24. But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.’ So he said to the paralysed man, ‘I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.’
25. Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God.
26. Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, ‘We have seen remarkable things today.’
27. After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. ‘Follow me,’ Jesus said to him,
28. and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.
29. Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them.
30. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’
31. Jesus answered them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but those who are ill.
32. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’
33. They said to him, ‘John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.’
34. Jesus answered, ‘Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them?
35. But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.’
36. He told them this parable: ‘No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old.