Luke 5 Study Notes

5:27-28 A tax collector would sit in a toll booth (tax office) and collect customs or duties, in this case likely on the international highway that ran through Galilee. Levi is another name for Matthew (Mt 9:9; 10:3). He demonstrated the discipleship commitment that Simon, James, and John had shown earlier (leaving everything behind . . . to follow him; see note at vv. 8-11).

5:29-30 Levi’s becoming a disciple was very open. He hosted a grand banquet in honor of Jesus, to which he invited his fellow tax collectors. The Pharisees and scribes (see note at vv. 17-20) were incensed because tax collectors were considered ritually unclean. Tax collectors and sinners (others who were ritually unclean) were socially off-limits to devout Jews. Although Levi was a fellow Jew, he was despised because he worked for the Roman government.

5:31-32 Jesus referred to the Pharisees and their allies as the healthy and righteous. In contrast, he labeled tax collectors and their associates as the sick and sinners. He did not mean that the Pharisees were actually righteous but only that they saw themselves that way. By contrast, those whom the Pharisees viewed as sinners realized they were spiritually sick and desperately needed a spiritual doctor who could guide them to repentance (see note at 3:2-3). Thus Jesus had higher regard for the sick and sinners.

5:33 The Pharisees were offended at the behavior of Jesus’s disciples as compared to their own disciples and those of John the Baptist. Jesus was not opposed to fasting (Mt 4:2; 6:16-18), but he also allowed his disciples to attend banquets (eat and drink), like that given by Levi (see note at vv. 29-30). This was in stark contrast to the Pharisees’ rigid schedule of fasting. They fasted twice weekly (18:12), on the Day of Atonement (Lv 16:29), four times a year to remember the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians (Zch 8:19), plus any other time it was deemed appropriate.

5:34-35 Jesus applied the issue of fasting to a wedding, as if he were the groom. It was not appropriate to fast during the joy of a wedding or before the divine groom was taken away (i.e., before the cross, resurrection, and ascension).

5:36 The first of Jesus’s two parables applied the principle that you cannot patch an old garment with new cloth. It will tear the new cloth and it won’t match the old garment. On the heels of the controversy about fasting, Jesus illustrated the point that his message was radical (the new) and could not serve as a patch for the existing form of Judaism (the old garment).

5:37-39 Jesus’s second parable initially made the same point as the first, but then proceeded further. New (not fully fermented) wine cannot be put into old wineskins because it will burst and ruin them. New wine (the message of Jesus) must be put into fresh wineskins (the church of Jesus Christ; see Mt 16:18). But there was a natural reason why many of Jesus’s hearers continued to cling to Judaism: old (properly fermented and aged) wine (the established traditions of Judaism) tastes better (more familiar and comfortable).