Who is the Pharisee?

I've had this post rolling around in my head for a long time.  It is a delicate issue and has taken a lot of thought to be able to express in words.

There are a few "buzz-words" in Christianity that are ill-defined.  One of them is legalism.  When we think of legalism in the Bible, we almost immediately think of the Pharisees.  The Pharisees were a religious group that were extremely adamant about keeping all aspects of the given law.  Despite that point, Jesus pointed out that they were lacking, or lost.  I think that the idea of the Pharisees can not only cause us to stumble, but can also divide us greatly.   We know that Jesus did not come to abolish the law, but rather fulfill it but Salvation by grace alone through faith alone doesn't give us free-license to do whatever we want to do--I think we can all agree on that!  Jesus wasn't condoning adultery when the he stood up for the woman the Pharisees dragged before Him.  He confronted their hearts (aka motives) and then dealt with her by telling her to turn form her own sin.    Like the Pharisees, we can be very focused on God's Word and what it teaches--and that's a good thing.  But like the Pharisees, we can also do it for the wrong reasons and without love.  That's a bad thing.  But there is something else is far more successful at dividing the Church: judging the heart.

A few Sundays ago as I was sitting in church listening to a sermon about the attitudes of the Pharisees, our pastor made a statement and the first thing that flashed through my mind was:  I wish ________ (insert name here) could have heard that!  I have a feeling that I am not alone.  If you tell me that you have never sat in a sermon thinking: "I wish so-and-so could hear this!" then, well, I don't believe you.  We've all done it.  I recognized the irony in my thought almost immediately and felt ashamed.  And then my mind wandered to the many times that I felt anger or "judged" by someone else's convictions.  For instance,(and please excuse me for this illustration, it simply seems to be the most obvious) my mind will say that so-and-so always wears dresses so she must be judging me for wearing pants.  Logically, that is not true, yet my sinful mind wants to convict that person of judging me when chances are, they haven't.  It is possible that this person does it because it is what she believes God desires from her, yet she doesn't see pants as wrong.   I actually know many women who believe that way.   Paul addresses this issue in his letter to the Romans.  Evidently, the Roman church was struggling with judging the convictions of others.  Notice I say the convictions....not the sins!  Big difference!  The Bible instructs us to judge sin and deal with it.  It even gives us clear instruction on how to search our own hearts before confronting the sins of others.  (Matthew chapter 7)  But it never condones judging the heart.  That is for God and God alone!  No one but God can see into your heart and know the motives for what you do.  I believe that this is what Paul was addressing in Romans chapter 14.  How beautiful it is to be able to sit alongside another believer who had different convictions than you and be in perfect unity despite it!

That brings me back to the Pharisees.  The things they did were good.  Yet Jesus, who was qualified to judge their hearts, addressed the motive behind their obedience.  Why did He do that?  Was it so that we could recognize a Pharisee when we see one?  Um, well....no.  If you have followed my logic, you will see that the only ones qualified to address YOUR heart and YOUR motives are you and God.  More than that, when we think of others who hold different convictions as "Pharisees" we committed a great irony.  Since you are not qualified to judge the intentions of others, you have labeled them with a title that you yourself deserve.  Being a Pharisee is about judging the heart.  Ouch.

I started thinking about Nicodemus.,  He was a Pharisee, yet he had a desire to know what Jesus was teaching and to know whether or not it was truth.  When I read his story, I have a hard time believing that he was that terrible of a person-Pharisee or not.  Nicodemus was the one who eventually stood up to the Pharisees and asked the question:  Does our law judge a man before it hears him and knows what he is doing?  John 7:52  Nicodemus got it.  After his encounter with Jesus, he understood what it meant to judge someone without knowing all of the facts!  Eventually, he reappears in chapter 19 providing spices with which to embalm his Savior.  He is a changed man.  Thank you Jesus for not dismissing him or giving up on him!


I have a feeling that a little bit of pride-lovin' Pharisee lives in each of us.  I wonder, however, how the Body of Christ would look if we could all do what we can to kill our inner Pharisee?  I wonder, if we could simply accept the convictions of others without feeling judged, or better yet, just sit and talk with them and attempt to understand them.  Get to know them.   I am sure it would take us moving far out of our comfort zone, but God never instructed you to even build a comfort zone!  It isn't horribly important that we all agree on everything, but the proper response to feeling conviction would be to search it out for ourselves and find what we believe to be true according to God's Word.  We also need to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to guide us in the matter.  If we are firm enough in our own convictions, then we really shouldn't feel judged by what others believe (unless they admit that they are judging us then in reality, it is more their problem than yours!)


