Starting with the top priority

Sermon for Trinity 11

1 Corinthians 15:1-10  +  Luke 18:9-14

Take a moment this morning and consider the priorities in your life. That’s helpful to do, once in a while, because your priorities will determine your decisions and your behavior. The word, priority, by the way, comes from a Latin word that means “to come first, to come before other things.” You could make a list of the things in your life that come before other things. The fact that you’re here today (or watching the service today) would suggest that hearing God’s Word is a priority for you. It obviously came before any of the other things you could be doing at the moment. Surely your family’s happiness and wellbeing is a priority. Hopefully your health makes the list. And serving your neighbor in love, that should be a priority for you, as a Christian. I’m sure you could come up with other things. But what’s at the top of the list? What’s your top priority in life? And a different question, which may or may not have the same answer, what should be your top priority? Well, if there is a God, and if He takes any interest at all in human affairs—and it’s obvious to any thinking person that there is and that He does—then the top priority has to be being right with God; to have His favor, both for this life and for the next. It’s more important than family. More important than health or wealth. More important than life itself.

Now, if it’s true that being right with God should be the top priority, then the most important thing to know is how a person can be right with God. And there are two basic answers to that question, illustrated for us today by Jesus in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. How can you have God’s favor? We have the Pharisee’s answer: “Be a good person! Be right with God by doing the right things and avoiding the wrong things!” And we have the tax collector’s answer: “Flee in faith to God’s throne of grace! Be righteous before God by faith in His promised mercy!” You already know which answer is the right answer. But you still need to hear it again from Jesus’ lips, because the Pharisee’s answer—the wrong answer—is the one that your natural heart always wants to go back to.

If even you Christians need to hear Jesus’ answer again, and again and again, then the unbelieving Pharisees certainly needed to hear it. Luke tells us that Jesus told the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector to certain people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. That describes very many people in today’s world, too, people who think very highly of themselves, because they think they’ve done some very good things, things that, if there is a God, will certainly put them in good standing with Him.

The Pharisees knew there was a God. They knew many things about Him, true things, the things He had revealed about Himself in the creation as well as the things He had revealed about Himself in the Old Testament Scriptures. They knew His commandments; they knew His Law. One thing they didn’t know—because they passed right over it whenever they came across it in God’s Law—was that God’s Law demands, not only outward obedience, but perfect love for God first, and then for our neighbor, love that comes from the heart and shows itself with the hands and with good deeds. Sins of the heart and a lack of love in the heart are just as damning before God as any evil deed of the hand. The other thing they didn’t know—again, because they passed over it in the Old Testament Scriptures—was that none of their good deeds could erase, or make up for, any of their bad deeds.

And so we have this Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, a man well-respected and honored in the Jewish community, who went up to the Temple in Jerusalem to pray. How would we describe him, based on his behavior in the parable? He’s smug. Proud. Full of himself. And he’s so confident that he’s right with God already, because of how many good things he’s done, that he has no word of praise or thanks for what God has given him, no word of confession, not even a word of supplication, seeking God’s merciful help with anything. On the contrary, we see only a self-congratulatory “thank you” that I am not like other men—extortioners, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

Now, he’s an extreme version of a self-righteous person, apparently admitting no flaws in himself whatsoever. There are less extreme versions out there that fall into the same category. There are people who will admit that they aren’t perfect. In fact, they see the very act of admitting they aren’t perfect as one of their praiseworthy virtues! But ask them if they consider themselves good people, and most will answer, yes. Most will point to something good they’ve done, some deed of kindness or obedience, or at least how hard they try to be good. If nothing else, some will hope that, no matter how many bad things they’ve done, God may yet accept them because of some really bright, shiny moment of goodness.

This is how the world sees things. This is how all the religions of the world (except for Christianity) teach people to gain God’s favor, by doing good, by being honorable, by showing “love.” This is how people normally comfort themselves when a loved one dies. “He or she was such a good person. He must be in heaven. She must be with God.”

