FEASTING AND FASTING. Luke 5:27-39 Celebration or Asceticism? Luke’s account of ‘the things most surely believed among us” continues to show the tensions that build between the liberty of faith and the restrictions of the law. The purpose of the law was that people would “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself.” To those who make law-keeping into regulations and imposed practices by the will of men, there is a bondage to which they feel obligated. Asceticism follows as people seek to accomplish what is impossible through their efforts. The point of the law was, and still is, love. Love for God and love for people, not labor and constant struggles to make oneself acceptable to God.
God’s grace and goodness will always contrast man’s guilt and labor. Our Lord Jesus came into the world to “seek and to save that which was lost.” That is the theme of Luke’s Gospel, which he illustrates through specific events in the ministry of our Lord. The call of Levi and the feast at his house emphasize that objective. Levi was a lost soul, and the evidence of the reality of his salvation was his desire to openly bring his former associates to meet the One who saved and called him.