There are basically two classes of self-righteous person. There is the self-righteous person who thinks that he is going to get to heaven and God will be pleased with him. He has got such a high view of himself. Then there is quite a different class of self-righteous person: interestingly enough, the person who is not religious at all, who wants nothing to do with God and who certainly wouldn't accept an invitation to a church. What is he self-righteous for? His self-righteousness is a kind of defence mechanism. It's the opposite. He is trying to pretend to himself that he's all right, in order to prove that he has no need of the gospel, no need of religion, no need of God. And so, although he may be the worst sinner under the sun, he has convinced himself that he is better than all these church people. He pretends to some righteousness merely to try to convince themselves that he doesn’t need religion and God is irrelevant, and he can go on living how he wants to live, living for the things of this world. Here the Lord Jesus Christ is speaking first and foremost to the religious self-righteous person, but it applies to all self-righteous people, and what a description it is!
This is an age of unbelief; this is an age of great spiritual ignorance; this is an age of alienation from God. However, most people still seriously imagine that if God is there, they would pass any reasonable test for acceptance. Very often, when people die, others will say, ‘Ah, he or she is up there in heaven. He is at peace, happy and blessed’ – even people who profess not to believe in God – because there is this extraordinary idea even in people who scarcely believe in him at all, that if there is God, they will be bound to pass any reasonable test to secure acceptance by him. That's the strange confidence of the human heart. It's an amazing thing. Whatever instinct even the unbeliever has about God leads to confidence and ease and this great presumption.
You may never have thought of yourself as self-righteous. It may be that you thought of the typical, let's say, Victorian maiden aunt type of person, as being self-righteous and bigoted in a religious manner. But you never thought of yourself as being self-righteous. Yet, here is the Lord Jesus Christ, here is the word of God, putting this quite plainly: that the biggest problem of all, really, written into most men, most women, most young people, is the problem of self-righteousness. This is a disease which holds so many out of a spiritual relationship with God.
Imagine there's a person over there and you dislike certain traits in that person. You can't abide them for some reason. Yes, but that person isn't aware of those traits in all probability, and he has probably got it all nicely parcelled up in his own mind. He's got a perfect explanation for it. He doesn't agree with you at all. He doesn't look at himself in that manner. Why not? Supposing everybody looks at this person and sees this trait and recoils away from it. Oh well, you see the processes of self-justification making one's own story so good, that he has convinced himself and now he can't see it. It's a secret sin as far as he's concerned. And that's the trouble with most of us. We are aware of certain things by nature but we don't see ourselves. Really we make fools of ourselves. It's not only an ugly thing but don't we make fools of ourselves? Suppose we were to make a list of all the things which we thought were our faults and failings: here are my principal character blemishes. One thing we could be certain of: that the list would be very much shorter than the list which others would make of us. So in a measure this parable applies to everyone, because self-justification is the biggest barrier between a man or woman and salvation. We think far too well of ourselves.