In the meantime, when so many thousands of the people had gathered together that they were trampling one another, he began to say to his disciples first, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops. “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell." – Luke 12:1-5
Beware of the Leaven of Pharisees
Jesus warns his disciples to beware of the leaven of Pharisees. He knows man-centered religion is a real and present danger to his followers. Jesus kindly calls us to be vigilant, to recognize and guard against Pharisaism, so that we can experience eternal life found in Him. (Luke 12:1-12, John 5:39-40.)
My Struggle with Pharisaism and Fight for Gospel Joy
One time in my life I can point to where I accepted the lies of Pharisaism was before the death of my first marriage. We can call it evangelical Pharisaism since I was a member of a gospel preaching church. I believed in the doctrines of grace and affirmed gospel orthodoxy, but functionally, I was living as though God would accept me based on my own works of righteousness.
As a young and zealous peacemaker, even earning the title of Certified Christian Conciliator, I may not have even realized what I subconsciously believed, but I assumed that I was wiser than others and that everyone with “failed marriages” must be at fault in some sinful way. I wanted others to see how my life glorified God because of how well I performed. You can call it a prosperity gospel view of Biblical peacemaking. Since I understood and lived out the wisdom of the Scriptures, my life would be a picture of the blessed life, like the flourishing tree planted by the water that we see in Psalm 1.
But God would teach me through the death of my marriage what it meant to live for His glory, not my own. He had a different vision of the good life for me. He would not be confined to a box in my own imagination. He would not be a genie in a bottle to make me look good. God knew that I needed a deep humbling. Through the death of my marriage, God began disarming me of my pharisaic tendencies. He was helping me to have both gospel orthodoxy and gospel integrity. He was calling me to understand that both justification and sanctification were a work of his kindness and grace.
In his recent book, “Evangelical Pharisees,” Professor Michael Reeves argues that Pharisaism is a hidden cancer and major problem for the church today. Pharisees can say all the correct words and yet deny the gospel with their lives. How is Pharisaism a denial of the gospel? Pharisees exhibit a basic attitude of self-reliance. A Pharisee thinks of religion as self-improvement and that God is gracious to him based on his performance (p.41-43). Rather than rejoicing at the repentance of lost sinners, Pharisees were smug, self-righteous, and excellent at inspecting the sins of others.
Professor Reeves explains,
“For the Pharisees, it all began with a basic posture of the heart: looking down. They looked down on others as they compared themselves with them. And they looked down to others to receive praise from them. But in looking down, they never saw what was above them. They never saw the high glory of God. They thought they did, of course, but only by reading the approval of others as the approval of God. Only by reading the glory of God as something very like their own glory. Looking down, they never imagined a God in whose presence they could stand only if he had a mercy they did not. They never considered the loving nature of the God who was so beyond them and so different from them.” (p.22)
Through the death of my marriage, I learned that all of life was grace. God didn’t owe me a successful marriage. God wanted my heart more than he wanted a perfect Christian (as if there is such a thing!). Through suffering, I learned God’s fatherly love and compassion as I saw his love for me and my own helplessness and unworthiness.
In Luke 18:9-14, Jesus gives a parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. In the parable, two men went to pray, a Pharisee and a tax collector. Using religious language, the Pharisee thanks God (that he isn’t like other sinners) and proclaims that he has been good at keeping God’s law. In reality he was blind to his own heart.
“Judging by outward appearance, he could see and condemn the speck in his brother’s eye but was serenely oblivious to the rot within his own soul. In reality, this disciplined and outwardly upright man was a gross transgressor against the very Law he claimed to uphold. While in some sense he did believe in grace, he clearly presumed that God was gracious to him because of his performance. Ultimately, then, he was trusting in himself, in his behavior and in his gifts… This man was a seeker of his own glory: he did not fear God or love him or trust him.” (p.43)
Ouch! What a sad and miserable place to be.
In contrast, the tax collector saw his own darkness and sin and how he offended God. He did not trust in himself for salvation. Reeves shows us that while the Pharisee saw only God’s commandments, the tax collector saw God’s promises. “In the tax collector, we see a strange wonder: Through grace, he knows himself to be a sinner—and then he clings only to grace.” (p.45)
Pharisaism: A Denial of the Gospel
Reeves explains how deceptive Pharisaism can be. We can hold to the proper confessions and creeds, but our hearts can be far from God. Without gospel integrity, we actually deny the gospel by our actions. “The Pharisees were as they were and acted as they did because they denied the gospel. Their mercilessness, love of applause, and trust in themselves all flowed from a refusal to listen to Scripture, a refusal to receive a righteousness not their own, and a refusal to see their need for a new heart.” (p.15)
While Pharisaism is the first step towards apostasy (p.12), Reeves instead calls us to gospel reformation. He call us to love God with both our hearts and minds. Reeves call us not only to gospel orthodoxy but to gospel integrity.
