The following recent articles and in this chronological order relate to this post.  One    Two   Three   Four   Five

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The Pharisees

“The Pharisees” are those historical and biblical characters with whom Jesus interacted in the Gospels.  Pharisees are those taking up the mantel of “the Pharisees” since then.  The Pharisees inundated the Israel into which Jesus came.

I like to say, “The inside of a barrel looks like the barrel.”  If you live inside the barrel, your whole world looks like the barrel.  The Pharisees so saturated the thinking of Israel during the life of Jesus that Israel looked like the Pharisees.  The world of the audience to whom Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount also looked like or literally was the Pharisees.

The most common viewpoint of the Pharisees is that they added a whole bunch of strict standards to the preexisting rules of scripture.  This popular notion says the Pharisees multiplied an immense number of added regulations that burdened down the Israelite people.  This idea leaves the impression that Jesus came to relieve people of standards.  He came to save them from the imposition of written rules.  This is a deadly lie about Jesus and what He did and taught that generation.

Jesus and Matthew 5

I return to Matthew 5 to see what Jesus said at the beginning of His Sermon on the Mount.  He said in verse 17:

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

The Pharisees and thus the people of that audience suspected Jesus would destroy the law or the prophets.  He debunked that speculation and added, “I am come to fulfill the law or the prophets.”  “The law or the prophets” in 5:17 is all of the Old Testament scripture.

“To fulfill” the Old Testament at least was keeping the Old Testament, but further transcending it.  Jesus’ standard was not the minimized, reduced standard of the Pharisees.  It went above theirs; it transcended theirs.  His righteousness exceeded theirs.  In no way, as He says in verse 19, was He teaching people not to keep everything in the Old Testament.  No, just the opposite.  Then Jesus illustrates that in six different sections between 5:21 and 5:48.

The purpose of Jesus was showing the sinfulness of the Pharisees and the audience they spawned.  Their viewpoint was not God’s.  They did not represent God.  This would take someone back to the first thing He said in the sermon in verse 3: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  His audience needed to understand their spiritual poverty to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Saving Grace

Saving grace as an outcome of conversion, which proceeds from God — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, does not lower the standard for righteousness of the Pharisees.  It exceeds it.  As a first illustration, Jesus uses one of the ten commandments, “Thou shalt not kill,” in verse 21.  Pharisaical thinking justified itself by saying it had not physically killed anyone.  That still occurs today.  People still think they’re fine because of something they haven’t done.  This indicates they lack spiritual poverty.

Using four different examples in verse 21 to verse 26, Jesus shows that His or God’s standard exceeds or transcends the letter of scripture.  It is more than just physically killing someone.  They’ve murdered someone in their hearts if they even showed contempt toward them.  Jesus goes so far to say that they’ve murdered the person with whom they would not initiate reconciliation.  Not reconciling is showing contempt.  God would not accept their worship as long as they would not try to reconcile.

The Pharisees were not about strict standards.  They were about diminishing God’s standards with their own, designed to be more easily kept.  They tried to keep these on their own without the grace of God.  Jesus was not following their example or trajectory.  He taught a different way than theirs.

Evangelicals and Jesus and the Pharisees and Grace

Most evangelicals today take an opposite message from Jesus than the one He told in His sermon.  They teach that Jesus came to relieve the people of standards.  I use the word “standards,” but you could use laws, regulations, or the like.  Jesus kept everything and in verse 19, He said that the greatest in His kingdom would teach others to do the same.

Jesus went further with adultery too.  It wasn’t just the physical act, but looking at a woman to lust after her in your heart (verse 28).  Jesus is explaining what He meant by fulfilling the law or the prophets.  Keeping the standards was never the means of salvation.  Yes, the addition of works was a burden on the people reckoned by the Pharisees.  People could not escape whatever shortcomings they had with the Pharisee approach.

If salvation came by keeping the rules, no one could do that.  This is why the Pharisees minimized or reduced the law or the prophets.  They tried to concoct a way of salvation through works.  The Pharisees developed their own handbook of sorts to accompany scripture to explain the procedures for keeping scripture.  This was not internalizing what God said out of love and obeying it from the heart.  Again, this is the burden they created.

The Pharisees made doing suitable good works impossible.  This was an exhausting, never ceasing burden.  Their system complicated the obedience to actual scripture.  It put them, the Pharisees, ahead of God, while claiming credit for God.

The Repercussions of Botching the Pharisees

People like the idea of not having to keep moral standards.  This is a very popular view of grace today.  This mirrors the Pharisees in that it minimizes or reduces scripture.  Pharisees did it to make a way for salvation by works.  Evangelicals do it in a way to change the nature of the grace of God.  I say that they treat grace as a garbage can, when scripture treats it as a cleansing agent.  Grace instead enables the keeping of the standards, rules, or laws of scripture.  Unlike the perversion of grace, grace saves from the violations of the law and the salvation changes the life.

You probably notice that churches have gone downhill.  They have changed in nature.  Part of it is this very interpretation of the Pharisees.  Evangelicals use the Pharisees as a reason to reduce standards.  They don’t get rid of all of them, which should send up a red flag.  If the Pharisees were all about having standards, then why don’t we eliminate all of them?  Quite commonly evangelical keep the ones still convenient, very much like the Pharisees did.  With this system, you still get credit for doing good works without obedience to everything that God said.

Scripture shows God wants everything He said kept.  It’s not grace not to keep what God said.  That’s an impostor grace.  It claims grace, but it’s a placebo or a poser of grace.  God does not accept not believing and not doing what He said, even in the so-called non-essentials.  Man’s adaptations, innovations, and modifications do not please God.  They are not of faith.

In scripture, God killed people for changing the recipe for the incense at the altar of incense.  He killed tens of thousands when David numbered the people against His will.  Grace tends toward keeping what God said, not squirming out of it.  Grace yields a higher standard than the Pharisees, not a lesser one.