While the guests were assembling Jesus saw a man suffering from disease. He knew that the Pharisees were watching him and would object to his effecting a cure upon the Sabbath Day and he therefore turned to ask whether a cure would be lawful. When they hesitated to reply, he healed the sufferer and then rebuked their hypocrisy, and warned against all insincerity in religion by reminding these formalists that they would not hesitate on the Sabbath to rescue a beast they owned; should they regard it as sinful to deliver a human being from distress? Jesus never encouraged breaking the Sabbath law, but he taught that this law must be interpreted by love.
When the guests were seated and Jesus saw how they chose for themselves the most desirable places, he took occasion to rebuke selfish ambition and to give a lesson in humility. Evidently, when Jesus advised a guest to “sit down in the lowest place; that when he that hath bidden thee cometh, he may say to thee, Friend, go up higher,” he was not merely teaching good manners or worldly wisdom, nor was he advising the pride that masquerades as humility. He was stating the great law that among his followers true lowliness and conscious unworthiness in the sight of God are the real conditions of advancement and honor; “For every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”
Then as Jesus looked around upon the company he took occasion to teach a lesson in true charity. He told his host—and there was something of playfulness in his voice—that in selecting guests one should invite not only the rich, lest he might be so unfortunate (?) as to receive an invitation in return, but also the poor, who could not return the favor. Here again, Jesus was not giving merely rules of social hospitality; he was illustrating the great spiritual principle of unselfish motives in all deeds of kindness. We are not to confer benefits with a view to receiving benefits in return.
However, Jesus did not mean literally to forbid inviting rich guests to our homes or to insist that all feasts must be confined to paupers, but to teach that no service is to be rendered with the mere hope of personal gain. It is proper and pleasant, it may be even profitable, to entertain “friends” or “brethren” or “kinsmen” or “rich neighbors;” but in none of these cases is such entertainment a ground of merit for they may “bid thee again;” but if kindness is shown to the poor or rich simply for their good and with no thought of personal gain either present or future, the deed will not be without its reward: “for thou shalt be recompensed in the resurrection of the just.”