A Friend of Sinners: Why Tax Collectors and Sinners Loved Being Around Jesus

Celebrate! Part One: a series on Luke 15 at The Woodlands First Baptist Church

This fall, The Woodlands First Baptist Church in The Woodlands, TX is spending several weeks in Luke 15, one of the most significant teachings of Jesus. The chapter holds three famous stories: the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the best known of all, the story usually called the parable of the prodigal son, though as the series will show, it goes by other names as well. Some have called Luke 15 “the gospel within the gospel,” because it tells the story of the good news and shows us the character of God.

In the rush to get to the prodigal son, however, Dr. Bruce Webb does not want anyone to skip past the first two verses. They supply the context for everything that follows, and in fact the rest of the chapter is Jesus’ explanation, even his defense, of what happens in them. Luke 15:1–2 says: “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”

Criticized for the Company He Kept

Jesus was being criticized, which should not surprise us. The only way to avoid criticism is to do nothing, be nothing, and say nothing; anyone in the fight for what is right will sometimes be criticized and often find themselves in the minority. The irony is who was doing the criticizing. The people who claimed to know God best were scolding the One who had come to reveal God fully, not only through his teaching but through his very being. Jesus embarrassed them because of the company he kept.

Who Were the Tax Collectors?

IRS agents are not especially beloved even today, but tax collectors in Jesus’ day were shunned on another level. They were considered traitors, because they collaborated with the Roman occupiers who oppressed their own people. They purchased from the Roman authorities the right to collect taxes, and the system was rife with corruption and abuse. As a result, their fellow countrymen hated and despised them.

Who Were the “Sinners”?

Everyone is a sinner, of course, but the Pharisees meant something more specific by the word. The “sinners,” sometimes called “the people of the land,” included people of low morality such as prostitutes, which we might expect. However, the label also covered Gentiles, meaning all non-Jews, and shepherds, who lived out in the fields and could not keep the ceremonial law requiring hands to be washed a particular way before eating. The sick, the diseased, and anyone suffering were often counted among the sinners too. We cannot say exactly who was gathered around Jesus in Luke 15, but we know they lived on the margins of respectable religious life. They were people the Pharisees would not associate with.

Jesus Knew Exactly What He Was Doing

None of this was naive on Jesus’ part. His eyes were open. There is every reason to believe he had the training of a Pharisee himself; he was adept at debating the law, and he was called Rabbi, a title reserved for those who studied it. When he began his ministry, though, he moved intentionally away from the direction and spirit of the Pharisees. It was not because he misunderstood them or the law. It was because he was moving in the direction of grace and truth.

Furthermore, Jesus went well beyond being cordial with tax collectors and sinners, which would have been scandal enough. The text says he welcomed them and ate with them. In his culture, and in ours, sitting down to eat with someone is a strong statement of acceptance.

Can You Judge a Person by the Company They Keep?

Honestly, we can understand the Pharisees’ concern. Most of us grew up hearing that a person is known by the company they keep, or as Dr. Webb heard as a teenager, “You are who you run with.” There is wisdom in that. So did the Pharisees have a point? No. Jesus was not an adolescent struggling with his identity. He was the Son of God who came to seek and save the lost. Meanwhile, the Pharisees were not young, impressionable believers either; they were men deeply grounded in Scripture who should have been carrying God’s grace to a lost world. They should have known you cannot always judge a person by the company they keep. Is a doctor sick because she spends her days with the ill? Is a funeral director dead because he is often around the deceased? Is a kindergarten teacher unable to read because she spends hours with children who cannot? Of course not, and Jesus was not compromising his faith by sharing God’s grace with tax collectors and sinners.

Holiness Is Not a Location

The key issue is not where you are, but who you are and why you are there. Holiness is not a location. It is a heart attitude of unambiguous devotion to God, and when we turn holiness into a location, we turn our religion into legalism. Every mature Christian is called to be holy, and that does not mean being odd or weird; it means exactly the opposite. It means being set apart for God’s purposes.

Every Follower of Jesus Needs Two Conversions

Dr. Webb put it this way: every mature follower of Jesus is called to at least two conversions. The first is out of the world and into the church. The second is out of the church and into the world.

