Quotes & Sayings About Pharisees

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the akingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: 21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the akingdom of God bis cwithin you. — Anonymous

It is interesting that Jesus never condemned short prayers, but there is more than one place where Jesus actually condemned the pharisees for making pretentious long prayers. — Paul Silway

My daughter, I see more Pharisees among Christians than there were around Pilate. — Margaret Of Cortona

The grand obstacle to the salvation of the scribes and Pharisees was their pride, vanity and self-love. They lived on each other's praise. If they had acknowledged Christ as the only good teacher, they must have given up the good opinion of the multitude; and they chose rather to lose their souls than to forfeit their reputation among men! — Adam Clarke

Pharisees lived "according to the strictest party of . . . religion."3 The name itself is probably derived from the root "to separate." Pharisaism was essentially a conservative "holiness movement." So — Sinclair B. Ferguson

So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. — Anonymous

The good repent on knowing their sin; the evil become angry when discovered. Ignorance is not the cause of evil, as Plato held; neither is education the answer to the removal of evil. These men had an intellect as well as a will; knowledge as well as intention. Truth can be known and hated; Goodness can be known and crucified. The Hour was approaching, and for the moment the fear of the people deterred the Pharisees. Violence could not be triggered against Him until He would say, 'This is your Hour. — Fulton J. Sheen

[On refusing to be silenced:] I do not pretend to be John the Baptist rebuking the Pharisees. I do not claim to be Nathan upbraiding David. I aspire only to be Balaam's ass, castigating his master. — Katharina Zell

Lincoln understood the importance, as one delegate put it, of integrating all the elements of the Republican party - including the impracticable, the Pharisees, the better-than-thou declaimers, the long-haired men and the short-haired women. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

The sabbath was made for men. But man now behaves like the Pharisees and insists that he is made for all the things - science , nation , money, religion, schools - which were really made for him. Why? Because he is so little aware of his own interests as a human being that he feels irresistibly tempted to sacrifice himself to these idols. There is no remedy except to become aware of one's interest as a human being , and , having become aware , to learn to act on that awareness. Which means learning to use the self and learning to direct the mind. It's almost wearisome, the way one always comes back to the same point. Wouldn't it be nice , for a change , if there were another way out of our difficulties! A short cut. A method requiring no greater personal effort than recording a vote or ordering some " enemy of society" to be shot. A salvation from outside, like a does of calomel. — Aldous Huxley

Show me the person ready to step from any, let it be the narrowest, sect of Christian Pharisees into a freer and holier air, and I shall look to find in that person the one of that sect who, in the midst of its darkness and selfish worldliness, mistaken for holiness, has been living a life more obedient than the rest. — George MacDonald

Do you ever wonder why a battered wife stays with her husband? Why people continue to spend money they don't have even though they know they are deeply in debt? Why some keep jamming food in their mouths when they're already overweight? Why do people stay in bad relationships? Why are some people still racist? Why do people still drink and drive? You'd think the response to all these things would be obvious and cause them to scream, "Duh, of course I need to change this." Why do we keep doing church the same way even when we know it's in critical decline? Why do paid church leaders spend so much time preparing for a 90-minute service for Christians who have heard it all before? Why do we still call our message the good news when it clearly seems to be bad news or no news to Sojourners? Why do we think Pharisees are only found in the Bible? Why is returning to a simpler form of ancient church so hard to grasp? — Hugh Halter

One of the reactions to Jesus was the confession, first voiced by the leader of the Twelve, Peter, that "You are the Messiah" (Mark 8:29), the eagerly awaited "anointed of the Lord" who would bring deliverance to the Jewish people. It was a confession welcomed by many, doubted by others, and feared by still others in positions of power. Jesus' popularity provoked jealousy and opposition from some Pharisees and a range of sentiments from uneasiness to profound disturbance among the political leaders. — Everett Ferguson

The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose; and the text of Scripture which he now most commonly quotes is, "The Kingdom of heaven is within you." That text has been the stay and support of more Pharisees and prigs and self-righteous spiritual bullies than all the dogmas in creation; it has served to identify self-satisfaction with the peace that passes all understanding. And the text to be quoted in answer to it is that which declares that no man can receive the kingdom except as a little child. What we are to have inside is a childlike spirit; but the childlike spirit is not entirely concerned about what is inside. It is the first mark of possessing it that one is interested in what is outside. The most childlike thing about a child is his curiosity and his appetite and his power of wonder at the world. We might almost say that the whole advantage of having the kingdom within is that we look for it somewhere else. — G.K. Chesterton

