“There are Christians who use Jesus’ willingness to dine with tax collectors and sinners as license to involve themselves in all sorts of questionable gatherings and activities. ‘Don’t you know that Jesus spent His time with gluttons and wine-bibbers?’ And so that excuses some of their own indulgences.
But Jesus was not there that day to just hang with these people. He was there to heal them. Doctors don’t go to ebola camps for fun or to look cool. They go to try to save lives. Jesus saw these people as sick, dying, and in terrible spiritual condition.
Elsewhere in the Gospels, He speaks very seriously about the spiritual health of tax collectors and their need for salvation.
He says here that He came to that dinner to call them. Call them to what? Luke tells us: To repentance. To turn from their old way of life and to follow after Him no longer as tax collectors but now as disciples. To be saved from that life and put on a new path. Jesus was there not for the filet, but because He was on a rescue mission.
In fact, later, when the Pharisees again question why He’s willing to interact with tax collectors, Jesus tells the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin and the Lost Son. These people were not only sick, they were lost. And His mission was a search and rescue mission – intervening for them before it was too late.”
