Amy C Walters

The Pharisee and the Tax Collector | Luke 18:9-14

A Pharisee and a Tax Collector walk into the temple. Both pray to God but their prayers are very different. The Pharisee seeks to prove his own righteousness. But the Tax Collector admits his faults and asks for God’s mercy. And he, the sinner, walks away right before God. Because we all need God’s mercy.

Jesus tells another brief parable near the beginning of Luke 18. And once again, Luke helps us out by telling us the purpose of the parable. He says that Jesus “told it to some who trusted in themselves, in their own righteousness, and treated others with contempt.” 

For this parable, Jesus picks two characters who are thought to be at opposite ends of the morality spectrum. You have the Pharisee, who was seen as the most righteous, the most law-abiding. And then you have the Tax Collector, who was a traitor for helping the occupying enemy government, often extorting and stealing money from people.

Both of them go up into the temple to pray. The Pharisee, you’ll notice, begins his prayer by comparing himself to others. “I’m glad that I’m not like extortioners, unjust adulterers, even the Tax Collector.” He doesn’t steal, he doesn’t cheat, he doesn’t sleep around, he doesn’t betray his people. This Pharisee avoids all the bad things. 

Not only that, he’s also proactive. He does the good things. He says, “I fast twice a week.” That’s one more time than is expected. 

“And I tithe on all that I get.” In other stories from Jesus’ time, we’re told that the Pharisees even tithed on their herbs and spices (Matthew 23:23). So they went to the extreme in doing all of the right things. 

What does this prayer from the Pharisee tell us about his attitude? I think it shows us that he wants to let God know how good he is, that he takes a lot of pride in his righteousness, in doing all of the right things.

It might seem odd to us that someone would pray this way. “I would never pray to God like that.” But we often think this way, don’t we? We often compare ourselves to others. “I would never say that to someone. I always follow the rules. I can’t believe they just did that.” 

You see, it’s easy to cherry pick the areas that we’re going to compare ourselves to others. We’re only going to pick the ones where we come out favorably, where we look good. We’re only going to pick those comparisons where we think we’re better than them. 

Let’s look now at the tax collector. There’s just one similarity between him and the Pharisee: they both go to the temple to pray. This is actually quite remarkable because if you think about a tax collector and their bad reputation, you would assume that they would want nothing to do with God and would avoid places like that. I wonder if he got any dirty looks as he came into the temple. The Pharisee at least notices him. But that’s where the similarities end. 

Let’s look at the differences: first of all, the tax collector’s posture as he prays. Before we even get into the content of his prayer, we can see something from how he stands and what he does. He stands at a distance, and we’re told that he wouldn’t even lift his eyes to heaven. He’s looking down. This is a posture of humility. And then he beats his chest. This is a sign of mourning, of regret, of sadness.

So what does his posture tell us about his attitude? Before he’s even said a word, we can see right where his heart is. Maybe that he’s full of regret over what he’s done. Maybe that he is humbled before God and hesitant even to approach him because of all the sin that he’s carried. 

And yet he still does approach God. And the content of his prayer is also very different from the Pharisees’. Instead of listing all of his virtues and trying to make an argument that he does a lot of good things to outweigh the bad, he acknowledges the truth about who he is, that he is a sinner. And because he is a sinner, he needs God’s mercy. That is his only request in this prayer. “Have mercy on me, a sinner.” 

How does God respond to these two men? The one who’s done everything right and the one who’s done everything wrong? 

We’re told that the Tax Collector is justified before God, but the Pharisee is not. To be justified means to be declared righteous, that God says, you are righteous. 

This is the exact opposite from what the original audience would have expected. You would think that doing all the right things makes one righteous. But here we see that it’s dependence on God’s mercy that makes one righteous. Going to God and admitting your guilt and allowing him to declare you as righteous. You see, those who try to justify themselves are unjustified. Only when God justifies you is it possible.

Dick Lucas, who was a minister of the Church of England, points out from this parable that religion, instead of being a bridge to God, was a barrier. And if you recall, this is the same point that Jesus makes in the parable of the Prodigal Sons when he’s talking about the older son who stayed home and obeyed all of the father’s rules. It was the older son’s goodness and rule following that kept him outside. As Tim Keller said, “The humble are in, the proud are out.” 

This parable shares some commonalities with the one before it–the Persistent Widow. Both parables involve prayer. Of course, the tax collector and the Pharisee are there at the temple praying. And the widow in her persistence in pursuing justice represents God’s people who cry out to him in prayer. 

Both of these parables elevate people whom society would denigrate: a helpless widow and a sinful tax collector.And yet God wants to hear from them. 

Both of these parables also are concerned with justice. The widow is seeking justice and the tax collector is seeking mercy because he knows he cannot stand under God’s justice.

This is really important for us to notice because we evangelical Christians here in America tend to be very strong on law and order and justice. We want harsh penalties for those who break the law. We don’t want people to get away with it.

But oftentimes in our pursuit of justice, we leave very little room for mercy. Maybe it’s because we’ve forgotten that we ourselves need mercy. In fact, that is our key truth for today: we all need God’s mercy. 

From the most moral and best behaved person among us to the least, none of us can stand before God’s justice on our own. We are all totally dependent on his mercy.

So even as we pursue justice in this world, even as we pray for God to bring justice with his return, we also need to remember that we are beneficiaries of his mercy. We pray for justice, but we remember mercy. And we operate as instruments of God’s mercy, extending it to one another as well.

We live in merciless times, where a person’s sins and mistakes are highlighted and rehearsed ad nauseum. Where we say we will never forget the bad things that you have done.

What a light we can be when we show mercy to those who don’t deserve it. What an opportunity to demonstrate and put on display God’s mercy. Let’s do that. Let’s be merciful people, remembering how much mercy we ourselves have received. 

Today as you go, I want you to look for opportunities to show mercy to others around you. In our world where we so long for fairness and are so concerned with things being right, it’s an opportunity to remember that God has been merciful to us, and we can extend his mercy to others.