HOW DO YOU KNOW that you’re right with God? Can you know such a thing? When I was in the eleventh grade, one of my friends took his own life. Some of you have heard me tell that story. I don’t want to get into the details now, but I do want to talk about the effect my friend’s death had on me.
It occasioned in me a crisis of doubt—not doubt about God or the things of God. I didn’t stop believing in God. I still affirmed everything the Scriptures taught. I didn’t question any of that. What I did question was my standing with God. The suicide was so unsettling that it—well, it unsettled me. I lost my bearings.
I was as sure as ever that God was real and that I was a sinner in need of a Savior. But what I was not sure of was whether or not I was saved. I had no assurance of salvation. And it took me several years to work through that.
In time, I came to see that my standing with God does not depend on me—truth is, I am pretty undependable. Thankfully it depends on God, and God is dependable. I came to see that it is not my perseverance that will one day deliver me safely home to heaven; no, it is God’s preservation that will get me there.
I am convinced that not everybody understands this. In fact, I suspect that most people think something along these lines—that God has a set of celestial scales. On one side of the scales he weighs all the good things we have done—and maybe gives some weight to the bad things we have avoided—and on the other side he weighs all our sins. And whichever way the scales tip determines our eternal destiny. If we’re good enough—which I suppose means the good outweighs the bad—we get to go to heaven. But if there’s more bad than good, then we are consigned to hell. Now, I hope you don’t believe that—because that’s not what the Bible teaches—but I’m guessing that many, many people do believe it. Or something like it.
The Pharisee in our parable must have believed that. We’re told that two men went up into the temple to pray, and he was one of the two. As we listen in on his prayer, what we find is that he was a very self-satisfied man. He saw himself as morally exceptional and his religion as nothing short of admirable. Listen to what he said. He was quite bold. He said, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men.” And then he listed the failings of others. Some are “extortioners,” he said. That is, they got what they wanted by threatening people. Other men were “unjust.” Still others were “adulterers,” and so forth.
But not our Pharisee. No. When he compared himself to the guy down the street, he came off looking pretty good. He said, “I fast twice a week,” and “I give tithes of all that I get.” Now, fasting and tithing were required of every devout Jew, but this guy was over the top. Take fasting, for example. Jewish law required only one fast a year, on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. So, he was fasting about 103 more times than necessary every year. That really is exceptional!
And here’s the deal. Everything this man said about himself was true. He was upstanding, law-abiding, morally pure—a shining example to others. But there was a problem. He thought that all of that ought to impress God. And the truth is, God’s not all that easily impressed.
What God saw was a man soaking in his own righteousness. You think self-righteous people turn you off? You don’t know the half of it! What do you suppose God thinks when someone comes into his presence all puffed up with pride? This man was full of pride, and his pride led to arrogance. There he was, boasting to God about all his fine qualities, thinking that God would be as proud of him as he was of himself.
But God has a particular antipathy to human pride. Over and over the Bible says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (Jas. 4:6; 1 Pet. 5:5). This man didn’t know it, but he was building a wall of separation between himself and God. Thinking he was drawing near to God, he was actually distancing himself from God.
So, some people soak in their own righteousness, but others seek a righteousness not their own. Enter the tax collector in our parable. Remember: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.” Notice how different things were with the tax collector. Jesus tells us that he stood “afar off” and “would not even lift his eyes to heaven.” Instead, he “beat his breast” and prayed only these words: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
And he was a sinner. Tax collectors were a hated lot in Jesus’ day. And for good reason. They were Jews, to be sure, but they were Jews who had sold out to the occupation Roman government. They were traitors who got rich off their neighbors by exacting from them exorbitant amounts of money—much more than they owed. Your tax bill might be x amount, but the tax collector, backed up by a military escort, would charge you twice that amount and pocket the excess. These guys were scoundrels.
But even scoundrels can be convicted of sin, and this man was. His sin against God and neighbor weighed on him like an unmanageable load. David says in Psalm 40, “My iniquities have overtaken me, and I cannot see; they are more than the hairs of my head; my heart fails me” (v. 12). That’s where this man was—crushed under the load of his sin.
