The Pharisee’s prayer sounds painfully familiar. He prayed. He visited the temple. He fasted beyond what was expected of him. He gave one-tenth of everything he received. By every outward measure, he was the kind of man you would want your children to become. And then Jesus delivered a verdict against him that should surprise every serious, churchgoing, Bible-reading person.
The tax collector standing nearby, the collaborator, the extortioner, the man no respectable Israelite would greet in the street, went home justified before God. The Pharisee went home unjustified. Before you explain that away or reassure yourself that you are nothing like him, read the parable again slowly. The man who prayed the wrong prayer was the most devoted person in the temple that day.
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The Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican: (Luke 18:9–14)
“And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” (Luke 18:9–14 KJV)
Why Jesus Told This Parable When He Did
The Audience: Who Jesus Was Actually Speaking To
Luke does not leave the audience to the reader’s imagination. He names them precisely in verse 9: “certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others.” Jesus was speaking to devout, religious people who had prayed for years; given generously; and lived carefully and who had concluded on the basis of all that faithfulness that they were standing well before God. These were the people most certain they did not need this parable. That certainty is exactly what the parable was aimed at.
The Two Prayer Parables of Luke 18
Luke 18 opens with the Parable of the Persistent Widow (Luke 18:1–8), where a widow’s relentless pleading with an unjust judge finally earns her justice. Jesus told that parable so that people “ought always to pray, and not to faint” (Luke 18:1). Then, without a break in scene, He follows it immediately with this parable. The first teaches why to keep praying, so you will not lose heart. The second teaches how to pray, not with self-trust but with humble dependence on God. Luke placed them back-to-back deliberately. Both are addressed to people who pray. Together, they give the complete picture of what prayer is supposed to look like.
Read also: The Parable of the Persistent Widow
The Meaning of the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican
Who Were the Pharisees?
Today’s understanding of Pharisee is quite different from how it was understood in the first century. Pharisees were the most visibly devout men in Jewish life, men who had given their whole lives to the study and keeping of God’s law. Ordinary Jews admired them. They memorized Scripture. They observed the Sabbath with precision. They fasted and tithed beyond what the law required. They were not performing religion carelessly. They were the men most serious about it.
The lesson of this parable depends entirely on understanding that the Pharisee was the expected hero before Jesus gave His verdict.
Who Were the Publicans (Tax Collectors)?
Tax collectors in first-century Judea were Roman collaborators who purchased the right to collect taxes in a district and then charged whatever they could extract above the required amount. The difference went into their own pockets. First-century Jews regarded them as traitors to Israel. They were excluded from synagogues. Their testimony was not accepted in court. They were grouped routinely with prostitutes and sinners in the Gospels, and the grouping was a social and religious classification, not merely a figure of speech.
When Jesus said the tax collector went home justified, first-century listeners would have been stunned. The verdict is still stunning when the history is understood clearly.
The Pharisee’s Prayer: Thanksgiving That Praised Only Himself
The Pharisee’s prayer has the structure of thanksgiving, but there is no real thanksgiving in it. He lists no gift from God. He speaks no adoration. He makes no confession. He asks for nothing. What he calls thanksgiving is a recitation of his own record, five uses of “I” in two short verses, delivered in the direction of God as though God were a mirror for confirming what he already believed about himself.
The Greek text of verse 11 carries an ambiguity worth noting: it can be read as “the Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself.” The phrase may mean only that he prayed in his own mind, but it also carries the sense that his prayer had no genuine object beyond himself. He used the occasion of prayer to confirm what he already believed: that he was not like other men.
He named three kinds of sinners he was glad not to be: extortioners, the unjust, adulterers. Then he pointed at the tax collector standing nearby, “or even as this publican,” spoken with the man in earshot. He asked God for nothing and, in the verdict Jesus gives, received nothing.
The Publican’s Prayer: “God Be Merciful to Me a Sinner” and Five Details
The tax collector’s entire prayer is seven words in English, fewer in the Greek. Everything else he communicates, he communicates with his body.
First, he stood afar off. In part this reflects shame, the awareness that he does not belong among the devout. But it also reflects the geography of the temple. Ritual uncleanness excluded certain people from the inner courts, and a man living as a tax collector would have known he could not stand where the Pharisee stood.
Second, he would not lift up his eyes to heaven. Looking upward in prayer was the normal posture. To refuse it was to communicate, without words, that he felt unworthy of the ordinary conventions of address.