If any kind of obedience, regardless of what motivates it, is what God is after, He would have showcased the Pharisees and exhorted all of us to follow their lead, to imitate them. But He didn't. Jesus called them 'whitewashed tombs'
clean on the outside, dead on the inside. — Tullian Tchividjian

I grew up fundamentalist, evangelical, Protestant. Those are my roots, and they are good roots. But it means the Pharisees are my people. I grew up with an image of God that was not helpful
largely the face of my father expanded. — William P. Young

Who is telling us about the false self today? Who is even equipped tell us? Many clergy have not figured this out for themselves, since even ministry can be a career decision or an attraction to "religion" more than the result of an encounter with God or themselves. Formal religious status can maintain the false self rather effectively, especially if there are a lot of social payoffs like special respect, titles, salaries, a good self image, or nice costumes. It is no accident that the religious "Pharisees" became the symbolic bad guys in the Jesus story. — Richard Rohr

The fierce words of Jesus addressed to the Pharisees of His day stretch across the bands of time. Today they are directed not only to fallen televangelists but to each of us. We miss Jesus' point entirely when we use His words as weapons against others. They are to be taken personally by each of us. This is the form and shape of Christian Pharisaism in our time. Hypocrisy is not hte prerogative of people in high places. The most impoverished among us is capable of it. Hypocrisy is the natural expression of what is meanest in us all. — Brennan Manning

The Holy Spirit did not go into such detail about the Pharisees in the New Testament just so we could understand a group unique to the first century. Pharisaism is a poisonous weed that grows in every garden of orthodox religion. Pharisaism is every bit the threat to the orthodox today that it was then. — J.D. Greear

Many great religions, Pagan and Christian, have insisted on wine. Only one, I think, has insisted on Soap. You will find it in the New Testament attributed to the Pharisees. — G.K. Chesterton

A pharisee is hard on others and easy on himself, but a spiritual man is easy on others and hard on himself. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

Religion and its defenders have always been the most insidious enemy of the true faith precisely because they are not glaring opponents; they are impostors. A raving pagan is easier to dismiss than an elder in your church. Before Jesus came along, the Pharisees ran the show. Everybody took what they said as gospel - even though it didn't sound like good news at all. But we wrestle not against flesh and blood. The Pharisees and their brethren down through the ages have merely acted - unknowingly, for the most part - as puppets, the mouthpiece of the Enemy. — John Eldredge

When we reduce Christianity to a negative system where fasting becomes more sacred than feasting, law wins out over grace, and correct theology becomes more important than divine encounter, we in effect become the modern-day Pharisees - whose ministry Jesus was set against. — Debra Hirsch

The Bible in itself is not the Word of God. The Word of God is a person. Neither does the Bible have life, power or light in itself any more than did the Jewish Torach. These attributes may be ascribed to the Bible only by virtue of its relationship to Him who is Word, Life, Power and Light. Life is not in the book, as the Pharisees supposed, but only in the Man of the book . — Robert D. Brinsmead

Often God takes what is intended as a criticism and turns it into a compliment. The Pharisees said of Jesus, "This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them" (Luke 15:2). Christ's enemies meant it as an accusation; we take it as an accolade! — Jerry Vines

A Pharisee is someone who is virtuous out of obedience to the Great Beast. — Simone Weil

We must stop using the Bible as though it were a potpourri of inerrant proof-texts by which we can bring people into bondage to our religious traditions ... We must no longer use the Bible as the Pharisees used the Torah when they gave it absolute and final status. Christian biblicism is no different from Jewish legalism. It is the old way of the letter, not the new way of the Spirit. — Robert D. Brinsmead

The Pharisees had an ethic of avoidance, and Jesus had an ethic of involvement. — Mark Buchanan

