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Luke 11:37–44
“Woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces” (vv. 42–43).
Failure to see the truth of Jesus and follow His way does not mean that our Lord’s teaching is too hard to understand or is inherently obscure. The problem is always with the person who hears and rejects the teaching. Such an individual does not have healthy spiritual eyes but has damaged spiritual eyes that leave him trapped in the darkness of sin (Luke 11:33–36).
Today’s passage features Jesus’ rebuke of some of those who in His day had severely damaged spiritual eyes—namely, the Pharisees. Before we turn to the text, we should note that not all Pharisees were opposed to Jesus. For instance, the Pharisee Nicodemus learned from Jesus, and his participation in the burial of Christ prompts us to surmise that he was a disciple of the Lord (John 3:1–15; 19:38–42). Nevertheless, the Pharisee party as a whole was strongly inclined toward a form of legalism that treated nonbiblical rules and regulations as equivalent in authority to Scripture. Because of this, the Pharisees frequently clashed with Jesus.
Pharisaic legalism puts itself on full display in today’s passage. Luke tells us that on one occasion when Jesus was dining at a Pharisee’s house, the host complained that Jesus did not wash before dinner (Luke 11:37–38). Based on certain ritual purity laws related to the cleansing of dishes that came into contact with something unclean (e.g., Lev. 15:12), the Pharisees developed an extensive list of new cleanliness laws that they then imposed on others as a sign of true piety. Jesus would have none of this, and He told the Pharisee that in complaining about His not following their extra rules, the Pharisee showed that he was concerned about the wrong things. The Pharisees’ fastidiousness in external cleanliness led them to neglect the state of their souls, and the result was greedy and wicked hearts. Jesus told them to “give as alms those things that are within,” a metaphor that basically means that one must devote his heart to what is good and true (Luke 11:39–41). In essence, He was calling them to repentance and the pursuit of holiness.
In Luke 11:42–44, Jesus condemns the Pharisees for being so focused on minutiae that they neglected the weightier matters of the law. It was not that they were wrong to try to follow the law even in its minutest details. Yet they did this at the expense of mercy and justice and congratulated themselves for being holy.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Paul tells us that love is the fulfillment of the law (Rom. 13:10). The Pharisees were not fulfilling the law because, ultimately, they cared about themselves more than they cared about others. This stemmed from their lack of love for God. They didn’t obey His Word in all its fullness. Let us take care to love God with our whole hearts and love our neighbor as ourselves.
for further study
- 1 Chronicles 28:9
- Psalm 119:1–2
- Matthew 23:23–24
- Colossians 2:20–23
the bible in a year
- Ezra 6–8
- John 21