So after finishing
His account of the words that reflected the mindset of the unjust judge, how
did Jesus respond? He pointed to faithfulness of the Creator God of
Israel. He answered by saying, “I tell you, He will give justice to them
speedily” (Luke 18:8a). Yes, by way of this, Jesus insists that God will
be faithful to the promises that He makes to His covenant people. We can
imagine the smug Pharisees and rulers, as Jesus says these words, believing
themselves to be the widow of the parable, being God’s elect, while their evil
Gentile rulers were represented by the unrighteous judge. Then Jesus adds
an important “Nevertheless.” Jesus says, “Nevertheless, when the Son of
Man comes will He find faith on earth?” (18:8b)
That was a big
question. The Son of Man was a term for the messiah, the expected king who
was expected to do nothing more than enable national Israel to cast off its
bonds. Jesus asked if the messiah will find God’s elect people trusting
the God to Whom they claim to cry day and night. Will the messiah find,
in God’s people, the spreading of the knowledge of God’s covenant faithfulness
throughout the whole of the earth? The implied answer is “no, He will
not.” The widow, representing the Gentile nations, had demanded “justice
against my adversary” (18:3b). We can surmise that, in this scenario, it
is God Himself that is the adversary. The
Gentile nations, filled with divine image-bearers that Israel had failed to
reach, wanted the justice of God’s righteousness applied to them, so that they
could stand against the adversaries of death, decay, and the grace that was the
lot of all mankind. Israel, by and large and as a whole, had broken and
disregarded the trust that had been given to it and kept the knowledge of God
to itself. In this day, as believers in Jesus as King claim to be the
covenant people of the Creator God, we must be careful that we do not do the
same. Believers must remember that the call to missions, offering the
proclamation of Jesus as King and Lord of all (the Gospel) to all nations and
making disciples is the greatest of duties.
Just in case His
hearers did not grasp the point that Jesus seemed to be making with the parable
of the persistent widow and the unrighteous judge, He moves on to the story of
the Pharisee and the tax collector. Somewhat clearly, continuing in
context of the Gospel as a whole and that had been created by the prior parable,
the Pharisee represents Israel. He stands by himself and prays, “God, I
thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or
even like this tax collector” (18:11).
Ultimately, this is
how Israel looked upon the Gentiles. The Pharisee thinks quite highly of
himself, as one of God’s very special covenant keepers, saying “I fast twice a
week; I give tithes of all that I get” (18:12). It seems that the
Pharisee, in this story, wanted his God to know how much he sacrificed for
Him. The Pharisee wanted to remind his God of how he cries to Him day and
night. Drawing the contrast, Jesus says, “But the tax collector,
standing far off” (18:13a). The Pharisee (representing the failing
portion of Israel, with specific direction to its leaders) made sure that the
tax collector (Gentiles and those of Israel looked up on as being outside the
covenant because they did not keep to the then current covenant markers) stood
far off. This tax collector “would not even lift up his eyes to heaven”
(18:13b), indeed, how could he, without the knowledge of the covenant God that
Israel was supposed to spread but had refused to do so? All that he could
manage to do, in a general awareness, was “beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be
merciful to me, a sinner’!” (18:13c). It is possible to hear an echo of
the Apostle Paul here, in that even without Israel’s help, when it came to the
Gentiles, “what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown
it to them” (Romans 1:19).
What does Jesus
say? He says, “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified,
rather than the other” (18:14). It is the tax collector of the story that
joins up with the covenant people. Do we
not hear the widow of the earlier story crying out with the tax collector,
saying “Give me justice against my adversary”? (18:3b) The Pharisee stood
in the place of the unrighteous judge, while the tax collector served as the
widow. Like the unrighteous judge, the Pharisee was more concerned with
self-preservation than with the offer of justice. Jesus continues on,
saying “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles
himself will be exalted” (18:14b). This is the standard “reversal of position”
language that regularly fell from the lips of Jesus, which would have carried
even more meaning in a society defined by honor and shame. By now, the point being made should be quite
clear. Israel looked upon the Gentile nations with contempt, especially
those that ruled over them, rather than looking at them in thankfulness as
evidences of God’s faithfulness towards them, as they were the instruments of
God’s cursing, by which He faithfully disciplined them according to His
covenant promises. God had not forsaken them. They had been faithless,
but He remained faithful, executing His redemptive plan for all mankind through
Israel and its Messiah.
Because Israel had
neither truly feared God, as evidenced by their idolatry and disregarding of
God’s laws for them; and because they clearly had no respect for man (as a
whole), choosing to isolate themselves from Gentile nations rather than
engaging them at the level of extending God’s covenant blessings to them, they
did not serve as God’s righteous judges through which He could administer His
judgment of “righteous” to the families of the earth. As the renewed Israel,
Jesus believers that are children and servants of the King of Kings, must be
ever so careful to not fall into the same snare through isolating themselves in
their communities, looking only to those communities as being the true divine
image-bearers, or to nothing more than a future blissful state, in an attempt
to escape this world.
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