The Pharisee and the Tax Collector: Seven Words That Went Home Justified

Short answer: In Luke 18:9–14, two men go up to the temple to pray. The Pharisee stands and thanks God that he is not like other men — extortioners, the unjust, adulterers, or like the tax collector nearby — and lists his fasting and tithing. The tax collector stands at a distance, won't lift his eyes to heaven, beats his chest, and says only, "God be merciful to me a sinner." Jesus says the tax collector went home justified, and the Pharisee did not — "for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted."

Luke tells us exactly who this parable is aimed at before it even starts: "certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others" (18:9). It is one of the few parables where Luke states the target audience up front rather than leaving it to be inferred from the story or the reaction to it.

The Pharisee isn't lying

It is easy to hear this parable as being about a hypocrite whose piety is fake. The text doesn't support that. Fasting twice a week went beyond what the law required — a Monday-and-Thursday fast is attested as a known devotional custom of the period, later contrasted in early Christian writing (the Didache recommends Wednesday and Friday specifically to differentiate from it). Tithing "of all that I possess" likewise exceeds the baseline. This man's religious record, on its own terms, is genuinely exemplary.

The problem the parable identifies is not that his righteousness is fake. It's the comparison built into his prayer — "God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are" — measured explicitly against the tax collector standing nearby. His prayer is addressed to God and spent almost entirely on himself.

A trade that made you unclean by association

Tax collectors in first-century Judea worked within the Roman taxation system, typically paying for the right to collect a district's taxes and profiting on whatever they could collect above that — a structure that gave real, well-documented opportunity for extortion, and made the profession widely despised regardless of whether a given collector actually cheated anyone. Being grouped with "extortioners, unjust, adulterers" in the Pharisee's prayer reflects the trade's reputation as much as this particular man's conduct, which the parable never actually describes.

"Went down to his house justified"

The word Luke uses — the tax collector went home justified — is a legal-declaration term: not "felt better," but formally acquitted. Some readers of Luke and Paul have noted the resonance between this usage and Paul's own vocabulary of justification, though Luke is not making Paul's argument here; the word simply carries a specific, weighty sense in both writers' Greek.

What earns it, on the page, is nothing the tax collector does beyond naming what he is and asking for mercy. He offers no fasting record, no tithe, no comparison to anyone. Seven words, and Jesus says that is what went home acquitted — set directly against a much longer, much more accomplished prayer that did not.

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Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (public domain). Verse references are given so you can read any translation alongside.

Sources and further reading

• Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke (New International Commentary on the New Testament, Eerdmans, 1997) — on the social standing of tax collectors and the Pharisee's genuinely above-baseline religious practice.
• The Didache 8:1, for the early Christian choice of Wednesday/Friday fasting specifically to distinguish it from the Pharisaic Monday/Thursday custom referenced in the parable.