Seeing the Need for Mercy

“While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’

For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Matthew 9:10-13

They say that a person struggling with an addiction is not going to make any progress toward victory until they first recognize and admit there is a problem.

Isn’t that also the case with salvation?

Unless we recognize our need for a savior we will not receive the grace God has provided. Those who see no need will never respond to address the need no matter how obvious it may be to everyone else.

So it is with the passage today.

Jesus was speaking with people who saw no need.

It wasn’t only that they were ‘sick’ (sinners) and in need of a ‘physician’ (savior) but rather that they were also blind to their own condition. If you and I could have been at Matthew’s house that night I am guessing we probably would have heard some tax collectors and sinners recognizing their need for mercy.

In many ways the Pharisees represented the elite class of their day.

They were the ones, or so they appeared to others, that had it all together.

There was no need for mercy because after all, they thought to themselves, their lives were exemplary. In their logic if Jesus were really from God, they reasoned, wouldn’t he hang out with them instead of with the no-account people he was having dinner with?

In a way we might say that the Pharisees were addicted.

They were addicted to their own self-righteousness and this

blinded them to their need of mercy.

Don’t ever come to a place where you are secure in your own right living and are not in need of the mercy of God. Ask God to keep your eyes open to your own need for mercy and in so doing you will more readily ‘see’ your way to extend mercy to others.