The righteous do not trust in their own righteousness

Sermon for Trinity 11

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

What does it mean to be righteous? It means to be the kind of person who has a moral character and a record of behavior that’s right, that’s good, that’s correct. The more important question is, who’s counting? Who’s judging? Who’s the one measuring a person, whether he or she is righteous or not? I’ll tell you who usually measures you. You do. You evaluate yourself. You measure your character, and your words and actions, and your motives and your reasons for doing this or that. You measure yourself by the measuring stick you have made for yourself, and, if you’re like most people, you conclude that, yes, you are righteous. And then—again, if you’re like most people—you take that measuring stick that was (amazingly) just your height and you hold it up before God, and you say, “See Lord? I measure up, don’t I? I’m so glad You will let me into heaven when I die. I’m so glad you will count me among the righteous!” And then—once more, if you’re like most people—you’ll take that very same stick and hold it up to others. How do your family members measure up to your measuring stick? What about your neighbors? Your classmates? Your teachers? The drug addicts and drunks meandering down the road? The people driving in front of you? The grocery clerk? Politicians? The people you see on TV? Invariably you will find that there are a lot of people out there who don’t measure up, who are not at all righteous according to your measuring stick. Thank God you’re not like them, right?

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, I hope you’re not like most people. Or at least, I hope there’s a New Man in you who makes better judgments. What’s the problem with the above scenario? The problem is, it’s not your judgment about yourself or others that matters in the end. God is the one who sets the standard, who makes the measuring stick and who holds people up to it. The people to whom Jesus was speaking in today’s Gospel trusted in themselves, that they were righteous. In other words, they made a measuring stick for themselves and, sure enough, they measured up, and they found lots of people who didn’t, and, as Luke puts it, “they despised others”—those who didn’t measure up. So Jesus tells the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector to people like these, to show them how differently God judges than they do. A sure sign that you are not actually righteous before God is if you find yourself trusting in your own righteousness. Because the righteous—those whom God considers righteous—don’t do that.

A Pharisee and a tax collector went up to the temple to pray. Remember who the Pharisees were. They were an elite association of men who were extremely knowledgeable in the Scriptures and who were so dedicated to following the Law of Moses that they made extra laws to serve as hedges around the actual Law, so that they would never even come close to disobedience. But they were also notoriously sure of themselves, sure of their goodness and decency, sure of their own righteousness, which made most of them proud, arrogant, haughty, and, worst of all, merciless toward others.

And this is how the Pharisee prayed: 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.’ You see how he holds up his measuring stick before God? He doesn’t ask for God to examine him. He’s already examined himself and found himself righteous, and so he wants to show God how he measures up, too. He’s a decent, law-abiding citizen who also takes his religion seriously, by the way. Oh, how excited God must be to have a man like this in His kingdom!

Then we come to the tax collector. Remember who the tax collectors were in first century Israel. They were Jews who were employed by the Roman government to collect taxes for them. And they were allowed a lot of “flexibility,” as it were, to charge above and beyond what a person actually owed, and most of them did. So they were seen as traitors of their nation who engaged in legalized theft.

This is how the tax collector prayed. He stood 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.’ You see, the tax collector didn’t create a measuring stick for himself. He measured himself by God’s measuring stick and knew that he fell far short of what God calls “righteous.” Not only that, but he was obviously sorry for his unrighteousness. It pained him. He knew he should measure up to the righteous standard of God’s holy Law, because it’s a good Law, a righteous Law. His commandments are commandments of love, and every unrighteous deed is a failure to love. So he threw himself at the mercy of God and dared to ask for grace, for the favor of God that he knew he didn’t deserve.

Why would he even ask for such a thing, knowing he didn’t deserve it, knowing he didn’t measure up and that it was his own fault? Because God Himself had promised such mercy for the penitent, and He had promised to show it right there in the Temple of Jerusalem, on the basis of the sacrifices made there day in and day out, the sacrifices that foreshadowed the one true sacrifice of the Son of God, who came to save sinners, who gave His life on the cross for sinners, who came to call, not the righteous, but sinners to repentance. The tax collector did not trust in himself, that he was righteous. Instead, as he grieved over his own unrighteousness, he fled in faith to the Throne of Grace. He put all his eggs in the basket of God’s mercy.

And what was the result? I tell you, this man—the tax collector—went down to his house justified rather than the other—rather than the Pharisee. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted. The Pharisee who trusted in his own righteousness was judged by God as unrighteous, while the tax collector who didn’t trust in his righteousness, but in God’s mercy toward the unrighteous, was judged by God to be righteous, not because he had never committed any sins, but because God Himself would make atonement for those sins, and He applied that atonement to the tax collector through faith.

It’s such a short little parable, isn’t it? But what an important lesson Jesus teaches here! No one should dare trust in himself, that he is righteous, because no one is, not according to God’s measuring stick, His holy Law, as He intended it and as He interprets it. No one measures up. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So it’s foolish to make your own measuring stick, and even more foolish to hold that stick up to others to measure them by it. The righteous—those whom God considers righteous—don’t do that.

Instead, God considers righteous the one who doesn’t measure up, but who mourns over his sins and at the same time believes God’s promise to justify, that is, to consider righteous, the one who trusts in His promise of mercy for the sake of Jesus Christ, who truly is the Righteous One.

You see, it’s not just about recognizing your sins. There are many people in the world who are neither like the Pharisee nor like the tax collector in Jesus’ parable. They know they’re unrighteous, and they’re content to be unrighteous. Or, there are those who know they’re unrighteous but think they can make up for it on their own if they just try harder. Or, there are those who know they’re unrighteous and refuse to believe that God is merciful and that He gave His Son to bring the unrighteous to God. All of these people’s souls are in jeopardy, just as much as the Pharisee was.

But the sinner, the unrighteous one, who knows his sin, mourns over his sin, and looks to God for mercy for Jesus’ sake—that one is justified by God, counted as a righteous man or woman or child.

To summarize, the righteous in God’s kingdom are not sinless. They are sinners. They aren’t content to be sinners, though. They despise their sins and know they should be condemned eternally for them. They don’t despise others for being “less righteous” than they are, because they know that no one is righteous before God on the basis of his works. The righteous in God’s kingdom trust in Jesus Christ for mercy and forgiveness, and they always find mercy for His sake. And then the righteous seek to amend their sinful lives, to live a life of love, according to God’s commandments. But the righteous never take pride in those righteous deeds and never hold them up to God to be judged by them. No, the righteous give credit to God for the righteous things they do, just as St. Paul did in today’s Epistle: But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain; but I toiled more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. That very same St. Paul, you recall, used to be a self-righteous Pharisee who was righteous in the sight of men, but not in the sight of God. But by the grace of God, he was humbled by God and then converted to become just like the tax collector in Jesus’ parable, after which he was justified and exalted again.

So be on your guard against the Pharisaical trust in your own righteousness, and follow instead the example of the tax collector and of St. Paul and of all the righteous who have gone before you, who have repented of their sins, turned away from their own righteousness, and trusted instead in the righteousness of God that He graciously applies to all who trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.