Why Did Jesus Christ Come Into The World ?

THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR

The Purpose for Jesus' Coming (1) To Call Sinners to Repentance (Luke 5:27-32)

Rev. Carl Haak


You and I must never underestimate man's ability to distort and confuse the most plain words written in the Bible. Surely there is no question more repeatedly and clearly answered in the Bible than this question: Why did Jesus, the Son of God, come into the world? Hundreds of passages directly and clearly give the answer. I Timothy 1:15, Christ Jesus came into the world to save. John 10:10, He came into the world to give His life a ransom for His sheep. Luke 19:10, He came to seek and to find that which was lost. There are few questions more plainly and simply treated than that one.

Yet, if you were to ask any one of a hundred people at this time of the year when carols are playing in the malls and Christ's birth is upon the lips of men, if you were to go door-to-door in your own suburb with this question: " Why was Jesus born?" you would be utterly amazed at the confusion, distortion, and ignorance of people on that very question. Or you would find them mouthing words of a special season, of goodness of the human heart, of man's compassion to the poor, and on and on.

Why did Jesus Christ come into the world?

As I said, there are many texts which plainly and forcefully give the answer to that question. Jesus Himself repeatedly spoke of the reason for His birth.

Today we would like to consider Luke 5:32, where Jesus said, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Here Christ Himself tells us exactly why He came to the earth. It has nothing to do with trees, lights, presents, reindeer, packed malls, and office parties. But it has to do with sin, calling, repentance, and God's grace.

To understand what Jesus meant when He spoke of the reason for His coming, we must first of all know the setting of those words in Luke 5. In verse 27 we read, "And after these things he went forth, and saw a publican (that is a tax collector), named Levi (or Matthew), sitting at the receipt of custom: and he said unto him, Follow me." "After these things" - that is, after the miracles which Jesus had performed that day, and which caused the people to cry out, We have seen amazing things today. After that, Jesus went along the highway and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at his tax booth. Now these publicans, these tax collectors, were people who, in response to the demands of the Roman government, collected taxes. They hired themselves to Rome and sat alongside the road in a booth, something like we have today at a toll road with toll booths, collecting money.

The publicans were greatly despised by their fellow countrymen. And that, for two reasons. First, whenever people saw one of these booths and a publican sitting in the booth, it was a constant reminder that they were not a free country but under an oppressive foreign domination. A foreign power had taken over. Imagine how you would feel if, on your street, you saw a tax booth. And sitting inside was someone collecting taxes for a foreign country. It would be a constant reminder that you were not free. Secondly, these publicans were notorious for being crooked. They were viewed as a kind of Palestinian Mafia. They took two shekels for Rome and one for their own pocket. They were hated, therefore, both as traitors and as thieves.

Now our Lord comes to this tax booth. And our text tells us that He simply stands before Levi and without any discourse or explanation simply says, "Follow Me." And, wonder of wonders, we read of no debate, no questions being asked by Levi, but simply, "And he left all, rose up, and followed him." Christ issued the call. The Good Shepherd spoke His powerful word, "Follow Me, come into personal attachment to Me, yield absolute obedience to Me," and Levi responded and left all behind.

Then in verse 29 we read that Levi made "a great feast in his own house; and there was a great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them." Levi takes what is available to him, his large house and evidently a large banquet room, no doubt attended by a staff of cooks and servants, and he puts on a great feast to show the joy of his new-found attachment to Jesus. And he is not selfish. He invites his tax collector associates. He invites others who, Matthew tells us, were sinners, apparently men from the same segment of society, men of business, but also men who were notorious sinners. And he gathers them into a banquet at which Jesus is the guest of honor.

There is the setting. Jesus comes. He calls Levi. And Levi gathers a great feast with others to celebrate.

Then, in verse 30, we find the question of the Pharisees, "but the scribes and Pharisees murmured against his disciples, saying, Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners?" The Pharisees, you remember, were the religious leaders of our Lord's day, the straightest of the straight, the ones who were regarded throughout all of Palestine as the religious leaders, so that when people passed by they would tip the hat and clasp their hands and say, Rabbi, Father, how are you? The Pharisees delighted in being called by special titles. They wanted to be seen in the market with long robes, and to be heard uttering long prayers on street corners. This crowd of Pharisees dogged Jesus' steps wherever He went. They came from all over with the desire to hound Him, listening to His words not as a humble disciple to receive them, but to trip Him up and to catch Him and twist His words and to prove that He was an enemy of Rome or to show that He was a spiritual impostor.