One of the penalties of sin is our acceptance of it. It is not only God who punishes for sin, but sin establishes itself in the sinner and takes its toll. No struggling or praying will enable you to stop doing certain things, and the penalty of sin is that you gradually get used to it, until you finally come to the place where you no longer even realize that it is sin. No power, except the power that comes from being filled with the Holy Spirit, can change or prevent the inherent consequences of sin. "If we walk in the light as He is in the light ... " (1 John 1:7). For many of us, walking in the light means walking according to the standard we have set up for another person. The deadliest attitude of the Pharisees that we exhibit today is not hypocrisy but that which comes from unconsciously living a lie. — Oswald Chambers

If God cared only about religious activities, then the Pharisees would have been heroes of the faith. — Francis Chan

Sooner mayest thou trust thy pocket to a pickpocket than give loyal friendship to the man who boasts of eyes to the heart never mounts in dew! Only when man weeps he should be alone, not because tears are weak, but they should be secret. Tears are akin to prayer,
Pharisees parade prayers, imposters parade tears. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

It is a strange story, the story of Jesus. To the Jews, it is not the story of Israel's redemption but some odd detour. For Christians, though, the story of Jesus is the final chapter of the story of Israel. For Christians, all that Israel hopes for - redemption from enemies, forgiveness of sins, triumph and exaltation, a restoration of Eden, the conversion of the nations, the earth filled with the glory of Israel's God - all of it comes to pass through Jesus. Not through the sword of Zealots, or the rigid purity of the Pharisees, or the political compromises of the Sadducees, or the withdrawal of the Essenes. Israel's story is carried to its conclusion by a different sort of Jew entirely, a different sort of holiness, a different story-line, a story-line of compassion, service, suffering, death. And, over all and transforming all, resurrection. For Jesus is risen. He is risen indeed. — Peter J. Leithart

This man welcomes sinners and eats with them," Jesus confronted the Pharisees and scribes not only with the return of the prodigal son, but also with the resentful elder son. It must have come as a shock to these dutiful religious people. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

it is extraordinary how few Christians make any concerted effort to keep the commandment of sabbath rest. We have somehow twisted Jesus' pithy rebuke of the Pharisees, "The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath" (Mark 2:27) from a warning against legalism into a license for neglect. We seem to forget that in the very next breath Jesus asserts, "so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath" (v. 28), thus asserting his lordship over - not exemption from or indifference to - this very good gift from God to his image bearers. — Andy Crouch

Whenever faith seems an entitlement, or a measuring rod, we cast our lots with the Pharisees and grace softly slips away. — Philip Yancey

I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy. To live your life is not as simple as to cross a field. — Boris Pasternak

LUKE 14. One Sabbath, p when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were q watching him carefully. 2. And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. 3. And Jesus responded to r the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, s "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?" 4. But they remained silent. Then he took him and healed him and sent him away. 5. And he said to them, t "Which of you, having a son [1] or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?" 6. u And they could not reply to these things. — Anonymous

The Pharisees weren't teachable; you couldn't tell them anything. So many people are like that; they profess Christ but don't want to hear all that true Christianity demands. The call to self-denial, they reject. They hold high their own ideas, goals, and designs. They want to go their way, and when you try to teach the right way instead, they don't want to hear it. It's not because they're unteachable Christians; it's because they're sham Christians. The one who digs deep empties himself of self-righteousness and self-sufficiency, casts aside his own visions and experiences, and builds on the Word of God for God's glory and not his own. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

We Protestants automatically assume that the Pharisees are the Catholics. They are the self-righteous people who have made Christianity a form of legalistic religion, thereby destroying the free grace of the Gospel. We Protestants are the tax collectors, knowing that we are sinners and that our lives depend upon God's free grace. — Stanley Hauerwas

Jesus teaches that we must go beyond the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees (Matt. 5:20). Yet we need to see that their righteousness was no small thing. They were committed to following God in a way that many of us are not prepared to do. One factor, however, was always central to their righteousness: externalism. Their righteousness consisted in control over externals, often including the manipulation of others. The extent to which we have gone beyond the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees is seen in how much our lives demonstrate the internal work of God upon the heart. To be sure, this will have external results, but the work will be internal. It is easy in our zeal for the Spiritual Discplines to turn them into the external righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. — Richard J. Foster