“Orthodox belief is vitally important, but it is not exactly the same as gospel integrity. For it is quite possible to have dead orthodoxy, or an orthodoxy that is only skin-deep: to affirm the truth on paper but deny it in the heart and in practice. Integrity, on the other hand, requires that the truths we formally confess are embraced such that they affect and change us. Integrity is found where the head and the heart are aligned.” (p.16)
Symptoms of Pharisaism: Am I a Pharisee?
1. Hypocrisy: Am I a hypocrite? Jesus warns his disciples to watch out for the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy (Luke 12:1-5). The problem of Pharisaism is deceptive and well hidden. Pharisees don’t want to be detected to be the mask wearing hypocrites that they are. Instead, they put on a show of religious performance and live for the praise of men (John 12:43, Matthew 6:5). Outwardly they may appear clean, but inwardly they are full of greed and self-centered corruption (Luke 16:14).
“Like leaven or yeast in dough, hypocrisy is transformative in its power but almost completely imperceptible. Like unmarked, whitewashed tombs, hypocrites may be full of dead people’s bones, but outwardly they appear beautiful (Matt. 23:27).” (p.12)
Behind the scenes though, there will be rot and symptoms ranging “from pride to people pleasing, tribalism, empire building, and lovelessness…” (p.15). Often there is a trail of victims. Reeves explains that “[w]e can profess the language of grace but deny its nature by a prickly, severe manner or disdain for the weak.” (p.17)
2. Legalism: Am I a legalist? Reeves mentions that legalism is the twin of hypocrisy (p.16). Legalists reveal how they see God. They view him through the lens of negative law, instead of through the lens of a tender Father. The Pharisees were great at adding burdens onto people’s shoulders but not raising a finger to help (Matthew 23:4).
“Seeing God as only conditionally loving, they did not perceive the sheer loveliness and benevolence of God. Thus, they did not heartily love him but sought to serve him with a joyless duty. Copying the god they thought they saw in Scripture, they then treated others with merciless harshness and self-concerned lovelessness.” (p.17)
Reeves explains that Pharisees added to Scripture through their human opinions and traditions that had an authority equal to Scripture.
“While, then, the Pharisees affirmed the trustworthiness of Scripture, they did not in practice trust it as the supremely authoritative word of God. Thus, Jesus could answer them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” (Matt. 15:3). Presumably, the true answer could only be that they had to modify the commandment of God by tradition to make possible their attempt to justify themselves. … For all their zealous reverence of Scripture, they accorded it no governing authority. In practice, their traditions—and their traditions’ interpretation of Scripture—ruled.” (p.33)
3. Religious Performance: Do I make a show of repentance? Reeves explains that Pharisees have little grief for sin and little joy in God. They exhibit false repentance and false joy.
“The hubris of the Pharisee was so intoxicating and blinding that he could not see the true state of his heart, and so his sin did not distress him. He had lost all true knowledge of himself beneath the mask of righteousness that he wore. Where that myopic self-confidence takes hold, it creates a blame-shifting, “mistakes were made, but not by us” culture. We become so invested in the appearance of our sanctity that we cannot admit to errors. Yet to all who will hear it, that self-protection unintentionally trumpets a far deeper folly: a loss of true knowledge of ourselves as sinners. It publishes abroad a truth to which we ourselves have become blind: that we have lost our grip on the gospel as a message for sinners. In such a culture, we will of course see mock repentance as a necessary part of the show. But it will be nothing more than a superficial parody of true, heartfelt remorse. In the same way, we will see mock joy. The real thing cannot be present for those who fail to appreciate the magnitude of Christ’s grace toward them. In its place will be artificial smiles and lightheartedness. Instead of the amazed and wondering deep happiness that takes redemption seriously is the flippancy that treats spiritual things with an airy lightness. It is not always easy to distinguish the two, but where genuine joy in Christ directs our gaze to God as its source, counterfeits glorify the wit or charm of the pretender.” (p.48-49)
Jesus offers a better way. Instead of being called to perform, we are called to pray in our closet.
4. Mistreating Scripture: The Pharisees were students of God’s word, studying it day and night. Citing John 5:39-40, Reeves explains that one way Pharisees mistreated scripture was by viewing it as an an end in itself. They missed Christ who the scriptures pointed to. “The fault of the Pharisees was not that they had a high view of the Bible as the very word of God. Jesus had that. It was that the Pharisees had a wrong view of Scripture as the very object of saving faith.” (p.24) Reeves says we can confuse knowledge with trust in Christ or growth in him (p.31).
