Matthew the Apostle and Tax Collector

Matthew was one of the original twelve apostles of Jesus. He was also known by the name Levi. What made him unique from the other Apostles was his economic status and his career as a tax collector for the Romans. As a tax collector he was very unlikely to get any attention from a Jewish Rabbi. Tax collectors were thought of as traitors in the first century due to their practice of skimming off the top to provide wealth for themselves. The fact that the rabbi called on Matthew to follow him as a disciple was unexpected by the culture. Pharisees viewed tax collectors as "sinners" as we can see in Mark 2:14-17. Apparently Jesus saw in Matthew the potential to be a great man of faith and one of the leaders of the movement of Jesus that contemporaries called "The Way."