2
Who Can Be Right with God?
(Luke 18:9–14)
And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (18:9–14)
The most crucial question facing every person is how he or she can be reconciled to God. Countless manmade religions, philosophies, and worldviews attempt to answer that question, but in the end there are only two possibilities: people can either make themselves right before God, or they cannot. Every religion that has ever existed, except for the religion of divine accomplishment revealed in Scripture, has been based on human achievement—being morally good (by human standards), along with performing rituals and ceremonies. The popular notion is the vain and damning hope that people’s salvation is based on the illusion of their good deeds outweighing their bad ones. As I wrote in an earlier volume in this commentary series,
There have always been but two systems of religion in the world. One is God’s system of divine accomplishment, and the other is man’s system of human achievement. One is the religion of God’s grace, the other the religion of men’s works. One is the religion of faith, the other the religion of the flesh. One is the religion of the sincere heart and the internal, the other the religion of hypocrisy and the external. Within man’s system are thousands of religious forms and names, but they are all built on the achievements of man and the inspiration of Satan. Christianity, on the other hand, is the religion of divine accomplishment, and it stands alone. …
Jesus repeatedly pointed out two things: the necessity of choosing whether to follow God or not, and the fact that the choices are two and only two. There are two gates, the narrow and the wide; two ways, the narrow and the broad; two destinations, life and destruction; two groups, the few and the many; two kinds of trees, the good and the bad, which produce two kinds of fruit, the good and the bad; two kinds of people who profess faith in Jesus Christ, the sincere and false; two kinds of builders, the wise and the foolish; two foundations, the rock and the sand, and two houses, the secure and the insecure. (Matthew 1–7, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary [Chicago: Moody, 1985], 451, 452)
The standard that God demands is absolute perfection through perfect obedience to His law. In Matthew 5:48 Jesus commanded, “You are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The Lord was reiterating God’s command in the Old Testament, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (Lev. 11:45; cf. 19:2; 1 Peter 1:16). Making the divine standard even more unattainable is the reality that it applies not only to external obedience, but also to internal obedience from the heart (Matt. 5:21–47). That obedience must be complete. James wrote, “Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all” (James 2:10). Obviously, the divine standard is impossible for people to meet. In response to the disciples’ question, “Who can be saved?” (Matt. 19:25), Jesus replied, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (v. 26).
The previous sections of Luke’s gospel have focused on the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and His kingdom (17:20–18:8). That kingdom in its present form is a spiritual kingdom, in which Christ reigns in the hearts of those justified believers who have put their trust in Him. He will return one day to establish His literal, earthly millennial kingdom. After that thousand-year kingdom, He will establish the eternal kingdom, the new heavens and the new earth. Only those who are in the spiritual kingdom will be in the earthly and eternal kingdoms.
The discussion of the kingdom raises the basic, fundamental, and crucial question of how one enters the spiritual kingdom. How can one be reconciled to God? How can a sinner be acceptable to the infinitely holy God? That is the issue that Jesus addressed in this story.
The question is not an easy one to answer. As noted above, the Old Testament clearly teaches that God is absolutely holy, and calls people to be holy. Yet it is impossible for sinners to become holy and righteous on their own. Jeremiah 13:23 asks, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good who are accustomed to doing evil.” A few chapters later God declared, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). Job asked, “How can a man be in the right before God?” (Job 9:2), and one of his would-be counselors echoed his question: “How then can a man be just with God? Or how can he be clean who is born of woman?” (25:4). Self-righteousness will never result in a person being justified before God; “All our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment” (Isa. 64:6), therefore “in [His] sight no man living is righteous” (Ps. 143:2; cf. 1 Kings 8:46; Prov. 20:9; Eccl. 7:20).
Because people are utterly incapable of justifying themselves before God, the Old Testament, like the New, teaches that justification is solely by faith (Gen. 15:6; Hab. 2:4) in the righteousness of God imputed to the sinner. That reality, pictured by the sacrificial system, was made possible by the sacrificial death of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, who would “justify the many, as He [would] bear their iniquities” (Isa. 53:11; cf. Ps. 32:1).
But the Jews of Jesus’ day had lost sight of the Old Testament’s teaching. In its place they had concocted a false, legalistic system of salvation by self-righteousness, based on good works, rituals, and outward keeping of the Old Testament law and the rabbinic additions to and embellishments of it.
