Jesus rebuked many Pharisees for hypocrisy, but He did not use their name as a general insult for people who took obedience seriously. He identified what they were doing: giving human traditions God’s authority, neglecting people they should have helped, and trusting their religious standing while rejecting Him. I need to understand those charges before applying the warning to someone else or assuming it could never apply to me.
The Pharisees Were an Influential Jewish Movement
The Pharisees were an influential movement within Judaism during the Second Temple period. That period extends from the rebuilding of the temple after the exile to its destruction by Rome in AD 70. They interpreted the Law and applied it to ordinary life, teaching about purity, tithing, the Sabbath, fasting, vows, and meals. Their influence among the people did not make them identical to the priestly establishment.
The Sadducees were another Jewish group, closely associated with that establishment. Acts 23 says they denied resurrection, angels, and spirits, while the Pharisees acknowledged them. Scribes and lawyers were trained in the Law. Some belonged to the Pharisees, but their training and their membership were different things. The names should not be used interchangeably.
The name “Pharisee” is usually connected with a Hebrew or Aramaic root for separation. “Separated ones” may refer to a concern for purity or a distinct way of life, though the name’s precise origin is debated. Their influence becomes visible during the Hasmonean period, when a Jewish dynasty ruled in the centuries before Christ. Some historians connect them with earlier devout Jews called the Hasidim, but the evidence does not establish a continuous organization running from one group to the other.
Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian, describes Pharisaic influence and distinguishes the movement from the Sadducees and Essenes. In Antiquities 13.297, he distinguishes inherited Pharisaic observances from commands written in the Law of Moses. His account helps explain the Gospel disputes over tradition, while Scripture remains our final authority in interpreting them. Later rabbinic writings must be read with their dates in mind. The Mishnah was compiled around AD 200, and the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds came later. Jesus was not debating a finished Talmud in the first century.
Several Pharisaic convictions were true, including belief in resurrection and the authority of God’s Law. But defending a biblical doctrine did not guarantee that a person would receive the Messiah. He could defend resurrection in principle while rejecting Jesus, or teach God’s commands while refusing to obey them himself.
We must also distinguish the movement from Jewish people generally. Jesus, His apostles, and His earliest disciples were Jewish. His rebukes addressed unbelief and misconduct among the people before Him; they give us no permission to despise Jews. Individual Pharisees responded differently too. Nicodemus listened to Jesus, Gamaliel urged restraint, and Acts explicitly identifies Pharisees who believed. They belong in our account alongside the leaders who opposed Him.
Jesus Exposed Religious Confidence That Never Reached the Heart
Before Jesus began His public ministry, John the Baptist had already confronted this confidence in religious standing. Pharisees and Sadducees disagreed sharply with one another, but John warned both groups that descent from Abraham could not protect an unrepentant person from judgment (Matthew 3:1-12).
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
John did not deny God’s covenant promises to Abraham. He denied that ancestry excused the sins of Abraham’s descendants. The fruit he required would show genuine repentance; it could not purchase mercy. Baptism could not make a refusal to turn to God acceptable, and neither can church attendance or religious vocabulary do that for me. John directed his hearers to the Coming One, who would separate the wheat from the chaff.
Jesus likewise refused to treat a respected religious life as sufficient for entry into His kingdom. In the Sermon on the Mount, He upheld the Law while exposing how far its demands reached beyond outward conduct (Matthew 5:17-20).
“Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus was not asking His disciples to accumulate more regulations than the Pharisees. He addressed the anger behind murder, the lust behind adultery, dishonest oaths, and hatred of enemies. A person might avoid a conspicuous offense while cherishing the sin from which it grew. God sees that inward life even when others admire our outward restraint.
I cannot produce the righteousness God requires by comparing myself with someone worse. I need the new life He gives and the righteousness received through faith in Christ. That does not make obedience unnecessary. Jesus condemned teaching people to break God’s commands; His rebuke reaches the self-righteous performance that seeks recognition while avoiding obedience of the heart.
Luke 7 shows the same need for mercy at a Pharisee’s table. Simon judged the woman weeping at Jesus’ feet, but Jesus exposed Simon’s cold welcome through a parable about two debtors who could not pay. Her tears and perfume did not buy forgiveness. Jesus said her faith had saved her, and her love expressed the mercy she had received. Later, when Pharisees and scribes complained that Jesus received sinners, He answered with the lost sheep, lost coin, and lost son in Luke 15. They resented the welcome of people whose repentance should have brought them joy.
Jesus made the danger of comparison especially plain in another parable. Luke tells us exactly whom He was addressing.
Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men–extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
The Pharisee listed his disciplines in prayer and compared himself favorably with people he despised. Fasting and giving were not themselves the problem. He trusted those practices to establish his righteousness and used them to look down on the man nearby. The tax collector offered neither achievements nor excuses, but asked God for mercy. Jesus said he went home justified, meaning accepted as righteous before God, rather than the Pharisee.
I need to hear that even if my doctrine is conservative and my habits are disciplined. Years of respectable service cannot make God owe me acceptance. Humility means agreeing with His judgment of my sin and receiving His mercy, without pretending that evil is good or obedience irrelevant. The study on true humility examines that response more fully.
Christ Placed Scripture Above Tradition and False Strictness
The Sabbath disputes show why strictness alone cannot establish that an interpretation is faithful. Jesus’ opponents accused His disciples of breaking the Law, but He answered from the Law itself. Matthew also records a healing dispute in the synagogue (Matthew 12:1-14).
And behold, there was a man who had a withered hand. And they asked Him, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”–that they might accuse Him. Then He said to them, “What man is there among you who has one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep? Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” Then He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and it was restored as whole as the other. Then the Pharisees went out and plotted against Him, how they might destroy Him.
Deuteronomy 23:25 permitted plucking a neighbor’s standing grain by hand, so the disciples were not stealing. The objection concerned doing it on the Sabbath. Jesus recalled David’s need and the priests whose temple service continued on that day, then applied Hosea’s words about mercy. He called the disciples guiltless and declared Himself Lord of the Sabbath. He was not admitting that they had sinned and making an exception because He liked them.
The opponents raised the same question in the synagogue, where a man with a withered hand needed healing. Jesus asked why someone willing to rescue a sheep would object to helping a person. He declared that doing good on the Sabbath was lawful and restored the man’s hand. These leaders then went out to plan His destruction. They condemned a merciful healing while devising how to kill the One who performed it.
I need to ask more than whether a rule sounds demanding. Does it follow the biblical text? Does applying it require me to condemn someone God calls guiltless? Jesus did not violate God’s Sabbath command; He challenged the interpreters who misused it. The study on the Sabbath day of rest considers the command and its covenant setting.
A later dispute made the conflict between God’s commands and inherited rules even more explicit. Scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem challenged the disciples’ failure to perform ceremonial handwashing (Matthew 15:1-20).
He answered and said to them, “Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? For God commanded, saying, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death.’ But you say, ‘Whoever says to his father or mother, “Whatever profit you might have received from me is a gift to God”– then he need not honor his father or mother.’ Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition.”
The dispute concerned ritual washing before a meal, not ordinary cleanliness. Jesus answered by exposing a tradition that allowed people to evade support owed to their parents. Mark’s parallel calls a gift devoted to God Corban. A declaration that sounded devout could leave needy parents without help, making “Honor your father and your mother” ineffective. Declaring property devoted to God did not release its owner from the duty to support his parents.
Jesus applied Isaiah’s rebuke to people who honored God with their lips while their hearts remained far from Him. Ceremonial washing could not cleanse the corruption He described. Murder, sexual sin, theft, false witness, and blasphemy came from the heart. Washing their hands left that source of moral defilement untouched.
Families and congregations can develop useful habits, but age and familiarity do not give a custom God’s authority. If it contradicts Scripture or excuses disobedience, we need to change it. Being accustomed to a practice gives me no right to make it a test of righteousness God never established.
The term legalism describes treating law-keeping or religious works as a means of justification. It can also describe imposing human rules as though God made them conditions of acceptance by God. Taking Scripture seriously is different. Biblical church order, sexual purity, truthfulness, and refusal of idolatry do not become wrong because someone finds them restrictive.
Ephesians 2 teaches that salvation is God’s gift rather than a reward for works, then says believers are created in Christ Jesus for good works. Obedience grows from the new life He gives; it neither earns forgiveness nor keeps us saved. We should reject religious bondage without treating God’s commands as bondage too. The study on Galatians develops the distinction between grace and attempts to secure acceptance by God through keeping the Law.
Nicodemus and the Believing Pharisees Show the Need for New Birth
Earlier in Jesus’ ministry, Nicodemus approached Him without the hostility of the questioners we have considered. He acknowledged that Jesus’ signs required God’s presence. Yet this learned Pharisee and ruler needed something his education and office could not provide (John 3:1-21).
Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Recognizing that Jesus came from God did not mean Nicodemus had been born again. He needed the new life of the Spirit. When I use regeneration, I mean that genuine new birth, not adopting a Christian name or improving a respectable religious life. Flesh gives birth to flesh. Only God can give the spiritual life Jesus described.
