Video of Sermon: 

n the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

At the end of the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector, Jesus says that it was the tax collector who went down to his house justified and not the pharisee. Our Lord explains why this was the case by adding, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” So, here Jesus reminds us that it’s only humble people who are justified before God. To be justified before God, means to be declared right with Him. It means that God doesn’t count your sins against you, but rather He forgives them and you’re no longer responsible for them. When God justifies someone, He makes it so that their sins don’t condemn them. He makes it so that your sins don’t keep you out of heaven. And so, if only humble people are justified, meaning only humble people are saved, then obviously it’s very important for us to know what it means to be humble. We need to be certain of the exact kind of humility that is Jesus talking about, because humility comes in many different forms, and not every form of it is the same. 

In the first place, to be humble in the way that Jesus talks about it our text doesn’t just mean that you get embarrassed by things in general. Yes, the word humility has to do with humiliation, but not everyone who’s ever embarrassed themselves because they did something dumb should expect to be saved. To give a Biblical example, think about what happened with King Herod. When he got drunk at one of his parties and promised a pretty girl that he would give her up to half of his kingdom, he was clearly embarrassed when she asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. But that wasn’t true humility. Herod wasn’t sorry for what he did. He was sorry that he looked like a fool. And that obviously is not the type of humility that justifies you before God. Just because bad things happen to you in your life and you don’t always feel proud of yourself doesn’t mean that you’re entitled to something better once this life is over. 

Along those same lines, it isn’t even true humility simply to be embarrassed by your sins. To be sure, you should be embarrassed by your sins, and no one will be saved who isn’t sorry for them. As the prophet Jeremiah tells us in Jeremiah chapter 8 about the people of Israel, “Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush. Therefore, they shall fall among the fallen, when I punish them, they shall be overthrown.” Cleary, God does want us to be ashamed of our sins. But shame by itself is not enough. We also need to acknowledge our shame before God. Lots of times even when people get embarrassed by their sins, they still refuse to admit them. Even when they’ve been shown from God’s Word that what they’re doing is wrong, and even if they know in their hearts that God’s Word is right, they still won’t come clean and stop doing it. They deny that they’re sinning because they are too embarrassed to confess it and too ashamed of what others would think if they made a change. They care more about the temporal consequences of what will happen to them when they repent than the eternal ones. King David describes this exact kind of situation in Psalm 32 when he writes, “For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For night and day your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.” Even though David knew that what he was doing was wrong, he still wouldn’t come clean and accept the consequences. So, David had no rest for his consciences. It was only when he confessed his sins to the prophet Nathan that he finally was able to be at peace. 

Whenever we’re talking about true justifying humility, we always need to keep in mind what the Bible says about repentance, and especially the fruits of repentance. There’s a very common false teaching in our day which totally overlooks the need for repentance and reduces it something like, “Nobody’s perfect” or “We are all broken.” But simply admitting that you’ve made mistakes before or that you’re a broken person isn’t the same thing as taking accountability for your sins and wanting God’s forgivness for them. It isn’t the same thing as trying to amend your life with the help of the Holy Spirit. Even the most devout atheist will probably still tell to you that they’re not perfect and that they’ve made mistakes before. But they’re not sorry for their sins. They don’t even think in terms of sin. 

Even Christians sometimes fall into this kind of thinking when they talk about their sins as if they’re no big deal, or even as if they’re a good thing. Have you ever heard this before? “I’m glad I made the mistakes that I did, because those mistakes helped turned me in to the person that I am today.” Well, that’s not how Christians are supposed to talk. Our sins aren’t what make us better people. Christ is the one who does that. And He does that not because of our sin, but in spite of it. So, we shouldn’t speak about sin as if it were a good thing by itself. We shouldn’t use the fact that we have a sinful nature, or that in our weakens we still sometimes fall into sin, as an excuse to sin even more. Our sin is what kills us, not what makes us alive. Our sin is what can drive away the Holy Spirit if we don’t repent of it, not what keeps the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Any kind of humility that avoids repentance and turning away from sin, is not the kind of humility that Jesus describes in our text. It is not the humility that justifies us.

