Luke 5:27–39

Jesus Calls Levi

²⁷After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting in his office. Jesus said to him, “Follow me.” ²⁸Levi got up, left everything, and followed him.

²⁹Then Levi had a big feast in his house for Jesus, and among the guests was a large number of tax collectors and other people. ^30*Some Pharisees and some teachers of the Law who belonged to their group complained to Jesus’ disciples. “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and other outcasts?” they asked.

³¹Jesus answered them, “People who are well do not need a doctor, but only those who are sick. ³²I have not come to call respectable people to repent, but outcasts.”

The Question about Fasting

³³Some people said to Jesus, “The disciples of John fast frequently and offer prayers, and the disciples of the Pharisees do the same; but your disciples eat and drink.”

³⁴Jesus answered, “Do you think you can make the guests at a wedding party go without food as long as the bridegroom is with them? Of course not! ³⁵But the day will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.”

³⁶Jesus also told them this parable: “No one tears a piece off a new coat to patch up an old coat. If he does, he will have torn the new coat, and the piece of new cloth will not match the old. ³⁷Nor does anyone pour new wine into used wineskins, because the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will pour out, and the skins will be ruined. ³⁸Instead, new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins! ³⁹And no one wants new wine after drinking old wine. ‘The old is better,’ he says.”