The Gospels can't agree on how Jesus' followers should treat tax collectors. The Synoptics paint Jesus as the friend of publicans, eating and drinking with them as a deliberate boundary-crossing gesture (Mark 2:15-16; Matt 9:10-11; Luke 15:1-2). Matthew 18:17 then turns around and tells believers to treat the unrepentant brother like "a heathen man and a publican" — i.e., as an outsider to shun. The same gospel that calls Jesus a friend of publicans uses "publican" as the shorthand for the person you cut off.
Proposed answers
People have answered this in several ways; GEBible presents them as equal peers.
15He was reclining at the table in his house, and many tax collectors and sinners sat down with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many, and they followed him.16The scribes and the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why is it that he eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners?”
10As he sat in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples.11When the Pharisees saw it, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
19The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ But wisdom is justified by her children.”
1Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming close to him to hear him.2The Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying, “This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them.”
15“If your brother sins against you, go, show him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained back your brother.16But if he doesn’t listen, take one or two more with you, that at the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.17If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the assembly. If he refuses to hear the assembly also, let him be to you as a Gentile or a tax collector.
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement— a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Genuinely disputed among scholars
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
The tension is genuine and, tellingly, internal to Matthew. The same Gospel that celebrates Jesus as the friend of tax collectors deploys 'publican' as the byword for the person the community should treat as an outsider.
The outreach strand is among the best-attested elements of the Jesus tradition. Mark 2:15-16, Matthew 9:10-11, and Luke 5:30, 7:34, 15:1-2 repeatedly show Jesus eating and drinking with *telōnai kai hamartōloi*, tax collectors and sinners, drawing Pharisaic complaint and the hostile label 'a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners' (Matt 11:19; Luke 7:34). Critical scholarship treats this as historically secure precisely because it satisfies the criterion of embarrassment: an early church would not invent a slur against its founder. Sanders set table fellowship with sinners at the center of Jesus's mission; Meier analyzed the *telōnai* as a despised collaborator class; Crossan read the shared meals as enacted, boundary-dissolving 'open commensality.' The gesture is deliberate and inclusive — outsiders are drawn in, not pushed out.
Matthew 18:15-17 points the other way. In the church-order discourse, an unrepentant offender who will not hear a private reproof, then two or three witnesses, then the assembly (*ekklēsia*), is to be treated *hōsper ho ethnikos kai ho telōnēs* — 'as the Gentile and the tax collector.' The procedure already echoes the two-or-three-witness rule of Deuteronomy 19:15 and reads as community discipline, not evangelistic outreach.
The strongest harmonization — Blomberg, Carson — argues that 'publican' here is cultural shorthand: Jesus (or Matthew's Jesus) speaks to a Jewish audience for whom 'Gentile and tax collector' simply named the social category of the outsider, so the phrase describes how such people were commonly regarded rather than prescribing contempt. Some press further: even an outsider remains an object of mission, so 'treat him as a tax collector' could ironically mean 'keep pursuing him as Jesus pursued tax collectors.' Stated at full strength, the appeal to idiom is not frivolous — *ethnikos* and *telōnēs* do function as a stock pairing for those outside the covenant community, and Matthew elsewhere uses *ethnikoi* this way (5:47; 6:7).
But the comparative grammar resists the softer gloss. The construction makes the *ethnikos kai telōnēs* the standard against which the offender is to be measured — 'let him be to you as...' — that is, the model of how to regard him, namely as one now outside the community's fellowship. The ironic 'keep pursuing him' reading runs against the plain force of an exclusion procedure that climaxes a graduated disciplinary sequence; the point of the escalation is removal from fellowship, not renewed table-sharing. Davies-Allison and Luz read 18:15-20 as Matthean redaction reflecting the church-discipline practice of a late first-century community, retrojected into Jesus's mouth; Luz in particular situates the passage in the developing order of the Matthean *ekklēsia*. That source judgment explains the friction: the inclusive table tradition descends from the historical Jesus, while the disciplinary rule encodes the later community's need to manage its own boundaries.
So the two are not a flat logical contradiction — they address different objects (outsiders to be won vs. an unrepentant insider) and operate in different registers (mission vs. internal order), which is why the status here is partial harmonization. Yet the harmonization does not dissolve the tension so much as locate it: the same Gospel holds together a Jesus who scandalously welcomed publicans and a community rule that makes 'publican' the very figure of the one you cut off. Labeling 18:17 'cultural' and 9:10 'ethical' does not erase that the one term carries opposite valences within a single document.
