(Luke 18:1-6)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+18&version=NIV
My purpose in addressing this parable is to bring some clarity to Jesus’ purpose for using the parable, and correct a common misunderstanding that people often come to in their interpretation. Spoiler alert: The passage does this very thing for me in the very first sentence, but for some reason, people seem to fly by this and miss the main point:
“Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.”
- “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought.”
There is a positive, and a negative here. A judge who has no fear of God should concern us. The scripture says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” If wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord, and there is no fear of God, wisdom has no beginning. What comes out of a person who does not fear God may be very sound intellectually, but it is not based on wisdom. I think the difference between intellectualism and wisdom is that, while intellectualism may give the man a great understanding of the details of any given thing, wisdom gives the man the ability to put that knowledge to its correct, intended use. A man can know a lot of factual data, but without wisdom, he does not put that knowledge to use the right way, and he comes to the wrong ultimate conclusions about what that information means. I have often heard it said that just because we can do something, (we have the know-how), does not mean that we should do it.
The positive to this judge is that he did not care what people thought. In other words, he was not swayed by people’s opinion of him. We all face the possibility of becoming enslaved to the opinions of others, and this is not a good place to be. A good judge should be able to look at all cases with an impartial perspective.
Having said all that, the character of the judge is NOT the point of the parable.
- “And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.”
As the character of the judge is not the point of the parable, neither is the tenacity of the widow. Tenacity, in and of itself, is neither positive or negative. The context within which it is exhibited makes it either positive or negative. Tenacity for the sake of a righteous cause is positive. Tenacity for the sake of an unrighteous cause is self-defeating stubbornness. Tenacity in business can either enable a man to press through difficult circumstances to success, or put him on a path to bankruptcy by stubbornly insisting on continuing with a faulty business plan.
- “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!”
One of the first mistakes people make in interpreting this scripture is to compare the unrighteous judge to God. While God is our ultimate judge, the judge in this parable does not represent God. The second, and most common mistake people make in interpreting this parable is to come to the conculsion that the way to get what we request from God is to just keep coming back to Him with it over and over. News flash: You are NOT capable of wearing God out!
- And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
The point to the parable, as I have been leading up to is this: God is a just God, and a just judge. His purposes stand, regardless of how the chaos of our life circumstances might “seem” to indicate otherwise. Knowing this, and standing in this truth in a tenacious way, is the faith that perseveres to salvation. The widow refused to give up. That is the point. We must not abandon our faith. We must be sure of what we know to be true, simply because God said it.
We must not base our faith on our life circumstances. Sometimes our circumstances are good, sometimes they are bad. Sometimes our health is good, sometimes it is bad. Sometimes our relationships are good, sometimes they are bad. Sometimes our finances are good, sometimes they are bad. etc.This is true for every human being that has ever lived.
We must not base our faith on our feelings. Our feelings and emotions are fickle and subject to change often. We may feel disappointed. We may feel angry at God because of something bad that is happened. That is OK. God is big enough to handle our anger. Just don’t allow your anger to lead you to blasphemy or apostasy.
We must not base our faith on our ability to understand things. “There is a way that seems right to man, but in the end, it leads to death.” Sometimes things make perfect sense. Sometimes they seem to make no sense at all. Our intellect cannot be the instrument for measuring our faith.
The point of the parable is the persistence of our faith that is grounded in the right truth, the truth of what God says regarding His plans and purposes, not the tenacity that hammers God with repeated requests until we get what we want. Sometimes what we want is wrong, and sometimes we never get what we want.
Danny's Stump 