Parable of the Pharisee & the Publican

Today on Renewing Your Mind. We're going to consider the parable that's an exercise in contrast in which Jesus is concerned with two men who are in prayer before God. And the parable is called the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, or sometimes the Pharisee and the tax collector.

Let me read it for you briefly. Also, He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God I thank you that I'm not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector.

I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I possess. And the tax collector standing afar off would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted. This is a very brief and in fact simple parable that Jesus gives, but we're told at the beginning of it why He gave it and to whom it was addressed. Notice He said, He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and they despised others.

If you look at all of the parables of the New Testament, we see recurring themes, one of which we've already noticed is the announcement of the crisis that is impending from the advent of the kingdom of God breaking through in the ministry of Jesus. Another motif that we hear again and again and again is that motif by which Jesus gives sober and serious warnings to those who make professions of faith but do not possess what they profess. The warning assumes the teaching of Jesus that the church is a body of people made up of both wheat and tares, what St. Augustine called a corpus per mixtum. That is, the church is a mixed body.

It includes true believers, but also those people who make professions of faith who have no who have no authentic faith. And the contrast we see here is perhaps as vivid as Jesus can make it, because the first person that He describes in the parable is the Pharisee. And we know that the Pharisee was a high churchman.

The Pharisees were a group among the Jews that began their ministry in the intertestamental period, and they were a group of men who banded together because they were profoundly concerned about the decline in religion among the Jewish people at that time, and the neglect of the law of God. And the Pharisees, whose name means set apart ones, committed themselves in spite of what everybody else was doing as they were being secularized, that they were going to be totally devoted to keeping the law of God in an effort to restore righteousness to the land and godliness to the people. But in a very short period of time, they became so caught up with their desire to be righteous that they soon had confidence in their own obedience to the law rather than learning from the law what the law was designed originally to teach them. The Apostle Paul teaches us in the New Testament that the primary function of the law of God is to act as a mirror, that when we look at that mirror, it reveals to us in the first place the holiness of God and our unholiness in contrast to God. And so what the law is to be is a school master to drive us to Christ as we realize that we are not capable of keeping the law. But rather than seeing this mirror, they looked in a mirror that showed them their own righteousness, and they became smug and overconfident in their own moral achievement.

And pretty soon, they began to have a spirit of being aloof from everybody else in the land. And one of the insidious doctrines that developed among the Pharisees was the idea of justification by segregation. That is, that a person would become justified in the sight of God as long as they could keep themselves clean from any contact with anybody who in any way was polluted. And we see that here when this Pharisee has the audacity to thank God for His superiority. Now actually, he's quoting a portion of a prayer that was found in the Talmud among the Jewish people where the leaders were instructed to thank God for the station in life that they enjoyed being one of the set-apart ones. And so this man thanks God, but not with any sincerity. He said he prayed within himself and perhaps to himself as much as to God, but he did address God saying, I thank you that I am not like other men.

He's saying in a sense there, but for your grace go I. These extortioners, adulterers, these extortioners, adulterers, or even as this miserable tax collector that I see over here in the temple. The tax collectors were the lowest form of life among the Jews, among the Amhorets, the people of the earth. They were most despised because they were quislings. They were considered traitors. They made their money by collecting taxes for the oppressive Roman government of the day. And they would often clip the coin, a trifle, and add to their collections and skim some off the top for themselves as they bled the people dry.

And so they were the most hated group of people in the nation. And so here's this Pharisee saying, God, I thank you that I'm not like other men like these extortioners, these adulterers, or this miserable tax collector over there. And I want you to remember, God, that even though your law requires fasting only once a year, I fast twice a week, and I give tithes of all that I possess.

I'm sacrificial in my giving. I am the quintessential true religious man. Now, the first thing that we understand about this Pharisee is that he has a seriously distorted understanding of what justification requires. Here's a man who thought that to be justified in the sight of God would be accomplished by one's own achievement of righteousness. Here was a man who added to grace his own merit, who added to faith his own works, adding to the work of Christ his own performance. And there are many Christians in the world today who believe in order to be redeemed, in order to be justified, you must have faith, you must have grace, and you must have Christ.

But they invariably add something else to the mix. They say, I must have faith plus works. I must have grace plus merit.

I must have Christ plus my own righteousness. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, to this day teaches that God will never pronounce a man justified until or unless inherent righteousness resides within that person. In other words, one must be sanctified before we may be justified, which is just the opposite of what the New Testament actually teaches and what is reiterated here in this parable. Now that was just the first problem that the Pharisee had. He had a completely mistaken understanding of what it takes to be justified.

Let me pause here. Jesus addressed this not to this one man who was just a character in the parable, but He addressed it to all who were standing there who thought that they could be justified by their own righteousness. And by extension, this parable of Jesus is given to the millions of people since and now who still trust in their own achievements and in their own good works to make them right with God. People assume that God grades on a curve. And as long as my sin is not as pernicious as my neighbor, I can be happy about my own performance. The Apostle Paul warned that those who judge themselves by themselves and judge themselves among themselves are not wise. But we look around, and as long as we can find somebody more corrupt than we seem to be, we are at ease in Zion assuming that our superiority and our achievements will get us past the throne of God's judgment. Other religions say that God has scales of justice, and if our good deeds outweigh our bad deeds, then that will get us into heaven.

However, what God requires is perfection. His law is holy, and we are not. As the psalmist asks, O God, if thou wouldst mark iniquity, who would stand? That's a rhetorical question.

