Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Luke 7:34

"The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold, a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!" — Luke 7:34 (ASV)

Attention now turns to the contrast between the response of the people (cf. comment on 1:17) and of their hostile leaders to John and Jesus. The tax collectors and the people stood ready to believe Jesus and thereby to “acknowledge that God’s way was right.” The issue is not only the role of Jesus and John but especially the entire counsel of God, whose “purpose for themselves” the “Pharisees and experts in the law” rejected.

John’s baptism was one of the symbols they chose to reject. Their obdurate opposition to each of God’s messengers is described as the ficklesness of children, who become annoyed when others won’t play their game. Jesus and John, when in confrontation with the Jewish leaders, refused to “play their game” and so are the object of their taunts. The people not only criticize but exaggerate the habits both of John (v.33), calling his asceticism demonic, and of Jesus (v.34), calling his normal habits of food and drink gluttony and drunkenness. The concluding saying probably means that those who respond to wisdom prove its rightness.