MARK 2:14-27

MARK 2:14-27

MARK 2:14 - “He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the receipt of custom.” Levi, or Matthew, the author of the first Gospel, was a member of the despised publican class. He was a tax-gatherer in the service of Rome. These were hated by the Jews because they farmed the taxes, grinding down their brethren to enrich themselves. At Capernaum there was a Roman custom-house, where all the fishermen had to bring their catches and pay over a certain per cent as tax. Levi was perhaps connected with this office. Evidently, he had heard Jesus before, and was convinced in his heart that He was the Messiah; so when the call came, “Follow Me … he arose and followed Him.” There was instant surrender to the claims of Christ. 

   MARK 2:15-17 - “The scribes and Pharisees saw Him eat with publicans and sinners.” In the eyes of these religious formalists this was a very serious offense. But it showed how little they understood the nature of the mission of Jesus.

“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” As a physician ministers to the sick rather than to the well, so Christ had come to bring the message of grace to needy sinners, rather than to seek out those who fancied they were already good enough for God. Actually, there are none righteous (Rom. 3:10), but there were many who prided themselves on a righteousness they did not really possess. For such there is no blessing. It is the confessed sinner who finds mercy. 

MARK 2:18-22 - Moreover, those who raised the question about fasting did not realize that Jesus had come to introduce an altogether new order. We are told elsewhere that the law was given by Moses, and there was much in the law that had to do with fasting; but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. It was not in accordance with His program to call men and women to subject themselves to legal principles. It is not possible to put the new wine of grace into the forms and enactments of the law: the one necessarily nullifies the other, even as we read in Romans 11:6, “And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.” By His answer, therefore, our Lord clearly distinguished between the legality of the past and the grace He had come to reveal. This was in measure illustrated in the incident next related.

  MARK 2:23-27 - As the disciples walked through a corn-field on the Sabbath day they began to pluck some of the heads of wheat and to rub them in their hands, eating the grains. This was in full accord with the provision made in the law (Deut. 23:25). There was nothing in the law that declared this act contrary to anything that God had commanded, but they had added so many traditions to the law that the disciples seemed to be violating a divine precept. “Therefore the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath.” By these words, if they had ears to hear, they would have understood that He announced His own Deity, for again and again the Sabbath is called “the Sabbath of Jehovah;” and when Jesus declared Himself to be Lord of that day of rest He definitely confessed Himself to be the God of Israel, manifest in flesh.