisputed. We have here just the former statement stripped of its figure. "The righteous" are the whole; "sinners," the sick. When Christ "called" the latter, as He did Matthew, and probably some of those publicans and sinners whom he had invited to meet with Him, it was to heal them of, their spiritual maladies, or save their souls: "The righteous," like those miserable, self-satisfied Pharisees, "He sent empty away."
Remarks:
(1) How glorious is the grace which not only saves the chief of sinners, but places one of proverbially sunken class among "the princes of His people"! (See the notes at Matthew 1:3; Matthew 1:5-6.)
(2) How delightful is it to trace the deep humility with which this disciple ever after carried himself-whether in the genealogy which he gives of His Master, to which reference has just been made; or in avoiding, in the record of his own calling, what was to his own credit; or in noting, in his catalogue of the Twelve, as none of the other New Testament writers do, the justly branded class out of which he had been called. (See the note at Matthew 10:3.)
(3) But let us not fail to observe the compassion with which he sought to fetch in his old associates to the circle of the saved, "that they also might have fellowship with him" in the love of Jesus. There is no more certain evidence of genuine repentance and true disciplineship than this (See Psalms 51:12-13; Luke 22:32, second clause.)
(4) How grievously do they err, and pervert the simple, who represent the object of Christ's mission to have been merely to furnish a code of sound morality, or establish spirituality of worship, or certify the doctrine of the resurrection, or the like. He came to heal the sick soul, to raise the sunken to save sinners; to bring back to God the vilest prodigals, and beautify them with salvation. Such as want him not for this He passes by; they are not his patients, and they get nothing from Him. They may laud the purity and loftiness of His teaching and example; but they are strangers to Him as "the Balm in Gilead and the Physician there."
Since this discourse is recorded by all the three first Evangelists immediately after their account of Matthew's Call and Feast, there can be no doubt that it was delivered on that occasion. For the exposition of this important discourse, see the notes at Luke 5:33-39, where it is given mostfully.