Third, he beat his breast. In first-century Jewish and broader Near Eastern culture, striking the chest over the heart was the gesture of deepest personal anguish, the sign of a man broken before what he has done.
Fourth, he called himself not “a sinner like others” but simply “the sinner,” with the definite article in the Greek. In his own sight, he was not comparing himself to the Pharisee or to anyone else. He was the one standing in the most desperate need of all.
Fifth, he prayed seven words: God be merciful to me a sinner. The briefest prayer in the passage. He asked for everything and, in the verdict Jesus gives, received everything.
What Does “Justified” Mean?
When Jesus says the tax collector went home “justified,” the word carries the full weight of a legal verdict. Justification in Scripture is a declaration, a pronouncement by the judge that the person before him is righteous in standing before the court. The verdict is external and complete. It changes status, not just experience.
Both men went home to their houses afterward. From the outside, nothing looked different. The Pharisee walked out of the temple with his tithes already given, his fasts already kept, his reputation intact. The tax collector walked out with nothing changed in his circumstances. Only one of them had been declared righteous before God. The external indistinguishability of the verdict is one of the most sobering details in the parable.
Read also: The Parable of the Prodigal Son
Hilaskomai: The One Word That Changes Everything
“God be merciful to me” is a natural translation of what the tax collector prayed. But the Greek word behind “be merciful” is hilaskomai, and hilaskomai is more significant than a request for general kindness.
Hilaskomai is the language of atoning sacrifice. It appears only twice in the New Testament. Here in Luke 18:13, where the tax collector prays it. And in Hebrews 2:17, where it describes what Christ did, “to make reconciliation for the sins of the people,” a reference to propitiation, the atoning covering of sin through sacrifice.
In the Old Testament background that an instructed Jew would have known, the mercy seat on the Ark of the Covenant was the place where the blood of the atonement sacrifice was sprinkled on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:14–15). The high priest entered the Most Holy Place once a year, and the blood on the mercy seat was what covered the sins of the people before God. The Greek word describing that covering, that act of propitiation, is the same word the tax collector reaches for when he prays.
The tax collector aimed his prayer at something far greater than God’s general goodwill. He was asking for what the Day of Atonement provided. He was reaching, knowingly or unknowingly, toward the blood-sprinkled sacrifice. His seven words anticipated the cross centuries before it came. The mercy he asked for is exactly the mercy Christ came to give.
The Double Sin of Luke 18:9: Self-Trust and Contempt for Others
Luke 18:9 contains two accusations in one sentence. Jesus told this parable to those who “trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others.” Both charges are visible in the Pharisee’s prayer.
The first is self-exaltation. The Pharisee catalogued his virtues before God, his fasting, his tithing, his separation from the failings of ordinary men. He trusted in his own record as the basis of his standing before God.
The second is contempt. He did not merely feel superior to the tax collector. He said it aloud, with the tax collector nearby to hear it: “or even as this publican.”
These two sins are never found far apart. Pride always has a direction. You cannot exalt yourself before God without lowering someone else in the same movement. The Pharisee’s self-elevation required a floor, and the tax collector provided it. James 4:6 puts the principle clearly: “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.” The man who exalts himself has positioned himself to resist the very gift he needs most.
What Was Wrong with the Pharisee? (He Was Not a Hypocrite)
The Pharisee told God the truth. He fasted twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, the traditional fast days, going beyond what the law required. He tithed on everything he received, not just crops and livestock, but on all his income. His deeds were genuine. His record was real.
The problem was self-righteousness, doing what you claim and concluding that you need nothing from God. This is different from hypocrisy, doing less than you claim, and it is the more dangerous condition of the two because it is harder to see from the inside. The hypocrite knows he is falling short. The self-righteous man genuinely believes he is not.
The Pharisee came to God with a full account and asked for nothing. He left with nothing. A man who brings everything believes he needs nothing, and God gave the Pharisee exactly what his posture left room for.
Was the Pharisee Saved?
The parable gives a verdict, not a feeling. Jesus says the tax collector went home “justified rather than the other.” The text does not say “justified in addition to the other” or “more justified than the other.” It says rather than, exclusively.
The Pharisee went home unjustified. A life of genuine religious devotion, lived without humility and without dependence on God’s mercy, did not justify him before God.
The parable was told to religious people, and the Pharisee represents their most devout member, a man who prayed sincerely and went home condemned, not because his deeds were false, but because his deeds had replaced his need.