Pharisaism makes its way into our preaching as well:
“Where evangelicals fall for Scripture as an end in itself, eerie resemblances to the Pharisees start to fester. Instead of being treasured as a revealing mirror (James 1:22-25), the Bible is used as a weapon for beating others or as a platform on which to parade our own brilliance. Arrogance mushrooms as, blind to its exposing light, we become masters of its words. Where Scripture is an end in itself, preaching becomes a matter of making our people experts in Scripture. It may even make them more scrupulously moral, but it creates scribes, not disciples… They are not made worshipers and lovers of Christ.” (p.26)
A second way Pharisees mistreat Scripture is surprisingly by adding to it. They treated their traditions with the same authority as the Word of God itself. Reeves explains how this can be subtle and hidden to us:
“Sometimes it can be reasonably obvious when human opinions trump Scripture. It is evident when a preacher merely uses the Bible as a jumping-off point for a diatribe on his own views or cultural observations… Yet rarely is that obvious if we agree with him. For the real power of traditions lies in their ability to create cultures, and while the quirks of other cultures seem blindingly—often amusingly—obvious to us, our own culture strikes us as plain common sense.” (p.33)
The sense of authority given to tradition, where the interpreter—not Scripture—becomes sovereign, leads in well to the next symptom of Tribalism.
5. Tribalism: Reeves explains that Pharisees engage in tribalism, where a “we vs. them” culture is created and we look down upon others that are different than us. Where tribalism exists, our traditions create a culture, which we equate with Christianity itself, and we wrongly assume our way is the only right way of doing things (p.33).
“Tribalism is the inevitable consequence of allowing tradition—or anything else—parity with the word of God. As soon as we adopt any rallying banner other than the gospel, we sacrifice evangelical unity. Such elevation of tradition rebuilds the old dividing walls of tribal hostility broken down at the cross (Eph. 2:14-16), promoting blocs of uniformity instead of unity… And on it goes: the more comfortable the uniformity, the more familiar the culture, the more Scripture is forced to take a back seat.” (p.36)
Pharisees rule with fear. When tribalism exists, pharisaical leaders will control their fiefdoms, demanding an undue influence through their overexalted authority. “They can even eclipse Christ in the eyes of acolytes who fear them as much as—or even more than—God.” (p.37.) Pharisees wield power without mercy. Reeves reminds us that Christ would not break a bruised reed but Pharisees “are more prone to unsparing and hard censoriousness than kindness and compassion. Vigorous in constant and prickly defense of their own dignity, they will be swift to lash out in judgment of others.” (p.51)
We begin to see how other symptoms can grow out of hypocrisy, legalism, mistreatment of Scripture and tribalism. Pharisees are self-dependent, lacking contentment, filled with pride and anxiety masking a sense of inferiority and self-loathing (p.49), they are outwardly holy but inwardly loveless (p.63). Reeves says that Pharisees practice “a gossipy, whispering culture” rooted in insecurity. They are actually wimps who act under the cover of night, despite their shows of bravado (p.50). Their faith is mechanical, lacking the heart (p.73).
A Call to Gospel Reformation
Reeves closes out his book asking us to consider whose glory we seek, the glory of men or the glory of God? “Heavenliness or wordliness, faith or hypocrisy – everything depends upon where glory is found and enjoyed.” (p.86)
Whose glory and approval do we seek? If we aim for the praise of men, we will get it! (See Matthew 6:2,5.) The Pharisees loved the glory of men more than the glory of God (John 12:43). They were intoxicated by the praise of men and missed the beauty in and from the glory of God.
If we are to have any hope of escaping Pharisaism, it is through the gospel of the glory of our blessed God. In being God-centered we will find a surprise blessing. Those who look to Christ will find that they are radiant, reflecting the beauty of Christ (Psalm 34:5).
“Through the gospel shines the light of the knowledge of the glory of a speaking God, a merciful and gracious God, a God who is love and who therefore looks more on the heart than the appearance. The gospel bring us to enjoy him.
The glory of God in the face of Christ has always been the lodestar or guiding light of reformation and refreshment in the church. When Christians have appreciated and adored God as all-necessary, all-sufficient, all-beautiful, and all-satisfying, they have been awakened and made fruitful. For them, the world is not enough. Its glory and acclaim pale beside the splendor and allure of Jesus Christ.” (p.103)
May we turn to Jesus Christ in love and faith. May we find in His death and resurrection the cure for our Pharisaism. And may God get all the glory in saving sinners.
For further encouragement: Pastor Chris Lownes’s sermon on Luke 12:1-12 entitled, “Fear That Drives Out Fear” talks about God’s provision for the coming persecution. We are called to fear God and hope in his steadfast love, rather than to fear Pharisees or other men.
