Luke 18:9-14 And he spoke this parable to certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:… Pharisee and publican, they both went up, as to a common home, to the great national temple. The Pharisee and the publican had this in common — they understood that prayer is a serious business — the highest business of man — that it is the highest and, if I may so say, the most noble, the most remunerative occupation in which a human being can possibly engage. Man has not always thus understood the real capacity of his soul — the real greatness of his destiny. There are thousands in this great city at this moment who do not understand it. Enervated by pleasure, or distracted by pain, absorbed in the pursuit of material objects, driven hither and thither by gusts of passion, slaves of the lust of the eyes or of the pride of life, men forget too easily why they are here at all, and what they have to do in order to fulfil the primal object of existence. When once a man has these fundamental truths well in view, the importance of prayer becomes immediately apparent. Prayer to something — prayer of some kind — is the higher language of humanity in all places, at all times. Not to pray is to fall below the true measure of human activity, just as truly as not to think. It is to surrender the noblest element of that prerogative dignity which marks men off as men from the brutes. Heathens have felt this; Deists have felt it. Jews felt it with an intensity all their own; and, therefore, when the two men, the Pharisee and the publican, went up into the temple to pray, they simply obeyed a law which is as old and wide as human thought. They gave expression to an instinct which cannot be ignored without wronging that which is noblest and best in our common humanity. Not to pray is not merely godless: it is, in the larger sense of the term, inhuman. They both obeyed this common, this imperious instinct; but here the difference begins. It was not the practice of the Pharisee, or the fact of his thankfulness, which made him less justified than the publican. What was it? My brethren, it was simply this — that the Pharisee had no true idea at all present to his mind, impressed upon his heart, of what it is that makes the real, the awful difference between God and His creatures. It is not chiefly that God is self-existent while man's is a dependent form of life. It is that God is, in Himself, in virtue of the necessary laws of His being, that which we are not — that He is perfectly, essentially holy. Until a man sees that the greatest difference of all between himself and his Creator lies, not in metaphysical unlikeness of being, nor yet in the intellectual interval which must separate the finite from the infinite mind, but pre-eminently in the moral chasm which parts a sinful, a sinning will, from the one all-holy, he does not know what he is doing in approaching God. Practically, for such a man, God is still a mere symbol, a name, whose most essential characteristic he has no eye for; and thus, like the Pharisee of old, he struts "into the awful presence, as if it were the presence of some moral equal, only invested with larger powers and with a wider knowledge than his own. While the angels above prostrate themselves eternally before the throne, crying, "Holy, holy, holy," proclaiming by that unvaried song the deepest difference between created and uncreated life, the Pharisee has the heart to turn in upon himself an eye of tranquil self-approval — to rejoice, forsooth, that he is not as others — to recount his little charities and his petty austerities — to enwrap himself in a satisfaction which might be natural if a revelation of the most holy had never been made; for observe, that the Pharisee does two things which speak volumes as to the real state of his soul. 1. He compares himself approvingly with others. "I thank Thee that I am not as other men, or even as this publican." He assumes that in God's sight he is better than others. But I ask, has he warrant for the assumption? He supposes that sin is measured solely by its quantity and weight, and not by the opportunities or absence of opportunities in the sinner. We know — every living conscience knows — that it is otherwise. If any one point is clear in our Lord's teaching it is this — that to whom much is given of him shall much be required, and, as a consequence, that in the case of the man to whom much is given a slight offence may be much more serious than a graver crime in another, at least in the eyes of the Eternal Justice. This consideration should prevent a readiness to compare ourselves with any others. We know nothing about them. We know not what they might have been had they enjoyed our opportunities. They may possibly be worse than we are; they may be better. 2. The Pharisee reflects with satisfaction upon himself. He may, he thinks, have done wrong in his day. Everybody, he observes, does so more or less. He is, as far as that goes, not worse than other people. In other matters he flatters himself that, at least of late years, he is conspicuously better. He has kept out of great sins which the law condemns and punishes. He could never by any possibility have been taken as a member of the criminal classes. He fasts twice a week according to rule: he pays his tithes conscientiously: he is fully in every particular up to the current standard of religious respectability. Surely, he thinks in his secret heart, surely God cannot but feel what he feels himself — that he bears a very high character — that he is entitled to general respect. And the publican has nothing to plead on his own behalf. He may have been a Zaccheus; he may have been a legal robber; but he can think of himself, whatever he was, in one light only — as a sinner standing before one Being only, the holy, the everlasting God. The Pharisee is nothing to him, not because he is indifferent, but because he is mentally absorbed — prostrate before One who has filled his whole mind and heart with a sense of unworthiness. "Out of the deep have I called to Thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Oh, let Thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint. If Thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, O Lord, who may abide it? But there is mercy with Thee." That is his cry. That cry is condensed into the blow on the chest — into the "God be merciful to me, a sinner." (Canon Liddon.) Parallel Verses KJV: And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: |
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