Modern Day Pharisees

We know from the New Testament something about the society and culture during the time that Christ walked the earth. We are introduced in the scriptures to two main Jewish sects that were influential during Christ’s time, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees and the Sadducees differed in many of their teachings. They differed in what they considered Biblical law…the Sadducees believed only the written law in the Torah while the Pharisees believed their tradition of oral laws carried just as much weight. The Sadducees believed in strict judgments under the law while the Pharisees allowed for more mercy. The Pharisees believed in an afterlife, the Sadducees did not. They argued about the Hebrew calendar and on and on. The Sadducees primarily controlled the civil government of Israel / Judah while the Pharisees were the dominant force in the religion of the people.

Though we know from historical records that there were other sects of Judaism we know a good deal more about the Pharisees than we do other Jewish sects of the time. The Pharisees were the dominant sect of Judaism at the time but the reason the scriptures tell us so much about them goes beyond simple history. God made sure that we had a clear picture of the Pharisees in His revealed word for the edification of His church. We have that picture as a warning to us…

A part of what Christ did in His ministry was to point out where the Judaism of His time had gotten off track from the faith God revealed to the patriarchs. It is worth note that Christ rarely addressed specific doctrines or which sect taught the correct interpretation of a specific doctrine.  Christ was much more concerned about the attitude of people towards serving God than He was specific teachings.

The Pharisees of Christ’s time are condemned over and over in the New Testament, not as much for their teachings as for their attitudes. His primary criticism was of the Pharisaical attitudes that were prevalent in their approach towards obeying God.

God ensured we have the New Testament as a historical record of Christ coming to earth and walking among us as one of us. But its teachings go well beyond simply giving us a historical record. Gods’ revealed word exists for the edification of His church. It contains instructions in righteousness and in the proper attitudes one should cultivate in approaching God. Not everyone who calls on God’s name does so in the proper spirit. It can be argued that the main criticism Christ had of the Pharisees was in the spirit with which they approached the worship of God.

The admonitions the modern church can glean from Christ’s condemnation of the Pharisees is two-fold. First, there is a movement in modern Christianity for some members to seek their Hebrew roots. This is a good thing in that it causes Christians to examine and revive the teachings and practices of the early church which was mainly made up of Jews. This is the restoration of the faith once delivered. The danger lies in Christians adopting many aspects of modern Judaism as the faith once delivered. Judaism is not the religion of the Israelites. It is an historical fact that Rabbinical Judaism, which became Modern Judaism, has its origins in the Pharisaical movement. That movement began after the Babylonian captivity. The Judaism of Christ’s time had gotten off track from the faith once delivered. Modern Judaism has continued on the same path. While there is much to be said of a people who have studied Gods law for centuries, a Christian must pay heed to Christ’s admonitions about how Judaism had deviated from God’s intent.

The second, and much more pervasive, aspect of Pharisaic thinking is in the attitudes of individuals and, in some cases, in entire churches. It is shame, but a truth, that Pharisaical attitudes are alive and well in the church today. We have all heard ministers behind the pulpit who have those attitudes. We have all sat next to someone in church who maintains a Pharisaical attitude.

The Pharisaical attitude is a way of approaching the worship of God. The scriptures address that attitude for our edification because it is alive and well in our time. The warnings in the scriptures against such thinking are for us.

So what are the hallmarks of a Pharisaical attitude?  Legalism, Spiritual Myopathy, Dogmatism, Separatism / Exclusivity, Being Judgmental, Self-righteousness, a Sanctimonious attitude, Public Piety, putting tradition on the same level or higher than Gods law, and Hypocrisy…only giving God lip service.

Perhaps the Pharisaical attitude that is best known is being overly legalistic. The Pharisees, and their offshoots in Modern Rabbinical Judaism, are known for their focus on the minutest details of legalism. Because they considered their oral law (later to become Talmudic) on the same level with the written law of the Torah they emphasized those laws. It was those traditions that Christ condemned because Pharisaical adherence to them often violated the spirit of the written law of God. Many modern Christians condemn Sabbath keepers as legalistic ‘Judaizers’ partially because they don’t understand Christ and, especially, the Apostle Paul were addressing two bodies of law…the righteous, written law of God and the oral laws of the Pharisees.

