The Sins Of The Pharisees

The word Pharisee is some times thrown at someone as if it invalidates their arguments.  I have been called a Pharisee several times in my life (along with several other titles intended to negatively describe me), and I scoff at the ignorance and stupidity of those who charged me with such a name, for what they meant by the term only showed that they understood neither me nor what a Pharisee is.  It needs to be clarified that the Pharisees were a group of religious leaders around the time of Jesus, and thus the errors of one Pharisee does not indict the entire group.  Although they are, for some reason, sometimes described as all being against Jesus' teachings, not all of them were ideological opponents of Jesus (like Nicodemus in John 3:1-21 and 19:38-39).  The broad characterization of every Pharisee as an enemy of Christ is an oversimplification, a fallacious construction of shallow minds.

When "Pharisee" is used as an accusation, it usually is a charge that one has a high regard for Mosaic Law or Biblical commands in general, or perhaps that one carefully observes the exact commands of God.  The modern evangelical attempt to distance themselves from Mosaic Law can sometimes motivate such accusations.  Yet the problem of the Pharisees is not that they obeyed God, it is that they did not.  In Matthew 15:3-9, Jesus harshly criticizes the Pharisees for not obeying God's laws and for instead honoring their own unbiblical constructs.  In John 7:19 Jesus charges a crowd of Jews near the temple (meaning Pharisees were very possibly among them) with the offense of not keeping God's laws.  Jesus never condemned people for actually living as God demands; he opposed doing the right thing for the sake of personal gain or public reputation.  He condemned selective, insincere upholding of Mosaic Law, not the Law itself (Matthew 5:17-19).

The Pharisees Jesus rebuked may have strictly observed (at least when others were watching) their own arbitrary, non-obligatory, extra-Biblical rules, but the idea that the Pharisees Jesus sparred with obeyed Mosaic Law as a whole is untrue, and, ironically, if they did obey Mosaic Law they would not have added their subjective preferences alongside the commands of Yahweh (Deuteronomy 4:2).  If a self-proclaimed Christian calls you a Pharisee for simply living as God demands, then that person is unintelligent, uneducated, or both stupid and uneducated.