The Righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees
Matthew 5v20
6th December 2024
We've been thinking about what Jesus says about the Law of God, found in the Old Testament. Jesus came to fulfil the Laws about the offering of sacrifices by being the ultimate sacrifice when He died on the cross for our sins. He also kept the moral Law perfectly, and calls us to to do the same.
When we were born again as children of God, we definitively repented of our sins, which means we made the decision to obey God, to do what He says is right, not what we think is right. And God tells us what is right in His Law, as well as in other ways. We still fail to keep God's moral Law sometimes, but every true Christian is co-operating with the Holy Spirit to put our sins to death and live an increasingly moral life, where morality is defined in the Bible - God's holy word - not in the current thinking of the ungodly society around us.
Jesus continues:
Matthew 5v20
For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and
Pharisees, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
The Pharisees were considered at the time to be the moral guardians of the nation. They took great pains not to break the Law. They even wrote lots of extra laws for themselves, over and above what God had given them. Unfortunately, they tried to force these extra laws, not given by God, on the people around them. They embodied what we mean by the word "legalistic". The scribes, who were experts in the Law, were their willing partners in this. The people must have been very surprised when Jesus said we needed to be more righteous than they were.
There are two main reasons why our righteousness must surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees. The first is that they were hypocrites. Jesus criticises the scribes and the Pharisees more than anyone else. Here are some examples:
Matthew 15v7-9
(Jesus said to the scribes and Pharisees)
You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
"'These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.'"
Matthew 23:13-15 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. Woe to you, scribes law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are."
Matthew 23v23-25
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices
— mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the
law — justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practised the latter, without
neglecting the former.
You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
Woe to you, scribes law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the
cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence."
Matthew 23v27
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs,
which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones
and everything unclean."
The scribes and the Pharisees were not what they appeared to be. They were like whitewashed tombs – they tried to look clean on the outside, but Jesus saw their greed and self-indulgence and their lack of justice, mercy and faithfulness. He saw that they were dirty on the inside.
The second reason why anyone who wants to enter the kingdom of heaven must be more righteous than the scribes and the Pharisees is this: our righteousness must not be merely external – a matter of keeping the rules, a box-ticking exercise. We must keep the law in our hearts, as well as in our actions. Our righteousness must start on the inside. That's what God promises us through the prophet Jeremiah:
Jeremiah 31v31-33
"The time is coming," declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the
house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by
the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a
husband to them," declares the Lord.
"This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after that time,"
declares the Lord. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their
hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people."
None of us, except Jesus, keeps all the law perfectly all the time. We have no righteousness of our own. We need God's righteousness. A Christian has been forgiven his sins. In that sense – what some people called "imputed" righteousness, which means God has given us His righteousness for free, because of our faith in Jesus’s shed blood – we are already more righteous than the scribes and the Pharisees. It's only because of this imputed righteousness that we can enter the kingdom of heaven.
And the promise of God is so much more than this. God promises to write His laws on our hearts. By the work of the Holy Spirit, the true Christian comes to hate sin – especially his own sin.
Jesus kept the Law because His heart was right. He loved righteousness and hated sin. By His Holy Spirit working in our hearts, He changes our attitudes so we love righteousness and hate sin – especially our own sin. This is a lifetime’s work, but all true Christians have experienced some of it – we love righteousness more than we used to, and we hate sin more than we used to – especially our own sin. This is one way we know we’re truly born again. It may seem strange that the closer we are to God, the more conscious of our own sin we become. But of course we do.
It's interesting - isn't it? - that the scribes and Pharisees were thought of as the people who were most jealous for God's Law, but Jesus proclaims that their righteousness is not what God desires, and they will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Today many Christian leaders teach things that are not in the Bible, and neglect or deny things that are in the Bible. Will they enter the kingdom of heaven?