A Word from Bob

While flying from Florida to Seattle, I enjoyed reading Michael Reeves little book, Evangelical Pharisees: The Gospel as Cure for the Church’s Hypocrisy. I’ve taken today’s post from Reeves’s excellent book.

As I write, and as you read, let’s not be hypocritical like the Pharisees. Let’s not simply say, “Oh, that person is a Pharisee!” Or, That group is pharisaical!” Let’s assess our own hearts and actions.

Telltale Signs of a Pharisaical Mindset: Sign #1—Hypocrisy 

Reeves calls pharisaical hypocrisy “the hidden cancer” (12). “It poses and deceives to avoid discovery.” Yet, “there are a number of telltales when Christians fall into the self-reliant mindset of the Pharisee” (48). First among these is the sign of hypocrisy.

Quoting C. S. Lewis, Reeves shows that arrogant condemnation is a first cousin to hypocrisy. Hypocrisy seeks to conceal my hidden sin by seeking to reveal your supposed sin.

• “The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing, and spoiling sport, and back-biting, the pleasures of power and hatred” (13).

Hypocrisy has another twin: legalism.

• “Legalism at root is the manifestation of a restricted heart disposition toward God, viewing him through a lens of negative law that obscures the broader context of the Father’s character of holy love” (16, quoting Sinclair Ferguson).

The root cause of pharisaical hypocrisy is a defective image of and relationship to God.

• Evangelical Pharisees “profess a God of grace but are blind to the true meaning of grace. Seeing God only conditionally loving, they do not perceive the sheer loveliness and benevolence of God. Thus they do not heartily love him but seek to serve him with a joyless duty. Copying the god they think they see in Scripture, they then treat others with merciless harshness and self-concerned lovelessness” (17).
• “It is possible to maintain a façade of orthodoxy but without integrity. We can profess the language of grace but deny its nature by a prickly, severe manner or disdain for the weak” (17).
• “Christian integrity (the opposite of hypocrisy) involves more than knowledge: it requires what Calvin called a deeply rooted ‘persuasion of God’s fatherly love’” (17).

Telltale Signs of a Pharisaical Mindset: Sign #2—Misinterpretation and Misapplication of Scripture (Tribalism)

Jesus said of the Pharisees of His day that “they search the Scriptures” (John 5:39). They were “fastidious students of Scripture” (23). Yet, they misinterpreted the true meaning of Scripture.

• “The Pharisees had a wrong view of Scripture as the very object of saving faith. They thought that in the Scriptures—and in the bare knowledge of Scripture—they had life” (24).
• “Evangelicals can and do fall into this sin of the Pharisees. We too can treat Scripture as an end in itself. We can do away with the discomfort of having our hearts searched and our sins exposed if we treat our basic problem as ignorance and the solution as mere Bible knowledge. That way we can ignore the deep darkness and dirtiness within and focus on self-improvement through reading and study” (25).

This wrong view of the Bible leads to sinful, selfish usages of the Bible.

• “Instead of being treasured as a revealing mirror (James 1:22-25), the Bible is used as a weapon for beating others or as a platform on which to parade our own brilliance” (26).

Though supposedly committed to the sufficiency of Scripture, Pharisees add current human tradition to Scripture. They chastised Jesus: “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?” (Matthew 15:1-2).

• “While the Pharisees affirmed the trustworthiness of Scripture, they did not in practice trust it as the supremely authoritative word of God” (32). This is why Jesus confronted them and their insistence on compliance with human models and human tradition. “Why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” (Matthew 15:3).
• “For all their zealous reverence of Scripture, they accorded it no governing authority. In practice, their tradition—and their traditional interpretations of Scripture—ruled” (33).

Reeves describes how easy it is for us to see this sin in ancient-day Pharisees, but how difficult it is to see this sin of placing our tradition above God’s Word in modern-day Pharisees—like us!

• Placing tradition above Scripture “is rarely obvious if we agree” with the modern human tradition. “For the real power of traditions lies in their ability to create culture, and while the quirks of other cultures seem blindingly—often amusingly—oblivious to us, our own culture strikes us as plain common sense. A ‘culture’ seems like something only other people have. Our traditions and assumptions are part of the very air we breathe, their very familiarity attesting to their rightness. And being so palpably unquestioningly right, our culture becomes laden with theological weight. Those who are not like us are immediately suspect” (33-34).
• “We can be blissfully unaware of how compromised our interpretation of Scripture is. Thus unchallenged, our fallen, theologically immature, culturally shaped reading acquires all the authority of Scripture itself” (34).
• “In just the same way, evangelicals today can fool themselves that they are being truly biblical. Scripture can be used only to confirm what they have come to believe on other grounds” (35).

Reeves then explores “how tradition helps tribes” (35).

