The Bible says more than you've been told.

Week 23 | Issue #23 | Spiritual vs. Legalism Series (3 of 4)

Go through Matthew 23 and write down every accusation. Not one of them is "you care too much about what God said." Here is what is actually on the list.

They would not do what they taught. "They preach, but do not practice" (Matthew 23:3, ESV). The teaching was not the problem. The gap between the teaching and the teacher was.

They loaded other people up and carried nothing. "They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to bear them" (Matthew 23:4, ESV). Read that twice. The complaint is not that the burdens existed. It is that they put them on other people's backs and kept their own hands free.

They did it to be watched. "They do all their deeds to be seen by others" (Matthew 23:5, ESV). Wider phylacteries. Longer tassels. Best seats. Everything calibrated for an audience.

They blocked the door. "You shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in" (Matthew 23:13, ESV).

That is the charge sheet. Hypocrisy, pride, performance, and standing between men and God. Not precision. Not rule-keeping. Not caring about details.

If you only keep one verse from this issue, keep this one. It is the center of the whole chapter. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. — Matthew 23:23 (ESV)

Everybody quotes the first half. They were counting out herbs. Mint. Dill. Cumin. Weighing out a tenth of the garnish from the kitchen garden, because the law said tithe your produce, and they were going to be thorough about it. Meanwhile they were walking past justice, mercy, and faithfulness like those were somebody else's job. Now read the last sentence of the verse again. "These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others."

Jesus just told them to keep tithing the cumin. He is not saying the small things do not matter. He is saying they got the weight wrong. They nailed the garnish and missed the main course, and His fix is not "stop counting herbs." His fix is "do that and do justice." That single clause kills the modern use of this verse. It gets quoted to prove that details are a distraction. Jesus says the details were fine and the neglect was the sin.

This is where it gets uncomfortable for the people who use "Pharisee" as a club. Early in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells the crowd what kind of righteousness it takes to get in. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. — Matthew 5:20 (ESV)

Exceeds. Not "is more relaxed than." Not "is less concerned with rules than." More. Higher. Past theirs. And then He spends the rest of the sermon raising the bar, not lowering it. You heard do not murder. I say do not even be bitter. You heard do not commit adultery. I say do not look at her that way. He takes every command and pushes it inward where nobody can see you faking it. Jesus did not come to ease the standard. He came to put it somewhere a performer cannot reach.

So if the teaching was right and the standard went up, what was wrong with these men? You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. — Mark 7:8 (ESV)

Note the order. The tradition did not sit next to the commandment. It pushed it out. That is exactly what we read last week in Colossians, and here it is from Jesus first. The Pharisees were not guilty of taking Scripture too seriously. They were guilty of letting their own additions crowd Scripture out, and then wearing the result in public.

Luke explains thata Pharisee praying in the temple: "God, I thank you that I am not like other men" (Luke 18:11, ESV). He goes on to list his fasting and his tithing, and every item on his list is true. He really did those things. And, he went home with nothing, and the man next to him who said five words about mercy went home justified. The record was accurate. The man was rotten.

John Gill on Matthew 23:23: Gill notes that Christ approves the tithing of small herbs as part of the law then in force, and places the fault entirely in the neglect of the greater duties.

Albert Barnes on Matthew 23:23: Barnes stresses the closing clause, arguing that Christ does not condemn attention to small matters but condemns attending to them while ignoring justice and mercy.

Matthew Henry on Matthew 23:23: Henry says the Pharisees were exact in the lesser things and false in the greater, and observes that Christ requires both rather than excusing either.

Matthew 23:3 — "Do and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do" (ESV). Jesus endorses their teaching and condemns their lives in the same breath.

Matthew 5:20 — "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees" (ESV). The bar goes up, not down.

Mark 7:8 — "You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men" (ESV). The actual mechanism of the failure.

Luke 18:11-14 — The Pharisee's prayer and the tax collector's. Both accurate. Only one went home justified.

