The justification of the penitent only

Sermon for Trinity 11

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

A few weeks ago, you heard Jesus, early on in the Sermon on the Mount, make a rather shocking statement—at least, it would have been shocking to His hearers. Unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. The Pharisees appeared very righteous to the average observer. More than that, as we see in today’s Gospel, they appeared very righteous to themselves. And, of course, it wasn’t just the Pharisees. Other very religious people among the Jews at that time also thought of themselves as good, decent, honest people who had done at least most of what God had required of them in His Law, and who deserved His favor far more than the Gentiles did or than the tax collectors and “sinners” did. And yet, Jesus told them that they didn’t have enough righteousness to enter the kingdom of heaven. They didn’t have enough righteousness for God, the heavenly Judge, to declare them righteous, to “justify” them.

Justification, as you know, is a courtroom verdict in which God judges a person to be righteous, innocent, acceptable to Him, worthy of eternal life. The opposite of justification is condemnation, a guilty verdict in God’s courtroom. And God, the always-just Judge, in the courtroom of His holy Law, only declares a person innocent if a person is actually innocent. He only declares a person righteous if the person is actually and thoroughly righteous, as judged, not by our own evaluation of ourselves, but according to His commandments. But we have this underlying problem with our humanity. It’s fallen. It’s corrupt and diseased down our very souls. There is pride where there should only be humility. There is selfishness where there should only be selflessness. There is hatred where there should only be love. And there isn’t the devotion to God that should be there, all leading God to declare in His Word that, There is no one righteous, no, not one.

So the question of questions is, how can someone who is less than righteous ever be declared righteous by the God who cannot lie, cannot make a mistake, and cannot ignore the facts? Jesus shows us in today’s Gospel with the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. In the only verse in the Bible where Jesus Himself uses the word “justify” in this context, He teaches us that contrition and repentance is the only way to be justified.

Jesus spoke this parable to certain people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. That was typical of the Pharisees, that attitude of smugness and condescension. It’s the very definition of being “self-righteous.” Righteous in your own estimation, a good person in your own eyes. And these people were doing what most people do who think of themselves as “good people.” They “despise others,” look down on those whom they see as not good people. Now, it’s not wrong to recognize bad behavior as bad. It’s not wrong to notice when other people are sinning. It’s the next step after that where people tend to go wrong. They see the sins of other people, and then they start comparing, “those bad people” to “us good people,” and then they make the huge mistake of thinking that they stand in God’s favor because of what good people they are, how obedient they are to His commandments, vs. those “bad people” who are so obviously disobedient, and, therefore, must be rejected by God. This whole parable is designed to put a knife through such a false, ugly, self-righteous belief.

Jesus introduces us to the stereotypical Pharisee in this parable. He parades into the temple with his head held high. He knows he’s better than most of the riff raff around here. He has dedicated his life to his religion, and to living according to it, and to teaching it to others. He follows the Law to the letter (if not to the spirit). In fact, he loves the concept of commandments so much that he and his fellow Pharisees have added hundreds of laws and interpretations of laws to do even better than God originally commanded. He’s sure that he has the right doctrine—unlike those Sadducees, who deny the resurrection and the existence of angels. It’s time to go to God’s holy temple and give thanks.

Oh, but what does he give thanks for? O God, I 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.’ Jesus puts it as crassly as possible, painting this man as so full of himself that he dares to approach God with self-praise. Now, be careful! Hopefully you’re not starting to say a little prayer, “O God, I thank you that I’m not like that self-righteous Pharisee!’ We all tend to do it, and it’s a terrible, dangerous habit, comparing ourselves with others before God. It’s exactly why Jesus had to unfold the Law to the people in the Sermon on the Mount. They thought, like this Pharisee, “I’m not an adulterer!” because they had never cheated on their wives. But they were fine with divorce for any reason and remarrying as often as they wanted, which is also adultery in God’s eyes. And it didn’t even occur to them that looking at a woman with lust in their heart was also included in the sin of adultery in God’s judgment. And so on. They hadn’t committed big, outward sins, in their narrow definition of sin. And so they thought they were righteous and thus qualified for God’s kingdom, while they saw the sins of others and assumed they were disqualified.