In this section of Luke’s gospel Jesus presented the correct answer to the question of how people can be justified before God. Like many of His stories, this one was counterintuitive; the reverse of everything the Jews believed regarding salvation. It is the story of two men. One was a self-righteous, outwardly religious Pharisee and the other an outcast sinner, a tax collector, a despised traitor to his people. That it was the irreligious tax collector in Jesus’ story who was justified, not the religious Pharisee, would have seemed outrageous, shocking, incomprehensible, and shameful to His hearers. It expressed truth that had no place in their theology.
This powerful story of two men, two postures, two prayers, and two results may be discussed under four headings: the comprehensive audience, the contrasting analogy, the confounding answer, and the central axiom.
THE COMPREHENSIVE AUDIENCE
And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: (18:9)
There is no time indicator or transitional statement to indicate whether Jesus told this parable on the same occasion as the preceding one (vv. 1–8). As noted above, however, it fits here well because it logically follows the previous discussion of the kingdom by describing how one enters it.
The Lord addressed this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt. The Greek phrase translated some people (lit., “whoever the ones”) encompasses all those outside the true faith—all those who trust that their own righteousness will gain them entrance to the kingdom.
In particular, the parable was aimed at the Pharisees, who were the architects of the legalistic system of self-righteousness that dominated life in Israel. Their theology, which was taught in the synagogues, greatly influenced the populace. As a result, the people believed that their self-righteousness would gain them entrance to God’s kingdom. In their sinful pride, they conveniently set aside the clear teaching of the Old Testament that they were evil and incapable of meritorious human works, and that salvation was by grace through faith.
But the Pharisees and their followers also represent all those who seek salvation through self-effort and self-righteousness; all who believe that they have the power to live a life that pleases God sufficiently to gain them eternal life in His kingdom. That has always been and still is the dominant, commonly believed, and damning lie that Satan has used to lure people to their eternal doom.
Before his conversion the apostle Paul believed that lie. He detailed his outwardly impressive credentials in Philippians 3:4–6:
If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.
Because of those credentials, Paul “was advancing in Judaism beyond many of [his] contemporaries among [his] countrymen, being more extremely zealous for [his] ancestral traditions” (Gal. 1:14). But after his salvation Paul’s perspective changed radically, as he wrote to the Philippians:
But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ. (Phil. 3:7–8)
Fifteen hundred years later another leading figure in church history also came to realize the futility of trying to obtain righteousness by his own efforts:
In the sixteenth century, a German monk named Martin Luther sat in the tower of the Black Cloister in Wittenberg, meditating on the perfect righteousness of God. Although he was the most scrupulous of monks, attending confession for hours each day, seeking forgiveness for the minutest of sins, he realized that the standard of perfect righteousness was absolutely unattainable. He thought of divine righteousness as an unrelenting, unforgiving, avenging wrath and believed his state was hopeless. Recounting the experience that transformed his life, he later said:
That expression “righteousness of God” was like a thunderbolt in my heart. … I hated Paul with all my heart when I read that the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel [Rom. 1:16–17]. Only afterward, when I saw the words that follow—namely, that it’s written that the righteous shall live through faith [1:17]—and in addition consulted Augustine, I was cheered. When I learned that the righteousness of God is his mercy, and that he makes us righteous through it, a remedy was offered to me in my affliction.
The remedy Luther found was the doctrine of justification by faith. His discovery launched the Reformation and put an end to the Dark Ages. What Luther came to realize is that God’s righteousness, revealed in the gospel, is reckoned in full to the account of everyone who turns to Christ in repentant faith. God’s own righteousness thus becomes the ground on which believers stand before him. (John MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus, Revised and Expanded Edition [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994], 196)
No matter how zealous they may be for God (Rom. 10:2), none who trust in their own righteousness will be justified. “For I say to you,” Jesus warned, “that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20).
Tragically, most of the Pharisees, unlike Paul and Luther, never made the discovery that entrance to God’s kingdom cannot be gained by human achievement. They remained sickeningly, obnoxiously self-righteous—so much so that they viewed others, whom they considered to be less righteous than they were, with contempt. Exoutheneō (contempt) means “to despise,” “to treat as if of no account,” “to consider worthless or of no value.” In its only other use in the Gospels, it describes the mocking treatment Jesus received at the hands of Herod and his soldiers (Luke 23:11). In Acts 4:11, Peter used it to describe the Jewish authorities’ contemptuous rejection of Jesus.
The Lord’s message that people cannot earn their way into the kingdom of God extended beyond His immediate audience. It is universal in scope, and serves as a warning to all who seek salvation through a works-righteousness religion or system of belief.
