9:11
We get another incident of the Pharisees questioning what Jesus was doing. They didn’t go direct to Jesus, but to His disciples. “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” There are two attitudes behind this questioning. One is a self-righteousness, they considered themselves to be OK, to be worthy of God’s attention. The other is that they considered the tax collectors and sinners to be beyond the pale, not to be worthy of God’s attention. Indeed, they were to be avoided.
9:12,13
Jesus reveals God’s real attitude. We need to be very careful about considering our own ideas to be the same as God’s ideas. In order to avoid that we need to take the Bible as our guide (I really need a stronger word here!), as the Word of God, something that must be paid attention to. And that means taking the whole of the word of God. First of all Jesus says that it is the sick not the well who need a doctor. Jesus is our saviour, that means we need saving, and most of all saving from ourselves, from what we are because of sin. Jesus quotes from Hosea 6:6, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”. Both the self-righteous and the sin-affirmers deny mercy. With the Pharisee types this is obvious, for they condemn “sinners”, but the sin-affirmers (eg those who condone various forms of sexual immorality, or overlook other sins) also deny mercy. For they say, effectively, that the person has no sins to repent of, and if that is the case then there is no need for any mercy. Both Pharisees and the “progressive Christians” deny mercy. In the Bible there is an absolute recognition of sin, but then a desire to see people saved from their sins. Jesus came to save sinners, and, of course, the Pharisees needed to recognise themselves as sinners.
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