Luke 18:9-14

The context

Luke states the audience before telling the story: people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. Two men go up to the temple to pray, a Pharisee and a tax collector. The parable is one of a pair in this chapter about prayer, the other concerning persistence.

What it establishes

The parable reverses the expected verdict: the despised collaborator goes home justified and the religious professional does not. It locates the difference in the prayer's posture, self-exaltation against self-abasement, and it makes humility the marker of the one accepted.

What it does not establish

It does not condemn Pharisees as a class. The Pharisee is a character in a parable told to a specific audience, and the Gospels name Pharisees who believed. Nor does it say the tax collector's trade was acceptable, or that self-assessment is forbidden; the man names himself a sinner.

Short note, first pass, October 2026. Corrections welcome.

Cited in these answers

• I know lots of people who don't believe in Jesus, and they live good lives. So they're all going to hell?!
• Didn't Paul invent Christianity? Why should I trust letters Jesus never wrote?

Part of Scripture, Opened — the exegetical layer behind every citation on this site. Scripture quotations are from the ESV.