Pharisees and Publicans

It is interesting that when Jesus walked the earth, He is said to have come to save the world, and yet, in His dealings with the Pharisees, He was impatient at best, and seems to have already written them off as being beyond saving, even before He began His ministry. A lot of that, of course, comes from the fact that Jesus knew the hearts of the people He dealt with, publicans and Pharisees alike.

In Luke 18, Jesus tells a parable about a Pharisee and a publican who went to the temple to pray. The Pharisee essentially spent his prayer time bragging to God about what a good man he was, while the publican begged for mercy. Jesus said that the publican went home justified, but the Pharisee didn’t. This gives us some insight into Jesus’ attitude towards Pharisees, although I don’t think Jesus was implying that all Pharisees were like the one in the parable, but that the attitude portrayed was not what the people of the time would have expected from the Pharisees. The Pharisees were religious leaders, and they were expected to be pious and holy, examples of all the best things of their religion. Jesus, of course, realized that, although some of them may have been exactly that, many were not.

In Luke 7, it tells that one of the Pharisees, a man named Simon, invited Jesus to dinner. A woman came in and kissed Jesus’ feet, and anointed them with ointment. Simon “spake within himself” that if Jesus were a prophet, He wouldn’t let this woman touch Him. Now, it seems fairly obvious to me that the phrase indicates that Simon didn’t say this aloud, and yet, Jesus knew what he was thinking. Furthermore, it seems fairly clear that He also knew what the woman was thinking, although she said nothing. Granted, her actions showed a willingness to serve, and an acknowledgement of His position. Jesus went on to lecture Simon about how her sins, which were many, were forgiven her, and that she could be trusted to love Him much—in fact, He said that her sins were forgiven because she loved much.

In John 9, a blind man is healed by Jesus, and the Pharisees attempt to dissuade him from giving Jesus credit for his healing. This man wasn’t about to deny his healing, though. He told them flat-out, “If this man were not of God, He could do nothing.” Their response was, “Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us?” as if they had not been born pretty much the same way the formerly-blind man had.been. It’s remarkable that the reaction of the Pharisees to such a notable miracle was to try to deny it, disprove it, and then, failing that, make accusations against the One who preformed it. I can understand skepticism, and I would imagine that God can, too, but these guys were so determined not to believe. No wonder Jesus generally didn’t want to have anything to do with them.

The Pharisees were also critical of the fact that Jesus spent so much time with “sinners.” Of course, if you understand that Jesus came to bring salvation, it makes sense that He would start with those who were most in need of it, even before you consider how much more willing they were to accept what He was offering. The Pharisees simply assumed that these people were easily misled, since they didn’t know the law. Jesus, correctly, pointed out that if the Pharisees would search the Scriptures, they would learn of Him, but they were so secure in the own righteousness that they would only consider those passages that seemed to contradict Jesus’ claims (for example, there is a Messianic prophecy in Micah that says that the Christ would be born in Bethlehem, but the nativity story was not well known and the conventional wisdom was that Jesus had been born in Nazareth).

In Luke 19, Jesus invited himself to the house of a publican named Zacchaeus, and many murmured against Jesus, because they believed that Zacchaeus was a sinner. Jesus, again, knew his heart, and knew that, although Zacchaeus’ occupation (publicans were tax collectors) was despised, it was not inherently dishonest. Zacchaeus may well have been the exception to the rule, but Jesus judged him by his heart, not by his reputation.

In Matthew 9, Jesus explained to the Pharisees that the sick need a physician, and that He had come to call sinners to repentance. The Pharisees should have been flattered by the fact that He didn’t suggest that they needed to repent, although clearly they did, but they had a hard time with the idea that one who claims to be righteous can spend so much time with undesirable people. It’s not as though it rubs off. Granted, one can be unduly influenced if one surrounds oneself with the wrong kind of people, but Jesus wasn’t worried about them changing His mind; He wanted to change theirs.

The point is, Jesus didn’t spend much time with religious people, because He knew that their hypocrisy ran deep. He made Himself a friend to those who were not religious, and who were willing to accept the Truth without trying to square it with what they thought they knew. We, of course, need to get fellowship with other people that believe what we believe, but we also need to show ourselves friendly to those who have not yet come to know what we know. We do need to be careful to not let them drag us down, but we should be trying to help them up. Jesus is our example, after all.