The Time Jesus Turned ‘Sinner’ into an Invitation

Levi is throwing a party, and the guest list is a scandal.

He had spent his working life at a tax booth, collecting revenue from his own people for an occupying power. That made him a collaborator, and collaborators have a particular kind of friend.

Jesus walks past that booth and says, “Follow Me”. Levi gets up, leaves everything and throws a feast in his house to celebrate the One who had called him. And the guests are his own sort: a levy of tax collectors (Luke 5:27–29).

The Pharisees refuse to join. Whatever is going on in there, they want none of it. They won’t even put their question to the Man they came to challenge; they aim it at the disciples instead:

Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

(Luke 5:30)

“Sinners.” There’s the word. One noun, and every person in that house reduced to one category.

Jesus answers them over the noise of the meal:

Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”

(Luke 5:31–32)

He doesn’t argue with the word. He takes it off them and points it back the other way.

That one exchange is the whole pattern in miniature. To see what He did with their word, it helps to see how carefully He used it everywhere else.

Count the Times

It’s easy to assume Jesus went around calling people “sinners”, as if the word rolled easily off His tongue whenever He confronted humanity. But a closer look at His actual vocabulary in the Gospels tells a far more interesting story. It turns out Jesus used the word “sinner” with remarkable care, and when He did, it wasn’t the way we usually imagine.

The Greek word translated “sinner”, from a root meaning to “miss the mark”, shows up regularly in the Gospels, 33 times in all. Crowds used it. Pharisees used it. Critics used it. The Gospel writers used it to describe the social categories of the day. But Jesus’ own use is strikingly careful. Across all four Gospels He uses the word 15 times, and even then with sharp distinctions between His voice and the voices He quotes.

In several key places Jesus is simply repeating the words of others. When He says, “A friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:34), He isn’t calling anyone a sinner. He’s quoting the insult thrown at Him by His critics. They meant it as a slur. Jesus repeats it to expose their attitude.

Similarly, when He speaks of being betrayed into the hands of “sinners” (Matthew 26:45; Mark 14:41), He uses the word within their framework, referring to His opponents using the label they themselves applied to others. Again, He isn’t assigning the term; He’s exposing the irony.

But then there’s the other side of the pattern.

The Word They Built

In the first century, “sinner” was more than a moral description. It was a label of condemnation the religious establishment used to distance themselves from those they had written off as unworthy. Just as they used “unclean” to condemn the Gentiles (Acts 10:28), they used “sinner” to condemn anyone who failed to uphold the standards they claimed God required.

It was a word built to keep people out. It told you where the line ran, who stood inside it and who could be left outside without troubling anyone’s conscience. It meant a man like Levi could be written off without a conversation. It meant a whole houseful of people could be summarised in a single noun by those who did not bother to enter.

So when Jesus takes up the word in His own voice, He mostly turns it back on the people who wielded it. He reaches for it when the Pharisees grumble that He eats with tax collectors and sinners (Matthew 9:11–13; Mark 2:16–17; Luke 5:30–32), and again when they complain, “This Man receives sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2), which prompts the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son.

In effect, His answer is this: Those you reject, I receive. Those you exclude, I welcome. Those you condemn, I accept. Those you break fellowship with, I break bread with. The very ones you discard are the ones I have come to bring home.

When Jesus says, “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matthew 9:13; Mark 2:17; Luke 5:32), it isn’t a verdict on a particular person. It’s a mission statement, spoken in the face of those who had drawn the lines. Pointing them to Hosea to learn the meaning of mercy (Matthew 9:13 cf. Hosea 6:6), He names the reality of human need and invites people into mercy rather than standing over them in judgement.

The point is not who qualifies for condemnation but who qualifies for grace.

What He Never Did

What’s just as important is what Jesus doesn’t do. He never stands before a person and calls them “sinner” as a label of identity. He doesn’t walk up to Zacchaeus in the tree and say, “Come down, sinner.” He doesn’t name the woman caught in adultery that way either. He doesn’t throw the word across the table at Levi and his friends. In fact, when Jesus addresses someone’s sin directly, it comes with healing: “Your sins are forgiven” (Matthew 9:2), or with restoration: “Go and sin no more” (John 8:11).

Jesus names the issue but never the person.

When Jesus speaks, He speaks to restore, not reduce.

The people others called sinners, He called by name. The ones the Pharisees labelled, He welcomed.

Levi is the proof. The Pharisees saw a houseful of a category. Jesus saw a man worth calling, and then worth eating with. That man went on to write a Gospel.

The word that summed up His mission was not “sinner” but “Father”.

In His mouth, “sinner” was never a weapon against a person. It was a quoted accusation He overturned or a signpost pointing to the very people He came to rescue. In fact, when He looked at those labelled “sinners”, He used tender imagery instead—calling them “lost sheep” (Matthew 10:6; Luke 15:4–7 cf. Matthew 9:36–38) and “orphans” (John 14:18)—emphasising care, belonging and restoration rather than condemnation.

And this is the heart of it: when Jesus looks at humanity, He doesn’t see them first as rebels storming the gates of heaven. He doesn’t even see them as “the lost”, a category to be reached. He sees them first as orphans—precious children disconnected from the Father who adores them.

In other words, Jesus never made “sinner” anyone’s identity.

He made grace their future.