Pain is our body’s way signaling injury or damage. Treatment of a severe injury calls for the attention of a good physician. Prudence pauses at the unpleasant sensation of pain to consider the problem. Imprudence ignores the symptom altogether.
Luke tells of penitent tax collectors coming to grips with the deep spiritual pain rooted in their severance and estrangement from God through Christ. Ironically, the Pharisees and scribes were noted as being spiritually blind to their own predicament as fallen people within the same boat as the other sinners and tax gatherers.
Levi was the son of Alphaeus (Mk. 2:13), who also went by the name Matthew (Matt. 9:9; 10:3). He worked as a tax collector in a toll booth on a trade route near Capernaum collecting taxes for Herod Antipas.[1] But one day Levi was spotted by Jesus, and the Lord said to him, “Follow me” (Lk. 5:27). [2] Levi positively responds to the invitation “and leaving everything, he rose and followed him” (Lk. 5:27). Giving up the life of tax collecting, Levi takes on the role of a learner under the tutelage of Jesus. Jesus is the rabbi and Levi the disciple.
The opportunity to be a disciple of Jesus would have been something honorable, and to set off the new chapter in his life “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” (Lk. 5:29).[3]
Levi’s past life was far from reputable as “tax gatherers sometimes collected extra money and kept the profit; although this practice was not legal, it was difficult to prevent.”[4] Making matters worse was the fact that tax collectors of that time were appointed to gather revenue for enemy pagan subjugators — the Roman Empire.[5] Yet, the shadiness a past life never disqualifies a person from the calling to follow Christ. Levi heeds the call and receives divine grace. All the money ever earned as a tax collector could never purchase what Christ offered, which was a treasure that neither moth and rust could destroy nor thieves break in and steal. Levi got something that money could not buy.
“Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” complained the Pharisees and scribes (Lk. 5:30). They were bothered by the company Jesus’ kept and such kind of table fellowship was unacceptable.[6] But Jesus and the disciples were never really participating in any sinful revelries; rather, they were connecting with those left dying on the road in a sinful and fallen world. “To blame Jesus for mingling with sinners would be like blaming a physician for stooping down over suffering and putting up with vile smells in order to heal the sick” says Gregory Nazianzen (Oration XXVI).[7]
Jesus replied, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Lk. 5:31-32).
What the Pharisees failed to understand is that they were in the very same boat as the tax collectors and “the story does not teach that the Pharisees are actually righteous, only that they presume they are righteous”[8] Put it another way: “The invitation to salvation, full and free, is extended not to ‘righteous people,’ that is, not to those who consider themselves worthy, but rather to those who are unworthy and in desperate need. It was sinners, the lost, the straying, the beggars, the burdened ones, the hungry and thirsty, whom Jesus came to save.”[9]
Luke knows of another tax collector named Zacchaeus who became a follower of Christ, recognized his sins of the past, and pledged to make amends. He said, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold” (Lk, 19:8). The Old Testament Law only called those guilty of defrauding others to repay the amount plus an additional fifth as restitution (Lev. 6:1-5). Thus, giving a fourfold restitution to those defrauded plus half of his wealth as alms to the poor was a sign of extravagant generosity on Zacchaeus’ part. Encountering Christ transformed the ex-tax collector. Jesus thus pronounces, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Lk. 19:1-10).
Yet, not everyone gets Jesus’ call to Zacchaeus to climb down from the tree and get something to eat. Luke tells us that “they saw it” and “they all grumbled, ‘He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner’” (Lk. 19:7). Whose “they”? All those around who witnessed the Jesus interacting with the short tax-collector perched on the tree. The Savior comes to save the lost regardless of where their station in this broken world.
Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the publican opens up the mystery of how penitent sinners who recognize their own brokenness and seek the Lord for restoration receive mercy and justification:
Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.” But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted” (Lk. 18:10-14).
C.S. Lewis observed that “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world”[10] but “until the evil man finds evil unmistakably present in his existence, in the form of pain, he is enclosed in illusion.”[11] There is a throbbing pain that leaves us all in distress. Not something physical, like a broken bone, bruise, our laceration. More than just social wounds resulting from alienation, marginalization, or discrimination. Even more than inner psychological torment like despair, anxiety and rage. All these are but symptoms of the deeper pain.
This deeper pain is estrangement from God. The pain is the progressive withering of ourselves as the result of severance from the Source of life. We are like branches cut from the Vine. We cannot anesthetize ourselves from the deeper pain with psychotropic compounds. We cannot simply train out mind to ignore it. But we can be grafted back. Reconnected, we can receive true life from the Source again.
Our deepest pain reminds us of the problem of being out of fellowship with God. Without God, we are incapable of grasping the value of our humanity. Our self-perception is off. Without God, we are incapable of seeing the true worth of other humans. We see life as “us against them,” and “I’m not the problem, you’re the problem.” We are blind to the realty that it is “our problem.” Without God, we become atomized. We are but alone in a world so cold. Then we die without anybody.
The Son of God comes to heal us from the sickness and death that came upon us as the result of the fall. Nothing can cure us from this fatal would except what can be provided from the Son. Those who ignore the symptoms are in the most miserable predicament. But to those who cry, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me,” God never ignores.
— WGN
[1] See article “Disciples” by M. J. Wilkins in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. Joel B. Green and Scot McKnight (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 180.
[2] All Scripture cited from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), unless noted.
[3] Craig Keener points out “that Levi should respond by throwing a party for him is not surprising; repaying honor was an important part of social life in antiquity. Table fellowship indicated intimate relations among those who shared it, and given the nature of ancient banquets, it was natural for a well-to-do person to invite his (former) colleagues and also subordinates to a feast” (Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993], Lk 5:29).
[4] Keener notes, “The Pharisees (and the teachers belonging to their party) were scrupulous about their special rules on eating and did not like to eat with less scrupulous people, especially people like tax gatherers and sinners. Most people regarded tax gatherers as collaborators with the Romans, and nationalistic religious people despised them” (Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993], Lk 3:12–13).
[5] Pompey conquered Palestine for Rome in 64 BC, ending the independent Jewish state that existed post Maccabean revolt. The Caesars set up the Herodian monarchs. Tax collectors, like Levi, were ultimately gathering revenue for the Roman Empire.
[6] Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), Lk 5:30.
[7] Cited from Thomas C. Oden and Christopher A. Hall, eds., Mark (Revised), Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 29.
[8] Thomas R. Schreiner, The Baker Illustrated Bible Commentary, ed., Gary M. Burge and Andrew E. Hill (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2012), 1071–1072.
[9] William Hendriksen and Simon J. Kistemaker, Exposition of the Gospel According to Luke, vol. 11, New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1953–2001), 304.
[10] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1940), 91.
[11] Lewis, 93.
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