Grace and peace be unto you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Pharisee in today’s parable is a pretty good guy. He is not like other men. He’s not an extortioner. He hasn’t gotten his neighbor’s goods by force or threat. Nor is he unjust. He’s fair and equitable to others, he gives them what is due to them. Nor is he an adulterer. He is faithful to his wife. Nor is he like the tax collector praying in the corner. He doesn’t cheat others out of money as tax collectors often did, enriching themselves in ways that only appear to be right. The Pharisee is a pretty good guy. He knows it and is thankful for that. “God, I thank You that I am not like other men,” he prays. Not only is he a good, upstanding person, he goes above and beyond what is required of him. Regular fasting was not mandatory for the Israelites. Yet this man fasts twice a week. The law required tithes of the first fruits of their harvests. But this man gives tithes of all he possesses. This guy is good. The tax collector, though, not so much. First, he’s in a disreputable profession. Tax collectors worked for Rome, who ruled Judea at the time. They were also given a good amount of latitude as far as how much they could collect, a latitude many of them seemed to use quite freely. Tax collectors were so despised that they were half of a byword among the Jews. No one wanted to be considered a friend of tax collectors and sinners. No wonder the Pharisee thanked God that he was not like this tax collector.
But the Pharisee has a big problem, perhaps the worst problem a person could have. It’s the kind of problem that is nearly impossible to self-diagnose. He trusts in himself that he is righteous, meaning he is self-righteous. To any onlooker or passerby, he’s a righteous, holy man. But inwardly the opposite is true. He sees himself and all his works and puffs himself up at the thought of them. He lives the way he lives—in such an outwardly holy way—because he thinks that his actions are what make him righteous. And become he thinks of himself as righteous because of his deeds and sensibilities, he despises others. Having turned up his nose at those who appear less righteous than he, he thinks little of them. And so, these two things go together: If someone trusts in himself that he is righteous, he will despise others. Self-righteousness can’t exist by itself. It needs others around to feed itself with their unrighteousness and deplorableness. That’s because at its root, self-righteousness is a theology of comparison. As long as there is someone worse—and the worse the better—I look good and have a reason to continue looking good. It doesn’t take another actual person, either to be self-righteous. If a class of people exist that are viewed negatively, self-righteousness has the nourishment necessary for its life. Even if this tax collector hadn’t been within earshot of the Pharisee, the fact that tax collectors exist would be enough for him to say, “At least I’m not like those people.” What makes self-righteousness so difficult, if not impossible, to see in oneself is it hides under the good that one does.
This tax collector, on the other hand, is not self-righteous. He’s the opposite. He’s humble and self-effacing. He doesn’t raise his eyes to heaven as he prays but beats his breast and prays, “‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!” He knows his sins. He feels them in his heart. He knows that he is unrighteous and that in his flesh there is nothing good. Jesus doesn’t put any specific sins in the tax collector’s mouth. He may very well have extorted money from his neighbor. He may very well have behaved unjustly. He may very well have adulterated his marriage. But Jesus has him go deeper. The tax collector confesses himself to be a sinner because even if he’s been good outwardly, his heart is still the sinful heart, and out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, and blasphemies (Matt 15:19). There is no self-righteousness here, no self-justification, no excuses, no blame shifting. There is only honest self-appraisal under God’s law that demands perfect love for God and selfless love for neighbor. Seeing that he is unrighteous in and of himself, he asks God to be merciful to him. Because he has nothing to offer God to make atonement for himself, he asks God to provide atonement for him. Why would he do that? Because he believed that God would be merciful to sinners. He believed that God had promised to provide atonement and be merciful to those who humbly acknowledge their sin and truly regret it. He prays as Asaph does in Psalm 79:9, “Help us, O God of our salvation, For the glory of Your name; And deliver us, and provide atonement for our sins, For Your name’s sake!” Provide atonement for my sins, not on account of any righteousness I have, but because You have promised to be merciful.
Then Jesus explains, “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.” This man—the tax collector—goes home justified, not the Pharisee. To be justified is to be declared righteous and free from sins and to be absolved from the eternal punishment for the sake of Christ’s righteousness, which is imputed by God to faith. God forgave the sins of the tax collector because he was humble, contrite, and because he trusted God’s promise to be merciful and provide atonement for sinners. The other—the Pharisee—goes home unjustified. God did not declare him righteous. God did not free him from his sins. God did not absolve him from eternal punishment because he wasn’t humble, contrite, or trusting God’s promise to be merciful and provide atonement for sinners. The Pharisee didn’t even ask God for anything in his prayer! He exalted himself and despised his fellow man. The Pharisee couldn’t see past how good he thought he was to see the truth that he, too, was a sinner in need of God’s mercy. He, too, was a sinner out of whose heart proceeded evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, and blasphemies like the blasphemy of self-righteousness. Because he couldn’t see himself as God saw him, he saw no reason to confess anything to God, and no reason to ask for mercy and forgiveness. He went down his house, still in his sins, still under God’s wrath and condemnation. “Still,” because apart from faith in God’s promise to forgive sin, there is no justification. Apart from faith in the atonement God provided upon the cross, no one is declared righteous in God’s sight.
This parable is so simple, but its application runs deep. Self-righteousness is a pervasive part of the sinful nature. The sinful flesh which the tax collector had, which the Pharisee had, and which you and I have, will think, say, and do anything to prove to itself and others that it is righteous. Like the Pharisee, the sinful flesh will play the comparison game, “Thank You that I am not like other men.” The sinful flesh will even tempt us to compare ourselves to our previous selves, so that we see how much more sanctified we are today and say, “Thank you, that I am not that bad anymore!” The sinful flesh is a master at playing the comparison game, with the goal that we think more highly of ourselves than we ought, which often means we look down on others. But God does not compare us to other people. Nor does he compare us to our former selves. He compares us to His law, which means that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23), for in God’s sight no one living is righteous (Ps 143:2). We are to realize this, to know this about ourselves, and to do what the tax collector does. No comparison. No excuses. No self-justification. Just confession of sin and faith in the gospel, for faith in the gospel that Paul received and delivered: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. Faith in that gospel is only thing that God counts for righteousness.
Having been justified, declared righteous, free from sins, and to be absolved from the eternal punishment by faith in Christ’s righteousness, we think of ourselves as we ought. We call ourselves sinners and this is most certainly true. But God calls us righteous because we believe in His Son, and for this justification we rejoice! In that joy we begin to do righteous things. We love God from the heart so that we trust Him to give us every good thing we need. We begin to love our neighbor from the heart as well, so that we do not seek our own good but the good of our neighbor. We say with St. Paul, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.” We are justified, declared righteous, and set free from eternal punishment by God’s grace alone. Even the good we do now is done by His grace which is with us, not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God (2 Cor 3:5). Having been justified freely by God’s grace for Christ’s sake, and this through faith, we labor. We don’t labor to pile up works to boast in, like the Pharisee. We labor in service to the Lord and our neighbor, out of thanksgiving and joy that God is merciful and provides atonement for sinners. Believing this promise, go down to your house justified by God, declared righteous, free from sins, and absolved from the eternal punishment, and labor in love God and for others by the grace with you. Amen.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