Another kind of humility that doesn’t justify us is the kind of humility that demonizes good works. It’s true that the pharisee in our reading was not justified like the tax collector was, but that wasn’t because the pharisee was doing things that were bad in and of themselves. It was because he trusted what he did for righteousness. It’s not bad to try and avoid stealing, murdering, or committing adultery. It’s not bad to be faithful to your spouse and not sleep with people that you’re not married too. It’s not bad to tithe to the church and put ten percent of what you have in the offering plate. All of those things are good. But none of those things by themselves are what justify you before God. None of those things are what make you a Christian or give you God’s grace and eternal life. Thinking that not stealing, or not committing adultery, and giving money to the Church earns you a place in heaven is like a child thinking that not hitting his sibling or cleaning up his room means that he should automatically get dessert after dinner. Those are the things we are supposed to be doing anyway! They’re not something that we should get a reward for. As Jesus tell us elsewhere, “So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.”

The Pharisee’s problem was not that he tried to do the right thing, but that he thought that his righteous looking efforts were enough to save him and that he didn’t have any sin. The Pharisee forgot that the law was not given to show sinners how to justify themselves, but in order to show them that they can’t justify themselves, and that they need a Savior to do it for them. The Pharisee forgot that even if we think we’ve done a lot of good things, as God’s Word also tells us, “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.” If the pharisee considered himself in the way that the Bible does, he would have known that he was just as guilty in the eyes of God as the tax collector. But we don’t need to demonize good works in order to prove that everyone is a sinner. In fact, a humble spirit lifts up good works, even though a humble spirit never trusts in them for salvation.

Similar to the kind of false humility that demonizes good works, there’s also a bad kind of humility that attacks the idea that we should have certainty in God’s Word or the assurance of our salvation. Now, certainly, we shouldn’t boast in ourselves for those things, or act as if we could never fall away from the faith, but that’s not the same thing as having confidence in the promises of God. As Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” And Jesus tells us in Mark chapter 16, “whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.” These passages are important for us to remember because we often hear the argument, especially as Lutherans, that it’s somehow arrogant for us to claim that we’re right about something and that others are wrong, or that it’s somehow bad to be confident that we’re going to heaven someday.

But it is never arrogant to stand on the clear testimony of God’s Word. In fact, that’s part of what it means to be truly humble. When God tells us something in the Bible, He wants us to believe it. For example, when He tells us that “whoever believes and is baptized will be saved,” that’s what He want us to think. Or, when He says that the bread in the Lord’s Supper is His Body, and that the wine is His Blood, that’s what He wants us to say too. And if others won’t say it, or say something else that disagrees with it, God wants us to disagree with them. He wants us to hold onto His Word and insist on it. It’s the people who teach against God’s Word that are not being truly humble, not the people who stand firm on it. They’re the ones putting themselves above the Scriptures, which is the most arrogant thing that you can do. But the most humble thing to do is to confess the Scriptures and not give them up for anything. So again, to be truly humble doesn’t mean that we doubt God’s Word or that we’re always unsure about our salvation. It means that we trust what God’s Word says. 

Ultimately, the kind of humility that justifies, and this is the main point of today’s sermon, is the humility of having faith in Jesus. It means to be repentant of your sin and trust in the atoning sacrifice of Christ. That’s the humility that Jesus is getting at in our reading. That is the true humility that God praises. When the tax collector prayed in the temple, he beat his chest and said, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” The word that he used for mercy, is the same word for propitiation. Literally, the tax collector said, “God be propitiated to me,” as is, “God be the remedy for my sin.” The tax collector wanted what Saint John describes for us in 1 John chapter 4 when he writes, “Jesus Christ is the propitiation for our sins and not for our sins only but also for the sins of the whole world.” What the tax collector was praying for was that God would forgive him of his sins on account of the blood that Jesus shed for them. That is what he clung to. That is what he put his trust in. Not himself, not his own works, not even his own faith, but the work of Jesus in his place.

The tax collector was a real sinner. He had done terrible things. He stolen from his own people and took sides against his own family. But Jesus says that he went home that day justified. That’s the most comforting message that there is in the whole world. It’s only thing that can give someone true and lasting peace. Because you’re a real sinner too. You’re just as guilty as the pharisee was, who looked down on the tax collector, and the tax collector who was ashamed of his past. You’ve also have treated others with contempt before and committed a whole litany of sins against God’s Word too. Pick any one of the ten commandments and you’ve have found a way to break it. You should be ashamed. It’s no one else’s fault but your own. You deserve to go to hell. But listen again to the words of Jesus, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Despite your many sins, God still makes you a promise. When you humble yourself before Him, meaning when you confess your sins and turn away from them, He promises to forgive you. He promises that regardless of how many or how bad your sins have been, you’ll still go down to your house justified. And when Jesus makes a promise, you can be certain that He’ll keep it. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.