“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?’ 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’ ” (Mark 2:16-17).

Matthew, after following Jesus, threw a party for his friends. He wanted them to meet the Man who had changed his life. His friends just happened to be other tax collectors and sinners—his former associates. That Jesus attended Matthew’s party so offended the religious leaders that they confronted Jesus’ disciples to express their outrage. Eating with disreputable people was a blatant act of indiscretion in the minds of the religious leaders.

Jesus’ response was one more declaration of His purpose in coming to us. Everyone is sick and Jesus is the Doctor who has come to cure us. The ones Jesus called “healthy” are as sick as everyone else, they just don’t acknowledge it. Scripture says, “There is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10).

Doctors are able to help the sick because they see us as we are and can tell us what’s wrong with us. Their goal is to make us well. Jesus went to Matthew’s party because He was a spiritual Physician who cared for Matthew’s friends and their spiritual needs. He comes to us because He cares for us and wants us to be healthy. In the same way that we go to a natural doctor and allow him or her to probe us for symptoms so we can be diagnosed and healed, we can come to Jesus in total honesty and vulnerability. He doesn’t examine us to humiliate us but to heal us.

It takes humility to admit that we are sick, but it’s the first step to being healed. Thank God for Jesus, who loves us in our weaknesses so we can become strong.