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What the Fathers say
Eastern Fathers
John Chrysostom
But our Lord refutes all their charges, showing, that so far from its being a fault to mix with sinners, it is but a part of His merciful design, as it follows, And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; in which He reminds them of their common infirmities, and shows them that they are of the number of the sick, but adds, He is the Physician.
Gregory of Nyssa
Or, He means that the sound and righteous need no physician, i. e. the angels, but the corrupt and sinners, i. e. ourselves do; since we catch the disease of sin, which is not in heaven.
Irenaeus
For the apostles, who were commissioned to find out the wanderers, and to be for sight to those who saw not, and medicine to the weak, certainly did not address them in accordance with their opinion at the time, but according to revealed truth. For no persons of any kind would act properly, if they should advise blind men, just about to fall over a precipice, to continue their most dangerous path, as if it were the right one, and as if they might go on in safety. …
Western Saints
Bede
And Jesus, answering, said to them: Those who are well do not need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. He castigates the scribes and Pharisees, who, considering themselves just, avoided the company of sinners. For he calls himself a physician who, by a marvelous method of healing, was wounded for our iniquities, and by his bruises we are healed (Isa. LIII). …
Bonaventure
It is reproved secondly from the light of evident truth, when it is added: Jesus answering said to them: They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. This is self-evident, because, as it is said in Ecclesiasticus thirty-eight, "Honor the physician for the need you have of him: for the Most High has created him." If medicine exists on account of illness, then neither should the sick person be reproached for fleeing to the physician, nor the physician for approaching the sick person: but rather those should be …
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