Mark 2:13-17
Jesus Calls Levi and Eats with Sinners
13 Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. 14 As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.
15 While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 16 When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
When we fell from grace and ate the forbidden fruit, we had to leave the garden...We fell from grace and sinned...Or being apart from God, caused our brokenness must be realized...The teachers of the law and the Pharisees did not realize this...We seem to have this impulse, and maybe it is the evil one constantly pulling at us, in us to act independent of our LORD...But when acting own our own, we show that the separation from God only continues us along the unrighteous path and repeats our broken ways...We have got to get back to the garden...We have got to get back to God...And this is what Jesus teaches us...
The importance of having His Father the central part of one's life, just like God was and is in Jesus' life...Jesus showed us and shows us what it is like to have God as the center and foundation of one's life...He lived a wonderful and beautiful life...Jesus was united with His Father, and seemed to often talk about Another World, called the Kingdom of God...So when Jesus came to earth and knew of our brokenness, and still knows of this brokenness...He knew we were and had grown apart from God, which caused this brokenness...He says it was not the righteous in the world that He came for, but the sinner...He came to show us the potential of humanity, living as He lived, and overcoming the two dark adversaries of man -sin and of death...He did not sin and did not participate in the corruption of the world, but looked at it and came to help us in our corruptible and sinning ways...Jesus is at work bringing us back to our human potential, to the potential He has show us, while He walked the earth...He shows us what it is to be truly human...