Every human is born in a prison. The important questions are: can we and will be set free? These are not only issues for us today. They were critical to address for the original hearers of Jesus’s Parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector in Luke 18:9–14.
In this text, Jesus provides the key we need to unlock our chains.
The Pharisees were a prominent Jewish sect known for their strict, outward adherence to religious laws and traditions. They’re often portrayed in the gospels as self-righteous opponents of Jesus.
Tax collectors were Jews who worked for the Roman Empire, collecting taxes from their fellow countrymen. Tax collectors were despised as traitors (1) for their collaboration with Rome and (2) for their tendency to demand excessive taxes for personal profit.
If the Pharisees resemble the smug elder brother in Luke 15, the tax collectors represent the money-grabbing, loose-living younger brother.
In some ways, they are so different. But in other ways, at the heart level, they are exactly the same.
Both types of people are living in invisible prisons.
Invisible Prisons
The tax collector was bound in the prison of moral and spiritual condemnation. Those of us bound in those chains make no pretense about our broken moral condition. We would do anything to be truly forgiven and restored.
The Pharisee is bound in the contrasting prison of moral reputation, when we are in these chains, we’re burdened with creating and maintaining an external moral façade for the world to see and admire.
Related to this prison of moral reputation is the prison of social comparison. For those of us in this prison, scrolling through social feeds can be profoundly demoralizing, highlighting the gap between our messy realities and the polished, successful, happy people we see online.
But there are so many prisons:
- Prisons of perfectionism
- Prisons of addiction
- Prisons of negativity
- Prisons of jealousy
- Prisons of busyness
- And prisons of control
If you find yourself in any of these prisons (and we are all in more than one), Jesus’s message to you is that there is a key to freedom. You are not condemned to the chains that bind you. Freedom is available. That’s what this parable is meant to teach us.
An Insulting Scandal
The original hearers of Jesus’s parable would have found it scandalous and offensive. As Luke 18:9 says, they were those who “trusted in their own righteousness and viewed others with contempt.”
The outwardly good person is left condemned, while the notorious sinner is declared justified.
One man assumes he is in God’s favor, but he’s actually under a curse. The one who feels the curse and simply cries for mercy ends up receiving the favor of God.
What? That blows our religious sensibilities to bits.
But if you think about it, Jesus is always pulling the rug out from under what we think about God, religion, morality, and self-identity?
The ways of Jesus are usually the opposite of conventional, worldly wisdom.
For example, Jesus teaches us these counter-cultural truths:
- To live, we must die.
- To be mature, we must become like little children.
- To be the greatest, we must become the least.
- To be first, we must become last.
- To be strong, we must be weak.
- To give is actually getting.
And in Luke 18:9–14, there is one more.
To be free, we must surrender
In conventional thinking, that’s not the way things work. When you surrender, you lose. When you surrender, you become a captive. You’re not set free. When you surrender, you go to prison.
But to be truly free, we must surrender because, in the kingdom of God, everything we expect is turned upside down.
Remember where these two men are praying? They were in the temple.
What was going on at the temple? Sacrifice. All day every day.
The message of the temple was clear: God has made a way to set us free, to deal with the human condition, to deal with our alienation, and to deal with every prison in which we find ourselves bound.
And the way of freedom is surrender, where I become radically honest with God about my need for Jesus’s sacrifice.
Not someone else’s need—my own need.
We Fight against Surrender
Even though he could see and smell the sacrifice on the altar, instead of surrender, the Pharisee doubled down.
His prayer begins well, “I thank you, God,” but quickly turns into a string of self-congratulatory virtues and religious practices.
Underneath the Pharisee’s prayer is a desire to convince himself (and others) that he is morally superior to others and, as a result, in God’s favor.
If we want a picture of what surrender looks like, we need only turn to the tax collector who beats his chest and cries out in verse 13, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”
While it took the younger, prodigal son bankruptcy to reach this point, we’re not told what drove the tax collector to the desperation of surrender.
But something exposed his need.
- It may have been a personal crisis that his wealth couldn’t fix.
- Maybe it was guilt over exploiting his fellow Jews for personal gain.
