Justified By The God Of Mercy
Luke 18:9-14
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. Luke 18:14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… I hope that, by now, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector is firmly rooted in your hearts. We hear it year after year in the Gospel for this 11th Sunday after Trinity, and it summarizes the Christian faith so simply that any child can understand it. In fact, it may be argued that children understand it far better than many great theologians and pastors and church officials.
Some people are justified before God; some are not. Who are the ones who are justified? Who are the ones considered and declared by God to be righteous and innocent in His sight, and who are not? That is the subject of Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.
Our Lord tells this parable in the first place because some of the Jews who were following Him still didn’t get it. Luke tells us that Jesus spoke this parable “to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others.” We need to understand, right at the outset, how devastating that is and why Jesus had to attack it with this pride-shattering parable. To trust in oneself, to have faith in oneself, that a person is good enough or that that person has done enough to earn God’s favor and forgiveness, well, that is a fatal mistake; and it is a mistake that will forever keep a person from being justified before God, “for,” as Jesus declares, “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled.”
Jesus gives us an example of a man who exalted himself, both before God and before men; that man is the Pharisee in the parable. Now, in the world’s eyes, he may have had every reason to exalt himself, to lift himself up in his own eyes. As the Pharisee stood in the temple and prayed, he sounded like a model citizen. He is no murderer, he is no thief, he is no adulterer. On top of all that, he is also very religious. He fasts twice a week which is a sign of devotion to God. He gives ten percent of his income to God, as God told the people of Israel to do. His works indeed looked good enough for him to be justified before God.
But, as Jesus reveals, this man’s heart was in the wrong place. The Pharisee lifted himself up before God, as if he had earned God’s favor because of the good life he had led. He lifted himself up above other men, and certainly above the tax collector standing across the room. Indeed, he lifted himself up above all the saints – above Adam, above Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, above Moses, above David and all the prophets – because all of them did acknowledge their sin before God. All of them humbled themselves before God and looked to God, not for praise, but for forgiveness. All of them relied only on God’s mercy for their justification. As Scripture says, for example, about Abraham: “He believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness” (Gal 3:6). Or as David wrote in Psalm 32:1-2: “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom Yahweh does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.”
But there was deceit in the Pharisee’s spirit. He was deceiving himself; he believed that he was righteous because of the good things he did. The truth is, even the good things he did weren’t good in God’s sight, because they weren’t done from faith in God’s mercy. By exalting himself, the Pharisee was actually rejecting God’s Word that accused him of being a sinner. By exalting himself, the Pharisee was actually despising and hating the true God, who is a God of mercy and compassion toward sinners, not a God who pats sinners on the back and praises them for being such good people. As Jesus says, the Pharisee went down to his house not justified.
Then Jesus gave an example of a man who humbled himself before God and before men. It was the tax collector. He stood at a distance, beating his chest and simply crying out, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” This was no mere show of humility; it was quite genuine. The tax collectors had a reputation of being swindlers, taking advantage of their neighbor and loving money more than God. Most of them probably never set foot in the temple, probably for fear that lightning would strike them because they were such bad people.
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This man must have heard the word that God is merciful and that God will forgive all who confess their sins to him. That’s not surprising, because the Word of God was certainly preached in Israel, even in the very sacrifices that were offered in the temple itself. So this man dared to go up to the temple. He dared to pray. He humbled himself before God, and God exalted him. God lifted him up. That is why this tax collector went down to his house justified.
Dear Christians, you and I know that God has now, once and for all, provided the sacrifice that makes atonement for all sin. He has given His Son Jesus, who shed His holy, precious blood on the cross so that all who have sinned may wash their filthy robes and make them white in the blood of Christ, the Lamb of God. In other words, so that sinners may approach the God of mercy in faith and receive forgiveness for all their sins.
We approach the God of mercy, the Throne of Grace, first in Holy Baptism, and then continually in the pastor’s absolution and in the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ. Here is where God has promised to be merciful, and that promise both inspires and creates faith. Paul reminded the Corinthians of that Gospel in today’s Epistle: “I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.”
Like the Corinthians, you have received that Gospel, too. You were baptized into it. You confess it here every week. You know that you have been justified by faith in Christ Jesus, and that faith is the only means by which sinners are justified, because human works simply don’t cut it. You and I aren’t good enough. But God doesn’t justify those who are good enough. He justifies those who humble themselves and rely only on His mercy for the sake of Christ.
Now, is that a license to go out and keep on sinning? Of course not! You and I have died to sin! As St. Paul wrote in Romans 6:2, “How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?” No, those who trust in the God of mercy are pleasing to God by faith. They are good trees that bear good fruit. They are branches in the vine that is Christ. And as Christ says, “He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” (Jn 15:5)
So being justified by faith doesn’t mean you don’t do good works or that God doesn’t expect you to do good works. It means that you don’t rely on those good works to be justified. It means that you always and only approach God on the basis of His mercy in Christ and never because you think you have been righteous enough to earn His favor. That is why David could pray this way: “Yahweh rewarded me according to my righteousness; According to the cleanness of my hands He has recompensed me. For I have kept the ways of Yahweh, and have not wickedly departed from my God…I was also blameless before Him, and I kept myself from my iniquity. Therefore Yahweh has recompensed me according to my righteousness, according to my cleanness in His eyes” (2 Sam 22:21-22; 24-25).
Now, at first, that sounds kind of like the Pharisee’s prayer in Jesus’ parable, where he speaks of his own righteousness before God. But there’s a night-and-day difference between the two; and that difference lies in the heart. As the Scriptures reveal about David, he didn’t rely on his own record of righteousness as if it earned God’s favor – like the Pharisee – as if he didn’t first need God’s forgiveness to be righteous before God. No, David confesses over and over his need for God’s mercy. But as a believer in God, David did act righteously when he went up against his enemies, including King Saul who wickedly kept trying to kill David. And so, God lifted David up above his enemies and gave him the victory. David was righteous by faith; and for that reason alone he sought to live a righteous life before the God in whom he trusted.
Dear friends, there is a warning in today’s Gospel that we all need to hear. Even though we have been born again by water and the Spirit in the new life of faith in the God of mercy, our natural, sinful tendency is to revert to our natural state of trusting in ourselves and our righteousness. The devil would soon have you convinced that you are saved because you are so much better than others. The devil would prefer that you pray like the Pharisee: “God, I thank you that I do not support abortion, or practice homosexuality, or defend illegal immigration. I give generous offerings to church and I loudly proclaim that ‘all lives matter.’ I thank you, God, that I am not like other men – immoral, indecent, unprincipled.” Watch out for that natural tendency. You and I stand by faith and only by faith, not by being so much better than the next guy.
But there is also great comfort in the Gospel for us who, like the tax collector, recognize that we have no reason to stand before God except that God has revealed Himself as merciful and forgiving for the sake of Christ. You and I are the ones who confess our sins, who plead, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” You and I are the ones who receive the body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins. You and I have been baptized into God’s family and name, and we are His. And so we are confident that we are the ones who will go home, again today, justified.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
