Orland Evangelical Free Church | Where Did the Pharisees Go Wrong?

The example of the Pharisees is troubling. They had crucial priorities right, yet they rejected their Savior and played a decisive role in killing him.

They were devoted to the scriptures, following a tradition went back to Ezra the scribe (Ezra 7.10). "For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel."

They were passionate about teaching the law to not just to Jews but Gentiles as well. They gained Roman disciples who actively supported synagogues, like the centurion in Luke 7.1-10. They were successful in teaching the law to Gentiles around the world (e.g. Acts 18.4).

Most of all, they understood that the Lord must obeyed. They took in the lesson of Israel's exile: the nation failed to keep the law and spent seventy years in slavery (Deuteronomy 28). The Pharisees were determined not to repeat the sins of their fathers.

Yet Jesus scorches them for all three passions.

He observes without approval (John 5.39), "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life." He curses them (Matthew 23.15): "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves." He scorns their obedience (Matthew 5.20). "For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven."

What error transformed their virtues into sins?

In John 11.47-53, we glimpse a Pharisaical council about Jesus. The rulers are afraid Jesus will use his followers to stage a rebellion against Rome, provoking the Romans to "come and take away both our place and our nation." They evaluate Jesus in nationalistc terms.

The high priest Caiaphas recalls a prophecy he had received from the Lord: "it is expedient that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish."

His interpretation is not that Jesus should die as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (1.29), but that he should be sacrificed for the nation's security.

The Pharisees' use of scripture, their teaching to the Gentiles, their obedience itself were all motivated by a lust for national vindication, not by a desire to repent of sin. Their very prophets misinterpreted their own visions.

Nationalism is a dangerous turn for any church. The linkage of the state's destiny with the blessing of God inevitably involves self-righteousness - and worse.

During World War I Kaiser Wilhelm managed to whip his nation into ecstasy with assertions like these, quoted in Michael Burleigh's Earthly Powers: "Remember that the German people are the chosen of God. On me, on me as German Emperor, the Spirit of God has descended. I am His weapon. His sword and His visor. Woe to the disobedient! Death to cowards and unbelievers!"

German pastors saw the opening of the war as a new work of God "not least because people seemed to be returning to vacant churches in significant numbers." But as the war went on, the churches emptied again.

It would be wise for evangelicals to recall the price churches have paid for the state's patronage: lost spiritual vitality.