Luke 18:1-14

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Dean, School of Christian Studies, University of Mobile

CHRISTIANITY 106: LEARN TO PRAY

Luke 18:1−14 

Two parables on prayer Persistent Widow (1−8)
The key to this first parable hangs on the front door. Jesus told it to encourage His disciples not to “lose heart” or “faint,” i.e. “Do not get ‘fed up’ with praying” or “grow sick of praying.” They must pray persistently despite the world’s hostility, knowing that the Lord will set all things straight when He returns.

Widowhood was especially hard in Jesus’ day. Usually a widow had no education, no job, no money, no property, no power and no status. Worse, in Jesus’ story, an unnamed villain was harassing a widow. Her only hope for help was to plead her case before a judge. This widow drew a bad judge who feared neither God (he was corrupt) nor man (he lacked sympathy). With no other options, she simply pestered that crooked, calloused man until one day he threw up his hands and helped the widow because she never quit asking.

This is a parable of contrast. It tells not what God is like, but what He is not like. No one has to pry a blessing from God’s reluctant hands. If unrelenting requests can sway a calloused, crooked judge to do right, how much more will His people’s unceasing prayers move the just and loving Judge of all the earth to right the wrongs done them. The Greek verb translated “delay long” suggests “postpones (His) wrath.” God postpones judgment to give those who persecute His people time to repent. Despite God’s patience, however, judgment day will come quickly.

One final question remained. When He comes, will the Son of Man find faith on the earth? Or will His long delay, assumed in the parable, drive most disciples to give up in despair? This open question each must answer for himself.

Pharisee and the Tax Collector (9−14)
Clearly Jesus aimed this second parable at self-righteous folks who “looked down on everybody else.”

In Jesus’ day Pharisees were respected religious leaders. They carried out all their religious duties and more. This man voluntarily fasted two days a week (Monday and Thursday), prayed three times a day, tithed all he acquired — not only his own field and garden produce but also all he bought — and kept all of the “traditions of the elders.” 

It was the tax collectors who were the bad guys. Common people despised them as leeches who charged them unbelievably high taxes and as traitors who collaborated with the hated Roman occupiers. Most folks admired Pharisees and hated publicans. It shocked Jesus’ hearers when Jesus put the Pharisee in a bad light and the publican in a good light.

The Pharisee approached God boldly with what began like a praise psalm: “I thank you, God.” So far, so good. But here the prayer went horribly wrong. It turned out this Pharisee was grateful only for himself. Five times in two verses he used the first person singular pronoun, making himself the major subject of the prayer. And he put down the publican praying nearby, referring to him derisively as “this tax collector.”

In contrast the tax collector drew no attention to himself but engaged God in prayer with a sense of his sinfulness and begged for divine mercy. The word “mercy” implies the man knew he could not earn forgiveness. All he could do was ask for God’s compassion.

It was the tax collector, not the Pharisee, who went home right with God. It was not that the tax man was more upright in character than the Pharisee but that God rejects those who are confident they need no mercy and “justifies” (shades of Paul!) the undeserving who cry for mercy. Obviously “justification” involves mercy rather than impeccable moral character. 

Ask people what they must do to get to heaven and most reply, “Be good.” Jesus contradicted that answer. Throughout the Bible God favors people who are “real” over people who are “good.” Heaven depends not on what a person has done for God but on what God has done for that person.