How different would we be if we understood that the only one we are qualified to judge as a Pharisee is ourselves?  

The War

There is a war going on.  One that most are not aware of.  It is a war for the hearts and minds of God's people.  It is an all-time war--waged since the beginning of time.  It's blows render us ineffective for a time.  They are subtle, we really don't even notice most days.  True, we cannot see the warfare around us, but we feel the effects, and usually when it is too late.

In England, that war escalated recently.  What was once a "civil rights" struggle for one group has now become a freedom of speech-religion issue for another.  The problem is~  where do we draw the lines?  How do we speak up for what we believe in, and when do we stop speaking?  If you have not read the article, it talks about a street preacher being arrested for calling homosexuality a sin.  He was not violent.  He was not shouting hate speech.  He was simply sharing his beliefs, which is something that Christians do out of love and commandment. 

The war is going on behind the scenes in America.  Liberal law professors are working hard to outlaw the exclusive teaching of Christianity in our country.  After listening to Michael Farris speak at the Indiana Convention of Home Educators, I am more and more convinced that America's rights to freedom of religion are dwindling every year.  Farris read from papers published by these law "experts" that attempted to convey the threat of  the home school community on the future of America.  We are dangerous to them because we refuse to let them have our kids.  We indoctrinate them into Biblical theology, and teach them that Jesus is the only way to God.  (YES!!)  They can't have our kids for 40 hours a week to tell them any different.   We are raising a generation of dissenters.  Whether you believe it or not, there are many working hard behind the scenes to turn America into a Orwellian utopia.

So what can we do about it?  

Obviously, I am not an expert on anything.  But I do have an opinion.  And a blog.  And freedom of press--for now.


This is a tough war because the enemy is tricky.  He has successfully divided God's people.  We turn on each other.  As another blogger put it:  we shoot our own..  And the truth is, if we cannot stand unified as a body of believers, we will lose the civil right to spread the truth of Jesus in this country.  It might not be in my lifetime, but my children and grandchildren will suffer the effects.

The only way that revival will happen in our country is if it starts with the family.  Sure, we can go to church every Sunday.  We can even go on Wednesday nights.  We can drop our kids off at every program the church offers.  We've been doing that for years.  Statistically, 85% of our youth will leave the church at some point.  So how's that working for us?

The truth is that we have been brainwashed so much that we even question our own convictions to call sin, well sin.  We worry about hurting someone's feelings.  And in this day and age...it is all about feelings.  We worry that we will come off as unloving, yet we fail to realize that true love always points the object of it's affection to truth.   We are afraid to share what God has done to radically transform our lives for fear of being called legalistic.  (true legalism does exist, and I realize that there are many people who have been hurt by it.--I do not endorse it.)  As a result, the church has become an institution that fails to recognize the fact that they have assimilated themselves into the "collective."  The same thing happened in Nazi Germany.  By the time people realized it, their Bibles had been replaced with Mein Kampf--and there was little they could do about it. 

At the current rate of decline in America, I believe that in my lifetime I will see many Christian things outlawed.  I have already seen hate crime legislation that sets Bible believing Christians up for persecution should they vocalize their belief about a particular sin.  I would not be surprised if my children are forbidden by law to home educate their own children, or even take them along to church if they resist. (for more insight check out my post 20 things you need to know about the CRC.)

Our first defense is always prayer.

2 Chronicles 7:14  "If my people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land."

Isn't humility what it is all about?  Can we really approach the Creator of the universe thinking that our ways are higher or better than His?

We have to ask ourselves:  How do we become a people who hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God, instead of our own man-made righteousness?  Then we need to ask:  Am I willing to stand for the truth of God no matter what persecution I might face?

If American believers cannot figure out where we are losing ground--and do it quickly--we will lose the freedoms that we enjoy and take for granted.  We need to stop what we are doing and take a look around us.  We need to know what we are fighting against and who our enemy is.  We are not battling flesh and blood here.  The only way revival will happen in our land is if it starts within the family.