Who Were the Pharisees, and Who Are We? (1 of 2)

Understanding the People Jesus Warned Most Severely Before Turning the Mirror Inward

“The experts in the law and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat. Therefore pay attention to what they tell you and do it. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they teach.”

— Matthew 23:2–3 (NET)

The Most Dangerous Misreading of Matthew 23

The most dangerous misreading of Matthew 23 is the most natural one: to read it as a condemnation of people who were obviously wrong about something you are obviously right about. The Jews who read it in the first century probably did this — nodding along as Jesus condemned the Pharisees, feeling the comfortable distance of not being one of them. Christians who read it today do the same thing. The Pharisees were the legalists, the rule-keepers, the hypocrites. We are the grace people, the Spirit-filled people, the people who know better.

This reading has two problems. First, it is historically inaccurate. The Pharisees were not the obvious villains they appear to be when read through twenty centuries of Christian interpretation. They were the reformers, the populists, the grassroots movement that had returned Israel’s religious life to the people after the aristocratic corruption of the Sadducean priesthood. They took Scripture seriously. They democratized theological education. They built the synagogue system that preserved Judaism through every exile and diaspora. Their failures were the failures of people who tried very hard at religion and produced something that fell short of the Kingdom in specific and instructive ways.

Second, the reading is spiritually lethal. The person who reads Matthew 23 as a condemnation of someone else has performed precisely the Pharisaic move Jesus is condemning: he has used religious knowledge to establish his superiority rather than to examine his own condition. The Pharisee in Luke 18 thanked God that he was not like other men — extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like that tax collector. The Christian who reads Matthew 23 and thanks God that he is not like the Pharisees has become, in that moment, a Pharisee.

You cannot use Matthew 23 as a critique of someone else without becoming the thing you are critiquing. The Woes are a mirror. Look into it, not past it.

Who the Pharisees Actually Were

The word “Pharisee” comes from the Hebrew פָּרוּשׁ (parush), meaning “separated” or “set apart.” The Pharisees were a lay movement that arose in the second century BC in reaction to the Hellenization of Jewish culture under Greek rule. While the priestly aristocracy accommodated pagan influence, the Pharisees insisted on strict observance of the Torah and developed the oral law — the tradition of the elders — as a fence around the written Law to prevent its violation. Their goal was holy separation: to be set apart from the contaminating influence of Gentile culture and apostate Jewish accommodation.

At the time of Jesus, there were approximately six thousand Pharisees in Israel — a small but enormously influential minority. They were not the priests or the temple establishment. They were the teachers of the synagogues, the scholars of the Law, the men whose opinions on religious questions shaped ordinary Jewish life. They were respected across every social class. They were known for their knowledge, their discipline, and their zeal.

And Jesus called them hypocrites, blind guides, whitewashed tombs, and a brood of vipers. Not because they were lazy about religion. Because they were extraordinarily diligent about the wrong things, and their diligence had become the very obstacle to the Kingdom they claimed to represent.

The Three Core Failures Matthew 23 Identifies

Before the Woes themselves, Matthew 23:2–7 establishes the framework for everything that follows. Jesus identifies three foundational failures that precede and produce all seven Woes.

Failure One: They Did Not Practice What They Preached

“So you must be careful to do and obey everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.” (23:3)

The Pharisees’ teaching was largely accurate. Jesus does not tell His disciples to reject what the Pharisees teach. He tells them not to imitate what the Pharisees do. The failure was the gap between what they proclaimed and what they lived. Their theology was sound. Their lives did not match it.

This failure is not unique to the Pharisees. It is the characteristic failure of every generation of religious professionals — and of every disciple who has learned to speak the language of the faith more fluently than he has learned to live it. The gap between proclamation and practice is not hypocrisy only when it is deliberate. It is also hypocrisy when it is unexamined — when the disciple has not stopped to ask whether his life matches his confession.

Failure Two: They Burdened Others Without Helping Them

“They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.” (23:4)

The Pharisees had developed 613 commandments derived from the Torah — 248 positive commands and 365 prohibitions — and the oral tradition that fenced them had added layer upon layer of obligation that ordinary people could not possibly navigate. Religion had become a crushing weight carried by people with no resources, imposed by experts who had made their careers mastering the system.

Jesus had said of Himself, in direct contrast: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28–30) The Kingdom does not crush people under its expectations. It liberates them into the relationship that makes the expectations livable. The Pharisaic failure was producing religion without that liberation — standards without the Spirit, requirements without the relationship.