On this day they had seen Jesus go into the house of Levi with all those other people. And the Pharisees, peeking through the window, say, "Ah, now we've got something on Him." And they take His disciples aside and say, "Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners?" Mark 2 makes very plain that their real concern was Jesus: Why does your master eat and drink with sinners? You see, what galled them was that Jesus was entering into social relationships with the riffraff of Palestine. If they had looked through the window and seen Jesus overthrowing the tables, standing with one hand towards heaven and the other towards these publicans and sinners and hurling at them thunderbolts of judgment, they would have stood by the window and uttered their "Amen." They would have said, If anybody needs to be preached at it is that crowd of sinners! But, you see, what disgusted them was that He ate and drank with those sinners. Even more than would be true in our day, for Jesus to eat and drink with these people was seen as a token of good will.

This resulted in the Lord's words recorded in verses 31, 32: "And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." The Lord says to them, first of all, healthy people do not need doctors. It is sick people who need doctors. When do you call the doctor? Do you call the doctor on Monday morning and say, "Hello, doctor. All is well in the house. No colds, no tummy aches, no sickness"? No. You call the doctor when you are sick, when you have something that you cannot fix with a band-aid or aspirin or a kiss. Jesus says something people everywhere know at all times: healthy people do not need doctors. And He continues in a glorious proclamation: "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. I have come as the great physician of men's souls. I have not come for people who are well, who think that they are well, who can make themselves well, but to the sick, to those who have no healing of themselves. I am come to bring salvation to sinners in the way of repentance." That is why He was born.

Let me make that as plain as I can. This is what Jesus is saying to the scribes and Pharisees: Now you, Mr. Pharisee, suppose that you leave this banquet hall and are very offended by what I have done, my having fellowship with these publicans. But you stop on the way home by your friend, and his wife meets you at the door and says, "Shh, my husband is not well. Be quiet." You say to her, "What is the problem?" She says, "We're not sure, but he is very sick. The doctor is here right now." And she leads you in and you see the doctor bent over the bed and see his hand on the forehead of your friend and his other hand taking the pulse. The doctor is close enough to your friend to discover what is wrong, close enough to bend over and to apply his medicines and to give his soothing presence. Would you be offended at that doctor for having fellowship with the sick?

You see, what Jesus is saying is: You Pharisees would not be offended if you saw a physician close enough to such a man to bring his healing. A doctor cannot heal while sitting in his office and people are in the waiting room behind a large, glass window. You are upset because I am close enough to these people who you think are spiritually unclean. Do you not see that I am the great Physician? I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

What does that say to us? That teaches us in no uncertain terms that only those who, by God's grace, see and feel themselves to be sinners are those who are saved by Jesus Christ. "I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

Our Lord is drawing a parallel between a doctor and Himself, between the healthy and the righteous, between sick and sinners. As a doctor is for sick people, I am come for sinners. I did not come on a mission for righteous people, that is, for people who think that they are righteous in themselves. He is telling them in the plainest terms possible, that only for sinners, only for those whom God gives to know and to feel themselves to be unclean before God, only for them has Jesus come to save.

Now Jesus, of course, is not teaching that there are really righteous people who, of themselves, do not need to be saved. That would contradict the whole Bible. The united testimony of the Bible is that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). "As in Adam all die ... (I Cor. 15:22). "All we like sheep have gone astray" (Is. 53:6). What is He saying? Remember the setting. He is unmasking the deception of the Pharisees. They thought they were well. You remember Jesus' picture of the Pharisees? The Pharisee was one who would brag about himself before God. (Cf. Luke 18; where the Pharisee in the temple prayed, "I thank Thee that I am not like other men.") The Pharisee was one who was blind to the true condition of his depraved heart. Jesus is not teaching that there actually are people who do not need His salvation. But He is saying this: As long as we are like the Pharisees, in the pride of our own heart, and do not by grace know and feel our sins, we cannot know the salvation that is in Jesus Christ. Only those who, by a transforming love of Jesus Christ, a work of the Spirit in their heart, see and know themselves as sinners - only they are saved by Christ. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. These are sinners. Sinners not only in the judgment of God. For all are sinners in the judgment of God. But sinners who have been given to know themselves as sinners in their own judgment.

