Luke 18

Luke tells us the point of this parable before he tells us the parable - a rare move, and a revealing one: Jesus spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint (v. 1). The two phrases sit in deliberate tension. To pray always is to keep at it without stopping; to faint is to lose heart, to grow weary and quit. Jesus knows the great danger in prayer is not that we will ask for the wrong thing but that we will stop asking - that the silence will wear us down until we conclude no one is listening and let the matter drop. The parable is medicine for exactly that fatigue. It is built for the long stretch when heaven seems closed and the answer does not come, when the temptation is to assume God is indifferent and to give up. Against that, Jesus does not offer a formula or a guarantee of speed. He offers a picture meant to keep a discouraged person on their knees a little longer.³

The cast is sketched in two strokes. The judge feared not God, neither regarded man (v. 2) - a man with no vertical accountability and no horizontal shame, answerable to no one and moved by nothing but his own convenience. Over against him stands a widow (v. 3), and in that world a widow was the very emblem of helplessness: no husband to plead her case, no standing in court, no money to grease a corrupt official's palm. She has only one asset - she will not go away. She came unto him, and kept coming, until the judge says within himself the most cynical thing in the story: not this is just, but because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me (v. 5). He grants her plea purely to make her stop. The justice she receives is real, but its source is shabby - a selfish man buying his own peace. And that is exactly the contrast Jesus is setting up, because the point is not how like God this judge is, but how utterly unlike Him.

Jesus draws the lesson by arguing from the lesser to the greater: Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? (vv. 6-7). The logic presses hard. If a godless judge, who cares nothing for the widow, will finally grant justice just to be rid of her, how much more will God - who loves His own, who is named the defender of the widow and the fatherless - answer those who cry to Him? Every term is set in opposition to the judge. He was indifferent; God loves His own elect. The widow was a stranger nagging a stranger; these are God's own people, crying day and night. Jesus then adds the promise: he will avenge them speedily (v. 8). The word does not deny that God may bear long - the text says plainly that He does - but it insists that when His answer comes, it will not be the grudging surrender of a wearied judge; it will be the swift, sure vindication of a Father who has heard all along. The delay is never neglect.

Again Luke names the target before the parable begins: Jesus spoke it unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others (v. 9). The two halves of that verse belong together, and they always do. The trust that one is righteous on one's own account almost inevitably curdles into contempt for those who fall short - the moment a person measures their standing by their own performance, other people become the scale they weigh themselves against. So Jesus sets two men side by side in the same holy place, doing the same holy thing. Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican (v. 10). To the original hearers these were not ambiguous figures. The Pharisee was the model of devout, disciplined religion; the publican - a tax collector working for the occupying power, grown rich off his own people's losses - was a byword for sellout and sinner. Everyone listening knew which man was the good one. The parable exists to overturn that certainty.

Listen to how the Pharisee prays: God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican (v. 11). It begins like thanksgiving and is really an inventory - and notice that every line is about himself. He thanks God, but the subject of nearly every clause is I: what I am not, what I do. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess (v. 12) - and both of these go beyond what the law required; he is, by his own reckoning, an overachiever. The tragedy is not that the things he claims are false; very likely he does fast and tithe. The tragedy is the use he makes of them. He has turned his obedience into a ledger and his prayer into a recital of the balance, and he has dragged the man behind him into it as a foil: or even as this publican. He came to the temple needing nothing, asking nothing, confessing nothing. He stands in the presence of God and informs God how well he is doing. A prayer with no request in it, offered by a man who senses no lack, turns out to be no prayer at all - it is a performance with an audience of one, and that one is himself: he prayed thus with himself (v. 11).

Everything about the publican is the opposite. He stands afar off, keeping his distance from the holy place as one who knows he has no right to press near. He would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven - the ordinary posture of prayer was to lift the face and the hands, but he cannot; the weight of what he is bends his eyes to the ground. He smote upon his breast, a gesture of raw grief and self-reproach, as if to strike at the very seat of his guilt. And his whole prayer is seven words: God be merciful to me a sinner (v. 13). There is no list, no defense, no comparison with anyone else - in his own eyes he is not a sinner among many but, as the Greek phrasing has it, the sinner, the one he must answer for. He brings nothing to bargain with and offers nothing in trade. He simply names what he is and casts himself on God's mercy. Where the Pharisee's prayer was full of himself and empty of need, the publican's is empty of every claim and full of nothing but a plea. He has no resume to read. He has only the mercy of God to hope in - and that, it turns out, is everything.¹

Luke sets the next scene right against the parable, and it is no accident. They brought unto him also infants, that he would touch them: but when his disciples saw it, they rebuked them (v. 15). The disciples, like the Pharisee, sort people by their importance, and infants do not rate - they cannot contribute, cannot understand, cannot earn their way into the teacher's notice. Jesus overrules them at once: Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God (v. 16). And then He turns the children into the very pattern of entry: Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein (v. 17). The point is not childish innocence but childlike emptiness. An infant brings nothing, earns nothing, has no merits to recite and no leverage to bargain with; it can only be received, only be carried, only depend. That is exactly how the publican came - with nothing in his hands - and exactly how the Pharisee did not. The kingdom is received, not achieved; it is entered by those small enough to take it as a gift.

