Who were the Pharisees?

This name was given to a religious school among the Jews; it is supposed to have been derived from the Hebrew word parash, meaning 'to separate.' It was given to them by others, their chosen name being chasidim, 'pious ones.' Josephus speaks of them as early as the reign of Jonathan (B.C. 161-144). They prided themselves on their superior holiness of life, devotion to God, and their study of the law. The Pharisees included all classes of men, rich and poor: they were numerous, and at times had great influence.

Their ideal was that of a select body in the middle of the Jewish people, a nation within a nation, marked off from the rest at least in outward association and outward practice. They did not (as the Sadducees did) conform to the secular world around them; they held aloof from the culture of Greece and the politics of Rome... But, though separate and aloof, they were highly respected by the public; to be "as touching the law, a Pharisee" was the highest religious commendation.

After the early enthusiasm of the restoration had died away... many of the more influential Jews lost faith in their separate calling and compromised to a greater or lesser degree with the heathenism around them. Others, condemning such unfaithfulness, sought support amid the prevailing weakness in a firm adherence to the law and a rigid exclusion of every non-Jewish element. These two tendencies gave rise to the two sects of the Sadducees and the Pharisees.

The Pharisees were the strictly religious, orthodox-ritualistic class... They were well versed in the traditions of the elders, and occupied themselves with creating new commandments and strange interpretations of the law... The Sadducees were the rationalists, the unbelieving class.

As the Pharisees opposed the intrinsic righteousness of Christ, and the Sadducees the doctrine of His resurrection, so the principle of Pharisaism became newly the great source of public trouble in the Church, and sought to add to, and to legalise the truth which it could not deny, so that Christianity should cease to be grace.

These traditions of the elders were explanations, expansions and inferences drawn from the law by respected teachers of old. They dominated the minds of the Pharisees and quite clouded over the law of God; so much so that they broke the law in order to keep their tradition.

The Pharisee does not represent a man who denies God, or who is not a religious man. He is religious, but such religion is the most damning thing about him. The evil is not merely his sins, but his religion: nothing is more blinding to himself and to other men, nothing more dishonouring to God.

The Lord severely rebuked all their pretensions, and laid bare their wickedness as well as their hypocrisy. It may be that because of the great looseness of the Jews generally, some at first sincerely sought greater holiness. Others, not sincere, may have joined the sect... Probably such men as Gamaliel, Nicodemus, and Saul were men of a different stamp, though all needed the renewing power of grace to give them what they claimed to seek.

The leaven of the Pharisee is religious pride, that which seeks a place, not in the world, but among the saints of God... It is easy to see the damage this has done in the profession of Christianity, but none of us is immune from this deadly poison.