Tax Collector

Throughout the ages, the tax collector has been looked at with dread. Particularly in the Jewish culture where anyone is looked down upon who takes advantage of other Jews. In the Roman rule in the time of Christ, the Jewish tax collector was considered a traitor because they made their money by overcharging the taxes that were due to Rome in order to pocket the excess. To understand how seriously the culture treated tax collectors, you have to go no further than the very words of Jesus in Matthew 18:17 - "And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, he is to be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector." The tax collector of Jesus' day deserved to be excommunicated.

Tax collectors of Jesus' time were often known to cheat their fellow Jews, collecting more than necessary in order to pad their own pockets. This can be seen in the confession one of the most famous tax collectors of the New Testament - Zacchaeus. In his confession to Jesus in Luke 19:9 he claimed that there were some number of people he had defrauded and he promised to pay them back four-fold. The scripture also claims in Luke 19:2 that Zacchaeus had gained great riches as a result of his dishonest practices. His act of repentance was to make things right with those he had done wrong.

The fact that the tax collector's had become wealthy from this practice of skimming off the top isolated them from the general Jewish population of the first century. The Jews were already living in hardship as Jerusalem and surrounding areas were occupied by the oppressive Roman Empire. It added insult to injury for some of their fellow Jews to be working for the Romans and profiting off of their oppression.

Jesus used the analogy of the tax collector in another teaching where he was comparing loving those who love you noting that "EVEN the tax collector's do that." He used this phrase to prove his point that even those we think most critically of love those who love them. Matthew 5:46 further illustrates the reputation that tax collectors had during this time.

Even though Jesus used tax collectors as an example of a people on the low end of respectable, He was also known for spending a lot of time with them. After Jesus called the most famous tax collector in the New Testament to follow Him as a disciple, Matthew (also known as Levi) threw a party to introduce his friends to Jesus. Jesus was criticized for attending that party by the religious leaders of the time. When the Pharisees criticized Jesus for partying with "many tax collectors." Jesus responded by saying that it was not the well he came for, but the sick. Once again, this indicates that Jesus and the culture of the time thought of tax collectors as low class traitors. (see Mark 2:14-17.)