At a time when believers faced discrimination by a hostile culture, when sacred traditions that bound the people together were endangered by a compromised religious leadership and an aggressive state power, a resistance sprang up to reassert ancient truths and keep the flame of faith alive. These were the Pharisees: those who set themselves apart through their strict adherence to the Law of Moses, despite the risks that this entailed in Roman-controlled Palestine.

Sounds heroic, doesn’t it? So why is Jesus so consistently critical of the Pharisees in the gospels? Aren’t they the good guys?

The problem is that the Pharisees really were good, in many respects, and they knew it only too well. It’s dangerous to have the ledger of right and wrong all neatly columnated, especially when your observance of the rules places you firmly on the right side. The Pharisees’ well-calibrated system, extending down to the tithing of herbs and spices, confirmed their conviction of righteousness: a certainty that left them ‘blind’ and led them to condemn the very one they claimed to await, the one promised in the Law and the Prophets.

You see, Jesus didn’t come to free a purified, righteous Israel from the power of evil Gentiles: he came to free all humanity from sin. And sin is most powerful when it hides within systems of seeming goodness, where it gives birth to patterns of prejudice and persecution—sins that violate ‘the weightier matters of the law; justice and mercy and faith.’

Our addiction to false systems of belonging, religious or otherwise, is fed by this cheap but reassuring sense of shared goodness. We need to recognise and reject such masquerades of righteousness lest we find ourselves, like the Pharisees, betraying the very truth that we profess to serve.

By Chad Hargrave