Where the critical reading lands: partially harmonizable as differing objects and registers, but a real intra-Matthean tension between Jesus's inclusive practice and the community's disciplinary rule remains.
Sources for this reading
W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, vol. 2 (ICC; T&T Clark, 1991) pp. 782-787on Matthew 18:15-17Matthew 18:15-17
Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8-20: A Commentary, trans. James E. Crouch (Hermeneia; Fortress, 2001) pp. 451-455on Matthew 18:15-20Matthew 18:15-20
E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Fortress, 1985) pp. 174-211on Jesus and 'sinners.'
John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 3: Companions and Competitors (ABRL; Doubleday, 2001) pp. 40-73on tax collectors
John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991) pp. 261-264on table fellowship
Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew (NAC 22; Broadman, 1992) pp. 278-280on Matthew 18:17Matthew 18:17
D. A. Carson, Matthew (Expositor's Bible Commentary, rev. ed., vol. 9; Zondervan, 2010) pp. 461-463on Matthew 18:17Matthew 18:17
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Genuinely disputed among scholars
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
The tension is genuine and, tellingly, internal to Matthew. The same Gospel that celebrates Jesus as the friend of tax collectors deploys 'publican' as the byword for the person the community should treat as an outsider.
The outreach strand is among the best-attested elements of the Jesus tradition. Mark 2:15-16, Matthew 9:10-11, and Luke 5:30, 7:34, 15:1-2 repeatedly show Jesus eating and drinking with *telōnai kai hamartōloi*, tax collectors and sinners, drawing Pharisaic complaint and the hostile label 'a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners' (Matt 11:19; Luke 7:34). Critical scholarship treats this as historically secure precisely because it satisfies the criterion of embarrassment: an early church would not invent a slur against its founder. Sanders set table fellowship with sinners at the center of Jesus's mission; Meier analyzed the *telōnai* as a despised collaborator class; Crossan read the shared meals as enacted, boundary-dissolving 'open commensality.' The gesture is deliberate and inclusive — outsiders are drawn in, not pushed out.
Matthew 18:15-17 points the other way. In the church-order discourse, an unrepentant offender who will not hear a private reproof, then two or three witnesses, then the assembly (*ekklēsia*), is to be treated *hōsper ho ethnikos kai ho telōnēs* — 'as the Gentile and the tax collector.' The procedure already echoes the two-or-three-witness rule of Deuteronomy 19:15 and reads as community discipline, not evangelistic outreach.
The strongest harmonization — Blomberg, Carson — argues that 'publican' here is cultural shorthand: Jesus (or Matthew's Jesus) speaks to a Jewish audience for whom 'Gentile and tax collector' simply named the social category of the outsider, so the phrase describes how such people were commonly regarded rather than prescribing contempt. Some press further: even an outsider remains an object of mission, so 'treat him as a tax collector' could ironically mean 'keep pursuing him as Jesus pursued tax collectors.' Stated at full strength, the appeal to idiom is not frivolous — *ethnikos* and *telōnēs* do function as a stock pairing for those outside the covenant community, and Matthew elsewhere uses *ethnikoi* this way (5:47; 6:7).
But the comparative grammar resists the softer gloss. The construction makes the *ethnikos kai telōnēs* the standard against which the offender is to be measured — 'let him be to you as...' — that is, the model of how to regard him, namely as one now outside the community's fellowship. The ironic 'keep pursuing him' reading runs against the plain force of an exclusion procedure that climaxes a graduated disciplinary sequence; the point of the escalation is removal from fellowship, not renewed table-sharing. Davies-Allison and Luz read 18:15-20 as Matthean redaction reflecting the church-discipline practice of a late first-century community, retrojected into Jesus's mouth; Luz in particular situates the passage in the developing order of the Matthean *ekklēsia*. That source judgment explains the friction: the inclusive table tradition descends from the historical Jesus, while the disciplinary rule encodes the later community's need to manage its own boundaries.
So the two are not a flat logical contradiction — they address different objects (outsiders to be won vs. an unrepentant insider) and operate in different registers (mission vs. internal order), which is why the status here is partial harmonization. Yet the harmonization does not dissolve the tension so much as locate it: the same Gospel holds together a Jesus who scandalously welcomed publicans and a community rule that makes 'publican' the very figure of the one you cut off. Labeling 18:17 'cultural' and 9:10 'ethical' does not erase that the one term carries opposite valences within a single document.
Where the critical reading lands: partially harmonizable as differing objects and registers, but a real intra-Matthean tension between Jesus's inclusive practice and the community's disciplinary rule remains.
Sources for this reading