Picture the scene: Jesus walking past the tax booth where Matthew sits, counting coins and calculating commissions. The crowd parts like the Red Sea—nobody wants to get too close to a tax collector. These men were traitors, collecting Roman taxes from their own people, skimming extra for themselves. Matthew was wealthy, yes, but utterly alone.
Then Jesus does the unthinkable. He stops. He looks. He calls.
“Follow me.” (Matthew 9).
Two words that changed everything. Matthew the tax collector didn’t hesitate—he left his ledger, his lucrative business, his life of luxury, and followed the carpenter from Nazareth.
When the religious leaders criticized Jesus for eating with “sinners and tax collectors,” His response cut straight to the heart of the Gospel: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”
Jesus came for the Matthews of the world—the broken, the despised, the spiritually bankrupt. He didn’t come to call the self-righteous who thought they had it all figured out. He came for those who knew they were sick and desperately needed healing.
That’s the breathtaking mystery of grace: God’s specialty is reaching into the mess of our lives and declaring us worthy of love. Matthew discovered that day what we all need to learn—Jesus sees past our failures to our potential, past our sin to our soul.
I’m Lonnie Davis, and these are thoughts worth thinking.