Luke 15:2 Commentary and Bible Study

Luke notes that the hostile clergy, the critics, murmured at him. The word ‘murmured’ is a compound word which means literally, they complained around. The original term in the Greek indicates they worked the crowd. They saw these multitudes and they made it their business to spread around everywhere that this man is phony. They attempted to prove it with these words, ‘This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them’, because he was addressing the tax gatherers and other notoriously evil people in society. Because he took hospitality from them in order to preach to them and explain things to them, they concluded he could not be a man sent from God, a prophet, let alone the Messiah. In saying this they are trying to draw the esteem of the crowd away from Christ. They are organized in all probability. They have seen the vast crowds, and they are determined to disrupt them. The Lord Jesus Christ had been scorned and criticised by these scribes and the Pharisees who murmured saying, ‘This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them.’ They expected that if he had been the Messiah, he would never have touched those who they regarded as fallen characters, non-worshippers, defectors from the life of the temple and the synagogue. The real Messiah wouldn't have had anything to do with anyone other than their own religious class. They counted themselves as holy, and looked down on these outcasts. They were not interested in such a thing as personal salvation, personal forgiveness from God, reconciliation with God, which was the message of Christ. Their idea was that of the clergy of those times: ‘We can earn the favour of God. We are good people because we keep the ritual of the ceremonial law, and we observe all its requirements. That gets us through.’ In their pride and their certainty of their good standing, they despised certain people who they regarded as failures. These tax gatherers, they may be wealthy, they may be successful, but they have sold out to the Roman authority and therefore they are not in the synagogue and the temple. They don't go through the ritual. They are rejected and we regard them with contempt and all other people with noted sin in their lives.’ But Christ saw through their self-righteousness. He saw all the heart sins which they tried to keep hidden from public view. They added to their sin record the sin of hypocrisy as they indulged in all this religious play-acting, but that fact never occurred to them. They were so bigoted, they were so proud, they were so lofty, and here they were criticising the Lord Jesus Christ. They had no compassion; they had no interest in winning the lost, and so the Lord Jesus Christ responds to them with this tremendous parable.