In answer, the news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen ... Lear goes berserk on a heath but comes out of it for a few brief hours every inch a king. Zaccheus climbs up a sycamore tree a crook and climbs down a saint. Paul sets out a hatchet man for the Pharisees and comes back a fool for Christ. — Frederick Buechner

To babble unintelligible prayers, to read masses, to recite rosaries, to practice ceremonies of religious worship empty of meaning, this is the conduct of the dead. Man tries to turn completely into an object, to subject himself entirely to the rule of what is alien. Such service is called devoutness. PHARISEES! — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

We cannot always judge man for only one part of his attitude. If we did so, we would be like the Pharisees in whose eyes Jesus was seen as bad, because He did not respect their rules about the Sabbath. They closed their eyes entirely to what would have lovable in Jesus, even in their sight. — Richard Wurmbrand

Curiously, the righteous Pharisees had little historical impact, save for a brief time in a remote corner of the Roman Empire. But Jesus' disciples - an ornery, undependable, and hopelessly flawed group of men - became drunk with the power of a gospel that offered free forgiveness to the worst sinners and traitors. Those men managed to change the world. — Philip Yancey

Jesus did not define the kingdom as being in the hearts of the Pharisees or anyone else. The kingdom is an objective reality when the King is present. — Dr. J. Otis Yoder

We miss Jesus' point entirely when we use His words as weapons against others. — Brennan Manning

The sentiments attributed to Christ are in the Old Testament. They were familiar in the Jewish schools and to all the Pharisees, long before the time of Christ, as they were familiar in all the civilizations of the earth - Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian, Greek, and Hindu. — Joseph McCabe

[Jews are] murderers of the Lord, assassins of the prophets, rebels against God, God haters, ... advocates of the devil, race of vipers, slanderers, calumniators, dark-minded people, leaven of the Pharisees, sanhedrin of demons, sinners, wicked men, stoners, and haters of righteousness. — Gregory Of Nyssa

It is, once again, fatally easy to misunderstand, to draw the lines wrong, to see "our present system" as automatically good, so that anyone who disturbs it - as Jesus was disturbing the system of the scribes and Pharisees - must be "satanic," must be from the dark side. That road leads to the "war of the sons of light against the sons of darkness," as at Qumran: the overbright light of an overrealized eschatology, enabling "us" to see ourselves as "children of light," casting a surreal, overdramatized shadow over "them," the "children of darkness. — N. T. Wright

Yet the order of the acts is planned And the end of the way inescapable. I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy. — Boris Pasternak

Levi celebrates the Pharisees scowl. — Jonah Books

We must remember that the people of all the States are entitled to all the privileges and immunities of the citizen of the several States. We should bear this in mind, and act in such a way as to say nothing insulting or irritating. I would inculcate this idea, so that we may not, like Pharisees, set ourselves up to be better than other people. — Abraham Lincoln

About Mahatma Gandhi: Great in taking decisions, great in executing them, Mahatma Gandhi was incomparably great in the last stand which he made on behalf of his country. He is undoubtedly one of the greatest men the world has ever seen. The world hath need of him, and if he is mocked and jeered at by "the people of importance," "the people with a stake in this country," - the Scribes and Pharisees of the days of Christ - he will be gratefully remembered, now and always, by a nation which he led from victory to victory. — Chittaranjan Das

There arose a riot among the Jews and Scribes and Pharisees, saying that the whole people was in danger of looking for Jesus as the Christ. So they assembled, and said to James, 'We beseech you to restrain the people, who are going astray after Jesus as though he were the Christ. — Robert H. Eisenman

Grace is loving people for who they are, where they are. It's loving people *before* they change, not just *after* they change. And that grace is the difference between holy and holier-than-thou. Holiness, in its purest form, is irresistible. That's why sinners couldn't be kept away from Jesus. Hypocrisy has the opposite effect. It's as repulsive to the irreligious as the Pharisees' religiosity was to Jesus. — Mark Batterson

Ignorance is, however, an evil; for this poor man was much tantalized by the Pharisees, and was quite unable to cope with them. It is good to be able to answer gainsayers; but we cannot do so if we know not the Lord Jesus clearly and with understanding. The cure of his ignorance, however, soon followed the cure of his infirmity, for he was visited by the Lord in the temple; and after that gracious manifestation, he was found testifying that "it was Jesus who had made him whole." Lord, if thou hast saved me, show me thyself, that I may declare thee to the sons of men. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The Pharisees deliberately avoided the Late form of Biblical Hebrew (LBH), which is the language of the Bible written after the exile, presenting their teaching in the language of the spoken vernacular. — Angel Saenz-Badillos