Read also: The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
Can a Religious Person Miss Salvation?
Yes, and this parable was told to the very people most confident they would not.
The Pharisee represents the person who has built a life of faith, who prays, attends, gives, reads, serves, and who has drawn the conclusion from all of it that he stands in good standing before God. Jesus looks at that confidence and delivers a verdict against it.
James 4:6 is direct: “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.” The word “resisteth” is active, not passive. God positions Himself against the pride that does not need Him. First Corinthians 1:27 adds the pattern: “God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.” The kingdom consistently moves toward the one who brings nothing, not toward the one who brings everything.
The most sobering reading of this parable is that the person most at risk of the Pharisee’s verdict may be the person most certain it does not apply to him.
What Does This Parable Teach About Pride and Humility?
The Reversal Principle: “Everyone Who Exalts Himself Will Be Humbled”
Jesus closes the parable with a principle that runs through the whole of Scripture. “For every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (Luke 18:14). The principle is ancient, running through Scripture from beginning to end.
Proverbs 3:34, quoted in both James 4:6 and 1 Peter 5:5, says: “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.” Mary’s song in Luke 1:52 declares: “He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.” The first Beatitude in Matthew 5:3 opens with: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The reversal runs from the wisdom literature through the Gospels without contradiction. The Pharisee and Publican parable is the clearest single illustration of this principle anywhere in Scripture: two men, one verdict, the wrong man vindicated.
Humility Is Not the Absence of Achievement: It Is the Right Understanding of It
The tax collector was humble because he had an accurate view of himself before a holy God, and that accuracy is what humility actually looks like. He did not pretend he had no record. He knew exactly what his record was. He came without pretense and without a list.
True humility is precision: seeing yourself as you actually are in the presence of the One who sees everything. The wise man does not pretend he has done nothing. He knows that nothing he has done is sufficient to stand him before God on its own. That is the difference between the two prayers in this parable. One catalogued a record. The other brought a need.
Am I the Pharisee? Five Signs You Are Praying Like the Pharisee
This parable was aimed at people who are serious about their faith. If you pray regularly, give generously, read your Bible, and attend church faithfully, this parable was told to you. The question it leaves open is which man you are when you close your eyes and pray.
Sign 1: Your prayer has no confession and no petition and no genuine need for mercy. The Pharisee thanked God for what he had done. He asked for nothing. If your prayers are predominantly reports of your faithfulness rather than requests born from genuine need, that pattern is worth examining carefully.
Sign 2: You count your religious deeds while praying. The Pharisee’s prayer was structured around what he had done for God, fasting, tithing, separation from sin. Gratitude for God’s grace looks different from an accounting of your own faithfulness.
Sign 3: You compare yourself to other people in prayer. The Pharisee measured himself against extortioners, the unjust, adulterers, and the tax collector by name. Second Corinthians 10:12 speaks directly to this habit: “they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.” The standard in prayer is God, not other people.
Sign 4: You are more aware of other people’s sins than your own. The Pharisee named three categories of sinners and pointed to one by name. The tax collector could see only himself. Awareness of other people’s failures alongside distance from our own is one of the most consistent markers of the condition this parable addresses.
What Is the Main Lesson of the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican?
The main lesson is direct: justification before God comes through humble dependence on His mercy, not through the accumulation of religious deeds.
The parable does not condemn religious devotion. Fasting is good. Tithing is commanded. Prayer is right. What the parable condemns is religious devotion that has no room for God, devotion that has become so full of what the person has done that there is no space left for what God must do.
The tax collector received the verdict not because he had done more, but because he knew he needed more than he had. He came empty. He left justified. The Pharisee came full. He left the same way.
Lessons from the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican
Lesson 1: God hears the prayer that asks for mercy. The briefest, most honest prayer in the passage received the verdict the longer, more polished prayer did not.
Lesson 2: Religious performance without humility does not justify. The Pharisee’s genuine acts of devotion, going beyond what the law required, did not earn him the verdict. Performance is not the path.
Lesson 3: The shortest, most honest prayer is enough. Seven words. No polish, no eloquence, no length required. The prayer of genuine need, offered honestly, is the prayer God answers.
Lesson 4: Pride is most dangerous when it wears devotion as a disguise. The Pharisee’s pride did not look like arrogance from the outside. It looked like faithfulness. Self-righteousness in its most dangerous form walks into the temple and kneels.
