There was a judge in a certain town
who neither feared God nor respected any human being.
This judge may have been an unintentional parody of the modern political scene. But while we can see multiple parallels in our own day we may wonder why Jesus would use such a judge as an analogy for God himself.
For a long time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought,
‘While it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being,
because this widow keeps bothering me
I shall deliver a just decision for her
lest she finally come and strike me.’”
The widow also seemed like an unlike analog for those who pray for justice. It was not as though those who prayed to God could bother him or persuade him to do anything that he did not intend from the beginning. Even though the unjust judge was probably not actually significantly threatened by the possibility of violence from the widow he was motivated to minimize his own hassle. But God himself had no such need.
Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones
who call out to him day and night?
Jesus used the humorous example of the widow and the unjust judge to reason from a lesser to a greater. If even a terrible judge, one who did not care about justice, might be motivated be persistence, how much more would God himself respond to those who learned to pray always without becoming weary. The similarity was not in the way that the persistence affected God and the judge. Absolutely speaking, persistence didn't affect God it all. Rather it affected those who petitioned him for justice. And in this it was vastly superior to the situation with the unjust judge. People who persisted in prayer would find there hearts more and more transformed by God's priorities. There was apparently some real risk that the widow might eventually become violent in her demands. So too would the insistence of the saints becoming increasing strong and even aggressive. Perhaps this was one interpretation of "the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and men of violence take it by force" (see Matthew 11:12). But it was not the obvious result when there was not an immediate answer to prayer. It might seem rather that unanswered prayers would eventually peter out. And certainly that was also a possibility. But God was looking for any apparent delay in his response to be exactly the length necessary to transform the hearts of those who sought his favor. And for this reason his response, however it would seem to us, would always be on time.
Will he be slow to answer them?
I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily.
But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?
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