Pray like it depends on God and work like it depends on you." But there are others, such as, "Criticize by creating," "Thou shalt offend Pharisees," and "Catch people doing something right. — Mark Batterson

I want to say to all you Scribes, Pharisees, heresy hunters, all of you that are going around pickin' little bits of doctrinal error out of everybody's eyes and dividin' the Body of Christ ... get out of God's way, stop blockin' God's bridges, or God's goin' to shoot you if I don't ... let Him sort out all this doctrinal doodoo! ... I refuse to argue any longer with any of you out there! Don't even call me if you want to argue ... Get out of my life! I don't want to talk to you ... I don't want to see your ugly face! — Paul Crouch

Too often, however, we "honor" God by creating our own law, making ourselves more pious than Him. God says, "Don't eat," and we say, "Don't touch." God says, "Give ten percent," and we say, "Give twenty
percent." Like the Pharisees before us, we add to God's law, then expect Him to pat us on the back. This problem of seeking a piety greater than God's, however, gets no uglier than when we apply it to ourselves. — R.C. Sproul Jr.

Heard as a moralist's diatribe, the Sermon on the Mount is an impossible-to-bear judgment. Read as a series of mandates for Jesus' disciples, it is an impossible-to-attain standard. Heard as heaven's dream for the creatures made in God's own image, however, the sermon becomes an impossible-to-wait-for world of Eden restored. Read as the Heavenly Father's reality in which we participate as his children by being transformed into the likeness of the one Perfect Son, it is our new-creation identity dawning on us and forming in our daily life habits. This is a righteousness that both fulfills the Law and the Prophets and exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. — Rubel Shelly

On the Eighth Day Adam Slept Alone

It must have been
the eighth day.

A day the scribes and Pharisees conveniently
left out.

Adam was either inspecting goats
or naming the birds

when something pinched
my side.

I had to stop pruning the tree of knowledge
to catch my breath.

God had taken a long weekend.

At first I thought the solitude of gardening
was going to my head.

Was it loneliness?
An omen? A vision?

For a moment I thought I would
ascend.

Then I realized it was just a rib
missing.

How you found your way in
along the banks of the third river

I will never know
but I still shiver to recall

how perfectly your fingers
fell into place

along the ridges
of my ribcage.

Go ahead, Love,
take every last bone.

Make of me
what you will. — Nancy Boutilier

My work with teenagers has convinced me that one of the main reasons teenagers are not excited by the gospel is that they do not think they need it. Many parents have successfully raised self-righteous little Pharisees. When they look at themselves, they do not see a sinner in desperate need, so they are not grateful for a Savior. Sadly, the same is true of many of their parents. — Timothy D. Lane

You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. It's staggering how you jump straight the hell into the heart of a matter. I'm goosebumps all over ... By God, you inspire me. You inflame me, Bessie. You know what you've done? Do you realize what you've done? You've given this whole goddam issue a fresh, new, Biblical slant. I wrote four papers in college on the Crucifixion - five, really - and every one of them worried me half crazy because I thought something was missing. Now I know what it was. Now it's clear to me. I see Christ in an entirely different light. His unhealthy fanaticism. His rudeness to those nice, sane, conservative, tax-paying Pharisees. Oh, this is exciting! In your simple, straightforward bigoted way, Bessie, you've sounded the missing keynote of the whole New Testament. Improper diet. Christ lived on cheeseburgers and Cokes. For all we know he probably fed the mult - — J.D. Salinger

He speaks to the poor, the powerless, and he mocks the rich and powerful. He isn't the Messiah the Pharisees are looking for. — Stephanie Landsem

You don't obey your way into faith (the Pharisees proved that); you believe your way into obedience. — Bob Sorge