Lesson 5: Grace is not distributed according to moral performance. The one who by every outward standard deserved the verdict went home without it. The one who by every outward standard had no claim to it went home justified. That is what grace means.
Read also: The Parable of the Rich Fool
How to Apply This Parable to Your Life Today
The tax collector’s prayer is available to every person reading this right now. It is not tied to a crisis, a particular emotional state, or a minimum threshold of sincerity. Seven words: God, be merciful to me a sinner.
The Eastern Christian tradition built what is called the Jesus Prayer from this foundation, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” and believers have prayed it in one form or another for more than a thousand years. The form is different. The posture is the same.
The mercy seat the tax collector was reaching toward, the hilaskomai, the atoning covering, has been given in full through Christ. What the High Priest did once a year in the Most Holy Place, Christ accomplished once for all (Hebrews 9:12). The door is still open. The mercy is still available.
You can pray those seven words today. You can pray them without eloquence, without a list of your accomplishments, without qualifying what kind of sinner you are. The publican did not. He called himself the sinner, brought that before God, and left justified.
Related Parables to Read Next
The Parable of the Persistent Widow opens Luke 18 and teaches why to pray without fainting. This parable follows immediately and teaches how. Together, they form a complete picture of what it means to pray with endurance and with the right spirit.
The Parable of the Friend at Midnight (Luke 11:5–8) is another of Jesus’ prayer parables, a story about a man who comes to his neighbor at midnight asking for bread, and whose bold persistence earns him what he needed. It raises questions about boldness and need that this parable answers from a different angle.
The Parable of the Two Sons (Matthew 21:28–32) asks a question close to this one: who actually does the Father’s will? A son who says yes and does not, or a son who says no and does? The answer follows the same reversal principle the Pharisee and Publican parable teaches.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican about?
The parable is about two men who went to the temple to pray: a Pharisee who recounted his own religious achievements before God, and a tax collector who asked for nothing but mercy. Jesus gave a verdict only one of them expected. The tax collector went home justified, and the Pharisee did not. The parable teaches that justification before God comes through humble dependence on His mercy, not through accumulated religious faithfulness.
What does the publican say in Luke 18?
The publican prays: “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13). Seven words in English. He accompanies this prayer with five physical postures: standing at a distance, refusing to lift his eyes to heaven, beating his breast, identifying himself as “the sinner” with the definite article in the Greek original, and offering the briefest prayer in the passage.
What does hilaskomai mean in Luke 18:13?
Hilaskomai is the Greek word behind “be merciful” in verse 13. It carries the meaning of atoning sacrifice and propitiation, the same word used in Hebrews 2:17 to describe Christ’s work of making reconciliation for sin. The tax collector was asking for the covering that the Day of Atonement provided through the blood sprinkled on the mercy seat. His prayer reached toward the cross before the cross came.
Was the Pharisee saved?
The parable’s own verdict answers this directly. Jesus says the tax collector went home “justified rather than the other” (Luke 18:14), not “justified more than the other” or “also justified.” The word rather than is exclusive. The Pharisee went home without the verdict. A life of genuine religious faithfulness, lived without humble dependence on God’s mercy, did not justify him. The parable does not leave this ambiguous.
What does “justified” mean in Luke 18:14?
Justified is a legal verdict, not a feeling. In Scripture, justification is God’s declaration that a person is righteous in standing before Him, the judge pronouncing the accused innocent. Both men walked out of the temple without any visible change in their circumstances. Only the tax collector had received this declaration. The verdict is complete, external, and not dependent on subsequent behavior.
What does “standing afar off” mean in the parable?
The tax collector stood at a distance from the inner courts for two reasons. The first is shame, the awareness that he does not belong among the devout. The second is practical: ritual uncleanness and religious exclusion would have barred him from standing where the Pharisee stood. That distance reflected what his life had cost him in standing within the community of Israel.
What does “smote upon his breast” mean?
Beating the breast, striking the chest over the heart, was the recognized gesture of deepest contrition in first-century Jewish and Near Eastern culture. It signified personal anguish over one’s own failures, not general sadness. He used the gesture his culture had reserved for this level of anguish, and it came from someone broken before God over what he was.
Can a religious person miss salvation?
Yes, and this parable was told to religious people who were confident they would not. The Pharisee prayed, fasted, and tithed. None of it produced justification before God, because his entire posture before God was one of self-sufficiency rather than need. James 4:6 gives the reason: “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.” The person most at risk may be the one most certain the risk does not apply to him.
