HOW WAS THE LIFE OF MATTHEW? THE APOSTLE WHO WAS A PUBLICAN
Everybody in Capernaum knew where Matthew sat.
That was the problem.
His tax booth stood near the movement of money, where fishermen came in from the Sea of Galilee, where merchants passed with grain, oil, wool, dried fish, spices, and whatever else could be counted, weighed, taxed, and recorded. If you wanted to move goods, you had to pass men like him.
And nobody passed gladly.
People felt Matthew before they reached him.
A tightening in the jaw.
A curse swallowed under the breath.
A hand closing around a coin pouch.
A mother pulling her child closer.
A fisherman pretending not to see him until he had no choice.
Matthew was not only a man behind a table.
He was a reminder that Rome had its hand in everybody’s pocket.
To Rome, he was useful.
To Herod’s system, he was practical.
To merchants, he was expensive.
To his own people, he was a traitor.
To religious leaders, he was contaminated.
And to himself?
That is the part we can only imagine.
But I think Matthew knew exactly what people thought.
A man can pretend not to care for only so long. He can harden his face, sharpen his voice, count the money, and tell himself respect is overrated as long as he has security. But contempt has a smell. Silence has a sound. Rejection leaves marks.
Matthew’s Hebrew name was Levi, son of Alphaeus. That detail matters. He was not born “the tax collector” like a curse stamped on his forehead. He was born into a Jewish family. He had a father. He had a name with history. As a boy, he likely learned the prayers of Israel. He learned the Shema: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
He heard the stories.
Abraham called by God.
Moses confronting Pharaoh.
The sea opening.
The law given.
David crowned.
Prophets warning and promising.
A Messiah to come.
As a child, Levi breathed the sacred air of Israel’s hope.
But childhood ends.
Bills arrive.
Pressure grows.
The world becomes more complicated than synagogue lessons.
Galilee in Matthew’s day was not a peaceful Bible painting. It was beautiful, yes. Hills, lake, fields, fish, sunlight on water. But beauty does not erase oppression. Rome’s presence was everywhere, even when soldiers were not standing in front of you. Taxes moved upward from working families to landowners, rulers, temple obligations, and finally imperial power.
The poor worked hard and stayed poor.
A fisherman could labor all night, sell his catch, pay fees, pay tolls, pay taxes, feed his family, repair his nets, and still owe more than he wanted to admit.
That kind of pressure changes a region.
People become tired.
Suspicious.
Angry.
And in the middle of that system sat the publican.
The tax collector.
The local face of foreign greed.
The Roman Empire did not need a modern bureaucracy in every village. It used a system that practically invited abuse. Tax rights could be leased. A collector paid for the right to collect in an area, then recovered the amount from the people. Anything above the required payment could become profit.
That means corruption was not a flaw in the system.
It was fuel.
If Matthew wanted to earn, he had to collect extra. If he wanted to become comfortable, someone else had to become more burdened.
So he sat at the booth.
Day after day.
He weighed goods.
Calculated rates.
Recorded transactions.
Collected tolls.
Maybe he told himself everyone was corrupt anyway.
Maybe he told himself he was only doing what survival required.
Maybe he told himself those who hated him would have taken the same opportunity if they had been smart enough.
That is how people survive shame. They build arguments around it.
But arguments do not heal the soul.
I once knew a man named Aaron who worked in debt collection. He was not evil. Not at first. He had kids, rent, a sick mother, and a job that rewarded emotional distance. His calls ruined people’s mornings. He learned to ignore trembling voices. He learned scripts. He learned pressure.
One night, after two beers too many, he told me:
“You know what happens if I start feeling bad for everybody? I can’t do my job.”
Then he laughed, but his eyes did not.
That is what I imagine in Matthew.
A man who had trained himself not to feel too much.
Because feeling would make the table unbearable.
In Jewish society, a publican was not merely disliked. He was religiously and socially marked. His testimony could be considered untrustworthy. His money was viewed as tainted. His presence was grouped with sinners, prostitutes, thieves, collaborators.
People did not just hate what he did.
They treated him as what he did.
That is a heavy prison.
To be reduced to your worst compromise.
To have no one ask how you got there.
To have your name replaced by your category.
Tax collector.
Sinner.
Traitor.
Unclean.
And then Jesus came.
That is where everything changes.
The Gospel describes it simply, almost too simply. Jesus was passing by. He saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth.