The pharisees minded what God spoke, but not what He intended. They were busy in the outward work of the hand, but incurious of the affections and choice of the heart. So God was served in the letter, they did not much inquire into His purpose; and therefore they were curious to wash their hands, but cared not to purify their hearts. — Jeremy Taylor

you were to ask Christians around the world what God wants from the people he has saved, most would probably answer "obedience." There is great truth in that answer, but it is not enough. If the sovereign God's primary goal in sanctifying believers is simply to make us more holy, it is hard to explain why most of us make only "small beginnings" on the road to personal holiness in this life, as the Heidelberg Catechism puts it (see Catechism Q. 113). In reality, God wants something much more precious in our lives than mere outward conformity to his will. After all, obedience is tricky business and can be confusing to us. We can be obedient outwardly while sinning wildly on the inside, as the example of the Pharisees makes clear. In fact, many of my worst sins have been committed in the context of my best obedience. — Barbara R. Duguid

As far as the Pharisees were concerned, if you gave a dish to the poor it became unclean, because the poor were the great unwashed who didn't fulfill ceremonial washing. But Jesus says the dish becomes clean because it expresses love. — Tim Chester

The Pharisees lacked - and what we Christians have all too often lacked - is grace. We must never let our theological disagreements get in the way of showing God's unconditional, overpowering grace to everyone we meet. — Justin Lee

We must not forget that people came to Christ from every kind of background and that the early Christian community included more than a few priests and former Pharisees. — Pope Benedict XVI

Arguments over Scriptures held the same power and importance as the way they dressed, the rituals they followed for prayer and for eating. All of this was intended to divide. To separate them from the rest. Either a person was part of their exclusive group or he was an outcast. Others might call themselves Judeans. They might consider themselves the Chosen, the followers of the One True God. But if politics or habits or interpretation of the Holy Book did not follow that of the Pharisees, they were doomed. — Janette Oke

If I had to choose between putting a saloon or a liberal church on a corner, I'd choose the saloon every time. People who drink up the pay check in the saloon are less likely to become Pharisees, thinking that they don't need the Great Physician, than those who weekly swill the soporific doctrine of man's goodness. — Jay Adams

We need both reverence and obedience. If we worship but do not walk in obedience and discipline, we are emotional, lacking self-control and godly character. If we obey God's commandments but are not true worshipers, we become religious and judgmental. As the Pharisees in Jesus' day, we may miss the real meaning and purpose, even God Himself. — Amy Layne Litzelman

Men ... who say that there is no one in our times and in our midst who is able to keep the Gospel commandments and become like the holy Fathers? To them the Master rightly says with a loud voice, 'Woe to you scribes and Pharisees (Mt. 23:13)! Woe to you, blind guides of the blind (Mt. 23:16), because you do not enter into the kingdom, and you hinder those who wish to enter' (Mt. 23:13). — Symeon The New Theologian

A spoiled saint, a Pharisee, an inquisitor, or a magician, makes better sport to Hell than a mere common tyrant or debauchee. — C.S. Lewis

If you are not drawing fire from both Pharisees and Sadducees, you are probably saying something other than what Jesus said. And if your message is not drawing both tax collectors (Roman collaborators) and zealots (anti-Roman insurrectionists) to repentance, you are probably speaking with a different voice than does he. Jesus wasn't inconsistent. He saw the Roman Empire, despite all its pretensions to preeminence both in its own mind and in the mind of its opponents, as a temporary obstacle, not the defining point of his agenda. We stand and we speak, with reconciliation in view. We see, therefore, even our most passionate critic not as an argument to be vaporized but as a neighbor to be evangelized. This doesn't mean that we back down one iota from the truth. But we proclaim the whole gospel of truth and grace, never backing down from either. That means taking seriously the arguments of our opponents, not merely caricatures of those arguments. — Russell D. Moore

But the disciple had the advantage over the Pharisee in that his doing of the law is in fact perfect. How is such a thing possible? Because between the disciples and the law stands one who has perfectly fulfilled it, on with whom they live in communion ... Jesus not only possesses this righteousness, but is himself the personal embodiment of it. He is the righteousness of the disciples ... This is where the righteousness of the disciple exceeds that of the Pharisees; it is grounded solely upon the call to fellowship with him who alone fulfills the law. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Our marks of piety can actually be evidences of impiety. When we major in minors and blow insignificant trifles out of proportion, we imitate the Pharisees. When we make dancing and movies the test of spirituality, we are guilty of substituting a cheap morality for a genuine one. We do these things to obscure the deeper issues of righteousness. Anyone can avoid dancing or going to movies. These requ ire no great effort of moral courage. What is difficult is to control the tongue, to act with integrity, to reveal the fruit of the Spirit. — R.C. Sproul

