1. It is St. Luke who informs us that before Matthew became a disciple of Jesus he was known as Levi, the son of Alphæus. We may perhaps infer that he was a brother of James, the son of Alphæus (Act_1:13). “Matthew,” which means “the gift of God,” corresponding to the Greek “Theodore” (fem. “Dorothea”), was probably the surname which he assumed or received when he became a Christian. And in the Third Gospel we learn that Levi, after forsaking all, and rising up and following Christ, “made him a great feast in his house: and there was a great multitude of publicans and of others that were sitting at meat with them.”
Being no ascetic like John the Baptist, Jesus was often seen at feasts, and no banquet which He ever attended-not even the marriage feast at Cana of Galilee-gave Him greater happiness than the festal gathering in the house of Levi. That feast had a profound significance for Levi himself, and the day on which it took place must have been ever afterwards the red-letter day in his calendar. For not only was the feast of Levi, now to be called Matthew, the instinctive offering of a glad and grateful heart, but it gave him the opportunity of telling his own companions-publicans and “others,” as Luke says with characteristic reticence-that he had broken with his past, renouncing for ever a life in which he could not be true to God and his conscience. And best of all, it enabled him to gather for Jesus just such an audience as He loved to have around Him.
In rendering such a service to Christ, Matthew was only obeying, with a fine originality, the impulse which every new convert to Christianity immediately and inevitably feels-the impulse of evangelism. No one ever believed in the glad tidings of the gospel-in the forgiveness offered to all sinners who repent of their sin and resolve to live a new life-without at once desiring the same tidings to be proclaimed to all the world. Nothing creates altruists-men and women who “live no longer unto themselves”-like an experience of Divine love in Jesus Christ. Matthew, till lately so hard and unmerciful, now felt his heart overflowing with pity and compassion. He knew well that many a publican of Galilee was just as unhappy as he had been, and would be just as happy to have done for ever with that shameful and degrading business.
There was more than universalism latent in the mission of Christ to the publicans. It was the cradle of Christian civilization, which has for its goal a humanized society from whose rights and privileges no class shall be hopelessly and finally excluded. It was a protest in the name of God, who made of one blood all the nations and classes, against all artificial or superficial cleavages of race, colour, descent, occupation, or even of character, as of small account in comparison with that which is common to all-the human soul, with its grand, solemn possibilities. It was an appeal to the conscience of the world to put an end to barbarous alienations and heartless neglects, and social ostracisms, cruelties, and tyrannies; so making way for a brotherhood in which “sinners,” “publicans,” and “Pharisees” should recognize one another as fellow-men and as sons of the one Father in heaven.1 [Note: A. B. Bruce, With Open Face, 119.]
2. Whether Matthew himself gave his old companions what would now be called his “testimony” is not told. It was strange if he did not. For when the heart is full the lips become eloquent, and even if a convert does not possess the distinctive gifts, he at any rate has the spirit, of an evangelist. He can no longer be dumb; he regards silence as a sin; he is impelled to say to all with whom he comes in contact, “Come and hear, and I will declare what God hath done to my soul.” The oral invitation to Matthew's feast, which was at once his farewell to the old life and his welcome of the new, probably included an intimation that he wished his old comrades and friends to meet and to hear Jesus the prophet of Nazareth. And “a great multitude” came so that the court of his villa by the Galilæan lake was full of “publicans and others.” And it was with the memory of such a day and such an audience that Jesus afterwards said to the chief priests and elders of the Jews, “Verily I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.” Matthew did not call his friends merely that he and they might once more feast together. He invited them with the secret hope and prayer that after eating his bread and drinking his wine they might find spiritual food in the words of grace which would, he was sure, fall from the lips of Jesus. He wanted to give them something far better than the feast of reason and the flow of soul. He wished to receive, as he had received, the bread of life, whereof if a man eat he shall never hunger. And it is more than probable that both Matthew and his chief Guest were satisfied with the work done that day for eternity in the court of his house. And, having left all, he felt that he had already received his hundredfold. His cup was running over.
The hostility [of the Jews to Jesus] recorded in the Gospels arose in connection with the class of persons to whom He made the offer of entry into the Kingdom, and the practical interpretation which He gave to repentance as the necessary condition for this entry. So far as the Scribes were concerned, the teaching of Jesus as to the class of persons who could be admitted to the Kingdom was wholly unacceptable. In their eyes this was the especial privilege of the righteous and pious in Israel; but Jesus announced that He had come to call sinners. In the later forms of the text this is softened by changing the phrase to “call sinners to repentance.” In one sense, no doubt, this change is justified: Jesus did not tell sinners to continue sinning, and nevertheless offer them entry into the Kingdom. But it obscures the full importance of the message. The Scribes did not seriously consider the possibility that a “Publican” or a “Sinner”-that is to say, anyone who did not observe all the obligations of the Scribes' interpretation of the Law-would be admitted to the Kingdom, nor did they take any special pains to convert these despised elements among the people. Jesus, on the other hand, regarded Himself as having a special mission to those classes, and offered to those who would follow Him in His mission of preaching and preparation the certainty of entry into the Kingdom.1 [Note: Kirsopp Lake, The Stewardship of Faith, 27.]
3. The multitude whom he entertained, and whom Jesus addressed, were regarded as outcasts, but they were outcasts of a peculiar type.
The outcast with us usually means someone who has impoverished, and demoralized, and debauched himself with indolence and with vice till he is both penniless in purse and reprobate in character. We have few, if any, rich outcasts in our city and society. But the outcast publicans at that feast were well-to-do, if not absolutely wealthy, men. They were men who had made themselves rich, and had at the same time made themselves outcasts, by siding with the oppressors of their people and by exacting of the people more than was their due. And they were, as a consequence, excommunicated from the Church, and ostracized from all patriotic and social and family life. What, then, must the more thoughtful of them have felt as they entered Matthew's supper-room that night and sat down at the same table with a very prophet, and some said-Matthew himself had said it in his letter of invitation-more than a prophet? And, then, all through the supper, if He was a prophet He was so unlike a prophet; and, especially, so unlike the last of the prophets. He was so affable, so humble, so kind, so gentle, with absolutely nothing at all in His words or in His manner to upbraid any of them, or in any way to make any of them in anything uneasy.
If Jesus saw how hard it was for such men to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, He did not despair of them. It was in reference to the special difficulty of saving the rich that He said, “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.”
With some the love of accumulation has a strange power of materializing, narrowing, and hardening. Habits of meanness-sometimes taking curious and inconsistent forms, and applying only to particular things or departments of life-steal insensibly over them, and the love of money assumes something of the character of mania. Temptations connected with money are indeed among the most insidious and among the most powerful to which we are exposed. They have probably a wider empire than drink, and, unlike the temptations that spring from animal passion, they strengthen rather than diminish with age. In no respect is it more necessary for a man to keep watch over his own character, taking care that the unselfish element does not diminish and correcting the love of acquisition by generosity of expenditure.1 [Note: W. E. H. Lecky, The Map of Life, 287.]