He said:
“Follow me.”
And Matthew rose and followed Him.
That is all the text gives us.
No long argument.
No emotional speech.
No record of Matthew asking questions.
No negotiation about salary, reputation, or future plans.
Jesus saw him.
Jesus called him.
Matthew rose.
But do not let the simplicity fool you.
That moment was explosive.
Jesus was a rabbi. A teacher with growing influence. Religious leaders watched who a teacher ate with, touched, defended, and welcomed. Reputation mattered. Boundaries mattered. Respectable teachers did not walk up to tax collectors and invite them into discipleship.
They avoided them.
At best, they preached against them from a distance.
Jesus did not.
He stood in front of the table.
He looked at Matthew not as a file, not as a scandal, not as a symbol of Rome, but as a man.
I think that look may have broken Matthew before the words did.
Because shame expects disgust.
It knows how to respond to accusation.
It knows how to fight contempt with indifference.
But mercy is harder to defend against.
Jesus gave Matthew back the dignity his profession had buried.
Then came the command.
“Follow me.”
Not “clean yourself up first.”
Not “prove you are sorry.”
Not “explain how you became this kind of man.”
Follow me.
That call was grace, but it was not cheap.
Matthew had to leave the table.
Luke says he left everything.
That detail is important.
Peter and Andrew left nets, but nets could be picked up again. Boats remained. Fishing was hard, but it was honorable.
Matthew’s booth was different.
A tax position was not something you abandoned for a weekend retreat. It was a concession, a livelihood, a structure of income and protection. If he left, someone else would take his place. Rome would not hold the chair for him while he explored spirituality.
Leaving meant burning the bridge.
It meant no easy return.
It meant losing the security he had purchased at the cost of his reputation.
Matthew stood up anyway.
I imagine the coins still on the table.
A merchant staring.
A guard frowning.
Someone laughing.
Someone whispering, “What is he doing?”
Maybe Matthew did not fully know.
But he knew enough.
The voice that called him was worth more than the money that held him.
Then Matthew did something that reveals his heart.
He threw a dinner.
Not a quiet private dinner with Jesus so he could keep this new beginning respectable.
A large dinner.
And he invited his people.
Other tax collectors.
Sinners.
The rejected.
The morally suspicious.
The ones respectable society had already written off.
That moves me every time.
Matthew’s first instinct after receiving mercy was not to climb into religious respectability and shut the door behind him. It was to bring Jesus to the table with the people who knew the same shame.
Real grace makes you think of who else needs it.
I have seen this in recovery meetings, in prison ministries, in living rooms where former addicts pray with current addicts, in churches where people with messy pasts become the first to notice the lonely. People rescued from deep water tend to watch the shore differently. They know who is still drowning.
Matthew knew his circle.
He knew the men who laughed too loudly because they were hated.
He knew the women who had stopped expecting kindness.
He knew the people who were no longer invited anywhere clean.
So he invited them to his house.
And Jesus came.
He reclined at the table with them.
Ate with them.
Listened to them.
Let them be near.
That alone was a sermon.
The Pharisees saw it and could not process it.
“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
You can almost hear the disgust.
Not, “Why does He teach them?”
Not, “Why does He call them to repent?”
But, “Why does He eat with them?”
Eating meant welcome. Association. Shared space. In that culture, table fellowship was not casual. It said something.
Jesus answered:
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”
Then He said:
“Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, and not sacrifice. For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Matthew must have felt those words in his bones.
A physician.
Mercy.
Sinners called.
Not sinners ignored.
Not sinners excused.
Called.
There is a difference between mercy and approval.
Jesus did not sit with tax collectors because betrayal did not matter. He sat with them because sick people need a doctor close enough to touch the wound.
That is the beauty of Jesus. He is holy enough to name sin and merciful enough to sit with sinners. Many people can do one or the other. They can condemn from a distance or excuse everything up close. Jesus does neither.
He comes near and calls us out.
Matthew’s life after that day became a long leaving.
Leaving greed.
Leaving old identity.
Leaving the safety of cynicism.
Leaving the habit of being hated and using that hatred as armor.
He joined the twelve.
That must have been awkward at first.
Think about it. Among the disciples was Simon the Zealot. Zealots hated Roman occupation. Matthew had worked inside a Roman tax system. Put those two men at the same table and you have enough tension to season the fish.
I wish the Gospels gave us their first conversation.
Maybe Simon stared at him.