When we imagine Jesus' teaching in his own time and place, W ca we cannot use profiles of teachers from our own world to understand the nature of his work. Our culture is heir to the Greek tradition, where abstract reasoning and verbal prowess are the measure of the teacher. Jesus' world was different. He communicated through word pictures, dramatic actions, metaphors, and stories. Rather than lecture about religious corruption, Jesus refers to the Pharisees as "whitewashed tombs." Rather than outline the failings of the temple, he curses a fig tree. This means that we should think of Jesus as a "metaphorical theologian" for whom drama, humor, and storytelling were all a part of his method. — Gary M. Burge

Self-righteousness is unavoidable. You can either be a self-righteous Pharisee where you think you are better than everyone else or you can be a self-righteous pagan who thinks you are better than the Pharisee. If you are a self-righteous person, I could become very self-righteous thinking that you're self-righteous and you think you're so good but I know you're bad. I know I'm bad so that makes me better than you. — Tullian Tchividjian

The banner waved by the religious leaders reads; do not upset my world! Jesus is one who comes to call an about face and reverse the curse. Jesus call is not half way or three quarters; it is a complete and utter abandonment to his Lordship. Will the Pharisees and Herodians submit to Jesus Lordship? — Jonah Books

Well, Espen, you're no drug addict, so why do you beg?"
"Because it's my mission to be mirror for mankind so that they can see which actions are great and which are small."
"And which are great?"
Espen sighed in despair, as though weary of repeating the obvious. "Charity. Sharing and helping your neighbor. The Bible deals with nothing else. In fact, you have to search extremely hard to find anything about sex before marriage, abortion, homosexuality, or a woman's right to speak in public. But, of course, it is easier for Pharisees to talk aloud about subordinate clauses than to describe and perform the great actions the Bible leaves us in no doubt about: You have to give half of what you own to someone who has nothing. Thousands of people are dying every day without hearing the words of God because these Christians will not let go of their earthly goods. I'm giving them a chance to reflect. — Jo Nesbo

To preach the Bible as 'the handbook for life,' or as the answer to every question, rather than as the revelation of Christ, is to turn the Bible into an entirely different book. This is how the Pharisees approached Scripture, as we can see clearly from the questions they asked Jesus. For the Pharisees, the Scriptures were a source of trivia for life's dilemmas. — Michael Horton

But thus I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. They are people of a low sort and stock; the hangmen and the bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey. And when they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had - power. — Friedrich Nietzsche

There exits within the ecclesia and among its citizens a phenomena I refer to as 'Spiritual Correctness'. Essentially it says: 'Don't say anything that could offend anyone, focus on what is right with the 'church' and its leadership, don't be critical, speak the truth in 'love', promote the status quo, don't make 'waves', don't call anyone 'out', respect 'authority', don't expose 'wrong-doing', cover those who 'spiritually abuse' others, keep it 'secret' within our family; don't ask any hard questions. Sounds exactly like the textbook definition of a highly dysfunctional family system. The only 'system' and its enablers that Jesus spoke out against vehemently was the religious system of His day and its leadership."

~R. Alan Woods [2013] — R. Alan Woods

Pharisees were the upstanding "conservative evangelical pastors" of their day, strongly convinced of the inerrancy of Scripture and its sufficiency for guidance in every area of life, if only it could be properly interpreted.69 Yet it is precisely such an environment in which a healthy perspective on the Bible can easily give way to legalism. — Craig L. Blomberg

Will the desire to maintain power and our level of comfort in our religious institutions equal the zeal of the Pharisees and Herodians who plotted to kill Jesus? — Jonah Books

The things closest to the heart of God are often the most offensive to the Pharisees. — Craig Groeschel

