“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men – robbers, evildoers and adulterers – or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’  But the tax collector stood at a distance.  He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said ‘God have mercy on me a sinner.’”  Luke 18:10-13

There is a Pharisee alive and well in me.  I don’t want him there, I’ve tried to kick him out, tried to shut him up but, darn it, he just won’t go away.  As is often the case in the stories about Jesus, in the passage above He turns an accepted religious concept of His day on its head.  Frankly, if asked, most people of the day would have agreed with the Pharisee that was “more righteous” than the tax collector. 

This is an uncomfortable passage where, were it transposed to the present day, I fear that those of us in the Church would be more like the Pharisee than the tax collector.  Yes, we will admit we are saved by grace, but salvation here is not the issue.  The question is whether they were living righteously on a day-by-day basis.  In this the Pharisee clearly thinks he is and the tax collector does not.  Yet it is the latter that experiences grace.  Yes, we say, we are sinners but at least we are more righteous than some of the scoundrels out there.  I’d love it if there were such a thing as “more righteous” but I can’t find Scriptural evidence that righteousness is graded on a curve. 

When Jerry Bridges says we must “preach the Gospel to ourselves everyday” he is not urging us to do this as some sort of rah-rah pep talk to make us witness more, he means we, already saved by grace, still should be aware of our need for grace for our sins each day.  The Pharisee in me is still in there and will pop out at any time.  And I am more like the Pharisee in the text above, or like the elder brother in the prodigal son story, than I’d like to admit.

But it gets worse.  What if I was more like the younger brother?  That would keep me safe, wouldn’t it?  Perhaps.  But the desire to think you are better than another is inherent in our sin-filled nature.  And you know the joke of the matter?  One of the easiest ways to think that thought is to recognize real sin in others.  Think for a minute of the end of the story above.  What if the tax collector, hearing the praise from Jesus, takes it to heart?  How far a leap is it to say “I am sure glad I am not a self-righteous hypocrite like that Pharisee.”?   And as soon as that thought would go through his mind, he would be just such a hypocrite.

Those of us who preach grace live this tension daily.  As soon as the warnings about legalism leave our lips we stand at the edge of falling into the exact same sin.  So great is our sinfulness that it is all but inevitable we will do some comparative judging of each other.  The good news is not that we get gradually better, gradually less in need of grace day-by-day.  It is that God’s grace is always available, and always “grace that is greater than all my sin.”

Yes, there is a Pharisee in me and no matter how many times I try, he won’t go away.  My determination to kill him off can’t do the job.  But, thank God, His grace is greater.