9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
To everyone else, it seemed like these two men were doing the same thing. Both passed through the same courtyard of the Temple. Both approached in reverent meditation. In an era where prayer was done out loud, both could be heard muttering to God. But they were not the same. Nor were they engaged in the same activity.
For starters, the Pharisee stood visibly apart. He wore the fine garb of a religious teacher. He was greeted by his students and underlings. He held his head high. He knew his worth, and he made it known, “I am not like other people – robbers, evildoers, adulterers -or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”
Despite the “Thank you” that began the Pharisee’s prayer, his focus was not really on God’s goodness but his own. He had entered the Temple to lay claim to the place before God that he thought he deserved. His prayer became a list of his own merits, as if he had entered the temple simply to remind God how good he had been to him.
What about the other man? This tax collector probably wore fine clothes, purchased with the cream he was allowed to skim off the top of poor families’ inflated payments to Rome. There’s no way he was greeted in the courtyard by his countrymen. The shame he felt for his own greedy extortion weighed his head down. He could only strike himself and tearfully mumble with a quaking voice, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” No personal righteousness to boast of. No status to proclaim. No trace of evidence that God should even listen. Just a guilty soul begging for mercy.
Are you ready for the surprise?
14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 18:9-14).
Of these two, the tax collector got it right. It’s not that his sorrowful confession merited God’s attention or love. It’s not that a promise to do better moved God to give him a second chance. Jesus simply tells us the result: this sinful man was “justified,” that is, declared righteous in God’s sight. Why?
Because at their core, these men are no different. They are both wicked sinners, estranged from God. The Pharisee, however, had fooled himself into thinking that his tithing or fasting made him more worthy before God than the tax collector. He looked to his obedience, his religious devotion, and the sacrifices he had made as evidence that he stood in a better place with God. He had forgotten that our righteous acts are like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). He neglected to mention that he was sinful from birth (Psalm 51:5). He did not confess with the Psalmist, “If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?” (Psalm 130:3). His fixation on what he had done and how faithfully he had done it blinded him to his need for mercy.
That’s what the tax collector understood. Like someone covered in mud trying to enter a five-star hotel lobby, there is no approaching God while stuck in the filth of our sin. We need cleansing. We need rescue. We need total, otherworldly mercy. Not mercy that meets us after we have done all we can, but mercy that saves us “not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy” (Titus 3:5). The tax collector begged God for this, and, as Jesus says, God’s answer was: “Yes! Of course, yes!” The tax collector went home washed clean in God’s mercy. He did not go home with a second chance to prove himself worthy. He went home already declared righteous before God, because God “justifies the ungodly” (Romans 4:5). He went home robed not in a righteousness of his own actions, but in the righteousness of God.
Dear friend, this is the righteousness Jesus drapes over you. He won it for you with his perfect life under the law, and he cleanses you from guilt and sin by his innocent death on the cross. Now, he lives. He lives to guarantee you God’s mercy.
But this gift of mercy, of righteousness, of full eternal life, is not willing to compete with your own merits. There is no place to stand with the Pharisee and attempt to lay claim to a special place before God because of our worthiness, our obedience, or our religious devotion. Why would you want to, when all this is freely given? This is a gift to receive, not a place before God we achieve. Instead, like the tax collector, we can freely admit what we are: totally sinful, and totally in need of mercy. Because, like the tax collector, that precise thing our souls beg for – the only thing that will save us from ourselves – is exactly what God gives through Jesus Christ. Find rest, weary sinner, in the mercy of God.
