Luke 18:1 - Meaning and Application

This parable is meant to be understood from the start, since Christ states its purpose in Luke 18:1. He told it to teach us that people should always pray and not give up. All of God’s people are praying people, because they keep up both regular and occasional contact with him. They go to him daily and also in every special need.

Prayer is both our privilege and our duty. We should pray, and we sin when we neglect it. It is meant to be our steady work, something every day requires. We must pray and never grow tired of it, never think of stopping until prayer is taken up into everlasting praise. But here Christ especially teaches constancy and perseverance in asking for spiritual blessings, whether for ourselves or for the church of God.

When we pray for strength against our spiritual enemies, our sins and corrupt desires, we must keep praying and not lose heart. We will not seek God’s face in vain. The same is true when we pray for God’s people to be rescued from persecutors and oppressors.

Christ first shows, by this parable, how powerful persistence can be among people. Even someone with no sense of justice may finally do what is right when worn down by repeated requests. He gives the example of an honest case that succeeded before an unjust judge, not because the case was fair in his eyes, but because the widow would not stop asking.

The judge in the story lived in a certain city. He neither feared God nor respected people. He did not care about his conscience or his reputation. He felt no reverence for God’s anger and no concern for people’s judgment. In other words, he took no care to do his duty to God or to others. He was completely unfamiliar with both godliness and honor.

It is no surprise when someone who has cast off fear of the Creator also ignores fellow humans. When there is no fear of God, no good can be expected. This kind of wickedness is bad in anyone, but it is especially serious in a judge. A judge has power in his hands, and he should use it by the rules of religion and justice. If he does not, his power is more likely to harm than help. Solomon saw wickedness in the place of judgment as one of the worst evils under the sun (Ecclesiastes 3:16).

Then there is the poor widow, forced to bring her case to him because someone had wronged her and tried to overpower her with force and fear. She clearly had justice on her side. It seems that instead of following legal formalities, she went personally to the judge day after day, crying, “Give me justice against my adversary.” She did not mean to get revenge for personal injury. She wanted him to restore what had been taken from her and to stop her oppressor from hurting her further.

Poor widows often have many enemies. People cruelly take advantage of their weakness and helplessness to steal their rights and strip them of what little they have. Magistrates are therefore charged not only not to harm the widow (Jeremiah 21:3), but to defend the fatherless and plead for the widow (Isaiah 1:17). In doing that, they act like God, because that is what God is like (Psalm 68:5).

At first, the judge refused to help her. As was his habit, he ignored her case and allowed the wrong against her to continue. She had no bribe to offer and no powerful friend to speak for her, so he had no reason, by his own standards, to care. Even he could see why he was delaying justice, and he had to admit to himself that he neither feared God nor respected people. It is sad when a person knows this much wrong about himself and still makes no effort to change.

In the end, though, she won her case by constantly bothering this unjust judge (Luke 18:5). “Because this widow keeps troubling me,” he said, “I will hear her case and give her justice.” He did not do it mainly because he was worried about his reputation, but because he wanted to avoid being worn out by her. She would give him no rest until he acted, so he decided it was easier to help her than to keep being bothered. Better to do it at once than at last.

She got justice by constant asking. She begged at his door, followed him in the streets, and pressed him even in public court. Her cry stayed the same: “Give me justice against my adversary.” At last he was forced to act just to be rid of her. Even though he was a bad man, his conscience would not let him send her to prison for disrespecting the court.

Christ uses this to encourage God’s praying people to pray with faith and earnestness, and to keep doing so. He tells them that God will finally show grace to them (Luke 18:6). “Listen to what the unjust judge says,” he says, if even he was overcome by persistence, “and will not God avenge his own elect?” That is, will not God act for his own chosen people?

There is a people in the world who belong to God, his elect, his own chosen people. He keeps them in view in everything he does for them. He acts for them because they are chosen, and because he is carrying out the choice he made of them. God’s own elect meet plenty of trouble and opposition in this world. Many enemies fight against them, and Satan is their great enemy. What they need and wait for is God’s protection, his preserving work in them, and his safeguarding of the church’s place in the world and his grace in the heart.

To receive this help, God’s people must cry to him day and night. Not because he needs to be pushed by their words, or can be changed by their arguments, but because he has made this their duty and promised mercy to it. We should be specific when we pray against our spiritual enemies, as Paul was when he said, “For this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times, that it might leave me.” We should pray like that importunate widow, “Lord, kill this sin. Lord, strengthen me against this temptation.”