I understand the reference to water and the Spirit in light of the promised cleansing and new heart in Ezekiel 36. Jesus expected a teacher of Israel to understand the need for inward renewal. He was not saying that baptismal water produces regeneration. Water baptism follows personal faith and pictures identification with Christ; the Spirit gives new life.
Jesus directed Nicodemus to the Son of Man who would be lifted up. God loved the world and gave His Son so that whoever believes in Him should have everlasting life. The person who refuses Him remains condemned. Membership in a respected religious group could not settle Nicodemus’ standing before God, and it cannot settle ours.
Later, Nicodemus asked whether the Law judged a man without first hearing him. At Jesus’ burial, he brought costly spices and helped Joseph of Arimathea care for the body. I see evidence of growing courage and attachment to Jesus in those actions. John records them without an explicit confession of faith or a conversion scene, so I would not supply one.
Other passages show Pharisees acting differently from the hostile leaders. In Luke 13, some warned Jesus that Herod wanted to kill Him. After the resurrection, Gamaliel urged the council to leave the apostles alone rather than risk fighting against God. Those actions deserve to be recognized, though neither a warning nor wise counsel by itself establishes saving faith.
Later, at the Jerusalem council, Acts 15 identifies some Pharisees explicitly as believers. Their presence in the church did not mean every inherited assumption had been corrected (Acts 15:1-11).
But some of the sect of the Pharisees who believed rose up, saying, “It is necessary to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses.” Now the apostles and elders came together to consider this matter. And when there had been much dispute, Peter rose up and said to them: “Men and brethren, you know that a good while ago God chose among us, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. So God, who knows the heart, acknowledged them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He did to us, and made no distinction between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. Now therefore, why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved in the same manner as they.”
These believing Pharisees still wanted Gentiles circumcised and commanded to keep the Law of Moses. The dispute had begun with a claim that circumcision was necessary for salvation, so this was a serious error. Peter answered by pointing to what God had already done: He had given the Gentiles the Holy Spirit and purified their hearts by faith. They did not need to become Jews before belonging to Christ. Jew and Gentile receive salvation through the same grace.
Scripture calls these Pharisees believers while recording their need for correction. Conversion does not instantly remove every long-held assumption. We must confront an error that burdens people and misrepresents salvation without assuming that every believer who needs correction has never known Christ.
In Acts 23, Paul identified himself with the Pharisees’ belief in resurrection before a divided council. Pharisaic scribes then said they found no evil in him. He could acknowledge that agreement truthfully without endorsing everything the movement taught. I do not need to deny what someone gets right to correct what he gets wrong.
The Woes Warn of Final Judgment, Not Mere Religious Failure
The fact that some Pharisees responded differently does not lessen the guilt of those who sought Jesus’ death. John 11 describes chief priests and Pharisees calling a council after He raised Lazarus. They acknowledged His many signs but feared that widespread belief would bring Roman intervention against their place and nation. The largely Sadducean chief-priestly establishment and Pharisaic leaders cooperated against Him despite their disagreements.
Caiaphas argued that one man should die rather than let the nation perish. John explains that his words announced more than he intended: Jesus would die for the nation and gather God’s scattered children. That saving purpose did not excuse the men who chose murder. The plot was already in place when Jesus entered Jerusalem for His final week. Matthew records His public rebuke of the scribes and Pharisees during the confrontations that followed.
The received text includes Matthew 23:14 and therefore eight woe statements. The familiar count of seven follows critical editions that omit that verse. These studies follow the Textus Receptus, the received Greek text, and its predominantly Byzantine tradition, so I retain the verse and count eight. I do not accept the Alexandrian omission as a reason to remove that warning (Matthew 23:1-39).
“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. Therefore you will receive greater condemnation. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.”
Jesus warned the crowds and His disciples not to imitate what these teachers did. Moses’ seat referred to their role in teaching the Law. His instruction to heed them could not mean accepting every tradition they promoted, since He had already rejected traditions that canceled God’s commands. His hearers were to obey what truly came from Moses without copying teachers who taught God’s commands but failed to obey them.
Jesus named concrete abuses. These leaders hindered people from entering the kingdom, exploited widows while making long prayers, and trained converts in the same corrupt religion. Their rules about oaths let them evade obligations. They carefully tithed small herbs while neglecting justice, mercy, and faith. Jesus did not tell them to stop tithing. He required them to fulfill those duties without neglecting the weightier commands.
They also sought honor through prominent seats, greetings, and religious titles. Phylacteries were small containers holding Scripture passages, worn on the body. Making them broad turned an expression of devotion into a conspicuous display. Jesus called His disciples to serve one another, rather than use religious position to place themselves above their brothers.
