Jesus Calls Sinners
An Orderly Account: Encountering Jesus in the Gospel of Luke
Luke 5:27-32
The Text
27 After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, “Follow me.” 28 And leaving everything, he rose and followed him.
29 And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. 30 And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” 31 And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
Introduction:
We’ve been making our way through Luke’s gospel account, and for the last three weeks Luke has been showing us what happens when various kinds of people meet Christ. And what we learn from these passages is the Jesus Christ is unlike any other religious figure in history. Christianity is unlike any other religion in history.
Most people think that Christianity is basically like any other religion in this way: they think religion is a set of practices that you adopt in order to make some changes in your life.
It’s like the old Welsh Pastor who lived around 1904. He’d preached for a long time and there was a kind of deadness to his preaching. He knew it. And he began wrestling with the question, “Am I really a Christian?”
And one day he turned to his wife. They’d both been in the church for decades, and he says, “Darling, have you been saved?” And of course, this is the pastor’s wife. And she says, “Well, you know dear that I have been confirmed in the church. I’ve been baptized.” And he said, “Yes, I know and you’ve been vaccinated to, but have you been saved?”
What’s he saying? Ultimately, being confirmed in the church and even being baptized have as much to do with the cause of salvation as being vaccinated.
Raise the Need, State the Destination, Give Signposts:
You see, Christianity is not primarily a set of practices that you adopt in order to change yourself. You gotta see this. These encounters with Jesus in Luke’s gospel show us; they are living pictures of what it’s like to become a Christian, and virtually every time someone begins following Jesus in Luke’s gospel, it’s not because they sensed a need for self-improvement. In fact, most of the time they are not aware that anything needs to change in their life. They are just fine where they are, thank you very much.
So, what is a Christian? A very simple message. A Christian is…
- Someone Who Jesus Calls
- Someone Who Jesus Convicts
- Someone Who Jesus Changes.
Three C’s. You know I don’t alliterate often, so you know how badly I want you to memorize this.
Ok, first…
- A Christian is Someone Jesus Calls
Luke says, you are not a Christian if you have not, like Levi, experienced the call of Jesus. You are not a Christian unless you are aware of having been called by Jesus.
Now, let me explain to you exactly what I mean by this right up front. I mean this: Christianity is not something first and foremost that you choose to take up. It’s something that takes you up. Let me put it another way. Christianity is not something you take hold of first. It first takes hold of you.
Look back at your Bible. Verse 27:
After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, “Follow me.” 28 And leaving everything, he rose and followed him.
Levi is at his tax office. By the way, Levi was his Jewish name. Matthew is his Roman name, and this is the same guy who would later write the gospel we know as Matthew. But here he is, doing his work. He has his ledger in front of him. He’s planning out who he needs to audit next. And the next thing he knows, he’s left it all behind and he’s following Jesus.
Now, I need you to hear me on this: a Christian is not first and foremost someone who seeks Jesus out. A Christian is first and foremost someone who Jesus has called to himself.
How do you know you’ve been called by Jesus?
First, you sense a power from outside of yourself taking charge. Levi isn’t looking to make a change. He isn’t seeking out the religious teacher. But Jesus is seeking him. When it says that Jesus saw a tax collector, the Greek word for saw means to look intently with purpose. In other words, Levi had no intentions for Jesus, but Jesus had all kinds of intentions for Levi.
And look at how Levi begins to follow. There is no negotiation. The conversation lasts two words. Jesus says, “Follow me,” and just like that Levi leaves everything; the text tells us he rose and followed him. There may have been more to it than that, but Levi has not gone out looking to make some changes.
The first sign that you are becoming a Christian… the first sign that you a have heard the call of Jesus is that you sense a power coming in from the outside and taking charge of your life.
Sometimes I ask people if they are a Christian and they say, “Well, I’m trying to be.” And the moment they say that I know they aren’t a Christian, or they have a really butchered understanding. Because look that the passage, there’s nothing to trying. There’s the call of Christ coming to Levi in power that he can’t not obey.
Second sign that you’ve been called by Jesus. You are confronted with a person, not just a bunch of ideas or rules. Christianity contains rules, but it is first and foremost about relating to Jesus Christ on a personal level. Levi is not adopting principles. He isn’t delving into esoteric knowledge. He’s confronted not with ideas. He’s confronted with a person. He’s relating to a person.
If you call yourself a Christian… are you merely relating to ideas, bare doctrinal truths? Or, are you relating to the risen Jesus Christ?