On the other hand, there’s the tax collector of Jesus’ parable, respected by no one, referred to as a “good person” by no one, including himself. His career was synonymous with extortion and thuggery, not to mention the regular betrayal of their countrymen in service to the Romans. How would we describe him, based on his behavior in Jesus’ parable? The tax collector, standing at a distance, would not so much as lift up his eyes toward heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’ He’s humble. Contrite. Sorrowful over his sins. He knows he doesn’t deserve even to look up toward heaven. He offers God no list of accomplishments, no excuses. Instead, he seeks something from God. He seeks God’s mercy. And he uses a special word for mercy in Greek. “Be favorable to me! Be propitious to me! Be merciful! Be gracious!”

Now, that word is related to the Temple itself. Within the innermost part of the first Temple—Solomon’s Temple—was the ark of the covenant, and the lid of it was called in Greek the Propitiation Place, or the Mercy Seat, or the Throne of Grace. It’s where the blood of atonement was sprinkled once a year by the high priest. It’s where God promised that He would be present with His people and would be gracious toward His people who sought Him there, because of the blood of atonement. But after Solomon’s Temple was destroyed, there was no longer an ark of the covenant in the Temple. It’s as if God no longer wanted His Throne of Grace to be enclosed in the Temple, as if He wanted Israel to start seeking it somewhere else.

Sure enough, the Apostle Paul, in Romans 3, refers to Christ Jesus Himself as the Propitiation Place or the Throne of Grace. He was the true ark of the covenant. His blood shed on the cross truly made atonement for the sins of all. And now all who flee to Christ as the Throne of Grace, all who seek God’s favor through faith in Him, receive God’s forgiveness. Or in other words, they are justified before God, they are right with Him, they have His favor.

This is truly the top priority, that which should be “first and foremost” in your life, what comes before everything else. As Paul also said in today’s Epistle: For I delivered to you first and foremost that which I also received, that…you have to be a good person? No, that’s not what he said. That you have to make atonement for your sins? No. That…what? What was first and foremost? That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. That’s first and foremost. That’s the most important thing, fleeing to Him in faith as the Throne of Grace, as the one who died for our sins and rose again.

That’s what the tax collector did by seeking mercy from God in the temple where He had promised to be merciful. That was his answer to the question, How can I be right with God? Not by finding righteousness within himself, but by seeking it by faith, as a gracious gift promised by a merciful God. And so Jesus shocked the self-righteous Pharisees with His conclusion: I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted. The Pharisee who tried to be righteous by himself failed, while the tax collector was counted righteous by God, through faith.

The same was true of the Apostle Paul. He had a sordid past, not as a thief or tax collector, but as a self-righteous Pharisee, as a religious fanatic, as a persecutor of Christians, until he learned that what the Prophet Isaiah had written hundreds of years earlier was true: All our righteousnesses are like filthy rags. As Paul wrote to the Philippians, Whatever things were gain to me, these I have counted a loss for Christ. Indeed, I count all things a loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.

And so the apostle humbled himself. You hear it in today’s Epistle: For I am the least of the apostles. I am not even fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But in humbling himself, there was finally room for God to exalt him. As he says, But by the grace of God I am what I am.

But notice this about the Gospel: It teaches us what our top priority must be, to be justified through faith in Christ. But the Gospel then gives us other priorities that flow down from the top one. Those who are righteous by faith are then called to be righteous in their deeds, in their works, to care for our families, to keep God’s commandments. The difference is, we’re no longer working to earn the favor of God. We’re working to serve the God who has already favored us in giving His Son into death for our sins, and in justifying us by faith in His Son, so that even the righteous things we now do are really being done in us by Him, as Paul also concludes about all his hard work as an apostle: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

Of the two answers we’ve considered today to the question, how can I be right with God?, Jesus reveals clearly what the Christian answer is: only by fleeing in faith to Christ, the true Throne of Grace, for mercy and forgiveness. Let that be your top priority! And then arrange all your other priorities around it. Trust in the mercy God has promised you in Christ Jesus! Flee to Him in faith! And you will not only go down to your house justified; you will also have everything you need to get through all the trials of this life and to lead a good, honorable, godly life of humble obedience to the God who has justified you by faith. Amen.