---
title: Matthew 9:10
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/matthew-9-10/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/matthew-9-10.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Matthew 9:10
testament: NT
section: Gospels
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Matthew 9:10

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> Later, as Jesus was dining at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with Him and His disciples.

## JW Usage

Jehovah's Witnesses rarely foreground Matthew 9:10 in their own teaching, but when confronted with it in the shunning debate they must reckon with its implications. The Watchtower cites Matthew 18:17 — "let him be to you just as a man of the nations and as a tax collector" — as a proof text for total shunning. Yet Matthew 9:10 records Jesus himself sitting at table with tax collectors and sinners, the very category he later names in Matthew 18:17. The JW position effectively requires reading "treat him as a tax collector" as meaning "cut all contact," while the Gospel record shows Jesus doing the opposite with actual tax collectors.

## Protestant Usage

The Protestant reading treats Matthew 9:10 as the interpretive key to Matthew 18:17. If Jesus tells us to treat the unrepentant person "as a tax collector," we must ask how Jesus himself treated tax collectors — and the answer is that he ate with them, called one as an apostle (Matt 9:9), and was publicly criticised for being a "friend of tax collectors and sinners" (Matt 11:19). Following Jesus's own example means relational engagement rather than social isolation. The Pharisees' position was "do not associate with sinners"; the Watchtower's shunning policy replicates the Pharisees' position, not Jesus's. As argument 092 notes, Jesus replied to the Pharisees' complaint with "I desire mercy, not sacrifice" (Matt 9:13) — a direct rebuke of the purity-by-separation logic that underlies the Watchtower's family-shunning policy. No verse in the Bible instructs a parent to stop speaking to their child, and Jesus's table fellowship with tax collectors demonstrates that biblical discipline was never meant to mean total relational severance.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [Admonish Him as a Brother — The Verse That Undoes Shunning](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/shunning-admonish-as-brother.md) — 2 Thessalonians 3:14–15 / 2 Corinthians 2:6–8 / Matthew 18:17 [Practice]
- [No Biblical Warrant for Family Shunning](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/shunning-family-no-biblical-warrant.md) — 1 Timothy 5:8 / Luke 15:4–7 / Matthew 9:10–13 [Practice]
- [When 'Bad Associations' Becomes a Categorical Ban](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/worldly-association-1cor15-categorical.md) — 1 Corinthians 15:33 — A Greek Proverb About Resurrection Deniers, Not All Outsiders [Practice]