Even those who only recognize the written law of God can be overly legalistic however. One can become so focused on the correct ‘do’s and don’ts’ that one can lose sight of the intent or spirit of the law. That’s a ditch that many Pharisees and many Modern Christians have fallen into. While what we do matters to God it is obedience that comes from our hearts that He values the most. The simple truth that escapes many Jews and Christians is that one can have all the correct doctrine and be doing all the correct things and still be wrong.

Closely related to legalism is the Pharisaical focus on the minutia. That is to say there is a kind of spiritual myopia in the pharisaical approach to God’s law. Sometimes in our quest to find Gods will we tend to overlook the most obvious lessons. We can easily spend our energies parsing the meanings of Greek or Hebrew words when the lessons are much more obvious. We may believe we are “rightly dividing the Word of Truth” only to find that we are getting caught up in the minutia and missing the Big Picture. While it is a good thing to study God’s word, that in itself is not righteousness. Believing and living God’s word is righteousness.

Careful Bible study ‘can’ make us dogmatic. Membership in some organizations can often make us dogmatic. The Pharisees had both forms. Dogmatism may be defined as holding one’s opinion as fact. Being dogmatic can make us dismiss other points of view out of hand. This was the case with the Pharisees and it is too often the case with Modern Christians. We must remember that there was a time when we didn’t believe what we do now. Chances are good that one may have believed something in the past only to have come to a different understanding later. Every human being who has ever thought “I have all the answers / truth.” has been wrong. To ‘grow in grace and knowledge’ means that we must allow room to grow and change. No human being has all the truth. The scriptures themselves demonstrate how God has revealed His truths to mankind over time. Abraham didn’t believe the same things as the Apostles but all of them had the truth. 

Being dogmatic can also make us exclusivists. We humans can get caught up in the pettiest arguments and we can let the minutest differences divide us. It is no wonder some people, like the writer Jonathan Swift, see theological arguments as just plain silly. (Witness the war between the Lilliputians…one side broke their eggs from the end…the other side broke their eggs from the middle!) Swift was making a commentary on the nature of human beings to let the silliest differences divide us. It’s Pharisaical to think like: “We are the one true group (church) that God is working with. We are the chosen and God is only concerned with us.” There are people in every nation that God is working with. Like many us have learned in the last few years, the Body of Christ is a spiritual organism, it is not a physical organization. Our concern shouldn’t be who else God is working with…our concern should only be how God is working with us.

God directed the physical nation of Israel to be separate from other nations. Israelites were not to do the things that people in other nations did. In a similar way Spiritual Israel, the Body of Christ, is to be separate from the world. We have to live in the world but we are not to be a part of it. That doesn’t mean we aren’t to interact with other people. We have to interact with others to be a light to the world. We are called to live by a higher standard to be that light. That doesn’t mean we should be exclusivists however. It’s a human tendency, when we separate ourselves from others, to begin to believe that we are somehow better than others. Being called by God the Father to be a Christian in no way means we are better than anyone else…what it means is that we have a greater responsibility to live up to a higher standard. Parents don’t love their oldest children more but they do expect better behavior out of them.

Groups that separate themselves from the rest of their human family tend to believe that they are better than other human beings. This is in stark contrast to our savior. He frequently associated with the worst sinners when He really was better than anyone else who has ever lived. Separatists believe they are called to understand truths that have not yet been given to others so it becomes easy to feel ‘superior’. When one feels superior it becomes easy to sit in judgment on others. The Pharisees took this to such an extreme that they felt entitled to kill those they judged as heretical, hence their persecution of early Christians. Christ is very clear on this…we are not to sit in judgment on others. We are to focus on our spiritual growth and allow others to do the same. The scriptures stand as judgment enough against us all.

This judgmental attitude is closely related to Self-Righteousness. The Self-Righteous think they have all that’s necessary. They have arrived and have nothing more to do. The Pharisees made Self-Righteousness an art form! Since they were ‘doing’ all that was required they thought themselves the top of the heap. (God may have thought the same of them…but the heap He had in mind was quite a bit different!)

