What Can I Make The Bible Say? Luke 5:32

 

Luke 5:32 “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

 

In this chapter of Luke’s gospel, we read a passage about Jesus our Lord sitting with tax collectors and sinners, and the Pharisees chiding Jesus and the disciples. Their question was both simple and accusatory: “Why do You eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Luke 5:30.

This passage has been lifted out of context, not only from Luke chapter 5, but from the New Testament and the Bible as a whole to advocate for the LGBTQ movement. So says certain professing Christians, that because Jesus sat with these morally questionable people, it intimates that He accepted them and their lifestyle. His presence represented consent to who they were, and what they chose to do. Bringing that sentiment into the modern sphere, Christ still sits with sinners, identifying with them and “sitting” with them; not condemning them as sinners practicing what is evil, as some narrow minded Christians might.

 

The purpose of this series has always been to demonstrate that a verse lifted out of context can be twisted or contorted to mean what the reader WANTS it to mean. That is what biblical scholars refer to as eisegesis, or reading into Scripture the reader’s own point of view. Keeping it embedded in the passage and book it belongs to and discerning what the whole of the book is actually saying about any given matter is referred to as exegesis, or lifting the meaning God intended out of Scripture to improve our understanding.

 

Having said that, what does this Scripture actually say? First, Jesus finds Levi the tax collector and makes him a disciple, Luke 5:27, 28. In response to His invitation, an excited and grateful Levi throws a feast for his Lord at his house, and the implication is that Levi invited a great many fellow tax collectors and sinners. Tax collectors were often Roman citizens that bid for the position, procuring taxes for the Roman state with excessive profits garnered for themselves. However, Jews could also bid for the office, and in Levi’s case, apparently gain it, and with it notoriety among fellow Jews. The office of tax collector was seen as reprehensible, on par with being a harlot, or getting paid for sex, Matthew 21:32. The two jobs linked together in this statement made by our Lord implies that these social positions were equally odious to the Jewish eye.

 

Following the feast’s beginning, the Pharisees and scribes begin to challenge Jesus and His disciples for daring to eat (and by implication demean themselves) and sit with the lowest of the low, again, Luke 5:30. Jesus’ response is concise and edifying: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick,” Luke 5:31. What is our Lord saying? Men don’t come to a doctor when they’re feeling fine. It is when they have suddenly been made to understand that something is wrong that they seek one out, so it is today. Levi was such a man; the people he chose to invite were such men. He didn’t invite them because they were righteous men. He invited them because, like himself, they were made to realize their sinful state and were found by Jesus. This line of reasoning agrees with what Paul said to the Corinthians when he reminded them, “Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites (“dominant” and “submissive” homosexuals)…will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you,” 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.

 

Notice the apostle tells us that such WERE certain members of the Corinthian church. But they were washed, sanctified and justified in the name of Jesus, by God’s Holy Spirit. Paul is stating that when a man is truly born again, he leaves behind sinful things to pursue God’s purposes. Sexual deviance or depravity falls outside of God’s purpose, by warping intercourse and marriage into a grotesque caricature of the express reason both were created for. The Corinthians left such practices behind, which Paul labeled sinful, and the Corinthians tacitly agreed, abandoning them so they might by faith serve the Lord Jesus.

 

The sick in Luke chapter 5 are drawn to Christ, not because He is comfortable with them sinful lives and has nothing to say to condemn the lifestyle they have chosen. They are drawn to Him because they have been convicted in their conscience that what they approve, practice and believe is sinful, and have turned to Christ for spiritual healing. They, like the Corinthian church, must leave behind that which offends if they seek forgiveness from the Lord for the sin that separates the sinner from God. This is absolutely solidified in Luke 5:32, when the Lord tells the Pharisees, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

 

Note: the Lord is not calling the righteous. Levi was not righteous, or right with God. Nor were those he invited to join Jesus at the feast. What were they? They were sinners, according to the words of Jesus Himself. Why were they present? To be called to repent of their deeds. Repentance means to change one’s mind. For the publicans or tax collectors present that means to shed their sinful conduct or lifestyle, confess that it was wrong, and turn in faith to the Lord to save them from their sin. This passage does not endorse complicity with or for sinners.

 

Rather, Jesus tells the Pharisees (and through them, the guests at the feast) that they are not righteous, but may receive forgiveness should they repent of the sin that convicted them and brought them to the Lord to begin with. There is nothing in this passage that can be used in good conscience to support the LGBTQ movement, or any other sinful pursuit by implying Jesus accepts people as they are. Jesus saves people FROM their sin; He does not save people to remain in their sin, especially if they fail to recognize that it is sin. If we refuse to recognize sin for what it is, or acknowledge we, as fallen people are sinners, we rank among the (self) righteous Jesus did NOT come to call. He will leave us in our vaunted righteousness, which, as Scripture attests, is filthy rags, Isaiah 64:6.