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The sermon presents the publican’s prayer as the proper posture of every sinner: humble, individual, honest, and wholly dependent on divine mercy. Spurgeon grounds forgiveness in Christ’s propitiatory death, insisting that mercy cannot be separated from the cross. Justification is described as God’s immediate act of blotting out sin and reckoning the believer righteous through Christ. The hearer is therefore urged to repent and pray for mercy without delay, trusting God rather than a priest or personal merit.
Theological center: God justifies the repentant sinner through faith in Christ’s atoning sacrifice, imputing Christ’s righteousness rather than granting forgiveness through human priestly absolution.
Applications: Confess personally before God · Plead Christ’s blood · Pray for mercy today · Understand true absolution
Primary texts: Luke 18:13 · Luke 18:11 · Luke 19:8
“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.” Luke 18:13 THE heroes of our Savior’s stories are most of them selected to illustrate traits of character entirely dissimilar to their general reputation. What would you think of a moral writer of our own day, should he endeavor in a work of fiction, to set before us the gentle virtue of benevolence by the example of a Sepoy? And yet Jesus Christ has given us one of the finest examples of charity in the case of a Samaritan. To the Jews, a Samaritan was as proverbial for his bitter animosity against their nation as the Sepoy is among us for his treacherous cruelty, and as much an object of contempt and hatred. But Jesus Christ, nevertheless, chose His hero from the Samaritans, that there should be nothing adventitious to adorn him, but that all the adorning might be given to the grace of charity. Thus, too, in the present instance, our Savior, being desirous of setting before us the necessity of humiliation in prayer, has not selected some distinguished saint who was famed for his humility, but He has chosen a tax-gatherer, probably one of the most extortionate of his class, for the Pharisee seems to hint as much. And I doubt not he cast his eye sideways at this publican, when he observed, with self-gratulation, “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.” Still, our Lord, in order that we might see that there was nothing to predispose in the person, but that the acceptance of the prayer might stand out, set even in a brighter light by the black foil of the publican’s character, has selected this man to be the pattern and model of one who should offer an acceptable prayer unto God. Note that and you will not be surprised to find the same characteristic exhibited very frequently in the parables of our Lord Jesus Christ. As for this publican, we know but little of his previous career, but we may, without periling any serious error, conjecture somewhat near the truth. He may have been, and doubtless he was a Jew piously brought up and religiously trained. But perhaps, like Levi, he ran away from his parents, and finding no other trade exactly suited to his vicious taste, he became one of that corrupt class who collected the Roman taxes. And ashamed to be known as Levi any longer, he changed his name to Matthew, lest anyone should recognize in the degraded cast of the publican, the man whose parents feared God and bowed their knees befor…