Verse of the day · October 4
What does it mean to pray always and not to faint in Luke 18:1?
A widow with no bribe and no friend at court got justice out of a judge who feared nobody.
Read one of these every day in the THNK GOD app →
And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;
Luke 18:1
The key to this parable hangs at its door: Jesus gave them the point of the story before he told them the story. Men ought always to pray, and not to faint. Hard times were coming, and he handed the parable to his disciples to keep them praying through all of it instead of leaving off.
Then the story. There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man. The rabbis had written down what a man in that office should be: wise, modest, God-fearing, a hater of money, a lover of truth and of people, and of good reputation. He came greatly short of that list. He made his own will the rule of what he did, and had no good name left to lose.
And there was a widow in that city, poor and helpless, with nobody to advise her or take her part. Somebody had wronged her, and meant to bear her down. She had right on her side and nothing else. Judges were charged in scripture with exactly her kind of case — not merely to do widows no violence, but to take their side and plead their cause — because widows were defenceless, commonly poor, and easy for men in power to rob of the little they had. So the man charged with pleading her cause was the judge. This one did the reverse. He frowned at her, took no notice of her case, and let her adversary go on doing as he liked. She had no bribe for him, and no important man on her side that he would have been nervous of. Judges there answered to nobody, and a case commonly waited until somebody paid to move it.
And she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. Avenge would be better translated do me justice against my adversary. What she wanted was justice, and that only — make him hand back what of mine he is holding, and stop him doing it again.
And he would not for a while. So she did not leave it to the court. She went to the judge's own house, day after day, and asked again. Then, turning it over in his own mind, he owned the thing to himself: Though I fear not God, nor regard man; yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. And she got it — what was rightfully hers, and her adversary stopped, by continual asking.
Weary is mild for the Greek word behind it. It comes out of the boxing ring — to stun a man, to beat him about the face until his eyes blacken and he is disabled. Her crying at him was landing like blows. It was not his conscience that moved him, and it was not any pity for her; he did it for his own ease, and he knew it. What he was afraid of was not the name she could give him around the city. It was the noise.
The judge is not a picture of God. His badness is in the story to make one argument stronger, and for nothing else — what carries over is the comparison, not his reasoning with himself or the end he had in view. The argument runs upward, and only upward: it does not set two things of equal size beside each other, but the lesser against the greater. If a man of that description could be brought to do right by a poor woman he felt nothing for but contempt, how much readier is God, who is infinitely good and merciful and loves his creatures in the tenderest way, to do justice for the people who come to him.
And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? Avenge there means the same: do them justice. And bearing long with them is better heard as his being longsuffering towards them, patient with them and for their own good. However that word is read, God comes out of it nothing like the unjust judge. This is not an unjust judge but the infinitely righteous one, and these are not strangers at his door. The widow was somebody her judge felt nothing about; these are people dear to him as the apple of his own eye.
Who are they? His own, chosen out of a world of sinners and given grace and mercy and everlasting life. He has promised salvation to every soul that comes to him through his Son, and it is his own Spirit in their hearts that sets them crying to him for it; the goodness of his nature and the promise of his grace bind him to hear them. One of the surest marks of them is that they pray: his electing love is known by the way it disposes a man to pray. She came to a judge who wanted her kept at a distance; they come to a Father who tells them to come boldly, and teaches them to call him Father. She had nobody to speak for her; they have an Advocate with the Father, who is always alive and always making intercession for them. She had to catch the judge when she could; they may cry to God day and night, at any hour.
Always is the word in the verse that sounds impossible. It does not mean a man is never off his knees. It means he should pray as often as he gets the chance, keep at it, and not leave off because no answer has come yet. And faint is the verse's own word for the alternative. It is what men do when they have lost heart: they give in to the hard thing and quit. What a man faints from is affliction, temptation, the sense of having been left alone, and the delay in getting an answer.
The delay is the pressure the parable was built for. He can seem slow about avenging the harm done to his own. But his will is that they keep at it — not to wear them out, but to exercise them. And God's time to appear for his people is when things have been brought to the last extremity, and his own people have begun to say that the Lord has forsaken them. If it does not come in this life it comes at the judgment, where he calls them blessed and takes them to himself. What is asked of them meanwhile is that they cry day and night — because he has made it their duty, and to this he has promised mercy, and not because he needs to be argued with or can be moved by the force of their pleading. Her adversary was a man holding something of hers. A praying man's adversaries are the men who oppress him, and the sins and corruptions of his own heart, which are his worst enemies. So he prays against them by name: make this thing in me die, arm me against this temptation.
The chapter that opens with this parable closes with a man doing it. A blind beggar by the road heard a crowd going past, asked what it was, and was told Jesus of Nazareth. He shouted: Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me. The people at the front of the crowd thought he was making a nuisance of himself, and told him to be quiet. Being told to be quiet worked on him the way a dam works on a full stream: it made him swell, and he cried so much the more. He was called over, asked what he wanted, and given his sight. He was asked, though what he wanted was already known. Laying a case out in front of God, with the wants and the burdens named, is how a man teaches himself to value the mercy he is after.
And then the last two things said. I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Suddenly, that is, and unexpectedly — at a time, perhaps, when they were nearly ready to give over and sink into despair. And then a question. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? The danger that question names is not that God will fail to keep his word. It is that his own people, worn down by how long it has taken, will stop believing he is coming for them, stop praying, and sink. The widow had no promise that she would get anywhere, and nobody had invited her to ask. She came every day. God's own praying people were given both — told to ask, and promised mercy when they do.
Drawn from Matthew Henry, John Gill, Albert Barnes, Adam Clarke, the Geneva Bible notes, the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown commentary and B. W. Johnson. How these teachings are made