A ruler comes to Jesus with an earnest and weighty question: Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? (v. 18). It is a sincere question, and there is much to admire in the man - he is seeking, he is reverent, he comes to the right person. But the shape of the question already carries a hidden assumption: what shall I do? He approaches eternal life as a task to be completed, an achievement to be earned by the right action. Jesus first probes the word good: Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God (v. 19). The reply is not a denial of who Jesus is; it is a door the ruler is invited to walk through. He has used good as a casual courtesy. Jesus presses on it: do you know what you are saying when you call someone good? Goodness in its fullness belongs to God alone - so the easy compliment, taken seriously, raises a question about the One standing in front of him that the ruler does not yet think to ask. Before the conversation is over, his own assumption that he can do his way into life will be tested to its breaking point.

Jesus points him to the commandments - Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother (v. 20) - and the ruler answers without hesitation: All these have I kept from my youth up (v. 21). Whatever we make of that confidence, Jesus does not argue with it. Instead He goes to the one place the man has not examined: Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me (v. 22). This is not a general rule that every disciple must liquidate every possession; it is a scalpel laid precisely on this man's heart. Jesus has located the one rival to God in his life, the thing he trusts and will not surrender, and He names it. The call has two halves, and they belong together: let go of the treasure you are clutching, and come, follow me. Jesus is not merely asking him to be poorer; He is offering Himself in exchange for the wealth - treasure in heaven for treasure on earth, and His own company for the thing the man has loved. It is an invitation as much as a demand. But the man cannot take it.

The result is one of the saddest sentences in the Gospels: when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich (v. 23). Notice that his sorrow proves Jesus was right. He grieves precisely because he is being asked to give up what he cannot bear to lose - his riches were never simply something he had; they had a grip on him, and at the test it held. He came asking how to gain eternal life and walks away clutching the very thing that stands between him and it. Jesus watches him go and speaks the lesson: How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God (vv. 24-25). The image is deliberately impossible - the largest animal anyone in that land knew, and the smallest opening - and the point is not difficulty but impossibility by human effort. Wealth is dangerous in a particular way: it offers a counterfeit of the security only God can give, and quietly trains the heart to trust what it can see and hold. The ruler is not condemned for having money; he is undone because his money had him.

The watchers are alarmed: Who then can be saved? (v. 26). If a man this devout and this blessed cannot enter, what hope is there for anyone? Their question is exactly the right one, and Jesus' answer reframes the whole conversation: The things which are impossible with men are possible with God (v. 27). All along the ruler had asked what shall I do, and the verdict has come back that no amount of doing can pry a heart loose from its idol or earn a way into the kingdom - that is impossible with men. But what no one can do for himself, God can do. Then Peter speaks for the Twelve: Lo, we have left all, and followed thee (v. 28) - the very thing the ruler would not do, these men have done. Jesus does not scold the remark; He answers it with a promise of overflowing generosity: There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting (vv. 29-30). The ruler clutched his treasure and went away sorrowful; those who let go find they have lost nothing and gained manifold more - in this life and in the life to come.

For the third time Jesus tells His disciples plainly where the road leads. He draws the Twelve aside and says, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished (v. 31). What is coming is not an accident or a defeat; it is the fulfillment of what the prophets had written long before, and He goes toward it with open eyes. The detail is unsparing: He shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: and they shall scourge him, and put him to death (vv. 32-33). Every clause names a specific humiliation, and He names them all calmly, in advance. But the sentence does not end in the grave: and the third day he shall rise again. The cross is never spoken of by Jesus without the resurrection on the far side of it. And then Luke adds a poignant note: they understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them (v. 34). The men closest to Him cannot yet take in plain words about His death. It will take the cross and the empty tomb to open their eyes - which is exactly why Luke sets a blind man next.

The contrast is pointed and surely deliberate. The Twelve have just heard plain words and seen nothing; now a man who cannot see at all perceives more than they do. A blind beggar sits by the Jericho road - the lowest place in the scene, dependent on passersby for his bread - and hearing the crowd, he asks what is happening. Told that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by, he does not waste the moment: And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me (v. 38). That title is a confession. Son of David is a name for the promised King, the Messiah of David's line; the blind man names Jesus as the One Israel had waited for - a recognition the sighted crowd around him has not made. The crowd's response is to silence him: they which went before rebuked him, that he should hold his peace (v. 39). They treat his cry as an interruption, his need as a nuisance - much as the disciples had shooed away the children and the world had despised the publican. But he will not be hushed. He cried so much the more, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me. His persistence is the widow's persistence; his plea is the publican's plea. The lowly one who keeps crying for mercy and refuses to be quiet is, again, the one who is about to be heard.

Jesus stops. The whole procession halts for one shouting beggar: Jesus stood, and commanded him to be brought unto him (v. 40). Then comes a question that seems almost unnecessary - surely a blind man wants his sight - yet Jesus asks it: What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee? (v. 41). He will have the man name his desire, speak his need out loud, ask. And the man does, simply and directly: Lord, that I may receive my sight. Jesus answers, Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee (v. 42). The word translated saved means more than physical repair; it is the same word the Gospels use for the salvation of the whole person. What healed him was not the strength of his eyes but the reach of his faith - the faith that cried out, confessed Jesus as the Son of David, and would not be silenced. And the response is immediate and complete: immediately he received his sight, and followed him, glorifying God (v. 43). Where the rich ruler went away sorrowful, unable to follow, the healed beggar followed him - and the whole crowd that had tried to hush him ends up giving praise to God. The chapter that began with a plea for justice ends with a plea for mercy answered, and a man who could not see now walking in the light, behind Jesus, on the road to Jerusalem.¹