The Pharisee and the Tax Collector, Part 1
The Pharisee, according to his own perception of righteousness, had every reason to expect that he was right before God. He followed all of the rules, He kept away from all of the sins, and he was absolutely more righteous than sinners like the tax collector. Everyone knew how moral the Pharisee was and how utterly wicked and depraved the Tax Collector was. This reality was not to be questioned.
Yet, the tax collector went home justified and the Pharisee did not. The Tax Collector understood something vital: that he was indeed a sinner! The Pharisee was right! There was nothing in the tax collector to commend him to God. There was nothing in his soul or in his heart that would make him in any way desirable or attractive to the Holy Lord. He was utterly without help and hope apart from God’s sovereign mercy. The Pharisee missed this key point: that he too was without hope apart from God’s Grace! No matter how righteous he was, no matter how holy he was, no matter how lovely his prayers were or how much he fasted or how much he prayed, all of those works were filthy menstrual rags in comparison to the holiness of God, the holiness that is required for salvation.
This was the hope that the Tax Collector had. That someway, somehow, God would overlook the blatantly obvious sin and still have mercy. The Pharisee did not need this mercy. God had already given it to him by making him so moral and upstanding that it inspired awe in those around him. He exalted himself above the Tax Collector and above the people around him and above even God himself and Christ states that he did not go away justified. Those who exalt themselves will be brought low. Without Christ’s mercy, the Pharisee was damned.
And why was the Tax Collector justified? Was it because of his righteous and holy repentance? Certainly not! He went home righteous because God heard his cry for mercy and loved and saved him. The Tax Collector knew that he was lost apart from God’s mercy. The Pharisee knew he was saved. Christ did not come to save the righteous, but He did come to save sinners. The Pharisee did not understand this reality.
How easy it would be to hate the Pharisee like the Pharisee hated the tax-collecting sinner! “Lord, thank you that I’m not like other religious men! I humbly pray three times a week, I give to the poor twice per year, I mourn over my sins every chance I get. I thank you that I’m not like self-righteous men who try to earn their own salvation or even like this Pharisee.” God forgive us for praying such prayers! May he grant the mercy to repent like the Tax Collector, praying simply “Lord have mercy on me, a sinner!”
Simply being a sinner is not enough to be saved. A man can know he’s a sinner and that he is completely unrighteous, but if he is not humbled enough to cry for mercy like the Tax Collector, he will not find salvation. There is really only one difference between the Pharisee and the Sinner. The Sinner knows he is lost, whereas the Pharisee thinks he is saved. Yet both are still lost. It is not until a man cries for mercy and believes that that man finds the salvation he so desperately seeks and needs.
Religion is a very dangerous thing. Having the understanding of salvation, or claiming to, can be an extremely powerful bargaining chip in the hands of wicked men. People engage in all sorts of insanity to find salvation. This is the beauty of Christ’s teachings, that only when one stops trying to be saved will he be in a position to attain it. Christ did not come to save the righteous. He came to save sinners. He came to save men like the Tax Collector, who had nothing with which to commend himself to God.
Yet pharisaical men are not without hope. The church’s greatest missionary, the Apostle Paul, described himself in his letter to the Philippians as being a man who had every reason to have confidence in and boast in his flesh by stating that he was “…circumcised on the eighth day, of the people 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 righteousness under the law, blameless.” (Philippians 3:5-6) Paul put the Pharisee in Jesus’ story to absolute shame. If that man was a good Pharisee, Paul was better. According to the righteous under the law, Paul was blameless. What was the difference then between Paul and this Pharisee? The difference is found in verse 7 and 8, as Paul states: “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:7-8). Paul understood the lesson of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. He knew that his righteousness was not enough. If anyone had come close enough, it was Paul. Paul’s heart beat with that of the penitent Tax Collector, not the Pharisee. The self-proclaimed Chief of Sinners knew the wickedness of his heart and the hopelessness of trying to satisfy God’s righteousness apart from Jesus. And that same humbled chief of sinners also knew something of the riches of the exaltation of being a son of God in Christ.
Perhaps one of the most poignant examples of Christ’s mercy to a man like the Tax Collector is the life of John Newton. The author of the hymn “Amazing Grace” was a man who spent a great deal of time and exerted a great deal of effort to, like Jonah, run away from God. After many years of fighting, this man was used of God in great and mighty ways (and through his hymns and his story, is still being used). The inscription on his tombstone reads: “John Newton, Clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy.” This is the mercy that God has for sinners. This grace is initially unlooked for, subsequently begged for and finally granted to the sinner; unearned, unexpected and above and beyond all hope. Amazing grace, indeed!