Mark 2:15
Mark 2:1515While Jesus was dining at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with Him and His disciples—for there were many who followed Him.
JW publications acknowledge that Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners, but treat the meals as targeted evangelistic encounters — Jesus the Great Physician visiting the sick — rather than as ongoing friendships. This framing keeps the Watchtower's categorical separation policy intact: the meals are reframed as ministry, not fellowship, and therefore do not contradict the doctrine that mature Christians today should not become close friends with non-Witnesses.
Mark notes that Jesus was reclining at table — kataikeimai, the verb for an unhurried meal in the host's home — with many tax collectors and sinners, "for there were many of them who were following him." The picture is sustained companionship, not a brief evangelistic visit. Jesus' answer to the scribes in v.17 — "those who are strong do not need a physician, but those who are sick" — does not deny the friendship; it defends it. He went where the sick were, ate with them, and walked alongside them. The categorical Watchtower reading cannot fit this verse without redefining the meal as something other than what Mark describes.