In New Testament Israel, a Pharisee was a teacher of the law, a respected member of the Jewish ruling council called the Sanhedrin. The Saducees made up the other sect, but the majority of these religious leaders were Pharisees. Jesus had many conversations with Pharisees. To those, like Nicodemus, who came to learn of him and from him, he answered their questions and taught them the truth. To those who opposed and tried to trap him in something he might do or say, he posed their greatest challenge.

It was to this group that Jesus gave a most scathing commentary, calling them blind guides, whitewashed tombs, and hypocrites. Not exactly the kind of comments you might find in books about how to win friends or influence people. But Jesus wasn’t out to win their affection. He had come to speak the truth to them in order to save them from the very things that blinded them.

Do Pharisees still exist today? I’m not up on the breakdown of the Jewish religious leaders of today, but Pharisees do still exist, just not in the same way. They are alive and well in our churches though, and that troubles me.

Jesus condemned the legalism of the Pharisees, the adherence to tradition and rules while negating the law of love. He got upset over the unbelief that allowed such men to condemn him for healing a man on the Sabbath day because in their minds it broke the tradition of their Sabbath. They placed their rules and traditions above compassion.

The Pharisaical attitude that showed so little compassion is clear whenever people choose to do all of the right things for God, while knowing little of God. The apostle John said it best when he said, “The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.”

One of the things John points out that God commands is to love. “But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.

“If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” And previously he says, “Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.”

This was the attitude of the Pharisees. They loved to let people know what they were doing, saying lengthy prayers in the marketplaces to be seen of men, taking the best seats at banquets, and sitting in Moses’ seat (the teacher’s seat) in the synagogues. But they broke the law to fit their traditions and added heavy burdens to the backs of men. They judged and condemned and did not keep the spirit of the law, which said “to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself.”

Loving others is hard. Forgiving is hard too. But to hold bitterness and anger and hatred in our hearts is not love. And it does not please God. I’ve been on both the giving and receiving end of bitterness and it’s not worth it. The root goes too deep, the price is too dear both for the one holding the grudge and those whom the grudge is held against.

Blind guides, whitewashed tombs, legalistic hypocrites with no sense of compassion, no love for others. This was a Pharisee…

~Selah