Commentary - Luke 18:9-14

Bird's-eye view

In this potent parable, the Lord Jesus Christ takes aim at the very heart of all false religion, which is pride. He does not address this parable to the dissolute or the pagan, but rather to a certain kind of religious person, a type that is tragically common in every generation. The target audience is composed of those who trust in their own righteousness and, as a necessary consequence, despise everyone else. To illustrate the only way a man can be right with God, Jesus presents us with two men, two prayers, and two eternal destinies. One man, a Pharisee, is the model of religious propriety and moral effort. The other, a tax collector, is the very picture of social and religious corruption. And yet, in the stunning reversal that is characteristic of the Kingdom of God, it is the tax collector who goes home justified, not the Pharisee. This parable is a surgical strike against the cancer of self-righteousness and a glorious display of the nature of justification by faith alone. It teaches us that the front door to the kingdom of heaven is very, very low, and you have to get on your knees to get in.

Outline

Context In Luke

This parable is situated within a larger section of Luke's Gospel where Jesus is teaching His disciples on the road to Jerusalem. The themes of prayer, humility, and the nature of the kingdom are prominent. Just prior to this, in Luke 18:1-8, Jesus tells the parable of the persistent widow to encourage His followers to pray always and not lose heart. Now, He immediately follows it with a parable that teaches them how to pray, or rather, how not to. The story of the Pharisee and the tax collector serves as a stark warning about the kind of prayer God rejects. It powerfully illustrates the "great reversal" theme that runs through Luke's Gospel, where the proud are brought low and the humble are lifted up. This parable is a direct confrontation with the works-righteousness that characterized the Pharisees and stands as a cornerstone for understanding the gospel of grace that Jesus came to establish.

Verse-by-Verse Commentary

Verse 9: And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt:

Right out of the gate, Luke gives us the diagnosis. Jesus is not telling a gentle story for a general audience. This is a targeted strike. The audience consists of those afflicted with two related spiritual diseases. First, they trusted in themselves that they were righteous. Their confidence was not in God, not in His mercy, not in His provision, but in their own performance. They had a system, they were working the system, and they believed the system was working for them. Their righteousness was a product of their own efforts, a structure they had built themselves. The second disease is the inevitable result of the first: they viewed others with contempt. If your righteousness is your own achievement, then you will necessarily look down on those who have not achieved as much. Pride is always comparative. It requires someone else to be lower for you to feel high. These two sins are a package deal; you cannot have one without the other. This is the very essence of legalism.

Verse 10: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.”

Jesus sets the stage with two characters who represent the opposite ends of the social and religious spectrum in first-century Judaism. The Pharisee was the respected man, the religious expert, the one everyone looked up to as a model of piety. He was an insider. The tax collector, on the other hand, was a pariah. He was a Jewish man who worked for the Roman oppressors, and it was widely assumed that they were extortioners, enriching themselves by collaborating with the enemy and cheating their own people. He was an outsider, a traitor, a man whose very profession was synonymous with sin. Both men went to the same place, the temple, for the same purpose, to pray. But that is where the similarity ends.

Verse 11: “The Pharisee stood and was praying these things to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.’”

Notice first that he was praying to himself. Although the prayer is addressed to God, its true audience and subject is the man praying it. It is a performance, a spiritual selfie. He begins with thanks, which is appropriate, but the content of his thanksgiving is utterly corrupt. He is not thanking God for grace, but for his own elite status. His standard of righteousness is not God's holy law, but rather "other people." He defines his goodness by what he is not. He lists a series of disreputable characters, swindlers, the unjust, adulterers, and then his eyes fall on the other man in the temple, and he cannot resist a direct, contemptuous comparison: or even like this tax collector. He uses the tax collector as a dark backdrop to make his own righteousness shine all the brighter. This is not prayer; it is a press release for an audience of one, delivered in the presence of God.

Verse 12: “‘I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’”

Having established his righteousness by negative comparison, he now moves to his positive achievements. He presents his spiritual resume to God. He fasts twice a week, which was more than the law required (the Law only mandated one fast a year, on the Day of Atonement). He pays tithes of all that I get, which was also going above and beyond, as the law only required tithes on specific agricultural products. In his own eyes, he is not just meeting the standard; he is exceeding it. He is a spiritual overachiever. But these works, which are good in themselves, are rendered foul because they are the foundation of his trust. He is not offering them to God in gratitude for grace received; he is presenting them to God as an invoice, as grounds for God's favor. He believes God is in his debt.

Verse 13: “But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his chest, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’”

The contrast could not be more stark. The tax collector's posture tells the whole story before he even speaks. He stands some distance away, acknowledging his unworthiness to draw near. He was unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, a physical expression of his deep shame and recognition of God's holiness. He was beating his chest, a sign of profound grief and repentance. And then his prayer. It is short, desperate, and perfect. "God, be merciful to me, the sinner!" The Greek is even more emphatic, it is "to me, the sinner." He does not see himself as one sinner among many, or as a sinner who is at least better than some others. In that moment, before a holy God, he is the chief of sinners. He makes no excuses. He offers no resume. He brings nothing but his sin and casts himself entirely on the mercy of God. He is not asking for justice; he is pleading for mercy. The word for "be merciful" here is related to the word for the mercy seat, the place of atonement. He is, in essence, crying out for a sacrifice to cover his sin.

Verse 14: “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Here is the divine verdict, delivered by the Son of God Himself. And it is a bombshell. The tax collector, the traitor, the sinner, went home justified. This is a legal term. It means he was declared righteous in the sight of God. His sins were forgiven, and the righteousness of another was credited to his account. He was right with God. The Pharisee, the religious man, the moral man, was not. He went home in the same condition he arrived in: wrapped in his own filthy rags of self-righteousness, which is to say, condemned. Jesus then states the unalterable principle of His kingdom. God resists the proud. If you exalt yourself, God will see to your humbling. But God gives grace to the humble. If you humble yourself, as this tax collector did, God will exalt you. This is the logic of the cross. This is the heart of the gospel.

Application

The central application of this parable is to force us to examine the foundation of our own standing before God. It is a terrifying story because the Pharisee was not a hypocrite in the normal sense. He very likely did fast twice a week and tithe scrupulously. The problem was not his external actions, but the proud heart from which they flowed. His religion was a religion of self.

We must ask ourselves, when we pray, are we praying to God or to ourselves? When we think of our spiritual lives, do we take secret satisfaction in being "not like" other people, whether they be liberals, fundamentalists, charismatics, or the unbelieving world? Do we present our good deeds to God as a reason He should be pleased with us? That is the way of the Pharisee, and it leads to damnation.

The only way to be justified is to come to God as the tax collector did. We must abandon all trust in our own works, our own theology, our own morality. We must stand afar off, spiritually speaking, and confess that we are "the sinner." We must look away from ourselves entirely and look only to the mercy of God, a mercy that was purchased for us at the cross of Jesus Christ. The prayer "God, be merciful to me, the sinner" is the only prayer that has ever justified anyone. And it is a prayer that we must never cease to pray, even long after we are justified, for it is the constant posture of a creature before his gracious Creator.