But now don’t miss this part. As miserable as the tax collector was—as ashamed as he was and full of self-contempt—his was an enviable position! What? What’s enviable about it? I’ll tell you what’s enviable about it. It’s the sinner’s first step toward God.
You see, the tax collector stood, as we said, “afar off” in the temple, but he was closer to God than the Pharisee ever dreamed of being. Both of these men were sinners—only one didn’t know it and the other did. And missing that one little point is just like failing to tag one of the bases as you round the diamond toward home plate. Even if you score, it doesn’t count.
And that’s the thing about the Pharisee’s prayer. It didn’t count. In fact, some translations say that, when he prayed, he “prayed to himself.” He didn’t pray to God. When a person soaks in his own righteousness, that’s all he’s really doing when he prays. He prays to himself. God certainly isn’t listening.
The tax collector’s sins may have been worse than the sins of the Pharisee, but in God’s eyes he was not a worse sinner. All sin—any sin—will land you in hell. James 2:10 says, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.” The Pharisee was actually in more danger, spiritually speaking, than the tax collector.
The difference between them is, the tax collector was heart-broken over his sin. While one man was inflated with pride—soaking in his own righteousness—the other man was humbled to the dust—seeking a righteousness not his own.
So, what is this righteousness that is not our own. It is just that. It is not our righteousness that we present to God if we want to be right with him. No. It must be the righteousness of Another. It must be the righteousness of Christ. Paul writes about this in Philippians, chapter 3. He tells us how religious he was. He was, after all, a Pharisee, and he was a good one, just like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable. Paul even says that, “as to righteousness under the law,” he was blameless. Blameless! You couldn’t catch him in a fault.
But you know what? As good as he was, he wasn’t good enough. Not for God. And, if he wasn’t, no one is. I’m not. You’re not. Even Mother Theresa was not—and how are you going to top that? Now, listen to what Paul goes on to say in Philippians, chapter 3. He says he wants to be “found in [Christ] not having”—listen to this part very closely—“not having a righteousness of my own that comes from [keeping] the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.”
Did you catch that? This is not a level of righteousness that you and I achieve and then present to God—the way the Pharisee in Jesus’ story thought he was doing. No, this righteousness “comes from God”—those are the Bible’s words—it comes from God and is bestowed on us. This righteousness is the righteousness of Jesus Christ. He lived a perfect life, and when I put my faith and trust in him—when I rely on him for my standing with God—his righteousness becomes mine.
But what about my unrighteousness? Because, I’ll tell you, I’m a lot more like the tax collector in Jesus’ story than I am the Pharisee. What happens to my unrighteousness? Here’s the wonderful thing about the gospel: Not only is Christ’s righteousness given to me—and to you, if you put your trust in him—but my unrighteousness—and yours—is given to Christ. He bears it. Or, I should say, he bore it. That’s what the cross was all about: Jesus taking upon himself our sin and bearing its consequences so we wouldn’t have to. Tim Keller puts it so well. He says that Christ lived the life I should have lived but didn’t and died the death I should have died but didn’t.
So, how does all this take place? How do my sins—or yours—get shifted to Christ? And how does his righteousness get shifted to us? Remember how just a few moments ago we talked about the sinner’s first step toward God? It doesn’t start with congratulating ourselves before God the way the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable did. No. Actually, soaking in our own righteousness is complete folly. That kind of attitude not only gets us nowhere with God; it actually pushes God away.
The first step toward God begins with grief over our sin—the way the tax collector grieved over his sin. It starts with acknowledging that we have no righteousness of our own, and so we seek a righteousness not our own. Remember Jesus’ verdict on these two men who went to the temple to pray? It’s in verse 14. Referring to the tax collector, the sinner who was despised in the eyes of men, Jesus says, “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified”—that is, right with God—“rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Or to put it another way, Those who soak in their own righteousness get nowhere with God; those who seek a righteousness not their own—well, they are in with God. All of us need to repent of our sin, but some of us need to repent of our righteousness.