When we first follow Jesus, probably the most crucial thing we can do is separate ourselves from the influences that damage our faith. There are places we need to stop going, people we need to stop seeing, social media we need to stop engaging, and entertainment we need to stop watching. We need to immerse ourselves in God’s Word with God’s people, committing to Bible study and consistent worship without letting a hundred other activities crowd them out. If we skip this early in our walk with Christ, we often will not make it. Some of us have never had this first conversion, and that is exactly what needs to happen next.

For those who have been involved in church, learned God’s Word, and grown in faith, however, holiness now requires the second conversion: taking our faith in Jesus out of the church to the people who need to know God. The Pharisees never had that second conversion. Instead of sharing God’s love with the lost, they muttered, “Why is he welcoming tax collectors and eating with sinners?” Interestingly, through the three stories that follow, Jesus asks them the opposite question: why aren’t you? And aren’t you glad he welcomed them? Because if Jesus welcomed tax collectors and sinners then, he will welcome us today.

Why Did Sinners Feel So Comfortable Around Jesus?

Why Jesus welcomed sinners is obvious; he came to seek and save the lost. The more interesting question, Dr. Webb suggests, runs the other direction. Why did tax collectors and sinners feel comfortable enough around Jesus to want to sit down and eat with him? And why do so many people feel comfortable around Jesus but uncomfortable around us? He offered three reasons.

Reason One: Jesus Was Enjoyable to Be Around

Let’s face it: plenty of religious people are not. Everyone knows the type, the party pooper who drains the room. Some religious traditions even teach their followers to be suspicious of humor and laughter. Charles Spurgeon used to tease his ministry students that when they preached about the glories of heaven, their faces ought to reflect the joy of the subject. “And when you are speaking about the anguish of hell,” he added, “your normal faces will do.”

Kathy Nickerson observed that the loss of joy is why so many churches have a hard time competing with a good Sunday brunch. Leonard Sweet wrote that the early Christians succeeded so magnificently because they outlived, out-loved, and out-dined the ancient world. Mark Twain’s jab lands too: some people “are the kind of good that gives good a bad name.”

The Most Joyful Person in the Room

Nobody knows exactly what Jesus looked like, but he was certainly full of life and vitality. He was a carpenter, not a cabinet maker so much as a builder, and he walked everywhere. He was a vibrant, positive leader that men and women wanted to follow. In fact, one of the Pharisees’ complaints was that he was not serious enough. In Luke 7:34, Jesus summarized what they said about him: “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’”

Consider that his first miracle was making sure a wedding party did not end too soon. In John 10:10 he said: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” And in John 15:11: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”

People Recoil From Us, Not From Jesus

Throughout the Gospels, everyone from little children to rulers to religious leaders enjoyed being around Jesus, and that is still true. Generally, it is not Jesus or his message that sinners recoil from. The late John Stott made a similar observation: many people who are critical of the church still retain what he called a sneaking admiration for Jesus. As Stott wrote, “I have never yet met anybody, nor do I expect to, who does not have a high regard for Jesus Christ.” Jesus challenged the establishment, championed the poor, befriended society’s dropouts, and never retaliated when he was unjustly attacked.

Consequently, when lost people pull away, they are often recoiling from us and our religion rather than from Jesus. That is why the church’s message must be Jesus, first in our lives and first in our witness at The Woodlands First. Jesus himself said in John 12:32: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

A Chapter Full of Celebration

Here is a detail worth noticing, and the reason this series is called Celebrate! In Luke 15, the words joyfully, rejoice, rejoicing, celebrate, be glad, music, and dancing appear twelve times. Eating together and killing the fattened calf for a party come up four more times. In other words, roughly one out of every two verses in the chapter has to do with celebrating and eating together. If we want to reach people who are lost, being more dedicated to the mission of Christ may mean being more dedicated to joy and to having fun together. When a group of ministers once traveled to Calcutta and asked Mother Teresa to tell them something that would make them more like Jesus, her answer was simple: “Smile at each other.”

Reason Two: Jesus Believed in What They Could Become

Jesus did not always like what tax collectors and sinners did, but he always liked them, and he believed they could be more than they were. Remember Zacchaeus in Luke 19, the sawed-off little social disaster with a big bank account, perched up in a tree? Jesus told him he was coming to his house to eat, and the Pharisees predictably muttered. Then, as they sat at the table, Luke 19:8–10 records what happened: “But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, ‘Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.’”