Somewhere along the way, "Pharisee" stopped meaning hypocrite and started meaning stickler. Now it is the thing you say about a man who asks where something is authorized, or who thinks the details of worship matter, or who will not move a line he cannot move.

Jesus never used it that way. Not once. He used it for men who taught the truth and would not live it. Who loaded other people with burdens they would not touch. Who performed for an audience. Who stood in the doorway.

So the next time somebody calls a careful Christian a Pharisee, ask which woe applies. Does he refuse to do what he teaches? Does he put weight on others he will not carry? Is he doing it to be watched? Is he keeping people out?

The terrifying thing about Matthew 23 is not that it describes somebody else. It describes the most religious men in Israel, and they never saw it coming.

This is the accusation. The people making it have usually been hurt. They grew up somewhere that measured them, and they watched men with perfect attendance and perfect doctrine treat people badly. They are not wrong that something was broken there.

But look at what the accusation assumes. It assumes the problem was the carefulness. So the cure is to be less careful. Jesus went the other way. He raised the standard in Matthew 5 and told the crowd to obey the Pharisees' teaching in Matthew 23. His cure for hypocrisy was never a shorter list. It was a real man behind the list.

And there is a cost to using the word loosely. When "Pharisee" means anybody who asks for a verse, then asking for a verse becomes socially expensive, and a congregation quietly stops doing it. That is not a small loss. That is how churches drift without a single vote being taken.

The other camp reads an issue like this one and feels vindicated. See, Jesus approved of their teaching. The details matter. Precision is not the sin. All true, and all dangerous if you stop there. Because the men Jesus tore apart in Matthew 23 would have agreed with every word of this issue. They would have nodded along at the part about tithing cumin being fine. They were on the right side of that argument. And He called them whitewashed tombs.

Being right about the details is not a defense. It was never a defense. The Pharisees had the right teaching and the wrong hearts, and Jesus held them responsible for the hearts. If you read Matthew 23 and come away comfortable, you have read it as a weapon instead of a warning.

Jesus never accused the Pharisees of caring too much about Scripture. He accused them of the opposite, in plain words: "You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men." He told the crowds to do what they taught. He told them not to do what they did. He raised the standard past anything the Pharisees ever demanded. And He told them to keep tithing the herbs while they went and did justice.

So "Pharisee" is not a word for a careful man. It is a word for a man performing, with nothing behind the mask, blocking a door he will not walk through himself. Which means the question for us is not whether we are careful. We should be. The question is whether anybody is home.

The lesson: Finish the verse. "These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others" is in the same sentence as the woe, and it changes what the woe is about. That is why tools like BibleWord.ai exist.

Transliteration: hoop-ok-ree-TACE

Strong's Number: G5273

Definition: An actor. A man playing a part on a stage. By extension, somebody pretending to be what he is not. This is a theater word.

In the Greek world, a hupokrites was a stage performer. The actors wore large masks so the crowd in the back row could tell who was who, and the word is built from parts meaning to answer from under something. To speak from behind a mask.

Jesus uses it constantly. He aims it at the Pharisees six times in Matthew 23 alone, and He uses it in the Sermon on the Mount for people who pray and give and fast where somebody can see.

Now put the word next to the charge and watch it fit. "They do all their deeds to be seen by others" (Matthew 23:5, ESV). That is a man performing. Wide phylacteries. Long tassels. Best seats at the banquet. Trumpets before the offering. Every one of those is a costume choice.

Here is why the word matters for this series. An actor's problem is not that he says his lines wrong. The lines might be perfect. Jesus said the Pharisees' lines were fine, and told the crowd to follow them. An actor's problem is that there is nobody behind the mask. The words are right and no one is home.

That is what Jesus was after, and it is the opposite of what people mean when they use the word today. We say Pharisee and mean "too careful." Jesus said hypocrite and meant "there is nothing behind it." You cannot fix a hypocrite by giving him fewer rules. He will perform the shorter list.

Until next time,