Ver. 8-11. Two or three moral instructions we have in this parable.
1. That the law of Christ justifieth none in any rudeness and incivility.
2. That the disciples of Christ ought to have a regard to their reputation, to do nothing they may be ashamed of.
3. That it is according to the will of God, that honour should be given to those to whom honour belongeth; that the more honourable persons should sit in the more honourable places. Grace gives men no exterior preference; though it makes men all glorious, yet it is within. But the more spiritual instruction (for which our Saviour put forth this parable) is in Luke 14:11. Our Saviour had but now, in the sight of these Pharisees, cured a man of a bodily dropsy; he is now attempting a cure of the spiritual dropsy of pride in their souls. He had before denounced a woe against the Pharisees for loving the uppermost seats in the synagogues, Luke 11:43, and told us, Matthew 23:6, that they loved the uppermost rooms at feasts, and possibly he might at this feast see something of it. He therefore applies his discourse by pressing upon them humility, and showing them the danger of pride, which though it be a vice seated in the heart, yet by such little things discovereth itself in the outward conversation. He tells them, that God is such an enemy to pride, that he ordinarily so ordereth it in the government of the world, that usually self-exalting people are by one means or other abused, and brought to shame and contempt, and those that are low in their own eyes are exalted; and if it doth not so fall out here, yet this will be what will at the last day befall them, in the day of God's righteous judgment. See Poole on "Matthew 23:12". We shall meet with the same again, Luke 18:14.