Matthew 9:9-17

J.B. Phillips New Testament

Jesus calls a “sinner” to be his disciple

⁹ Jesus left there and as he passed on he saw a man called Matthew sitting at his desk in the tax-collector’s office. “Follow me!” he said to him—and the man got to his feet and followed him.

^10-13 Later, as Jesus was in the house sitting at the dinner-table, a good many tax-collectors and other disreputable people came on the scene and joined him and his disciples. The Pharisees noticed this and said to the disciples, “Why does your master have his meals with tax-collectors and sinners?” But Jesus heard this and replied, “It is not the fit and flourishing who need the doctor, but those who are ill! Suppose you go away and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’. In any case I did not come to invite the ‘righteous’ but the ‘sinners’.”

He explains the joy and strength of the new order

¹⁴ Then John’s disciples approached him with the question, “Why is it that we and the Pharisees observe the fasts, but your disciples do nothing of the kind?”

¹⁵ “Can you expect wedding-guests to mourn while they have the bridegroom with them?” replied Jesus. “The day will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them—they will certainly fast then!”

^16-17 “Nobody sews a patch of unshrunken cloth on to an old coat, for the patch will pull away from the coat and the hole will be worse than ever. Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins—otherwise the skins burst, the wine is spilt and the skins are ruined. But they put new wine into new skins and both are preserved.”