Jesus said in John 15: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” Do you know what that means? Jesus says, a Christian is someone who receives life from me the way a leave receives life from a stem. It’s a vital connection to a person. So, are you merely giving rational ascent to religious concepts? Or, are you vitally connected by a living faith to the living Christ?
In the 18th century, John Wesley had founded a revival movement on the campus of Oxford University. The group had been known as the Holy Club because they were fastidious about their religious duties. So they met all the time. They learned and read all the great doctrines of the faith. They held one another to high standards of morality, and one-by-one they all realized that they were unconverted. They had knowledge. They had religious habits. But they were not vitally connected to Jesus Christ.
So the group began reading Martin Luther’s commentary on Galatians, specifically the preface, and one-by-one they all heard the call of Jesus and responded and were converted. Here’s the testimony of one of the members, a man named William Holland:
“Mr. Charles Wesley read the Preface aloud. At the words, ‘What, have we then nothing to do? No! nothing but only accept of Him, “Who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption”‘, there came such a power over me as I cannot well describe; my great burden fell off in an instant; my heart was so filled with peace and love that I burst into tears. I almost thought I saw our Savior! My companions, perceiving me so affected, fell on their knees and prayed. When I afterwards went into the street, I could scarcely feel the ground I trod upon.”
Charles Wesley would famously writes the lines:
Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature’s night.
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray.
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light.
My chains fell off, my heart was free.
I rose, went forth, and followed thee.
You see, a Christian is not first someone who takes hold of Christ. It’s someone who Christ calls. He takes hold of you.
- A Christian is Someone Jesus Convicts.
After Levi begins following Christ, he throws a party at his house, invites all his friends over to meet Jesus, and of course the religious crowd hates it. Look at verse 30:
Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?
Their understanding is that there are two kinds of people: those who obey God, and are therefore welcomed into God’s presence, and those who disobey God and therefore are rejected. Of course Jesus corrects them and says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
Ok. Look at who it is that Jesus has called in this passage. Levi, the tax collector. Those two words, tax collector, do not strike us the way they would have struck a first century Jew. We may not like the IRS a whole lot, but understand that being a Jewish tax collector in the first century meant you were the scum of society.
Tax collectors routinely collected more than was required. Rome didn’t care what they collected so long as they got their share. So tax collectors were known extortioners.
To be a tax collector in the first century was not like choosing to be a fisherman or a farmer. This was a conscious choice to enter a life of planned and calculated abuse and misuse of others. Just last week we saw Jesus heal a man with leprosy. He was a social outcast. But understand that the leper was a social outcast by providence. He hadn’t chosen his unclean status. But Levi had. Levi was the Ebenezer Scrooge of his culture.
But beyond the practice of extortion, becoming a tax collector meant that Levi was working for the political enemy of his own nation. To be a tax collector was to be an ethnic traitor. Because we now have so little national pride we don’t really sense how despised an ethnic traitor was.
But do you remember Dante’s Inferno? It’s the fictional work of Dante the poet descending down into hell. And remember hell was made up like a giant funnel divided into nine circles… and the further down you go the worst the sinners you find and the worse punishments you get.
- Limbo – Virtuous Pagans
- Lust – Adulterers
- Gluttons
- Greedy
- Sinfully Angry
- Heretics
- Violet
Then, at the very bottom were traitors.
Now, by recording the conversion of Levi, do you see what Luke is telling us? Yes, Jesus comes for sinners… but not just any old run of the mill sinner. He comes for the worst.
He comes for the people who deserve to be thrown into the ninth circle of hell; the lowest pit.
And Jesus says, this is who I have come for. I have come for the worst of the worst. When he says, “I haven’t come to call the righteous, but sinners…” He’s not saying that some people don’t need his salvation. He’s saying some don’t realize they need it. And the only one’s who realize it are those who are willing to cry out, like Isaiah, “Woe is me, for I am undone.”
You see, great sinners often stand closer to God because they know they are sick, while religious types, who believe they are close to God are actually driven from him because they’re full of pride. They won’t admit their own need.
And the more painfully someone feels their own sickness, the more they are willing to put themselves without reservation into Jesus’ care.
Jesus says, I have come for sinners… but I have not come to confirm or affirm them in their sinfulness. I have not come to leave them in their sinfulness. I’ve come to convict them.
Jesus says his call, his invitation, it goes out to sinners. And it’s a call to repentance. That’s a big churchy word, but it means a change of mind. It means turning around.
