The following question came through via email:As I thought the application of Luke 18:9-14 to those who are now followers of Christ, I tried changing the parable (NIV with changes in italics) to:
"Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The
tax collector stood up and prayed about himself: `God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this
Pharisee who fasts twice a week and gives a tenth of all he gets.'
But the
Pharisee stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, `God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'
I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Q1. Does changing it this way change the purpose for which the Lord Jesus used the parable?
Q2. If it does not essentially change the purpose of the parable, does it (either as it stands in the text or with my changes) apply to me as one who is already justified by grace alone though faith alone and therefore knows he does not earn God’s approval by his works?
AnswerTwo interesting questions here!
The purpose of the parable seems to be grounded in v14
For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he whom humbles himself will be exalted
So, on the one hand, no the purpose of the parable doesn't change if you swap the Pharisee and Tax Collector around. But, on the other hand, Jesus uses these people for a particular reason. The Pharisees were at least known for their rigorous pursuit of the law and in a way that placed there trust in it. For example
Luke 11:45ff
One of the experts in the law answered him, 'Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also'. Jesus replied, 'And you experts in the Law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not life one finger to help them . . . When Jesus left there, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, waiting to catch him in something he might say.
Luke 16:14
The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, 'You are the one who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight.
Or in Philippians 3:4ff
If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more; circumcised on the 8th day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law,a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
It seems this problem of being confident in their own righteousness and looking down on people was a particular Pharisee problem and therefore Jesus is directing this parable towards a faulty view of salvation and justification which these people hold. Jesus corrects it by using a 'filthy' tax collector being justified before God.
Which brings us to question number two - does the parable apply to you who know salvation by grace through faith?
A wholehearted YES! For two reasons
1. All Scripture is applicable to our lives!
2. It is a common enough problem in my experience of Christian ministry that people always default back to their own merits and righteousness to describe their relationship with God and to describe how God thinks about them. I have sat with some people in the last few months who are struggling in their Christian life and one told me that God doesn't approve them or is angry with them. Another, when I've asked them whether they are going to heaven they have told me they are not good enough. And these are people who have articulated the gospel of grace to me at one time in the past.
And not to mention them but it can easily be a position I find myself thinking and feeling before running back to the Scriptures and to the cross of Christ. So, while we know in our heads the truth of grace alone and faith alone - living out these great truths in our daily Christian life as we struggle with sin and temptation from the Devil is not always easy. So, I think, we constantly need to be reminded of the life of grace.
John Piper says it way better than I ever could:
Therefore, what we need in the church is not front-end regulations to try to keep ourselves pure. We need to preach and pray and believe that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, neither teetotalism nor social drinking, neither legalism nor alcoholism is of any avail with God, but only a new heart. The enemy is sending against us every day the Sherman tank of the flesh with its cannons of self-reliance and self-sufficiency. If we try to defend ourselves or our church with peashooter regulations, we will be defeated even in our apparent success. (Brothers we are not professionals, p155-6)
Somewhere on my sermon notes every week I put the words - 'preach grace'. And I pray in God's strength that I do.
