In an honor- and shame-based culture like the ancient Mediterranean, a public complaint such as the one the Pharisees had issued constituted a challenge. Quick repartee in the face of such a challenge would not only silence the challenge but shame the challengers (as in Diog. Laert. 6.2.33). Jesus shames his opponents with some traditional and biblical wisdom. Jewish teachers often exhorted hearers to "go and find," that is, search the Scripture for examples (as in Sipre Num. 76.2.1), or "go and learn," that is, understand the point of a given text (Sipre Num. 115.5.6). But when Jesus introduces his quote from Hosea with go and learn in the context of a response to a challenge, he is insultingly suggesting his interlocutors' ignorance of the point of Scripture; he implies that perhaps they have never even read Hosea (compare Mt 12:5; Ex. Rab. 21:6). Hosea addressed a people satisfied with their ritual but displeasing to God (Hos 8:2-3).

Jesus' response would have been clear enough. Other ancient teachers also used health as a metaphor for spiritual or moral wholeness and disease as a metaphor for vice or folly, seeing themselves as physicians of the soul (for example, Diog. Laert. 2.70; 6.1.4; ARN 23A). Writing after the spread of Christianity, Diogenes Laertius reports a much earlier philosopher who, "when he was censured for keeping company with evil men," responded, "Physicians are in attendance on their patients without getting the fever themselves" (Diog. Laert. 6.1.6, LCL 6-9).

Jesus came to call sinners-to invite them to God's final banquet (Mt 22:3, 14), a foretaste of which the present table fellowship with them may have represented. Jesus' demand for mercy is so critical that it recurs in 12:7 (see also 23:23). Many of Jesus' contemporaries who practiced sacrifice also emphasized the priority of mercy over physical sacrifice (as in Sirach 35:1-7; Prayer of Azariah 16-17). That Jesus' opponents agreed with his principle in theory yet invited his reprimand should force us who acknowledge his doctrine to survey our practice as well (compare Jer 2:35; 1 Jn 1:10).

After my conversion from a non-Christian background in high school, I witnessed to everyone I could, sometimes to drug users who were smoking marijuana in my presence. That kind of fellowship could have landed me in jail! But Jesus' example gave me courage to continue to engage all people with the gospel, regardless of their moral background; and some of them committed their lives to Christ. Yet I have learned that some apparently worshipful and Bible-centered churches do not welcome such persons-suggesting that ultimately Jesus who ate with sinners might not truly be welcome there either.