He was an unlikely convert. Hated by the Jews as a traitor who extorted his own people, tolerated and backed by Rome to collect taxes, Levi (or Matthew) was in a special class of wicked in the eyes of society. He was an outcast; a rich outcast, but an outcast nonetheless. He didn’t fit in with any group among his people, especially those who were eagerly anticipating and preparing themselves for the kingdom of God. Luke tells us how he became a disciple of Christ (Lk 5.27-32).
Jesus obviously didn’t understand social dynamics when he called him to be a disciple. This guy’s tax booth was on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, close to where Simon, James’, and John’s fishing businesses were located. They had probably been extorted by this guy. What a band of disciples this would make!
But Levi repented because of the healing, welcoming grace of Christ. Levi experienced the hospitality of God in Christ.
When Levi was called by the voice of Christ from his death in sin and raised to follow Christ, his first impulse was to get his friends in contact with Jesus. He did this by opening his home and having all these former ne’er-do-wells over to eat with Jesus. The hospitality that sought to have people draw near to Jesus was the right-hearted impulse of Levi in his new life. He cared about people the way YHWH in the flesh cared about him. It makes perfect sense as to why he would respond this way: Levi was now being renewed in the image of God (cf. Eph 4.22ff.).
Granted, before his conversion Levi was the image of God, but that image was perverted and was growing in the wrong direction. Instead of feeding people, he was feeding on people. Instead of seeking the good of others, he was seeking what was good for himself without regard for whether or not it was good for others. When Christ raised him from his death in sin to follow him, this spiral downward in sin and the distortion of God’s image turned around. He discovered true life, and true life is to live in the way and for the purpose that God created him.
God created us like himself and to grow up to be more and more like him. Sin distorts this image. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. In Christ Jesus, this image is restored and is being restored. Man can now grow up to be truly man and fully alive as the image of God.
One characteristic of God is that he is hospitable. He is so hospitable that before there is anything outside of himself, he decides to create man in order to bring him into fellowship with him. Even after man sins, God hunts him down to restore him to his family, welcoming him back.
When we are renewed in the image of God, and as we grow up in that image, we too become hospitable. It can’t be otherwise. We desire and want to show God’s love to others so that they can know real life. What we discover in these acts of love toward others is that our hospitality to others and theirs to us becomes the occasion for discipleship. Sometimes this is quite purposeful. We invite people to our homes to encourage them either to come to know Christ initially or to encourage the hurting. Hospitality is not merely sharing a meal with one another. Hospitality is an expression of love to others, and that love, that letting other people in, is the way discipleship happens.
Most of the time you don’t have to do anything extraordinary. Just the simple act of opening your home up to others and doing what you normally do as a Christian home while including these others becomes the occasion for discipleship. When you enjoy one another in your family around the table, laughing and talking about your day, pray with one another, and things as such, you are showing people what it means to be a disciple of Christ. Of course, our homes have problems as well. Not everything is lightness and laughter all the time. Even when our guests see glimpses of these things and how we handle them, these too are occasions for discipleship. All of this means that while discipleship classes and things as such have their place, we can’t discount the simple sharing of a meal together as a Christian to fulfill the Great Commission.