We should also care about persecuted and oppressed churches, and pray that God would do them justice and put them in safety. We must be urgent in this. We should cry out with earnestness, day and night, because we believe prayer will be answered in the end. We should wrestle with God, knowing the worth of the blessing and refusing to take no for an answer. God’s praying people are told to give him no rest (Isaiah 62:6-7).

Christ also shows what discouragements his people may meet in prayer and waiting. God may allow a long delay, and he may not appear for them right away in answer to their prayers. He is patient toward the enemies of his people and does not punish them at once, and he also tests the patience of his people by not acting immediately. He was patient with the cries over the sins of the Egyptians who oppressed Israel, and with the cries of those who suffered under them.

Even so, Christ gives strong assurance that mercy will come in the end, though it may be delayed. He points to what the unjust judge said: if this widow prevailed by persistent asking, then God’s chosen people will prevail much more. She was a stranger to the judge, but God’s praying people are his own chosen ones, whom he knows, loves, and has always cared for. She was only one woman, but God’s people are many, and they all come to him with the same request and agree together in what they ask (Matthew 18:19).

She came to a judge who wanted to keep her at a distance, but we come to a Father who tells us to come boldly and teaches us to cry, “Abba, Father.” She came to an unjust judge, but we come to a righteous Father (John 17:25), one who cares about his own glory and the comfort of his poor creatures, especially those in distress, like widows and orphans. She came only for her own cause, but God himself is involved in the cause we bring before him. So we can pray, “Rise up, Lord, defend your own cause,” and, “What will you do for your great name?”

She had no friend to speak for her or press her case, but we have an Advocate with the Father, his own Son, who always lives to pray for us and has great power in heaven. She had no promise that her request would succeed, and no encouragement to ask, but we have the golden scepter held out to us, and we are told to ask with the promise that it will be given. She could only reach the judge at certain times, but we may cry out to God day and night, at all hours, and so we have even more reason to expect success through persistent prayer. Her persistence may have annoyed the judge, and she might have feared it would make him less willing to help her, but our persistence pleases God. The prayer of the upright delights him, and a prayer that is earnest and active can avail much.

Christ then warns them that, even with these assurances, many will grow tired of waiting for him. “Nevertheless,” he says, “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” The Son of Man will come to defend his own chosen ones, to plead the cause of persecuted Christians against persecuting Jews. He will also come in his providence to defend his injured people in every age, and in the great day he will come finally to settle all the disputes of Zion. But when he comes, will he find faith on earth? The question strongly suggests the answer, No. He himself foresees that it will be so.

This question means several things. First, faith is needed only on earth, since sinners in hell already feel what they would not believe, and saints in heaven already enjoy what they believed. Second, it shows that faith is the main thing Jesus Christ looks for. He looks down on people and does not first ask whether they are outwardly innocent, but whether they believe. He also asked about the faith of those who came to him for healing. Third, if faith were there, even in a small measure, he would see it. His eye is on the weakest and least noticed believer.

The prophecy also means that when Christ comes to defend his people, he will find far less faith than one might expect. In general, he will find only a few truly good people. Many will have the outward form of godliness, but few will be sincere and faithful. In fact, there will be very little honesty among people, and the faithful will seem to disappear (Psalm 12:1-2). This complaint will still be true to the end of time. The world will not improve, even as it moves toward its end. It is bad now, and it will be bad then, and it will be worst just before Christ returns. The last days will be the most dangerous.

More specifically, he will find few who truly believe concerning his coming. When he comes to defend his chosen ones, he will look for faith to support and encourage, and he will wonder that it is so hard to find (Isaiah 59:16; Isaiah 63:5). This tells us that Christ, both in his special times of help for his people and in his final coming at the end, may delay so long that two things happen. First, wicked people begin to mock the promise and say, “Where is the promise of his coming?” (2 Peter 3:4). They challenge him to come (Isaiah 5:10; Amos 5:19), and the delay only makes them bolder in evil (Matthew 24:48). Second, even his own people may begin to lose heart and think he will never come, because he has waited longer than they expected.

God’s time to help his people is often when things have reached the very worst point, and when Zion begins to say, “The Lord has abandoned me” (Isaiah 49:14; Isaiah 40:27). But this is our comfort, when the appointed time comes, it will be clear that human unbelief has not made the promise of God useless.