THE CONTRASTING ANALOGY
“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ (18:10–13)
There is no one a devoutly religious Pharisee would have been more contemptuous of than an outcast, irreligious tax collector (cf. 3:12; 5:27–30; 7:29, 34; 15:1; 19:2). The two men were polar opposites—they were the most pious and the most impious; the most respected and the most despised members of Jewish society.
In the Lord’s story, the two men went up the steps into the temple to pray, either at the time of the morning (9:00 A.M.), or more likely the evening (3:00 P.M.), sacrifice. After the atoning sacrifices had been made, prayer and worship could be offered. The scene would have been a familiar one to Jesus’ hearers; it was only natural for prayers to be offered at the temple, the “house of prayer” (Isa. 56:7; Matt. 21:13).
The Pharisee stood as he prayed, since standing was one of the acceptable postures of prayer (Gen. 24:12–14; 1 Sam. 1:26), along with sitting (Judg. 21:2–3; 2 Sam. 7:18; 1 Kings 19:4), kneeling (1 Kings 8:54; Ezra 9:5; Dan. 6:10), bowing (Ex. 34:8–9), lying facedown (Ezek. 9:8; Matt. 26:39), with uplifted hands (Ps. 28:2; 1 Tim. 2:8), looking up (John 11:41; 17:1), and looking down (Luke 18:13). But while praying standing up was acceptable, doing so to be noticed by men was not (cf. Matt. 6:5). The Pharisee’s posture was one of self-promoting pride, intended to showcase his supposed spirituality.
His prayer also displayed a hypocritical, self-righteous attitude, as the interesting statement that he was praying this to himself reveals. That could mean that he was praying inaudibly, as Hannah did (1 Sam. 1:13). More likely, however, the idea here is that he was focusing his prayer in the direction of himself in a self-congratulatory fashion. This was no prayer to God. He gave Him no praise, and asked nothing from Him; no mercy, grace, forgiveness, or help. His pompous, arrogant declaration, God, I thank You that I am not like other people, was sheer hypocrisy. It was an unequivocal declaration to God of his worthiness and self-righteousness; of what he was and had achieved on his own. It expressed his confidence that his own virtue was sufficient for him to have a relationship with God.
To make certain that no one, including God, missed the point, the Pharisee proceeded to compare himself favorably to the riffraff of Jewish society: swindlers (robbers), unjust (cheaters, dishonest people), and adulterers (immoral sexual sinners). Those types of sinful outcasts were frequently associated with tax collectors.
At that moment the Pharisee noticed a perfect example of exactly the kind of person he was not—a tax collector. The Pharisee would have kept his distance from such an unclean person, lest he inadvertently touch him and become ceremonially defiled. Such physical isolation was a statement by the Pharisee of his spiritual superiority to the common people the Pharisees considered “accursed” (John 7:49). He and his fellow Pharisees held themselves aloof from the common people, associating only with each other. This one may have wondered why the tax collector had not been ushered out with the other impure people (cf. Mishnah, Tamid 5.6).
Not content with saying what he was not, the Pharisee wanted everyone (including God) to know what he was. He then proceeded to list his religious credentials, contrasting himself with the irreligious tax collector. Though the Old Testament prescribed only one fast, in preparation for the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:29–31), the Pharisees fasted twice a week (normally on Monday and Thursday). He was careful to pay tithes of all that he received, going beyond the tithing required in the Old Testament law to include such minutiae as “mint and dill and cumin” (Matt. 23:23) and “rue and every kind of garden herb” (Luke 11:42).
His ostentatious, self-promoting prayer was typical of the Pharisees, as William Hendriksen notes:
A Pharisaic prayer, dating from about the time Jesus told this parable, runs as follows:
“I thank thee, Jehovah my God, that thou hast assigned my lot with those who sit in the house of learning, and not with those who sit at street corners [i.e., moneychangers and traders]. For I rise early and they rise early: I rise early to study the words of the Torah, and they rise early to attend to things of no importance. I weary myself and they weary themselves: I weary myself and gain thereby, while they weary themselves without gaining anything. I run and they run: I run toward the life of the age to come, while they run toward the pit of destruction.” (New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Gospel According to Luke [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978], 820)
Jesus condemned praying, fasting, and tithing intended merely to “make a good showing in the flesh” (Gal. 6:12) in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:1–18).
The second character in Jesus’ story manifested a radically different attitude to that of the proud Pharisee. His self-reflection led him to abject humility, which was revealed first by his location. Unlike the Pharisee, who stood as close to the Holy Place as he could get, the tax collector was standing some distance away on the fringe of the crowd. This man was acutely aware that he was unworthy to be in God’s presence, or even in that of the righteous. He was a pariah not only in his own eyes, but more importantly in God’s.
