Who was Jesus interested in reaching?

It Seems Jesus wasn’t very interested in religious people.

This summer, I’ve been given a significant amount of thought to Jesus’ behavior. Asking questions like, what did he do? How did he conduct himself? And who did he associate with? I’ve noticed something peculiar about him. Quite frankly, he didn’t operate with a tremendous amount of social propriety.  And he didn’t seem to have much patience with religious the folk of his day.

Of course that leads to the question. What is social propriety?

According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, propriety means “correctness concerning standards of behavior or morals.” 

In fact, to the contrary, the Scribes and Pharisees, i.e., the religious folk, accused him of the very opposite.

To put it bluntly, the religious folk of Jesus’ day accused him of partying too much and hanging out with the wrong crowds. In the words of Matthew, Jesus came “eating and drinking with sinners.”

So what could Jesus have done? Well, he could have adopted the approach of John, his cousin. 

 John was a different sort of radical. He was an ascetic prophet who observed a rigorous religious life. John abstained from “worldly pleasures” and limited his diet to bugs (seriously) and wild honey (Mt. 3:4). He fasted, strictly observed the law, and preached a strong message of repentance.

 John’s disciples indeed were known for their religious devotion — observing the Sabbath, following a strict diet, and avoiding alcohol. But it still did not make the religious elite very happy, and it particularly annoyed John’s political enemies, King Herod, and his wife, Herodias.

So the religious folk hated him for his annoying habit of referring to them as a “brood of vipers” (Mt. 3:7) and calling them “to repentance.” Jesus makes this clear when he says, “John came neither eating and drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon” (Matt. 11:18). Who said John had a demon? It was the religious establishment bothered by John’s prophetic message.

So why didn’t Jesus follow John’s approach?

I believe the answer rests in Luke 5:32. Jesus says, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”  

Context is crucial if we’re going to understand what Jesus is saying. 

When we see the words “righteous” and “sinners,” we typically interpret these words in the generic sense of right and wrong. The righteous are “right,” and sinners are “wrong.” But the context of this verse nuances the meaning of righteous and sinner a bit more than our English words allow.

Why were the religious folk so grumpy with Jesus?

I believe the answer can be found in the nuances of the words “righteous” and “sinners.” The term “righteous” in the Greco-Roman world conveyed the idea of “upholding the customs and norms of behavior.” If you followed the “norms” of society, you were “righteous” or “just.” Social mores were the determinant of one’s “righteousness.”

“Sinner,” on the other hand, is more nuanced and is defined as “the failure to conform to certain standards.” One is general, righteous, and the other is specific, sinner. 

The New Testament writers adopted the word righteous to mean “upholding the customs and norms of behavior” in responsibility to God. It’s here where the point of contention between religious folk and Jesus heated up.  

The BDAG, a standard for Greek definitions, describes the nuance of sinner generally as “tantamount to an outsider. Non-Israelites were especially considered out of bounds.” Notice something. The word “sinner” during Jesus’ time carried with it ethnic and political meaning.

One was a “sinner” merely by birth, political associations, or type of vocation. There’s a word we use today to describe this type of category, prejudice. And indeed, the failure of the Scribes and Pharisees was their blind prejudice to God’s redemptive plan.

It’s here where context plays a critical role. Jesus is in the midst of a party with “tax collectors,” the dreaded civil servants of Roman occupation. They were outsiders, sinners who challenged the sense of propriety for the Jews. Their very presence was reprehensible. 

Even worse and scandalous, they were wealthy due to their corrupt, oppressive tax collecting practices. We know this because Levi is described as giving “a great feast in his house” and invited a “large company of tax collectors” over for the party. Could there be a more despised place for a respectable Rabbi to dine?

And Jesus does the unthinkable. He accepts the invitation, parties with them, and subsequently was ridiculed for it.

What was it, then, that had them so incensed? 

Was it because Jesus “sinned” in the eyes of the religious folk, i.e., violated God’s standard? I don’t think so, at least not in the usual “churchy” way we think of it. Instead, it was something else. And thus, by association, Jesus was a sinner. He failed to exercise the “social propriety” of the Scribes and Pharisees who avoided “being seen” with such sinners. That was the real sin, the one that violated the religious folk’s senses. 

What can we learn from how Jesus responded?

I believe it’s the following. Jesus was teaching his disciples something significant about the message of God. 

Jesus was hanging out with outsiders. When he says, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” He is not speaking in purely moral categories. Instead, Jesus is speaking primarily in terms of fellowship— inviting (calling) those on the outside into fellowship on the inside with God.

David Brought Knox defines “fellowship” this way. Fellowship is friendship sharing a common activity (D.B. Knox, Collected Works, Matthias Media). Knox’s definition fits nicely with Matthew’s description of Jesus as a “friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Mt. 11:19).

And Jesus demonstrates friendship by doing what all great leaders and teachers do; he modeled the behavior he wished to impart to his disciples. He ate with tax collectors and sinners.

What can we take away from this study?

I believe it’s the following. The religious folks said to outsiders, “be like us so we can be your friend.” Jesus says to outsiders, “I’ll be your friend so I can be with you.” That is the way of God. He befriends sinners.

Ask yourself the following: Who in your immediate neighborhood or community is on the outside of faith? Who can you invite to a meal and begin their journey into fellowship with God?