Reflecting on Luke 18:9-14“To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else…” (Luke 18:9)
To be righteous is to be right before God in all ways.
Jesus sees religious people who were convinced they were right.
They viewed themselves as right and others as wrong, as evildoers.
They maintained lists of their rightness, and lists of everyone else’s wrongs.
Jesus’s parable provides a stark contrast between the Pharisee and tax collector.
The one is confident they are right, the other admits they’re not.
The tax collector offers no list, just the general admission that they fall short.
The story finishes with the tax collector going home justified before God.
We miss it in the English, but in the Greek it is the same word for ‘right’.
To be justified is to be declared right before God by God.
I hear a lot of Christians and churches talking as if they are right.
They have lists of their right perspectives and practices, and judge others by them.
They discipline and excommunicate those that are not right by their lists.
They are confident in their rightness, and look down on others.
It seems we need to hear this parable again: God, not us, determines rightness.
PRAYER
Lord Jesus, our rightness is not based on our correct bible interpretations or understandings of morality. We all fall short in ways we do not realize. No one is more 'right' than the other. Have mercy on all of us, for we are all sinners!