These words were evidently spoken with surprise and scorn, and not with pleasure and admiration. These ignorant guides of the Jews could not understand a preacher of religion having anything to do with wicked people ! Yet their words worked for good. The very saying which was meant for a reproach was adopted by the Lord Jesus as a true description of His office. It led to His speaking three of the most instructive parables which ever fell from His lips.
The testimony of the Scribes and Pharisees was strictly and Kterally true. The Lord Jesus is indeed one that " receiveth sinners. " He receives them to pardon them, to sanctify them, and to make , them meet for heaven. It is His special office to do so. For this end He came into the world. He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. He came into the world to save sinners. What He was upon earth He is now at the right hand of God, and will be to all eternity. He is emphatically the sinner's Friend.
Have we any sense of sin ? Do we feel bad, and wicked, and guilty, and deserving of God's anger ? Is the remembrance of our past lives bitter to us ? Does the recollection of our past conduct make us ashamed ? Then we are the very people who ought to apply to Christ, just as we are, pleading nothing of our own, making no useless delay. Christ will receive us gra- ciously, pardon us freely, and give us eternal life. He is One that "receiveth sinners." Let us not be lost for wajit of applying to Him that we may be saved.
We should observe, secondly, in these verses, the remarkabk figures under which our Lord describes Sis otan