Maybe Matthew avoided his eyes.
Maybe Peter made it worse by saying something loud.
But Jesus called both.
That is the church in miniature.
People who would never choose each other are chosen by Christ and taught to become family.
Matthew walked with Jesus through villages and roads. He heard the Sermon on the Mount. He saw lepers cleansed. He watched demons flee. He saw storms obey. He watched religious leaders challenge Jesus and leave silenced. He saw children welcomed, the sick healed, the proud exposed, the hungry fed.
And all the while, he was being rewritten.
The former accountant of empire became a witness to the kingdom of heaven.
That phrase—kingdom of heaven—fills Matthew’s Gospel.
Maybe that is not accidental.
A man who once served Rome’s economy became obsessed with heaven’s reign.
A man who once recorded debts became a messenger of forgiveness.
A man who once sat at a booth taking from his people became an apostle sent to give the treasure of Christ’s words to the world.
Matthew’s Gospel shows Jesus as the promised King, the Son of David, the fulfillment of Scripture, Emmanuel—God with us. It is deeply rooted in Israel’s story. That matters too.
Matthew had not forgotten the Scriptures he learned as Levi.
Grace did not erase his Jewish memory.
It redeemed it.
The boy who learned the promises became the man who showed their fulfillment.
I find that hopeful.
God wastes nothing.
Not your training.
Not your past.
Not even the places where you went wrong, once they are surrendered to Him.
He does not call evil good. But He can take a life bent in the wrong direction and turn even its history into testimony.
Matthew never hid what he had been. In the list of apostles, he names himself Matthew the tax collector.
That humility is beautiful.
He did not need to polish his past to magnify grace.
Some people want redemption to mean nobody ever mentions what happened. I understand that desire. Shame is painful. But mature grace can say, “Yes, that was true. And Jesus called me anyway.”
Matthew the tax collector.
Matthew the apostle.
Matthew the Gospel writer.
All true.
But not all final in the same way.
His sin was real.
His calling was greater.
His past was remembered.
His identity was changed.
There are traditions about Matthew’s later ministry. Some say he preached among Jewish communities. Others say he carried the Gospel farther, perhaps into Ethiopia or Persia. History is not equally clear on every detail. But the most important thing is clear: the man at the booth became a witness to Christ.
That is a complete miracle.
Not dramatic in the way movies prefer. No lightning. No army. No palace collapse.
Just a man standing up when Jesus said, “Follow me.”
And sometimes that is the greatest miracle.
Because tax booths still exist.
Not always with coins and Roman ledgers.
Some people sit at the booth of addiction.
Some at the booth of bitterness.
Some at the booth of greed.
Some at the booth of sexual sin.
Some at the booth of image management.
Some at the booth of religious pride.
Some at the booth of shame, convinced they are what they have done.
And Jesus still passes by.
He still sees people others reduce to categories.
Divorced.
Addict.
Hypocrite.
Failure.
Traitor.
Criminal.
Dirty.
Impossible.
He sees the person.
Then He calls.
“Follow me.”
The call is mercy.
But it also means leaving the table.
You cannot follow Jesus and keep collecting from the old life as if nothing has changed. Matthew had to rise. So do we.
That does not mean instant maturity. Matthew had much to learn. All the disciples did. Following Jesus is both a moment and a road.
But there must be a rising.
A leaving.
A break with the booth that owned you.
I think of Matthew sometimes when I meet people who believe they are too far gone. They assume Jesus is interested in clean people. Religious people. People with respectable résumés.
But Jesus built His apostolic circle with fishermen, zealots, doubters, hotheads, and a tax collector.
He does not need impressive raw material.
He creates what He calls.
The last scene I imagine is Matthew as an older man, writing.
Maybe his hand aches.
Maybe his beard is gray.
Maybe he pauses before recording his own calling.
He remembers Capernaum.
The table.
The coins.
The eyes of people who hated him.
The heaviness of being known only for his compromise.
Then he remembers Jesus stopping.
Seeing.
Speaking.
“Follow me.”
Perhaps Matthew smiled as he wrote that he rose and followed.
Because the whole story turned there.
Not when Matthew became worthy.
Not when society approved.
Not when he repaired his reputation.
But when Jesus called and he answered.
That is the ending and the beginning.
Matthew left the booth.
He followed the King.
And the man once known for taking from his people gave the world a Gospel that still leads sinners to mercy.