- It may have been an acute sense of alienation from God and the condemnation he deserves.
Whatever combination of factors led to his surrender, it would be the greatest blessing of his life.
He received the key to freedom.
But it also would be the hardest thing he had ever done. Because, before surrender feels like freedom, it feels like death.
It is death to the ways that we try to justify ourselves, when we bring our idols of moral superiority and worldly identity before the cross.
- It is death to all the ways we attempt to justify ourselves, whether through the idol of moral superiority or the idol of worldly success and material accumulation.
- It’s death to any goodness or merit within ourselves.
- Ultimately, surrender is death to self-righteousness.
Confessing and giving up our self-justifications feels like death because we’ve been finding our life in them for so long. From this perspective, surrender is a death that brings us life.
Jesus Shows us the Way Forward
In the Garden of Gethsemane, when facing death, Jesus prayed in Luke 22:42, “Not my will, but yours be done.”
For Jesus, his prayer of surrender to the Father’s redemptive plan was “a conscious act of confident faith.”
As he told the parable of the two men at prayer, Jesus knew he would be the answer to the tax collector’s prayer.
The cry for mercy is the Greek word hilasthēti, from hilasterion, which means “to propitiate.”
To propitiate means to satisfy the demands of justice.
The tax collector knew he needed what the temple sacrifices represented. He needed a substitute to serve the sentence his treasonous sins deserved.
After all, being a righteous judge, God can’t just wink at sin. His own law demands justice be fulfilled. Debts must be paid, and the sentence must be served.
Imagine spilling a beverage on the table. Propitiation is wiping up the mess with a paper towel that absorbs the spill into its cotton fibers.
In the same way, the wrath of the law upon my sin was absorbed not into cotton fibers but was absorbed by the very body of Jesus.
No stain remains.
As the beloved hymn by Horatio Spafford says,
“My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!”
Can you imagine a more fitting theme song for the believer?
What Happens When We Make that Hymn Our Theme Song?
We are able to surrender every area of our lives to the lordship of Jesus.
We’re not told what happened to the tax collector after going home justified, but having experienced the liberating power of surrender, I suspect the tax collector would give to Jesus his whole heart.
As the burden of guilt and shame lifted, he would be free to live out a new identity, no longer rooted in wealth and status, but firmly grounded in the mercy, kindness, and love of God.
A life once defined by greed and exploitation could become characterized by generosity and compassion.
I can imagine that his relationships, previously strained by his profession, could begin to heal as he seeks reconciliation with those he had wronged.
The tax collector’s life would show us that complete surrender to the sovereign, good, and wise lordship of Jesus is not a duty, but a gift designed to set us free.
And ongoing surrender is not something we can do in ourselves, but as the Holy Spirit works within us.
So, I wonder what the Spirit is calling you to surrender today that would unlock the prison doors in your life?
It may help to name and confess your prison.
For all of us, it begins with the prison of moral condemnation. Surrendering our sin happens as I really believe that every wrong, every moral blemish, everything I can possibly think of, and so much more is under the blood of Jesus. I’m no longer condemned, but fully justified, possessing the perfect righteousness of Jesus as my very own.
Surrender unlocks every prison.
- The prison of needing to protect your moral reputation.
- The prison of social comparison and perfectionism.
- The prison of addiction
- The prison of negativity and jealousy.
- The prison of scarcity and busyness.
- The prison of control.
I wonder what it would look like for us to pray with Jesus—”Father, not my will but yours be done”—and to apply that prayer of surrender to every circumstance of our lives including family, children, job, sickness, and sin?
The Father’s will (his redemptive plan) WILL be done, anyway. So why not surrender to it and be free? After all, at the very heart of God’s will is the propitiating mercy of the cross, which restores us to himself as fully forgiven, perfectly accepted, and dearly loved sons and daughters.
Having received such reconciling grace, we can trust him with anything.
So, surrender your prisons, turn the key of conscious trust in the merciful declaration of the cross over your life, and be free.
Galatians: Navigating Life in View of the Cross
In his Galatians Bible study, McKay Caston guides participants in keeping the gospel as the “true north” compass for their lives, allowing them to break free from religious rule-keeping and live with freedom and joy.