In a world as dark as ours is becoming it’s too easy for Christians to become self-righteous just by trying to be better people. Some even think that church membership or attending services regularly is all they need to do. This is an especially dangerous spiritual condition. When we think we have arrived and there is nothing more that need be done it leaves no motivation to grow spiritually. This is a kind of idolatry and it is a counterfeit spirituality. The trouble with a counterfeit is that it makes us think we have all that’s needed. If someone owes you twenty dollars and they pay you with a counterfeit bill you think you’ve been paid…until you take it to the bank!

It’s Pharisaical when we think like: “Thank God that I’m not like: (fill in the blank)…” Our concern is not what God is doing with someone else…it should only be with what He is doing with us. Christ admonished Christians to mind the beams in their own eyes…not the motes in the eyes of others. We don’t judge ourselves by comparing ourselves to others…we judge ourselves by comparing ourselves to God’s word. We should all think we have a long way to go…because we all do. Other people deserve our compassion…not our condemnation.

The Pharisees liked to make a public show of their piety. They didn’t want to actually be decent, upstanding, pious people so much as they wanted to appear to be to others. The Pharisees wanted to appear to be righteous to others more than they actually wanted to be righteous before God. This one is simple: when public appearance becomes more important to us than our walk with God…we are on path to hell. (Think ‘Politician’ here!)

This brings us to the Pharisaical tendency to put their own traditions on a par with or above God’s law. In a way this brings us full circle back to legalism. The Pharisees believed their own oral laws and traditions were equal with the revealed, written law of God. Traditions aren’t necessarily bad but in the case of the Pharisees, many of their traditions were contrary to the spirit of God’s instructions. They were in no way equal to God’s law. They put an undue burden on the people. Christ often found Himself in direct confrontation with Pharisaical traditions. He always condemned them. The apostle Paul addressed the burden that these laws laid on the people in his epistles. When one doesn’t understand that Paul was addressing TWO bodies of law, the written and the oral, one can easily become confused by some of Paul’s writings.    

When Paul said the law was a burden too hard to bear he was referring to the oral law the Pharisees considered on the same par with God’s revealed law written in the Torah. The original intent of the oral law may have been good. For example, one of the reasons Israel had been carried off into captivity by the Assyrians centuries before and Judah had been in captivity in Babylon was because of the failure of the people to observe Gods Sabbaths. The Rabbi’s wanted to put so many restrictions around the Sabbath that the people wouldn’t come close to defiling it again. Their intent was a good one. Human nature being what it is, however, the original intent became lost and all that remained was the rote, obligatory observance of minute rules and regulations that were enforced by men who wanted power over other men more than a sincere walk with their Creator. That is contrary to the spirit of Gods law. From the beginning what God has wanted of man is a humble heart willingly obedient to Him. Endless rules and regulations are easier for most human beings to observe than to honestly humble themselves to God.

What the Pharisees were guilty of was practicing the empty ceremony of religion instead of the true transformation of their hearts that would bring forth real spiritual growth. They made hypocrisy a way of life. They valued the glory and honor of men over that of God. The scriptures recorded their attitudes and practices as a lesson and a warning to us.

For the Christian the qualities that define true spiritual growth are the fruits of the spirit: Peace, love, joy, patience, kindness, mercy etc. Those qualities are far more difficult to develop than observing the endless rules and regulations religious people often define themselves by. Too many well-meaning people create such rules and regulations to set themselves apart from others. In that way they can convince themselves they are somehow more worthy of God’s love. Such people are missing point of Christ’s gospel.

There are correct practices and there are correct attitudes. The Old Testament is primarily about the former.  The New Testament is primarily about the latter. Both are essential. Christ was clearly more concerned with the correct attitudes but we must remember that He came to a people who knew Gods law. They knew how they were supposed to live. Those who were receptive to Christ’s message undoubtedly felt that something was missing in their faith. Without understanding the historical and cultural context of Christ’s ministry it becomes too easy to misunderstand what He taught. Doing the right thing without the right attitude is Pharisaical. Having the right attitude without doing the right thing is aimless.

Unfortunately many Modern Christians think it’s only what one believes that matters. That’s the ditch on the other side of the road from Pharisaical thinking. Love without the law is lost.  But even Gods revealed law without love is empty.