Lost In Translation: Luke 5:31-32

"It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." (NIV)

(Note: This article is part of a series explaining the deeper meaning and hidden aspects of some of Jesus’s most popular verses. See this article for the beginning of this series.)

These verses are shown under this article’s title. They are Jesus’s response when he is asked why he eats with the worthless. I like these verses so much for what they teach about Jesus’s speaking style and the mistranslation of his Greek that I was surprised I haven’t written about them before. I am sure the second verse appears as a reference in many of my articles on poorly translated words. It contains several of them. This is surprising because it seems so simple. And it is simple in Greek but in a different way.

These two verses seem more disconnected today because none of its keywords are read in English as they were heard then. In the first sentence, the setup is lost in the mistranslation of “is” and the double meanings in “healthy,” “need,” and “sick.” This setup was designed to make his audience curious about his point. The last verse is made purely religious due to mistranslation of its three keywords. It was never a criticism of “sinners,” but, as Jesus says, “a call,” to all of us. It was a punchline.

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Luke 5:31

When the scribes and pharisees asked Jesus why he eats with sinners, Jesus said:

“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” (NIV:)

Isn’t this a bit of a non-sequitur? Asked about sinners, Jesus responds with talking about a doctor? The problem is the Greek translation. The phrase, “it is not” does not exist in the Greek. The verb means “have.” and it is plural, not singular. The sentence starts with “no need have those.” This “have” connects to the last word of this verse in Greek, which is left out of all English translations.

The “healthy” is not a noun. It is a passive verb that means “being sound” in the form of an adjective. It is preceded by a plural article, so “those being sound.” Jesus only uses this word twice. It means solid in body, mind, and spirit. The root of this word is the Greek verb meaning “grow.” The idea of “spirit” is important here. It connects the question about “sinners” to his answer, and, because of the question, Jesus’s listeners would have heard it as referring meaning “solid of mind and spirit.”

The word translated as “doctor” comes next. Jesus uses it only three times, only here and in the two other versions of this verse in Matthew and Mark. The word means “healer.” It included everyone involved in physical healing from “surgeon” to “apothecary” to “midwife.” It switches the focus, however, from spiritual health to physical health, creating the metaphor.

The “doctor” creates the expectation that those physically “sick” will finish the verse, and English translations provide what is expected and boring. What Jesus did is quite different. He uses the Greek word that means "bad," "mean," "base," "ugly," "ill-born," and "evil."  It is normally translated as “evil” in the Bible for its sense of being morally wrong. The word more commonly translated as “evil” has even less of a sense of moral failure. (See this article.) Here, it feels like it means “base” or “mean” in the sense of “lower-class.”

The ending verb is left out of all English translations. It is the verb meaning "to have," "to hold," "to possess," and "to have charge of," in the form of a participle, “having.” This forms a kind of tease, describing his hosts as “having ugly” or “having badness,” but it also refers to the “have” at the beginning of the verse, “having need” or, combining the two, “having base needs.”

Listeners Heard: “Those being sound have no need of a healer, rather those having badness.”

Luke 5:32

After this introduction, he goes explains.

“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (NIV:)

The word translated as “righteous” means “law-abiding.” Jesus uses it to flatter the Pharisees, but also to remind the others of what the religious sect’s primary mission was: criticizing regular people as not law-abiding enough.

The word translated as “sinner,” (see this article on “sin”) has no sense of a moral failure. “Sin” means mistake. “Sinners” mean “mistake-makers.” The Pharisees were trying to promote the idea of mistakes as moral failures. Christianity echoes them today, wanting everyone to admit that they are “sinners,” but we would be much more successful if we called, like Jesus, to mistake-makers. No one denies making mistakes. The use of “mistakes” changes the discussion to how we avoid bad decisions. However, many Christians cling to the title “sinner” as if the admission was a badge of honor.

The term translated as "repentance" literally means "to change a mind." It has a sense of "regret" but not the religious baggage of ash and sackcloth it has been given as "repentance." Again, people admit to having regrets. We all do. And, if we can avoid mistakes, we want to change our thinking if it will help prevent more. This is a much easier call than “repentance.”

Listeners Heard: I have not shown up to invite the law-abiding but the mistake-makers—-to change their minds.

Discussing This

Do people today know that we can be unsound mentally and spiritually as well as physically? Not just brain sick so we need a pill, but mind polluted with ideas that obscure reality and prevent good decisions? And that all those forms of sickness can make us base and mean? We have needs of the mind and spirit just as we do the body, but too often today, they are forgotten.

Then, what should we call each other? First, mistake-makers not sinners. Polemic is annoying. Christians are the religious in general are shunned for their criticisms of others. But—we all make mistakes. The tough question is: do we want to change our minds or not? Do Christians want to do a better job of calling our to others or not? How should we change our minds? Can we change to something more welcoming and less self-righteous?