Reading through the gospels, it is impossible not to dislike the Pharisees. They are always lurking around, trying to figure out how to get Jesus killed, or confronting Him to trap Him in some theological riddle (which never works). Jesus Himself got pretty frustrated with them, calling them: a brood of vipers, whitewashed tombs, and blind guides. Nobody like these guys, no one wants to be these guys.
While there is a universal distaste for the Pharisees, there is some question as to who the Pharisees actually are. I say this because I see spiritual people throwing the term Pharisee around in the same way that secular people use the term Nazi: as a way of describing people that do not agree with them. We need to be careful because not all parts of what it means to be a Pharisee are worth demeaning. Let me begin by working through a few of the incorrect ways that I have seen the Pharisees portrayed.
The problem with the Pharisees was not that they were too focused on the law. I think that this is most common misnomer I have heard. The moment that someone holds a Biblical moral line, there are those who want to brand them a Pharisee. Having a standard and holding people to it is considered Pharisaical. The problem with the Pharisees was not that they were too focused on the law, it was what they used the law for. They continual used the law of God as a means of value. It wasn’t about trusting and honoring God through obedience, it was about a measurable way of increasing their own value and decreasing others. We see this in the way that they approached Jesus with the Law: it was always to trick Jesus into saying something that they could exploit. This is why Jesus calls them a brood of vipers; they ignore the purpose of the law. This is how Jesus puts it:
For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. | Matthew 23:23
The problem is not that they are too focused on the law, the problem is that they aren’t lawful enough. This leads us to the second misnomer about the Pharisees:
The problem with the Pharisees was not that they were too religious. I have heard many Christians make the bold assertion: Jesus loved the sinner, it was the religious people that He hated (and who hated Him). I don’t think that this is a very helpful distinction. First, because as the Bible makes it clear, ALL people are sinners. Also, it was not all religious people who had a hard time with Jesus. It was a very specific subset of the religious community. Specifically, it was those who promoted the religious system as a means of power. The Pharisees were religious, only in the sense that they used the language and framework of religion for their own gain. They took the images that God had given to reveal Himself and used them to control others. This is why Jesus calls them blind guides, or specifically:
“Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? | Matthew 23:16-17
The problem is not that they are too religious, but that they aren’t religious enough. This is what makes the Pharisees so hard to define: they appear to be something that they are not. They wear the robes and use the words, but at the end of the day they are about their own glory, not God’s. It is this that causes Jesus’ to call them whitewashed tombs: with the appearance of cleanliness, but dead inside. The word we hear most often to describe this is hypocrisy, which is the same word that Jesus uses 7 times in Matthew 23. He defines this hypocrisy as:
The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. | Matthew 23:2–5a
Hypocrisy, as defined by Jesus, is: people who expect a lot of others, but nothing of themselves. They believe that the world and others owe them something, without believing that they owe anything to the world. To be a hypocrite, to be a Pharisee, is not just to say one thing and do something else. It means being so self-centered that truth revolves around how it affects you. To Jesus, hypocrisy is about more than just living against what you say, it is about living against who you ARE; being something other than what you were created to be.
In a world of individualism, this sort of thinking is the norm. People are encouraged to do what is best for them, to treat all situations as subjective, and to read the world through individual experience. In this, we end up encouraging people to be Pharisaical: to create a worldview based on what works best.
This world is full of Pharisees, but they aren’t the ones who look like Pharisees, that would be too obvious. Instead, modern Pharisees are those who talk about beauty, peace, and unity while living this life for their own gain. They are the ones who are willing to let Jesus be minimized in order to be accepted. They are those who use what God has created to push against Him.
Some of these are in our churches, and God has made it clear that He is most angry with are those who represent what is true, but in a false way. The best way way to NOT be a Pharisee is to seek out the real thing. Don’t go out looking for Pharisees; instead, spend your time being a faithful disciple of Jesus. Don’t be a Pharisee by being who God created you to be: one who worships Him and proclaims His glory in all you do.