Meals showed a person’s social standing in the ancient world. Eating with someone meant you accepted them. The Pharisees refused to eat with tax collectors and other sinners or to enter their homes. They believed this would make them unclean. They expected Jesus, as a rabbi (a Jewish teacher), to do the same.
But Jesus broke these social rules. He ate with sinners and allowed sinful people to touch him (5:29; 7:39; 15:1). The religious leaders strongly criticized him for this and mockingly called him “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (7:34).