One of the most horrible effects of sin is the blinding of the sinner in his own conceit before God, and for him to say, "But I am not like other men." Although God does forgive and has forgiven the vilest sinners on earth: murderers, harlots, liars, and thieves, God has not forgiven nor will He forgive the man, the woman, the child, the boy, and the girl who in their own conceit believe that they will make it on their own. They are deceived concerning the nature of their own hearts and blind to the holiness of God. They do not know the foul depth of their own hearts. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked (Jer. 17:9); for out of the heart proceedeth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, and so on (Matt. 15:19).

Every sin comes out of the fountain of the human heart. And God judges that heart according to His law. God says that the look of lust is adultery, that anger is murder. The Pharisees were ignorant of their own state. They were self-righteous.

Do you know yourself? By God's grace do you feel yourself to be the sinner that God says you are? I did not say, "Do you glibly admit, Oh, yes, I am a sinner, I mess up, but everybody does. Everybody is a sinner." I never met a person who would not admit in some offhand way that he is a sinner and that he has messed up occasionally in his life. But I ask you this: Has God's grace, through His Word, spoken to you and brought you to see and to feel the reality of your own sin in the light of God? In your marriage, in your relationship, in your heart? I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Not those who simply attend church, read the Bible, hold down a job, and are decent for the most part (oh, perhaps a few things out of place, but saying, Everything is going to end up OK). Beloved, it will not end up OK if the only thing you have is the outward expression of religion. If you do not know and see yourself, by the grace of God, as a sinner undone before God; if you live in self-deception, you will die a stranger to Christ and be in outer darkness.

Blessed, said Jesus in Matthew 5, are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. The first mark of one whom God is bringing into His kingdom by His grace is that God shows him how poor he is. He has nothing. He is nothing. Jesus strips away all of our pride and self-righteousness and brings us into the place of the publican who was in the temple ( Luke 18) and cried, "God be merciful to me, the sinner."

I am come to call sinners to repentance.

The sick need a physician, not a quack. I am come. There Jesus is, as I said, expressing the reason for His coming into this world. The second person of the godhead, the eternal Son of God, is come into the world, that is, He has taken upon Himself our flesh and blood. I am come into the world, the Son of God in human flesh. I am come into the sin-cursed world to live in weakness and to suffer. I am come. No other, not an angel, not a host of angels, not simply a righteous man, not a mere man. No, I am come, the Son of God now in human flesh, born of a virgin, laid in a manger. And I am come to take upon Myself the liabilities and obligations of God's law, to bear the sins of My people upon the cross, to expose Myself to the wrath that is deserved by the sins of My people, to open My breast to all the arrows that should have been aimed at them so that they all strike Me. The whole story of Bethlehem, of Calvary, of Joseph's empty tomb is that I am come. And I am come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

You see, men go to a physician only as last resort. We always say, "Ah, it is not that bad. I can put my arm in the sling of my own works. I will walk with the crutches of my own religious ceremonies. I will have some experience which makes me feel good." Oh, no! You need none of that. You are dead. You need the Jesus of the Scriptures, the Christ of the cross. I am come to suffer and die in order that sinners might be saved and to call them to repentance.

Repentance is the forsaking of sins. It is when God gives to us a totally and radically different view of sin, we hate it and love the God against whom we have sinned. He brought repentance to Levi, Matthew, the publican. The Lord looked into his eye and pierced him. Levi, who, perhaps, was a covetous man. Jesus pierced his heart and laid bare his thoughts so that he felt his guilt and condemnation. Yet Levi also saw in the eyes of Jesus Christ compassion. I am come, Levi. Follow me. Be bound to me in obedience and love. Christ comes and by His grace He gathers His people in repentance and following of Him. Without this repentance no one is saved. Unless there is repentance, which is the gift and the work of God in the heart, you will perish.

Do you know anything of biblical repentance? Do you know the place of the prodigal son before the father ( Luke 15), "I have sinned against heaven and before thee and am not worthy to be called thy son"? Do you know the words of David in Psalm 51, "Against thee, thee only have I sinned"? Do you see the horror of your sin and your deserved condemnation? Do you see your sin as an ugly and wretched thing? Has He brought repentance to your heart?

That is why He came. He did not come for the righteous. He did not come to make men feel good about themselves and to unite mankind in one glorious humanity. No. He came to call sinners whom He loved in God's election to repentance.

That is why He came. That is what Jesus said.

Now He lives. And by His grace He says, Follow Me! Leave all. Place all hope in Me.

And He speaks the promise: He that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out.

Let us pray.

Father, we thank Thee for the grace of giving Thy Son to be born into this world, and we thank Thee that He came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. Amen.