They tell others, “Keep your distance! Don't come close to me as I'm too holy to be touched by you!” These people are like smoke in my nostrils, a stink burning all day long!
When the religious leaders of the Pharisees saw Jesus eating with such people, they asked Jesus' disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
The Pharisee stood up and prayed to himself, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—cheats, criminals, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.
One day when Jesus was teaching, the Pharisees and religious teachers who had come from all over Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem were sitting there. The power of the Lord to heal was with him so he could heal.
The religious teachers and the Pharisees began to argue with that. “Who is this who's speaking blasphemies?” they asked. “Who can forgive sins? Only God can do that!”
Now the Son of man is here, and eats and drinks with people, but you say, ‘Look, he spends his time eating too much food and drinking too much wine. Plus he's a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’
When the Pharisee who had invited Jesus saw this he said to himself, “If this man was really a prophet he would know who this woman was who's touching him, and what kind of person she was—that she's a sinner!”
A great commotion erupted and some of the Pharisee teachers of the law stood up and argued fiercely, saying, “We find this man not guilty! Maybe a spirit spoke to him, or an angel!”
