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17 Jesus heard this and said to them [that], “Those who are well do not need a physician,[a] but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

The Question About Fasting.[b]

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Footnotes

  1. 2:17 Do not need a physician: this maxim of Jesus with its implied irony was uttered to silence his adversaries who objected that he ate with tax collectors and sinners (Mk 2:16). Because the scribes and Pharisees were self-righteous, they were not capable of responding to Jesus’ call to repentance and faith in the gospel.
  2. 2:18–22 This conflict over the question of fasting has the same pattern as Mk 2:16–17; see notes on Mt 9:15; 9:16–17.