Attributes of Pharisaism

By Curtis Lydic

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     History reveals an inclination on man's part to be playful with things that are holy, to be frivolous about things that are quite serious, and to be careless about things that are of great consequence. Many of the great difficulties into which mankind has gotten itself are brought on in part by these attitudes. In the face of the great needs of life, the truly weighty issues, men have proven themselves to be irresponsible and, indeed, unwilling to face up to stern reality. Historically, man is shown to be reliable only in his unreliability.

     Characteristic of the general irresponsibility of men is their tampering with religion. Now, the word tampering would not have meaning if, as anthropologists have it, men had invented and developed their own religions without exception; but this is not the case. Even in the most idolatrous cultures, in fact, the religions begin with the true idea of a supernatural force; and idols are the inevitable inventions of religiously inclined men to whom the true light of heaven has not yet been revealed. The real indictment of religious irresponsibility is not to be leveled against the idolatrous heathen, but against the presumably enlightened, the elect of God, for here is where the most flagrant neglect is found. In Romans 2:14, 15, Paul speaks of the Gentiles who live according to the precepts of God's law which they do not have; whereas Stephen, full of the Spirit, says, "You obstinate people, heathen in your thinking, heathen in the way you are listening to me now! It is always the same--you never fail to resist the Holy Spirit! As your fathers did so are you doing now."

     The best efforts of our Master, during the time of His earthly ministry, to bring light and life to his own people, were frustrated because of the obstinate stance of the Jewish leaders on the ground of their own tradition; and that tradition represented hundreds of years of proliferate perversion. Today we read the accounts of His efforts among them with chagrin, righteously indignant that the precious gifts of the Son of God should be so casually dismissed, and even scorned. But upon close examination, a rather frightening idea presents itself: the attitudes and actions of those people, indicating the extent to which they had strayed away from their God, are noticeable

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among us today, and this has rightly given occasion for the question, "If Jesus were to appear among us in the flesh today, would we accept Him or crucify Him again in our own up-to-date way?"

     An examination of the record of John's gospel brings before our minds the problem Jesus had with His people. In these graphic accounts of the encounters between the Savior and the Jewish leaders we see the essence of Pharisaism distilled. Let us look, and see if our own unrighteousness is not mirrored on the calm surface of this now ancient story.

     The Pharisees were frustrated by the popularity which Jesus enjoyed among the common people, as they really wanted to kill Him. They sent officers to arrest Him, but they could not. When asked why they returned empty-handed, they replied, "No man ever spoke like that!" Then the Pharisees answered with reasoning which has an all-too-familiar ring, "Has he pulled the wool over your eyes, too? Have any of the authorities or any of the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, who know nothing about the Law, is damned anyway." (Jn. 7:45-49)

     Here you have the prototype of the clergy-laity distinction, with the implication that what the clergy approves deserves approval, while that which appeals to the laity may be of no value at all. Here the trust is placed in scholarship and position; and so it is so often today. The questioning Bible student is rebuked when his inquiries lead him athwart of orthodoxy; "Don't be foolish--the scholars among us have long since resolved that question; accept their conclusions like a good little boy, and you'll get along better." If an unorthodox idea does gain ground, its supporters are dismissed as modernists, "who know nothing of the Law," and "are damned anyway."

     Then Nicodemus, "(the one who had previously been to see Jesus) remarked to them, 'But surely our Law does not condemn the accused without hearing what he has to say, and finding out what he has done?" But the Pharisees as promptly, and as logically, disposed of this objection; "Are you a Galilean too," they answered him. "Look where you will--you won't find that any prophet comes out of Galilee!" (Jn. 7:50-52) The challenge is to examine the scriptures (and/or the traditions of the fathers); the inevitable conclusion was that prophets just couldn't come from Galilee.

     How many ideas have we rejected for similar reasons? The idea of supernatural manifestations in our own day, for example, speaking in tongues, healings, prophecies, etc. We have figured out by our method of interpreting a few isolated passages that such things were meant for only a few postpentecostal years, then would vanish away. God just doesn't work that way anymore. Anyway, if He did, we would be the ones who would be doing these works, because we are the right ones. Who ever heard of a Galilean prophet or a "sectarian servant of God?" Well, but to go on

     In John 9 we read of the Master's healing of the man born blind. What a lot of trouble might have been avoided if Jesus had confined his works to the six days of the week. "It was because Jesus did such things on the Sabbath day that the Jews persecuted him." (Jn. 5:16) It is indicative, however, of the set of the Jews' minds that they stumbled over such a small item; the crucial point seems to be that Jesus' teachings offended them, and the Sabbath work was very possibly only a convenient complaint to use against Him, a propaganda device. It happened to be on the Sabbath day that Jesus healed the man born blind; so, the Pharisees' reaction was, "This man cannot be of God since he does not observe the Sabbath." (Jn. 9:16) Again, we are astounded by the ingenuity of their answer, and reminded of ourselves. How many times have we spurned the words of some devout person because they held to some position we considered wrong, or practiced something we considered to be an innovation and a mark of defiance of God's will. Only the words of the "faithful" carried any weight with us, and the "faithful," of course, were those who

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thought as we did, so that in effect the only thing we wanted to hear was the echo of our own declarations of truth. There was never any question of anything new being revealed to us by God through the instrumentality of anyone else; anything we were supposed to know we already knew, and insofar as anyone disagreed with us they were simply wrong, and had better learn it or suffer the natural consequences. It is sadly, so sadly, ironic that the words of Jesus, "my sheep...do not recognize strange voices" (Jn. 10:5), should be equally true when His voice has become strange to their ears because for so long hearing they would not hear, and seeing they would not see. May He forgive us.