• “Tribalism is the inevitable consequence of allowing tradition—or anything else—parity with the word of God. As soon as we adopt any rallying banner other than the gospel, we sacrifice evangelical unity” (36).
• “Each silo subtly develops its own particular slang, peculiar dialect, shibboleths, and buzzwords. Its members learn the ‘in’ patter and dress code, talking and walking in specific ways that ape the inner ring of their party leaders. They become, as C. S. Lewis put it, like the country bumpkin, full of ‘the cocksure conviction of an ignorant adolescent that his own village (which is the only one he knows) is the hub of the universe and does everything in the Only Right Way.’ Out of sheer ignorance as much as anything else, the inhabitants of other villages seem increasingly alien and wrong. Out of sight and understanding, they grow horns” (36).

What are the results of this tribal mindset?

• “The process then becomes self-reinforcing as each tribe fails to see how it is conflating the gospel with its own tradition. With their appeal limited to people of the same culture, they find they cannot connect with the other side of gown, let alone another continent. And on it goes: the more comfortable the uniformity, the more familiar the culture, the more Scripture is forced to take a back seat. No longer supreme and no longer challenging, the Bible can be commandeered as proof of the rightness of the culture” (36).
• “Tribalism, therefore, has an oddly distorting effect, leading subscribers to swallow camels while straining at cultural gnats. The village mentality makes mediocre leaders appear Herculean in ability and significance. Small ponds acquire big fish. This, swollen in significance, it is hard for them not to exert an undue influence and for their every view to assume an overexalted authority” (37).
• “Therein lies a recipe for insecurity, for when defined by leadership or culture more than Christ, tribes need their boundary markers more than ever. They become entrenched and necessarily opposed to other groups who must be wrong” (37). 

Telltale Signs of a Pharisaical Mindset: Sign #3—Mercilessness 

While addressing many Gospel passages about the Pharisees, Reeves especially focuses on, exegetes, and applies Luke 18:9:

Jesus told a parable “to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt.” 

• “Not knowing the loving mercy of God, Evangelical Pharisees are more prone to unsparing and hard censoriousness than kindness and compassion” (51).
• Modern-day Pharisees are “hard-hearted, but thin-skinned” (50). They easily and mercilessly criticize others, but they are quickly and easily offended by others. “Vigorous in constant and prickly defense of their own dignity, they are swift to lash out in judgment of others” (51).
• “The weak and wounded frustrate and annoy the Evangelical Pharisee” (51). They crush the weak with heavy burdens (58). 

Telltale Signs of a Pharisaical Mindset: Sign #4—Pitiless and Partisan 

Reeves describes how Evangelical Pharisees are pitiless to those they deem outside their group, but merciful to themselves and those of their own sect.

• “Their high sense of self make them equate the gospel with their own particular style; their buzzwords; and their particular culture/group” (51).
• Modern-day Evangelical Pharisees are “not only pitiless but partisan, they eye others with suspicion for the minor defenses that they deem to represent a different gospel” (51).
• Evangelical Pharisees “treat those not of their sect with a merciless lack of love” (64). 

Telltale Signs of a Pharisaical Mindset: Sign #5—Spreading Toxic Fear

Fearful themselves, modern-day Pharisees spread fear.

• Evangelical Pharisees “create a culture of fear around them” (50).
• The pharisaical mindset is “a breeding ground of toxicity for the culture around them” (51).
• Modern Pharisees “act like an insensitive bulldozer” (50).
• Modern-day Pharisees “fear the more gifted as rivals” (51). 

Telltale Signs of a Pharisaical Mindset: Sign #6—Parading Self 

Evangelical Pharisees make much of themselves—it is all about them.

• Modern-day Pharisees parade themselves, their biblical knowledge, and their zeal, but not Christ (48).
• Evangelical Pharisees are “hollow people: moral but loveless, learned but vain” (69).
• “They do all their deeds to be seen by others” (84; Matthew 23:5).
• “Blind to the gloriousness of God, they are more impressed with their own glory, and of course they seek more from others” (85).
• “For the Pharisee, it all begins with a basic posture of the heart: looking down. They look down on others as they compare themselves to them. And they look down to others to receive praise from them” (21). 

Telltale Signs of a Pharisaical Mindset: Sign #7—Maximizing the Law; Minimizing Grace 

Reeves explains how the law may break the heart, but grace melts the heart. Overreacting to a perceive lack of confrontation, the Evangelical Pharisee “concentrates mainly on hammering home an awareness of sin” (78), but forgets that where sin abounds, grace superabounds (Romans 5:20). Quoting Richard Sibbes, Reeves writes:

• “It is not enough to have the heart broken; for a pot may be broken in pieces, and yet be good for nothing, so may a heart be, through terrors, and a sense of judgment, and yet not be like wax, pliable” (78-79).
• “Tenderness of heart is wrought by an apprehension of tenderness and love in Christ. A soft heart is made soft by the blood of Christ” (79).