Tax collectors also came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?”

After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax office, and He said to him, “Follow Me!”

Then Levi hosted a grand banquet for Him at his house. Now there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others who were guests with them.

But the Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to His disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

(And when all the people, including the tax collectors, heard this, they acknowledged God’s way of righteousness, because they had been baptized with John’s baptism.

The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’

All the tax collectors and sinners were approaching to listen to Him.

“Two men went up to the temple complex to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

The Pharisee took his stand and was praying like this: ‘God, I thank You that I’m not like other people —greedy, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

“But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even raise his eyes to heaven but kept striking his chest and saying, ‘God, turn Your wrath from me—a sinner!’

There was a man named Zacchaeus who was a chief tax collector, and he was rich.