NOTES for Mat 9:12-13
These words are a testimony to the greatest mercy of God. It is we people who reason about our relationship with God in terms of worthiness and unworthiness. The Lord Himself knows perfectly well what we are, and it is precisely to such people, precisely to us, that He came. Not because we are worthy of His mercy, and not because we can repay Him with something, but only because we need Him.
We often ask, "Where is God?", resenting Him for abandoning us in our sufferings. No, He has not abandoned us, though we have not deserved this in any way. But there is a radical difference between what He does and what we expect from Him. We expect God to correct the circumstances of our life so that everything will be good for us. The Lord says that He came to call us to repentance, that is, to correct not the circumstances of life, but us ourselves.