     For a while the Jews hoped to establish that a hoax was being perpetrated by showing that the man who could see was not the same man as he that had been born blind, and this again indicates their extreme reluctance to even acknowledge the nature of Jesus' works. How they would have preferred to have proven Him a fraud! Having done so, they might have forgiven Him and forgotten Him as being no longer a threat, but they were denied this pleasure. This frustration doubtless added to their bitterness and made them all the more determined to bring about His end.

     Being unable to successfully ensnare Jesus, they aimed at others. The man formerly blind came under their interrogation. They demanded that he explain to them what had happened to him; but this honest man gave them no satisfaction. To their assertion that Jesus was a sinner (because he worked on the Sabbath), he answered, "Whether he is a sinner or not, I couldn't tell, but one thing I am sure of, I used to be blind, now I can see!" We may easily appreciate their difficulty in accounting for this. Imagine such a sinner having power to do such marvelously fine works! We have had something of the same problem trying to account for such things as the missionary zeal and impressive results of those whom we consider to be the "false Christians" of this world. They send men and women all over the world to preach "Christ and Him crucified" while we have sat in our air-conditioned houses and eaten our fried chicken after driving from our air-conditioned church building in our fine air-conditioned cars. Yes, this has given us some pain, but not much. If no one would talk about it it would quit hurting.

     The man born blind went on to add insult to injury by declaring that the One who had healed him could not be a sinner. "If this man did not come from God, he couldn't do such a thing." This was too much (presumably because of the position of those to whom he was speaking, in contrast to his own, but probably in reality because his argument was embarrassingly unanswerable), so, with malevolent remarks concerning the circumstances of his birth, they threw him out.

     There is a lesson here for us too. They resorted at last to an irrelevancy, which is possibly the lamest sort of rationalization. Whether he were misbegotten or not had no bearing upon the validity of his argument about the Lord. Just so, no matter what we might think of a man's character generally, or his rank, or his family, or his education, it is quite possible for him to have something to say to us which we need to hear and heed. Satan's ends are served when we do otherwise, just as they were when the high and mighty of Judea, Asia, and Rome refused to listen to those poor fishermen and tent-makers.

     Jesus told the Pharisees, "You do not believe me because you are not my sheep. My sheep recognize my voice and I know who they are. They follow me and I give them eternal life. They will never die and no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all. And no one can tear anything out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are One."(Jn. 10:26-30) When He said these things, the Jews took up stones to stone Him. Then He asked them, "I have shown you many good things from the Father--for which of

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these do you intend to stone me?" They protested that it was for the blasphemy of making Himself equal with God that they would stone Him, but again this was only a pretense. How many times are our brethren reduced to such pretenses to fight against the efforts of this generation's reformers. Leroy Garrett, for example, has opponents who have not so much as talked with him or read more than a few paragraphs of his writing; yet they will stand up in their own assemblies or speak out in discussions to denounce him and his work in the most emphatic terms, freely misrepresenting his views, having only the most minute bits of information, and that mostly gleaned from other of his antagonists. Tell me, you Texas Pharisees, for which of his works do you stone him? What has he done to earn such statements as "All I know of him is what little I have read, and that's all I want to know of him." Does your Law justify condemnation on the basis of hearsay? For that kind of stone, one has to stoop very low indeed. Fortunately, that kind of stone is small and hard to find, and he will not suffer too badly. But what of his accusers?

     Finally, Jesus convicted the Pharisees of blindness. (Jn. 9:39-41) He told them that the Father testified as to the rightness of His work. "Now you have never at any time heard what he says or seen what he is like. Nor do you really believe his word in your hearts, for you refuse to believe the man whom he has sent. You pore over the scriptures for you imagine that you will find eternal life in them. And all the time they give their testimony to me! But you are not willing to come to me to have real life!" What a fantastic irony! The ultimate reason for the rejection of the Messiah for whom they had so long waited was that they had formed their own conception of what he would be, and would tolerate no contradiction. Truth has no chance when it encounters the mind that is already made up, once and for all, and this was the situation here. Having once arrived at what we consider to be a proper understanding of the scriptures, we too have been most unreceptive to any suggested alternatives. What room is there for the admonition of God when Satan has us convinced that we know all we need to know?

     Jesus had mercy upon the Pharisees of that day, notwithstanding His disapproval of their ways. What would He say of us? Let us pray for His admonition, that we may learn better.