Luke names the audience before he gives the parable, and the naming is itself the point. "And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others."1 The parable is aimed at a particular confidence, the confidence a man places in his own righteousness, and at the contempt for others that confidence always produces alongside it.
Two Men Went Up to Pray
"Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican."2 The pairing was calculated to unsettle. A Pharisee represented the most rigorous and most respected form of religious devotion known in that setting, a man who kept both the written law and the traditions built up around it. A publican collected taxes for Rome, a trade that placed him among collaborators and extortioners in the eyes of his own people. If the temple that day had taken a vote on which man stood right with God, the outcome would not have been in doubt.
"The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess."3 The prayer opens with thanksgiving and never leaves the subject of himself. What he thanks God for is not mercy received but distance maintained, the gap between his own record and the sins of other men, named last and most pointedly in the publican standing near him. His fasting twice in the week went beyond what the law required, and his tithing of all that he possessed went beyond the tithe of produce the law commanded. Every claim in the prayer is true. He really did fast, and he really did tithe, and the record he recites is accurate down to the last item. The failure is not in the record. It is in what the record was offered for.
What He Actually Prayed
The Pharisee's words are addressed to God, but their content never asks God for anything. There is no petition in the prayer, no confession, no request for mercy of any kind, only a recitation of accomplishment set beside a comparison to men he judged beneath him. A prayer built entirely from comparison has already stopped being a prayer to God and become a report delivered in His presence. The Pharisee did not come to the temple needing anything from the one he addressed. He came to have his own estimate of himself confirmed.
"And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner."4 Everything about his posture argues the opposite case. He stands at a distance rather than near the front. He will not lift his eyes toward heaven, the ordinary posture of one who felt he had no claim to make there. He strikes his own breast, a gesture of grief turned against himself rather than outward at anyone else. His words carry no defense and no comparison. He asks for mercy, and he asks it for himself alone, without reference to any other man in the temple that day.
The Verdict Jesus Gives
"I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted."5 The verdict is stated plainly and reverses the judgment the temple crowd would have handed down on its own. Justified is legal language, the declaration of a court, not a compliment on good character. Jesus declares that the publican left the temple acquitted before God, and that the Pharisee, for all his fasting and tithing, did not.
The reversal is not arbitrary. It follows from what each man actually asked for. The publican asked for mercy and received it, because mercy is what God gives to the man who asks. The Pharisee asked for nothing, because he believed he already had what mercy supplies. A court cannot acquit a man who never stood trial, and a man who insists he owes nothing cannot receive a pardon he has not sought. The Pharisee left the temple with the same standing he entered it with, unchanged because he asked for no change.
Jesus does not say the Pharisee's fasting and tithing were false or that he failed to perform them. The record is not disputed. What the parable exposes is that a true record of religious performance can be presented to God as evidence for the defense rather than laid down as it should be, in full knowledge that no defense built from it will hold. The Pharisee's error was not hypocrisy in the ordinary sense of pretending to virtues he lacked. It was confidence placed in virtues he genuinely had, as though their number could purchase what only mercy supplies.
Jesus closes with a principle that reaches well beyond this one parable. He had already stated the same rule at a dinner among the Pharisees: "For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted."6 The principle governs every appearance before God, not only the two men in this particular temple. Self-exaltation and humbling are not equally available postures from which either might work. Only one of them opens onto mercy.
The God Who Resists and the God Who Looks
The Old Testament had already stated the pattern the parable dramatizes. "Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD."7 Solomon states it as a fixed principle of God's own character, not as a preference that shifts with circumstance. Isaiah states the corresponding promise on the other side of the ledger: "But to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word."8 God's attention turns toward the man who has nothing to offer but his need, and James draws the same contrast into a single sentence: "God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble."9 The Pharisee stood in the temple offering God an account of his own sufficiency. The publican stood there admitting he had none. Only one of those postures is met with grace, because grace by its nature cannot be added to an account a man believes is already full.
David had learned the same lesson centuries earlier from his own affliction: "The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit."10 Nearness to God is not purchased by religious accomplishment. It is found by the man broken enough to stop offering an account and start asking for mercy.
Righteousness Received, Not Achieved
Paul later states in doctrine what this parable had already shown in a story. "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."11 Every man, the most devout Pharisee included, comes short of the glory that is God's standard, and justification when it comes is given freely, not earned by the one who receives it. "Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law."12 The publican's fasting record, had anyone kept one, would have looked far poorer than the Pharisee's. His justification did not rest on that record at all. It rested on the mercy he asked for and the God who is near to grant it.
The temple that day held two men and one true verdict, and the verdict did not follow the record either man could produce. It followed the posture each man took before God. One man came with an account to present. The other came with nothing but a plea, and the plea was answered.
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