Luke's label on this parable tells us that it was spoken to a group
of the very people who were personated in it by the Pharisee. One
can fancy their faces as they listened, and how they would love the
speaker! Their two characteristics are self-righteousness and
depreciation of every one else, which is the natural result of such
trust in self. The self-adulation was absolute, the contempt was
all-embracing, for the Revised Version rightly renders 'set
_all_ others at nought.' That may sound exaggerated, but the
way to judge of moral characteristics is to take them in their
fullest development and to see what they lead to then. The two
pictures heighten each other. The one needs many strokes to bring
out the features, the other needs but one. Self-righteousness takes
many shapes, penitence has but one emotion to express, one cry to
utter.
Every word in the Pharisee's prayer is reeking with self-complacency.
Even the expression 'prayed with himself' is significant, for it
suggests that the prayer was less addressed to God than to himself,
and also that his words could scarcely be spoken in the hearing of
others, both because of their arrogant self-praise and of their
insolent calumnies of 'all the rest.' It was not prayer to God, but
soliloquy in his own praise, and it was in equal parts adulation of
himself and slander of other men. So it never went higher than the
inner roof of the temple court, and was, in a very fatal sense, 'to
himself.'
God is complimented with being named formally at first, and in the
first two words, 'I thank thee,' but that is only formal
introduction, and in all the rest of his prayer there is not a trace
of praying. Such a self-satisfied gentleman had no need to ask for
anything, so he brought no petitions. He uses the conventional
language of thanksgiving, but his real meaning is to praise himself
to God, not to thank God for himself. God is named once. All the
rest is I, I, I. He had no longing for communion, no aspiration, no
emotion.
His conception of righteousness was mean and shallow. And as St.
Bernard notes, he was not so much thankful for being righteous as
for being alone in his goodness. No doubt he was warranted in
disclaiming gross sins, but he was glad to be free from them, not
because they were sins, but because they were vulgar. He had no
right to fling mud either on 'all the rest' or on 'this publican,'
and if he had been really praying or giving thanks he would have had
enough to think of in God and himself without casting sidelong and
depreciatory glances at his neighbours. He who truly prays 'sees no
man any more,' or if he does, sees men only as subjects for
intercession, not for contempt. The Pharisee's notion of
righteousness was primarily negative, as consisting in abstinence
from flagrant sins, and, in so far as it was positive, it dealt
entirely with ceremonial acts. Such a starved and surface conception
of righteousness is essential to self-righteousness, for no man who
sees the law of duty in its depth and inwardness can flatter himself
that he has kept it. To fast twice a week and to give tithes of all
that one acquired were acts of supererogation, and are proudly
recounted as if God should feel much indebted to the doer for paying
Him more than was required. The Pharisee makes no petitions. He
states his claims, and tacitly expects that God will meet them.
Few words are needed to paint the publican; for his estimate of
himself is simple and one, and what he wants from God is one thing,
and one only. His attitude expresses his emotions, for he does not
venture to go near the shining example of all respectability and
righteousness, nor to lift his eyes to heaven. Like the penitent
psalmist, his iniquities have taken hold on him, so that he is 'not
able to look up.' Keen consciousness of sin, true sorrow for sin,
earnest desire to shake off the burden of sin, lowly trust in God's
pardoning mercy, are all crowded into his brief petition. The arrow
thus feathered goes straight up to the throne; the Pharisee's prayer
cannot rise above his own lips.
Jesus does not leave His hearers to apply the 'parable,' but drives
its application home to them, since He knew how keen a thrust was
needed to pierce the triple breastplate of self-righteousness. The
publican was 'justified'; that is, accounted as righteous. In the
judgment of heaven, which is the judgment of truth, sin forsaken is
sin passed away. The Pharisee condensed his contempt into
'_this_ publican'; Jesus takes up the 'this' and turns it into
a distinction, when He says, '_this man_ went down to his house
justified.' God's condemnation of the Pharisee and acceptance of the
publican are no anomalous aberration of divine justice, for it is a
universal law, which has abundant exemplifications, that he that
exalteth himself is likely to be humbled, and he that humbles
himself to be exalted. Daily life does not always yield examples
thereof, but in the inner life and as concerns our relations to God,
that law is absolutely and always true.