• Home
  • About This Blog
  • Contact Me
  • Subscribe
  • Comment Policy

Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

  • Westminster Shorter Catechism Series
  • Sermon on the Mount Series
Home Bible Reflection More righteous than the Pharisees?

More righteous than the Pharisees?

Posted on June 3, 2013 Written by Mark McIntyre 2 Comments


More RighteousI have written on this verse before but have some thoughts to add. In verse 20 of Matthew 5, Jesus makes a curious statement about being righteous:

“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)

Let’s set the Way Back Machine to approximately 30 AD when Jesus made this statement in an attempt to understand how his listeners would have reacted to it.

The Pharisees were the group that sought to reclaim the religion of Israel and drive it back to it’s Biblical roots. They were the fundamentalists of their day. They sought to follow the law of God in every particular. They were obsessive about being righteous according to the law of what we call the Old Testament.

A few hundred years earlier, the Pharisees began as a group in reaction to the general disregard of the law of God. They sought revival of correct belief and practice. Therefore the Pharisees were the ones who were pushing the nation of Israel toward following the Old Testament law. They also lead by example and practiced what they preached. The Pharisees were the poster boys for righteousness according to the law.

When Jesus made this statement in the sermon, his hearers would have understood how radical it is. How can one be more righteous than a Pharisee? They display ultimate obedience to the law. This would be like telling me to be a better basketball player than LeBron James. No amount of effort could make me better than LeBron.

We, like Jesus’ first listeners, have a tendency to hear this statement in terms of what we do (or perhaps this is only me). Too often we take it as an encouragement to try harder, to work at being righteous. But if it is impossible to be more strict in our observance than the Pharisees, then what could Jesus mean by this statement?

Habakkuk 2:4 tells us that the righteous must live by faith. Abraham was declared righteous because of this faith, not because of his perfect obedience as the Apostle Paul demonstrates in Romans 4. It is belief and not practice that allows us to be declared righteous. By the exercise of faith, we can be more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees.

But faith is only effective if the object of the faith is effective. As Christians our hope is in Christ alone. Paul follows up his discussion of the faith of Abraham with these words:

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” (Romans 5:1–2, ESV)

We are justified (declared righteous) by having faith in Jesus Christ. What many of the Pharisees (ancient and modern) miss is that the path to true righteousness is through faith in the one who trades our mess for his righteousness (1 Cor. 5:21).

It is this trade that allows our righteousness to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees.

This post is #18 in the Sermon on the Mount Series


Filed Under: Bible Reflection Tagged With: Heaven, Pharisees, Righteousness, scribes, Sermon on the Mount

About Mark McIntyre

A follower of Jesus Christ who shares observations about how Scripture should impact the church and the world. Mark is the original author and editor of Attempts at Honesty.

Follow Attempts at Honesty

Honesty in your Inbox

What we need versus what we want

The curious thing about this familiar Sunday School story is that when the man was let down from the roof so that Jesus could heal him, Jesus does not directly address his paralysis. Jesus spoke to the man about his sin.

Church Membership – A Response to Matt Chandler

Matt Chandler makes the claim that church membership is necessary for optimum growth of a believer. I provide a counter perspective in this blog post.

High Places

High Places and Alliances – 1 Kings 3

1 Kings 3:1, 3 (ESV) 1 Solomon made a marriage alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt. He took Pharaoh’s daughter and brought her into the city of David until he had finished building his own house and the house of the Lord and the wall around Jerusalem. 3 Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the […]

Diversity

Division vs. Diversity in the Church

I’ve been thinking about my post of 5 days ago regarding division in the church and feel the need to clarify something. Unity in the church does not equate to uniformity. We should not all look the same inside the church because the people in the culture around us are not all the same. Within the bounds of correct belief and practice is the opportunity for diversity.

Twin Focus

External versus Internal Focus

I’ve been involved in some discussions recently regarding the focus of the church. Should our focus be toward the outside to bring new people in or should our focus be on building people up that are already in the church? I struggle to see how these two can be separated without doing damage to what […]

Post Series

  • Westminster Shorter Catechism Series
  • Sermon on the Mount Series

Categories

Archives

Blogger Grid
Follow me on Blogarama

Copyright © 2022 · Focus Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in