But then Jesus gives us the example of the tax collector. Now, you remember what the deal was with the tax collectors. They were Jews who went to work for the Roman Empire, collecting taxes for the Empire from their fellow Jewish citizens. And the Empire allowed them a lot of leeway in how much extra tax they were allowed to collect, above and beyond what the citizen owed to the Empire, taking advantage of their neighbor for their own benefit. The vast majority of them did collect extra, and everyone knew it. They practiced extorsion and bribery and favoritism. They were like mafia thugs, going after someone who owed money to the mob, except that what they were doing was perfectly legal. That’s why they were so hated, and why they were seen as traitors to their countrymen. The lowest of the low.

And yet, this one wasn’t laughing it up with his friends and enjoying his wealth. He was standing off in a corner of the temple, almost hiding from the people, but not trying to hide from God. He didn’t look up to heaven with pride, or self-satisfaction, nor did he attempt to justify his sinful behavior and explain to God why he had to do it, for this or that reason. No, he hung his head in shame and beat his breast and said, God be merciful to me, a sinner. Now, clearly, it wasn’t just words. Jesus clearly implies that he means those words. He knows his sin. He isn’t proud of it. He isn’t comparing himself to anyone at all (although surely he could have found a worse tax collector than he was, or an outright murderer or rapist or something). Nor does he intend to keep stealing from people, because it isn’t genuine repentance to plan on continuing in the sin that you’re supposedly sorry for and asking forgiveness for. No, this tax collector has been crushed by the weight of his sins and by the threats of God’s judgment. That’s called “contrition.” He has changed his mind about his sins, has turned away from them in his heart, and now seeks nothing from God but mercy. That’s called “repentance.”

And you know God’s answer to his request, because Jesus tells His hearers what it is: 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 tax collector, the lowest of the low, was justified, received a “not guilty” verdict in God’s courtroom. How? Did God not know how bad He was? Of course He knew! But this is why Jesus came, to provide sinners with the one way to escape condemnation, to be justified before God: by contrition and repentance, which is to say, by faith in God’s promise to show mercy to sinners for Jesus’ sake.

Now, how does that work? Because the sinner is still a sinner, and the Judge has to recognize that. This is how God made it work: He gave His only-begotten Son into our humanity to be righteous in our place, and to take the punishment for our unrighteousness on Himself. As Paul said in today’s Epistle, Christ died for our sins. And as he writes later on to the Corinthians, God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that, in Him, we might become the righteousness of God. In His justice, God couldn’t let sins go unnoticed, or unpunished, nor could He ignore His own requirement for righteousness in His human creatures. So, He provided both the righteousness and the punishment in the Person of His Son. And now He’s opened up another courtroom, as it were, the courtroom of the Gospel, where He invites sinners to enter, in contrition and repentance, seeking His mercy and grace in Christ, the Throne of Grace, which is exactly what the tax collector was doing, seeking mercy from God in the place where He had promised to be merciful, in His temple, which was a type, a picture, of Christ Himself.

Now God calls out to all people, to Pharisees and to tax collectors, to the outwardly religious and to the complete pagans: Acknowledge your sins and turn away from them! Stop pretending to be righteous by your own right! You aren’t! And if you continue to exalt yourself, you will be humbled. Eternally humbled. So, everyone, learn from the tax collector to repent, to humble yourselves before God, and to hold nothing up to Him except for His promise to be merciful to sinners for the sake of Christ and the blood He shed for us on the cross. Everyone who humbles himself in that way will be exalted, will be justified, will be forgiven and accepted into God’s favor and into eternal life, not because of what we’ve done, but because of who Jesus is, in whom we trust. Amen.