Self-Justification vs. God's Mercy
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They did not know about the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, the did not submit to God's righteousness. |
The eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. |
"God, I thank you that I'm not like other men--extortioners, sinners, adulterers, or like that tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all I get." |
God, looking around, to Adam: Where are you? |
Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others: "Two men went up into the temple to pray, a Pharisee and a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed this: 'God, I thank you that I'm not like other men--extortioners, sinners, adulterers, or like that tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all I get.' The tax collector stood off by himself, looked at the ground, and beat his breast, saying, `God, be merciful to me a sinner!' I tell you, he went down to his house justified rather than the other man. Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted." |
Zacchaeus (a wealthy "chief tax collector") said to Jesus, "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded any one of anything, I restore it fourfold." And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost." |
A Pharisee asked Jesus to eat with him, and Jesus went into the Pharisee's house, and took his place at the table. A woman of the city who was a sinner, when she learned that Jesus was at the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. When the Pharisee saw it, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner." Jesus said to him, "Simon, I have something to say to you." And he answered, "What is it, Teacher?" "A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he forgave them both. Now which of them will love him more?" Simon answered, "The one, I suppose, to whom he forgave more." And he said to him, "You have judged rightly." Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I entered your house, you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little." And he said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, "Who is this, who even forgives sins?" And he said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace." |
It depends not on a person's will or exertion, but on God's mercy. |
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To claim one's own righteousness is to erect a barrier against God's righteousness (again Rom 10:3). This is the effect, but it is also the purpose of claiming one's own righteousness: to be independent of God and his righteousness. Claiming to be good is how we run from God (or, for that matter, staying away from God is the only way we can claim to be good). Adam and Eve made leafy aprons for themselves so that they could look better (Genesis 3:7; but to be clothed by God, Adam and Eve had to learn what death is: Genesis 3:21). Adam and Eve fell not out of a desire to be bad but out of a desire to be independent of god. And once this independence was achieved (as far as it could be), the constant human practice of self-justification kicked in. Celebrating one's own goodness like the pharisee in the temple in the parable (Luke 18:11f.) is a way of escaping from the reality of our universal sin and from God's annoying questions (Gen 3:9-13).
The desire for justification is like hungering and thirsting. It drives us. It is close to basic on some sort of Maslow hierarchy-of-needs scale. It permeates everything we do except receive from God. Our faulty understanding of sin (and of sanctification?) leads us to ask, in any number of situations, "did I sin?" "whose fault was it?" or something similar. The point of the question is self-justification. I examine my conscience to see whether the particular situation is one that I should count as gain or loss in the matter of self-justification. (The pharisee's answers tended toward the gain side.)
There are two problems with this kind of accounting. First, it relies too much on that faulty knowledge of good and evil that we picked up at the fall. It is subject, that is, to human deceitfulness, to our common lack of self-knowledge. Second, the correct answer is always "yes, I did sin." In every situation and circumstance. Even where I can say that someone else did something really bad, there I was still what I am, still one who sins. And why should I make sin or lack thereof a matter of comparison, as the pharisee in the temple does? The only reason for doing so is to make the whole topic of sin, of my standing before God, serve the desire for justification. But self-justification inevitably involves self-deception because we are all sinners.
All good things and all goodness come from God. To be in right relationship to our creator is to receive good, not to (claim to) do or be any good that is our own. So the fall into sin looks like this:
Part of this self-deception is our usual belief that that goodness of our own gets us closer to God. It does not. It only helps us avoid our need for God, our lack of any goodness that we do not receive.
When the self-deception fails, as it does for that other man in the temple, the tax collector (Luke 18:13), despair is the result. Despair feels like considerable distance from God. But that long distance is measured not from God but from righteousness of our own, from ourselves as little gods, in effect. Despair is much closer to God and his righteousness, his justification of a person, than one's own goodness can ever be (Luke 18:14a). As another tax collector experienced and another Pharisee saw (Luke 19:8-10; 7:36-50), one does real good out of gratitude, as part of receiving, not out of the old desire to be good, that is, to have one's own goodness.
This is one of the two reasons that Jesus speaks again and again about a great reversal (the other will come later). In the parable of the two men in the temple (Luke 18:14b),
but | Everyone he | who who | exalts humbles | himself himself | will be will be | humbled, exalted. |
Elsewhere, "the first will be last" and vice versa.
So we must follow a paradoxical route to God and to goodness. It is paradoxical for us, but in the universe as God created it, it makes complete sense. Receiving good rather than achieving it seems unworthy to us. God giving good rather than requiring it of us might seem like a bad way to run a moral universe, but that is only because we are misled by our constant effort to establish our independence of God, by, that is, the fall of humanity into sin. Knowledge of God in Christ is more important than doing good (Hos 6:6; Phil 3:8-10) and precedes doing good (Phil 3:9; John xx:xx; 1 John xx:xx; Prov 1:7a). Knowledge of good and evil leads to shame, division, and death (Gen 2:16f.; 3:6-12, 21-24) and to knowl-edge of sin (Rom 3:19f.).
Our natural inclination is to be like the Pharisee. How natural? About like head up, feet down, instead of trying to walk about the other way around. We really do have to be turned completely upside-down. Giving up self-justification is that unnatural. The Pharisee's problem is not with his bits of righteousness. There is nothing wrong with his religion, even if we have been taught to dislike it. The problem is with his self-deception, his lack of comprehension of his sin, that is, of himself. The key message here is about justification, that is, that other justification, justification before God. It is reached through the tax collector's despair.