“The tax collectors and harlots (shall) go into the kingdom of God before you”  

it is not a person’s sins that give the right to enter the kingdom; 

it is rather humble repentance for sin, 

the humble consciousness and confession of our own moral misery and need to be saved. 

It was humility that opened the hearts of the tax collectors and sinners to accept salvation, 

and that gave them precedence in the kingdom of God.

Humility:

those who realize their own moral insufficiency, 

those who recognize their own spiritual poverty, 

those who feel a deep need of being saved, redeemed and purified, 

and those who therefore call upon and await the Savior with all their hearts.