The dirty cup and whitewashed tomb explain why improving their appearance could not solve the problem. The outside looked respectable while greed, self-indulgence, and lawlessness remained within. When Jesus calls someone a “hypocrite” here, He exposes a deceptive religious performance, not simply the failures every believer has to fight. Honoring dead prophets could not excuse rejecting God’s messengers in their own generation.
Jesus’ severity did not mean He was unwilling to receive them. He lamented that He had wanted to gather Jerusalem’s children, but they were unwilling. I understand His desire as sincere and their refusal as culpable. His words do not describe an invitation people were never permitted to accept, nor do they allow us to replace their responsibility with irresistible grace or fatalism.
His question about escaping “the condemnation of hell” was equally serious. The word translated “hell” is Gehenna, a name derived from the Valley of Hinnom and used here for final judgment. Jesus was warning of more than public embarrassment. Religious standing could not protect these leaders from the judgment of the Messiah they rejected.
Unbelievers will be raised and judged at the Great White Throne. The Lake of Fire is Gehenna and the second death, the final, irreversible destruction of the human body and soul. Human beings have no independent immortality, so their conscious existence between death and resurrection does not mean God must keep them conscious in torment forever. Revelation 20:10 explicitly describes endless torment for the devil, the beast, and the false prophet.
John’s earlier warning about chaff consumed by unquenchable fire points to that final destruction. No one can extinguish the fire or prevent it from completing God’s judgment. The word does not require an indestructible human soul kept alive endlessly. John and Jesus both warned that religious privilege cannot shelter someone who finally refuses the Savior.
Jesus nevertheless went willingly to the death these leaders sought. His sinless perfection made Him the perfect sacrifice for our sins, and He voluntarily gave Himself to be slain. Wicked men inflicted the real torture and death He endured. His shed blood and death completed His saving sacrifice before His burial, and He then rose bodily. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath upon His beloved Son. Father and Son remained united in the redemption Jesus accomplished.
Christ died for the whole world, so God’s offer of salvation is genuine for every person, though people can resist and reject Him. Everyone who repents and believes receives forgiveness and eternal life. Belonging to the Pharisees placed no one beyond that mercy. The unbelieving leaders were responsible for refusing the Light, and Paul’s conversion shows how fully Christ could forgive even a determined persecutor.
Paul Shows How Christians Must Leave Self-Righteousness Behind
But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Paul knew Pharisaic life from within. He could point to his ancestry, circumcision, training, and zeal. Describing himself as blameless by the Law did not mean that he had been sinless before God. That same man, with an impressive religious record, had persecuted Christ’s church (Philippians 3:1-11).
After meeting Jesus, Paul stopped using those things as grounds for acceptance by God. He counted them as loss so that he might gain Christ and receive the righteousness God gives through faith. He wanted to know Christ, share in His sufferings, and attain the resurrection. He continued to obey God, but could no longer present his obedience as a claim on God’s favor.
I need to examine my confidence just as honestly. Teaching sound doctrine and behaving respectably in public cannot compensate for hidden greed, lust, bitterness, or deceit. Calling myself a Christian does not establish that I have been born again. Genuine new life should become evident in my conduct. That evidence neither earns nor keeps salvation, and genuine conversion does not make a believer sinless. When someone repents, we should welcome him rather than resent Christ’s mercy. His past alone gives us no reason to withhold fellowship where Christ has cleansed him.
Teachers bear particular responsibility for those who listen to them. We must not burden people with demands we refuse to bear ourselves, manipulate vulnerable believers, or use titles and attention to secure a privileged place. Sound teaching helps people understand Scripture and trust Christ, so that justice and mercy become evident in their lives. The teacher’s work is to serve those people faithfully.
At the same time, a congregation should not use “Pharisee” to silence someone who raises a biblical concern. We need to examine the passage together. Scripture may command the practice directly, or a sound inference may support it. An inherited habit does not become a divine command through religious language, and an actual command does not become optional because someone attaches an insulting label to the person defending it.
My Final Thoughts
The Pharisees confessed several biblical truths, and some received Christ. The leaders Jesus rebuked were not condemned for caring too much about obedience. They used religion to protect their standing, excused what God condemned, and resisted the Messiah before them. I need to examine those same dangers in my own conduct rather than congratulate myself for recognizing them in someone else.
We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Our obedience should grow from the life He gives, our traditions must remain subject to Scripture, and another sinner’s repentance should bring us joy. Correct doctrine and disciplined habits are good, but neither can replace the new birth or give us grounds for confidence apart from Christ.