The answer is clear. No one of us could possibly pass the bar of God's justice based upon our performance. And so to assume that we are going to enter heaven because we've lived a good life or tried to live a good life or lived a better life than others around us is to be on a fool's errand, to make the most fatal mistake of all. However, the second mistake perhaps is even worse than the first because even if it were the case that we could get into heaven by our own by our own righteousness, the Pharisee would have had a greatly exaggerated view of his own achievement. Even if it were true that we could get into heaven by having more good deeds than bad deeds, none of us could possibly make it on that basis because our bad deeds far surpass our good deeds. In fact, we've never done an authentic good deed in our lives. As the Apostle said with a real evaluation of our performance by the law, there's none who does good, no, not one. And we say, wait a minute. Wait a minute.

It can't be that dire. But remember when God considers our acts, He not only considers the act itself, whether it corresponds to His law, but the motivation for it. Did we do this particular work out of a heart that was 100% dedicated to God? We're called as the great commandment to love Him with all of our hearts, all of our minds, all of our strength. And there's no one of us in this room that has ever loved God with all of his heart in one hour or one minute of your life. So every deed that we do is always marred by that imperfection of the dedicated heart and will that performs it. So this Pharisee was misguided in every regard about his redemption.

Now standing in stark contrast to this man who's boasting of the difference between him and the publican is the publican himself. We read the tax collector standing afar off would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Couldn't even raise his eyes to heaven.

You know, one of my favorite hymns is Augustus Toplady's hymn, Rock of Ages. And that passage in the hymn, nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling. The Pharisee brought his fasting in his hand. He brought his tithing in his hand. He brought his status and his standing in the church in his hand where the tax collector, his hand was empty. He had nothing, nothing to contribute to his own salvation. All he had was a plea for mercy. Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.

At least the publican knew who he was and what he was. He wasn't suffering under the delusion of a phony righteousness such as the Pharisee carried with him every day. What this is about is about the only hope and the only ground for justification which is found in perhaps the most important theological concept in history, the concept of imputation. The concept of imputation means that our justification in the presence of God is founded and grounded on a righteousness that is not our own.

It's what Luther called a eustitium alienum, an alien righteousness, a righteousness extra nos, a righteousness outside of ourselves, a righteousness accomplished only by Christ, the only one who ever kept the law perfectly throughout his life. And sometimes we ask the six-year-old child in Sunday school, what did Jesus do for you? And the child will say, He died on the cross for my sin. And that's true. But had Jesus just come down from heaven on Good Friday and gone to Golgotha and took your sin upon him and paid the price before a holy God, would that have been enough to redeem you?

The answer is no. That would have been enough to take away your guilt. That would have been enough to remove your punishment. But what it wouldn't do would be to supply you with the righteousness that God requires from every human being. That's why Jesus had to be born.

He had to live under the law. He had to do what we call a life of perfect active obedience so that in His obedience He accrued for Himself perfect righteousness. And it's that righteousness that is then transferred to the account of every person who puts their trust in Him and in Him alone. And as long as that Pharisee and as long as that Pharisee trusted that much in his own righteousness, he couldn't possibly be redeemed.

I remember my mentor giving a sermon in a church one day on the radical ravages of sin. And after the service, this dear sweet little old lady came up to him and said, Dr. Gerstner, you've made me feel that big. And he looked at her and smiled, and he said, ma'am, that's too much.

He said, that's much too much. Don't you know that that much self-righteousness will send you to hell forever? If you're trusting in your accomplishments, in your goodness, in your works, you're no different from this Pharisee who went home to his house unjustified. The one who went home to his house justified was the one who rested on grace and on grace alone. Now, what is this mercy of justification?

And what was this publican looking for? The very essence of justification, dear friends, is forgiveness. What happens in justification is that God pronounces a person just who in himself is not just, but with that pronouncement grants the remission of sin. That person's sin is removed. It's taken away. It's sent into the outer darkness.

It's buried in the sea of forgetfulness as far as the east is from the west. And when it says that this publican went to his house justified, it meant this. He went to his house forgiven. When Paul deals with this doctrine of justification in Romans after he explains it all, he says, therefore, being justified, that is, justification is something that has already taken place.

We have peace with God and access into His presence. The Pharisee had status, but he was still at war with God. He was still an unforgiven person. And as long as a person is trusting in their own righteousness, they can never experience that grace of sin that is removed and forgiveness that is received.

But again, the publican, he had nothing to claim. The only merit he had before God was demerit. All he had to bring before God was his sin. And he knew that he was a sinner.

God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Jesus said, he went home, an adopted Son of God. He went home forgiven.

He went to his house justified. And then Jesus warns all of us who hear this parable that those who exalt themselves will be humbled, that those who humble themselves will be exalted. That's Dr. R.C. Sproul from his series on the parables of Jesus, and you're listening to Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb. Thank you for being with us on this Monday.

In his public ministry, one of the primary ways Jesus communicated was through parables, and this week Dr. Sproul is giving us an in-depth look at several of them. We'd like for you to have this series in a 12-message, 2-DVD set. Just contact us today with a donation of any amount.

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And if you'd like to become a ministry partner, please mention it while you're on the phone with us. But when someone sins against you, how many times should you forgive them? Jesus said 70 times 7. In other words, when I forgive somebody who has sinned against me, what does it mean to forgive them? If I say I forgive you, that's a very weighty pronouncement. When God forgives you, He holds that sin against you no more. We'll learn about the parable of the unforgiving servant tomorrow, here on Renewing Your Mind.