Religiosity devoid of Christ-enlivened spirituality always and without fail leads to damnation. This is a sobering lesson of the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. Jesus made no secret of His detestation of the teachings and theology of the Pharisees. When He was not teaching doctrines that ran contrary to the Pharisees (enraging them) or dining with sinners (deeply offending them) or teaching parables against them (confounding them), He was pronouncing woes upon them and calling them vipers and whitened sepulchers. He even saw fit to use them as an object lesson in this parable in Luke 18:9-14.
The parable in question involves two characters: a Pharisee and a Tax Collector. Pharisees were the religious leaders of their day. They were renowned for their apparent righteousness and law-keeping. They loved the honor of men and loved the sweet smell of money (Luke 16:14). They were self-righteous and devious. Jesus did not think very highly of the Pharisees. In return, they hated Him. The Gospels are filled with battles that Jesus had with these leading rulers and many of his teachings were teachings in direct opposition to the Pharisees. In Matthew 21:33-40 Jesus likened them to tenants who beat and murdered the servants of the owner of a vineyard, even going so far to murder the owner’s son. When asked what should be done to men such as those, the Pharisees ironic answer was “He will put to those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons” (Matthew 21:41). Jesus’ telling response was that they (the Pharisees) had rejected God’s chief cornerstone and that “…the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.” (Matthew 21:43). Furthermore, Jesus pronounced seven woes against them in Matthew 23:13-36, using perhaps his harshest language recorded in the Gospels. In this chilling passage Jesus referred to the Pharisees as hypocrites, children of hell, blind guides, blind fools, blind men, whitewashed tombs, serpents, and a brood of vipers. He pronounces woes on them for trying to keep people out of God’s kingdom, attempting to make proselytes into children of hell, making foolish oaths, neglecting the “…weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matthew 23:23), being men concerned only with their outer appearance, concerning themselves with external righteousness while being internally dead men of lawlessness and hypocrisy, and hypocritically distancing themselves from the murder of God’s prophets. Again, Jesus did not think highly of the Pharisees. Their doctrines were hateful to Him. Their supposed worship was a stink to His nostrils. He hated their wickedness and their hypocrisy. Yet, the Pharisees were the “big leaguers” of the Jewish religious climate. They were the professionals. If they said to jump, everybody asked how high. They were the Righteous. They were the ones close to God. They were the ones who were in and doing God’s will.
The tax collectors, on the other hand, were a despised lot. After Levi the Tax Collector was called by Jesus to be a disciple he invited Jesus and his fellow Tax Collectors (and other sinners) over to his house. The scribes of the Pharisees took offense to this and asked why Jesus would do such a thing, to eat with such a dirty group of people. Jesus’ beautiful answer is telling: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17) Tax Collectors were a sinful lot and they knew it. They were in the employ of the Roman Empire but were Jews. They were cheats, snitches and were despised by everybody. They and everybody else knew that righteousness was impossible for them. They were not well. That Jesus would eat with them was a scandal of the highest order. Such men were worse than the Romans. Yet Jesus, because of His gracious love, came to save such men. The Pharisees knew that they were righteous. The Tax Collectors knew that they were not.
The parables of Jesus were more than quaint stories. They always had a purpose and always had a particular message and audience in mind. Quite handily, Luke very kindly interpreted this parable by mentioning the audience and purpose of this passage. In Luke 18:9 he states: “[Jesus] also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt”. This parable was (and is) intended for men like the Pharisees, who thought themselves righteous and better than everybody around them.
In particular, the Pharisee of Jesus’ parable was a stellar example of perceived righteousness. By his own loud, self-seeking, prayerful admission, he proclaimed his righteousness by thanking God for giving it to him. “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all I get.” (Luke 18:11). This was a man convinced of his standing before God and of his own inherent righteousness. He was fair with his money (even though he loved it too much), he was just (even if it was by his own depraved standard of righteousness), he was faithful to his wife (even if he was able to find a myriad of reasons to justly divorce her) and he was nowhere near as wicked as the nearby Tax Collector. Furthermore, this man did not just fast once a year or once a month or even once a week, he fasted two times during a week and he was sure to let everybody see how much his devotion cost him. Even more impressively, he gave tithes of all he that he got, even if it meant that he did not have enough to respectively give to his parents in their need. This Pharisee in Jesus’ parable was the standard of holiness and God-likeness.
The Tax Collector, on the other hand, agreed with the Pharisees assessment of him. He knew that he did not have the righteousness of the Pharisee. He knew that he was an extortioner, that he was unjust and that he was adulterous. He was a tax collector after all. This man knew that he was sick and in dire need of a physician. It was all he could do to fall on his face and cry to God for the simple grace of underserved, unearned, unjust and completely necessary mercy. This man was at his end. He knew that there was nothing that he could do and nothing that he could offer to God to make God love him. He quite simply had nothing to give and was ready to take anything and everything that God might give to him. This man, Jesus says, went home justified, rather than the Pharisee. This man repented of the sins that the Pharisee would never admit he had committed. This man, completely unacceptable to God was accepted and went home justified and the Pharisee who by God’s grace kept all the law was found wanting and went home condemned. In exalting himself the Pharisee was humbled to the point of condemnation. In humbling himself and simply asking for mercy, the sinful Tax Collector was exalted and justified before God.