What is repentance? Very simply, it is turning from whatever you previously loved, and valued, and treasured more than Christ, and turning to Christ in faith and trust.
Repentance is an inward change of mind, a change of affections. It is both sorrow over sin as well as a turning to Christ in love, fear, and faith.
Do you want to know what repentance looks like? When Levi heard the call of Jesus Christ, he knew his old life of extortion was dead. When he heard the call of Jesus he knew that his love of money had been mortified, put to death.
It wasn’t that he had to give anything up to go find Jesus. It’s that Jesus had found him and in the shining light of Jesus Christ, his old life shrivels to dust.
I want to be absolutely clear at this point: repentance is not a work we do in order to earn Christ’s grace. Rather, having received grace from Christ to begin with; having heard his call, having received his invitation, we respond in repentance and faith.
So, have you experienced the call of Jesus? Have you experienced the conviction of Christ? Finally…
- A Christian is Someone Jesus Changes.
A Christian is not just someone who experiences a call and conviction. A Christian is also someone who rises, just like Levi and follows Jesus. Verse 28:
And leaving everything, he rose and followed him.
How does Jesus change us? Two ways.
First, he changes us over the course of a lifetime.
Do a little bity of grammar with me. In English, the word “follow” sounds like a past tense perfect, or completed action. But the way this verb is written in the Greek, it’s a present tense verb, and it’s active. In other words, Luke is not communicating that Jesus was walking and Levi followed him for the rest of the walk.
He’s saying, for the rest of his life, Levi followed Jesus; which is to say, Levi became Jesus’ disciple. He follows Jesus the way a student follows a teacher, or a soldier follows a general.
This is not a momentary following. It’s a lifelong following.
Can I get really practical with you? Jesus saves you in a moment. He forgives your sins in a moment. He removes the penalty for your sin and gives you his righteous record in a moment.
But he takes a lifetime to actively and providentially conform you to his image. Growth in the gospel, outwardly manifested in our thoughts, actions, and attitudes, takes a lifetime.
And if you begin following him today, you will be shocked at the remaining sin in your life in 15 years.
Following Jesus is learning the lesson that you need his mercy and grace as much in year 20 as you did the hour you first believed.
Second, he changes us by reorienting how we relate to our possessions.
Look at how Levi reorients his entire life. Before, he extorted others to enrich himself. Now, after meeting Christ, he divests himself to help others meet Jesus. The text does not say that he threw a mere dinner party. We’re told he made a “great feast.” This is a lavish meal, the likes of which you would plan for a visiting dignitary. This is the kind of banquet the prophets said would happen when God establishes his kingdom on earth.
This is the kind of feast that makes you go down into the wine cellar and find those treasured bottles that have collected dust, that have been waiting for the right occasion.
Third, Jesus changes how we relate to sinners.
The first thing Levi does after receiving the call of Christ is he begins telling other sinners about Jesus. Luke contrasts the inviting welcome of Levi with the aloof standoffish Pharisees.
What’s the difference between Levi and the Pharisees? Levi knew he was a sinner who knew he’d done nothing to get himself close to God. And because he’s lumped himself in with the sinners, he has no hesitancy in calling others to listen to Jesus.
Listen to me church… the gospel, that we are saved by grace alone. It humbles us. We know there’s nothing we can do to get ourselves close to Christ.
And if there are people who you don’t think God could or would save, then you have not yet truly humbled yourself. You still see yourself as earning, not freely receiving God’s love through Christ.
- A Christian is Someone Jesus Changes.
So, what is it that caused this radical, total life transformation in Levi? What would make you or me commit to lifelong discipleship, to reorient how we think about our possessions, to change how we relate to sinners?
What made Levi leave everything to follow Jesus is that Jesus had already left everything to come and rescue Levi.
When Levi met Jesus he realized that here is one who didn’t just own the jewels under a thousand mountains, he owned the mountains and the stars in a billion galaxies and he gave it all up so that he could have me.
And he didn’t do it because we were beautiful. He did it to make us beautiful.
Here is the one who never sinned… who was perfectly obedient to God, and yet he has come to be my sacrifice for sin. He’s come, not to judge me in my sin, but to be judged and condemned for my sin, and to give me his sterling spotless righteousness.
And when that truth broke upon Levi, Christianity wasn’t just some new religious morals to take up. No, in that moment he was taken up by Christ.
You need to discern for yourself. Are you a Christian? Is Christianity something you are trying, or has it taken hold of you? Have you experienced Jesus call? Have you been convicted of your sin? Is he changing you into a lifelong follower?