The tax collector’s posture also manifested his meekness. Unlike the Pharisee, who stood proudly displaying his supposed virtue and spirituality, he was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven. Overwhelmed with guilt and shame, he had an overpowering sense of his own unworthiness and alienation from God. His sin, disobedience, and lawlessness brought him pain, along with fear and dread of deserved punishment.
His humility is also seen in his behavior; he was beating his breast. When they prayed, the Jewish people sometimes put their hands over their chests and put their eyes down. But this man did something unusual. Clenching his hands into fists, he began pounding his chest rapidly and repeatedly in a gesture used to express the most extreme sorrow and anguish. There is only one other reference in Scripture to this practice. Luke 23:48 records that after Christ’s death on the cross “all the crowds who came together for this spectacle, when they observed what had happened, began to return, beating their breasts.” The gesture acknowledged that the heart is the source of all evil (cf. Gen. 6:5; 8:21; Jer. 7:24; 16:12; 17:9; Matt. 12:34; 15:19; Luke 6:45).
Finally, the words the tax collector spoke reveal his humility. Unlike the Pharisee, this true penitent actually addressed his prayer to God. He referred to himself not as a sinner but as the sinner. His words are reminiscent of Paul’s declaration in 1 Timothy 1:15, “It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.” The tax collector’s unequivocal confession of his extreme and deep sinfulness shows that, compared to others, he viewed himself as the worst sinner of all.
Though they were poles apart in terms of their status in society, the tax collector and the Pharisee had a lot in common in their beliefs. Both understood the Old Testament to be God’s revelation; both believed in God as Creator, Lawgiver, and Judge, who is holy and righteous, and at the same time merciful, gracious, and compassionate. Both believed in the sacrificial system, the priesthood, atonement, and God’s forgiveness of sin. There was one crucial difference, however: the tax collector repented and sought forgiveness by faith, while the Pharisee did not repent, but sought his forgiveness through his good works.
The tax collector expressed his repentant faith in his plea, “God, be merciful to me.” Merciful translates a form of the verb hilaskomai, which means “to appease,” “to make propitiation,” and “to make satisfaction.” In its only other New Testament use, it describes Christ making propitiation for the sins of His people (Heb. 2:17). He was asking God to be propitious and appeased toward him. This was not a general plea for mercy, but rather that God would provide an atonement for him. That would come in the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus.
I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; (18:14a)
This stunning statement by the Lord shocked the legalists in His audience, absolutely shattering their theological sensibilities. Dedikaiōmenos (justified) is a perfect passive participle that literally means “having been permanently justified.” Moreover, Jesus did not appeal to rabbinic authority; His declaration I tell you asserted His absolute divine authority. Here is sound soteriology from God incarnate.
Without any works, merit, worthiness, law keeping, moral achievement, spiritual accomplishment, ritual, penance, good works, or any other meritorious activity, this guilty sinner was pronounced instantly and permanently righteous. The only righteousness acceptable to God is the perfect righteousness that no amount of human effort can earn. Since it cannot be earned, God gives it as a gift to penitent sinners who put their trust in Him. But the self-righteous pride of the Pharisee, and those like him, only increased his alienation from God. His soliloquy merely solidified his confidence in his own righteousness, and he left in a more wretched condition then when he came. Atonement is worthless to the self-righteous.
The work of Jesus on the cross is not mentioned in the story because it had not yet occurred. The salvation of the tax collector was an Old Testament, pre-cross conversion. But in any age, righteousness and justification are granted by God apart from works through the application of Christ’s atoning sacrifice before and after His death and resurrection.
THE CENTRAL AXIOM
for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (18:14b)
Jesus closed His story with a truism or proverb. Exalted in this context is a synonym for salvation; for being in the spiritual kingdom. In its Old Testament usage, only God is truly exalted and only God can exalt men, who are unable to exalt themselves to His level. Thus, everyone who exalts himself will be humbled in the severest sense of the word; crushed in eternal loss and punishment. The path of self-exaltation ends in eternal judgment; “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).
On the other hand, all who humble themselves and confess that they can do nothing to save themselves will be exalted to eternal glory. The damned think that they are good; the saved know that they are wicked. The damned believe that the kingdom of God is for those worthy of it; the saved know that the kingdom of God is for those who know that they are unworthy of it. The damned believe that eternal life is earned; the saved know it is a free gift. The damned find God’s commendation; the saved seek His forgiveness.