God does not demand that every man attain to what is theoretically highest and best. It is better to be a good street sweeper than a bad writer, better to be a good bartender than a bad doctor, and the repentant thief who died with Jesus on Calvary was far more perfect than the holy ones who had Him nailed to the cross. And yet, abstractly speaking, what is more holy than the priesthood and less holy than the state of a criminal? The dying thief had, perhaps, disobeyed the will of God in many things: but in the most important event of his life he listened and obeyed. The Pharisees had kept the law to the letter and had spent their lives in the pursuit of a most scrupulous perfection. But they were so intent upon perfection as an abstraction that when God manifested His will and His perfection in a concrete and definite way they had no choice but to reject it. — Thomas Merton

If you are not offending some Pharisees, you are not being effective. — Craig Groeschel

Churches that are filled with self-righteous, exclusive, insecure, angry, moralistic people are extremely unattractive. Their public pronouncements are often highly judgmental, while internally such churches experience many bitter conflicts, splits, and divisions. When one of their leaders has a moral lapse, the churches either rationalize it and denounce the leader's critics, or else they scapegoat him. Millions of people raised in or near these kinds of churches reject Christianity at an early age or in college largely because of their experience. For the rest of their lives, then, they are inoculated against Christianity. If you are a person who has been disillusioned by such churches, anytime anyone recommends Christianity to you, you assume they are calling you to adopt "religion." Pharisees and their unattractive lives leave many people confused about the real nature of Christianity. — Timothy Keller

Jesus keeps the Sabbath with an eye to the "weightier matters of the law," which are justice, mercy, and truth. Jesus keeps the Sabbath as an adult. Children are very worried about keeping the rules, and forcing other people to keep the rules. But children might keep rules so rigidly that they actually violate the rules. That's how the Pharisees keep the law. They are childish law keepers. Jesus is a mature law-keeper, and He calls His disciples to keep the law in the same way. — Peter J. Leithart

If the moderns really want a simple religion of love, they must look for it in the Athanasian Creed. The truth is that the trumpet of true Christianity, the challenge of the charities and simplicities of Bethlehem or Christmas Day never rang out more arrestingly and unmistakably than in the defiance of Athanasius to the cold compromise of the Arians. It was emphatically he who really was fighting for a God of Love against a God of colourless and remote cosmic control; the God of the stoics and the agnostics. It was emphatically he who was fighting for the Holy Child against the grey deity of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He was fighting for that very balance of beautiful interdependence and intimacy, in the very Trinity of the Divine Nature, that draws our hearts to the Trinity of the Holy Family. His dogma, if the phrase be not misunderstood, turns even God into a Holy Family. — G.K. Chesterton

Tsars and slaves, the intelligent and the obtuse, publicans and pharisees all have an identical legal and moral right to honor the memory of the deceased as they see fit, without regard for anyone else's opinion and without the fear of hindering one another. — Anton Chekhov

the Temple was rebuilt, but by then the religion of Israel had been marked forever by the piety of the exile. Alongside the single Temple, where blood sacrifice was celebrated, arose numerous synagogues, places for meeting and for prayer, and the dominium of the priests yielded to the growing influence of the Pharisees and Scribes, men of the book and of study. In 70 A.D., the Roman legions again destroyed the Temple. But the learned rabbi Joahannah ben-Zakkaj, slipped covertly out of Jerusalem through the siege and obtained permission from Vespasian to continue the teaching of the Torah in the city of Jamnia. The temple has never been rebuilt since, and study, the Talmud, has become the real temple of Israel.24 This complex relationship to the Talmud is in fact a key to understanding the life and work of Mark Rothko. — Annie Cohen-Solal

Jesus did not spend the same amount of time with everyone. He chose twelve and spent a majority of his time with them. There were toxic people that he spent hardly any time with. For example, the Pharisees were against him from the outset of his ministry. He engaged them only when he needed to. Most of his time he poured himself into a small circle of disciples. — Rick Brown

Sometimes we emulate the Pharisees more than we imitate Christ. — R.C. Sproul

Publicans and harlots do sooner come to heaven than Pharisees, because they are sooner convinced of their sin and misery. — Richard Baxter

If you follow Jesus, you'll do what He did. You'll seek to please the heavenly Father first and foremost. You'll care for the poor, you'll wash feet, and you'll offend some Pharisees along the way. You'll also traffic in the miraculous. And it won't just be as an eyewitness. It'll be as a catalyst. Please believe me when I say, you are someone else's miracle! Make no mistake about it: only God can perform miracles. So God gets all of the glory. — Mark Batterson