There are a selection of scripture verses in Matthew that has stuck out to me over the years. It seems that
as we focus on the Pharisees as villians, we have made them into two dimensional figures, musch like the
cowboys who wore black hats in those very old Western "B" movies.
Just look at these verses from the NET translation: "Matthew 23:
25 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness."
In these verses, Jesus contrasts what seems to be good to the bad of the Pharisees. When we skim over the good to get to the bad, we lose the depth of the verses.
When we look at the good with the bad, we see a pattern of being good on the outside and "not so good" on the inside. When I started looking into this, I found this back in Exodus, from the 10 commandments. These can be found in Exodus 20. They are as follows:
1. You shall have no other gods before me
2. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
3. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God
4. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy
5. Honor your father and your mother
6. You shall not murder
7. You shall not commit adultery
8. You shall not steal
9.You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor
10. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor
Now, as you look at these, you will notice that the first 9 are commandments of action, and the 10th one is one from the heart. The Pharisees were great at keeping the first 9, but couldn't keep the 10th one. This is what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 23. This contrast is also what Jesus was talking about in his sermon on the mount when he said, in Matthew 5:
21 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder,[a] and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ 22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister[b][c] will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’[d] is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
What I see from this is that obeying the first 9 commandments is doing righteousness, but the 10th only comes from being righteous. God is telling us that He is not wanting us to do righteousness. He wants us to be righteous. Paul goes deeper into this when wrote Romans chapters 7 & 8.
Now remember that Paul was a Pharisee and here he tells of the inner struggle that Pharisees struggled with. As Paul states: "Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet"
and a few verses later he says: "For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing."
You see there is no way, that you can discipline yourself or anyone else to be righteous. Paul would go on to say in his letter to the Galatians in chapter 3 and verse 21: "if a law had been given that was able to give life, then righteousness would certainly be by the law."
So how do we become righteous, Paul tells us in Romans 8: "if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.". This is the difference in being righteous and doing righteous. True Righteousness is God living within us. We become righteous by God living inside of us.
Now how does political agendas play into this? The answer to that is that political agendas can only coerce people into doing righteous deeds and that is not being righteous, which is what Gods wants from us.So when you see Christians (especially those within church leadership positions) post and support these political agendas, they have fallen into the same mindset that the Pharisees of Jesus' day had fallen into, and the biggest tragedy is that they have skipped over the "new birth" that scriptures talk about, that produces true righteousness, for a false righteousness that comes from simply doing.
