The Gospel tells that Christ often spoke to the people with parables. They were supposed to awaken certain moral feelings in a person. Christ used parables as images for a clearer understanding of the basic moral truths of Christianity.
The parable of the publican and the Pharisee is set forth in the Gospel of Luke. So, the Holy Scripture tells about two people who went to the temple in order to pray. One of them was a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. Pharisees in the Jewish people were people who had the status of experts in the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament. The Pharisees were respected by the people, they could be the religious teachers of the Jews. Tax collectors were called tax collectors. The people treated such people with contempt.
Christ tells that the Pharisee, entering the temple, stood in the very middle and proudly began to pray. The Jewish law teacher thanked God that he was not such a sinner as everyone else. The Pharisee mentioned the obligatory fasting, the prayers that he performed for the glory of the Lord. At the same time, it was said with a sense of his own vanity. Unlike the Pharisee, the tax collector stood modestly at the end of the temple and beat himself in the chest with humble words that the Lord would be merciful to him as a sinner.
Christ, having finished his story, announced to the people that it was the publican who came out of the temple justified by God.
This narration means that there should be no pride, vanity or complacency in a person. The publican appeared to be a madman before God, because he praised himself more, forgetting that every person has certain sins. The publican showed humility. He experienced a deep sense of repentance before God for his life. That is why the publican modestly stood aside and prayed for forgiveness.
The Orthodox Church says that humility and understanding of one's sins, together with a feeling of repentance, elevates a person before God. It is an objective view of one's own sinfulness that opens the way to the Creator and the possibility of moral improvement for man. No knowledge of God can be useful if a person is proud of them and puts himself above other people.