What in the world happened? The author Lloyd Douglas imagined the moment afterward, with Jesus asking Zacchaeus why he decided to change his heart. In Douglas’s telling, Zacchaeus answered: “Because I saw in your eyes, Lord, the Zacchaeus I was always meant to be.”

An Angel in the Marble

Just because someone is lost does not mean they are unaware. People can tell when someone really cares about them, and they know whether we believe in what they can become. It is a cliché because it is true: people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Jesus saw oak trees in acorns. There is a beautiful story about Michelangelo staring for a long time at a large block of marble until his apprentice finally asked what he was doing. “There’s an angel in that rock,” Michelangelo replied, “and I’m trying to figure out a way to set it free.” Jesus changed people because he saw them not only for what they were, but for what they could become.

Reason Three: Jesus Met Them Where They Were

Jesus created the universe, yet he did not mind getting down into the world. He was accessible, with no ivory tower attitude. He was God, but he never acted like a big shot, and he ministered to people in humility. Significantly, he did not simply invite people to come to the synagogue and hear teaching. He went and taught where lost people already were.

Dr. Webb is quick to clarify that inviting people to church matters. He does it constantly, and anyone who comes will hear the good news of Jesus, so keep inviting. At the same time, a large percentage of people will never come to church until we love them the way Jesus did, outside the church.

Billy Graham at the Miami Rock Festival

In his autobiography, Just As I Am, Billy Graham recounts a Sunday morning in December 1969, just months after Woodstock, when to the horror of some he was not in church at all. He was on the stage of the Miami Rock Music Festival, speaking to thousands of young people who were waiting for bands like the Grateful Dead and Santana and who would likely have felt out of place in an ordinary church. The night before, Graham had put on a simple disguise and slipped into the crowd to get a feel for the event. His heart went out to them. One bearded young man who had come all the way from California recognized him and, with a grin, asked him to pray a thanks to God for good friends and good weed. Graham’s reply: “You can get high on Jesus.”

The next morning, Graham came prepared to be shouted down. Instead, he was met with scattered applause, and most of the crowd listened politely as he told them that Jesus was a nonconformist who could fill their souls and give their lives meaning and purpose. Afterward, young people visited a tent a local church had set up on the grounds, and over that weekend the pastor reported that 350 of them made commitments to Christ and two thousand New Testaments were handed out. Reflecting on his calling, Graham often recalled Paul’s words in Romans 15:20: “It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation.” Dr. Webb shared that Graham once went so far as to say he would go to hell and preach if the devil would let him out again.

The Table Is Still Open

May God help us have that kind of attitude in sharing Jesus. May God help us truly love people, believe in what they can become, meet them where they are, and be full of the joy of our Lord. Luke 15 begins with a complaint that turns out to be the best news in the world: “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” He still does, and that includes you.

Next week, the Celebrate! series continues with the first of Jesus’ three answers to the Pharisees, the parable of the lost sheep. If you are searching for a church near me in The Woodlands, TX where you will find a seat at the table, we would love for you to join us at The Woodlands First Baptist Church.

Learn More about The Woodlands First

► Watch the full sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN1UlA7JfzE

► Plan your visit this Sunday: https://thewoodlandsfirst.org/new/

► Learn about our church: https://thewoodlandsfirst.org/beliefs/

► First Kids (Children’s Ministry): https://thewoodlandsfirst.org/ministries/first-kids/

Visit The Woodlands First Baptist Church

We offer worship services in traditional, modern, and Spanish-language styles across two campuses in The Woodlands, TX, along with Bible study classes and small groups for all ages.

South Campus: 11801 Grogan’s Mill Rd, The Woodlands, TX 77380

North Campus: 5148 FM 1488, The Woodlands, TX 77354

Phone: (281) 367-4317

Website: thewoodlandsfirst.org

Looking for churches near me in The Woodlands, TX? The Woodlands First Baptist Church has served this community since 1979. Come discover a community that takes Scripture seriously and welcomes everyone who is searching.