Tax collectors were among the most despised individuals in first century Judea. They were mostly Jews who worked for the Roman occupation. They were therefore seen as traitors to their own people. This would have been bad enough. Worse still was the fact that they invariably enriched themselves by taking far more than they needed to fulfil the Roman quota. The tax collectors were, in other words, corrupt officials who exploited their own people. Scores of families in the area where Levi collected taxes would have been impoverished and subject to terrible deprivation because of this man’s exploitation. That Jesus should then befriend Levi was a scandal to the whole region. That he should call him to be his disciple was unthinkable! But Jesus was signalling something about the nature of his movement. It is not a revolutionary movement that seeks to condemn evil, but a movement of grace that seeks to transform the lives of evil doers. And the best people to carry this movement forward would be very sinful people who had nevertheless received forgiveness. God is recruiting for mission, and he wants sinful people, not righteous people, to become his messengers of grace. There are, of course, no righteous people (Romans 3:10ff), but many people think they are ‘good enough’ by moral standards. That’s a shallow standard. God looks deeper than this, and there at the core of our being we are deeply conflicted and corrupt. If you don’t agree with this, then Jesus is not for you. But if you feel this to be the case with you, then you are just the sort of person Jesus wants to recruit.
Thank God for his grace to you and ask him for opportunities to share this with others.
Read Mark 2:13-17
