Matthew 23:13-15

TEXT: 23:13-15

13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye shut the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye enter not in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering in to enter. [Some authorities insert here, or after Matthew 23:12, Matthew 23:14: Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widow's houses, even while for a pretense, ye make long prayers: therefore ye shall receive greater condemnation. See Mark 12:40; Luke 20:47.]

15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he is become so, ye make him twofold more a son of hell than yourselves.

THOUGHT QUESTIONS

a.

Jesus affirms that the Pharisees somehow succeeded in shutting the kingdom of heaven against men, implying that the entrance was really blocked. If so, what personal responsibility would be that of anyone thus shut out? What guilt would they have, if any?

b.

Do you think it is right for God to permit men like the Pharisees to shut the kingdom of heaven against people? What great principles are involved here?

c.

If the Pharisees were really as bad as Jesus pictures them, how could their converts be twice as much a child of hell as their spiritual fathers? What does it mean to be twice as bad as a Pharisee?

d.

Why do you think that the Pharisees produced such evil fruit through their ministry? What is there in the essence of Pharisaism that must produce this kind of fruit every time, even if the Pharisees themselves may deplore it?

e.

Is it wrong therefore to try to win people to our understanding of God's truth, and to persuade them to abandon their present position to come to that which we occupy? What is the difference between evangelizing and proselyting? Which do you do? Can we do both?

f.

What is a sect? When does one become a sectarian? Is the group with which you are connected, where you feel at home as a believer, a sect?

g.

What type of converts are we making? What must be our method, our plea, our goal, our spirit, if we would avoid the proselyting done by the Pharisees?

h.

To save ourselves from sectarian proselyting, must we leave to God's leading the question regarding which group a given convert belongs to, rather than claim him for our congregation or our segment of Christianity? What principles do you consider important in answering this question?

PARAPHRASE

But how terrible for you teachers of the Law and you Pharisees: every one a counterfeit! You lock the Kingdom of God in men's faces: you yourselves do not enter in; and you block the passage of those who want to get in! How terrible for you, theologians and purists, you imposters! You scour land and sea to make a single convert to your sect. When you succeed, you make him twice as fit for hell as yourselves!

SUMMARY

The sectarian theology of the Pharisees produced the doubly devastating effect of keeping everyone out of God's Kingdom: they themselves rejected Jesus-' invitations to enter, and their opposition to Him cowed many others from doing so. Only membership in the Pharisean brotherhood counted, but this too ruined the earnest disciple because of what sectarianism does to his soul.

NOTES
II. DENUNCIATION OF HYPOCRITICAL RELIGION

Matthew 23:13 But woe to you! Before proceeding with comment, it should be noticed how truly Jesus-' Woes picture false religion, profoundly contrasting with His Beatitudes that depict and recommend true religion:

TRUE RELIGION: THE BEATITUDES

FALSE RELIGION: THE WOES

1.

The poor in spirit enjoy access to the kingdom of heaven. This humble submission admits its need of help. It is not confident of its rightness, but more certain of its wrongness and need.

1.

To shut the kingdom of heaven, not entering or permitting others, is arrogantly to reject any suggestion of needing help. It is absolute certainty of one's rightness.

2.

They who mourn shall be comforted. This involves sensitivity to others-' needs and pains and to one's own personal need to repent.

2.

Crossing sea and land to make a single convert twice as bad as oneself involves a sectarian pride and an insensitive presumption. For this there is no hope of comfort, only punishment.

3.

The meek inherit the earth: they surrender self-rule to God through their acquiescence and obedience.

3.

Evasion of responsibility to truth and duty is a subtle rebellion that quibbles to keep from obeying, the diametric opposite of meekness.

4.

Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied with that for which they seek, because there can be no satisfaction with less than truth and godliness.

4.

Tithing minutiae while neglecting justice, mercy and faith is but satisfaction with empty ritual. Instead of deep thirst for godliness, there is only satisfaction with trivia.

5.

The merciful shall obtain mercy.

5.

While cleansing the outside of eating utensils, the inside is filled by extortion and rapacity, the diametric opposite of kindness or mercy.

6.

The pure in heart will see God. When there is no double-mindedness, no dual motives, God is pleased with sincerity.

6.

The white-washed tombs: externally righteous are inwardly full of hypocrisy and lawlessness, because of impure hearts.

7.

Peacemakers are called sons of God.

7.

The beautifiers of tombs were sons of murderers of God's witnesses with whom they warred.

8.

To those who are persecuted for the sake of Jesus and righteousness will belong God's Kingdom, for so men persecuted the prophets before you. You are blessed, so rejoice and be glad.

8.

(No woe stated) So from inheriting the long-awaited Kingdom, persecutors of Jesus-' prophet wise men and scribes will face fearful blood guiltiness to be punished in their own generation.

Although the comparison between these blessings and woes must not be unduly pressed since the parallels are not strictly precise, it is clear that Jesus intended to express the antithesis of that sincere, heart-felt religion which he vividly described in the Beatitudes.

Arrogance and Exclusiveness

Matthew 23:13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees. Having publicly warned the crowds of their leaders-' hypocrisy, He now addresses them directly. Woe: How sad for you, because of the judgment threatening to overtake you! (See notes on Matthew 11:21 and Matthew 18:7.) Woe stands in sharp relief over against the sunny happiness of the Beatitudes, since it depicts unhappiness, misery and calamity. But, it might be objected, does not Jesus expose Himself to the same accusation He levels against the arrogant, exclusivist sectarians? Does not this very message fairly bristle with INTOLERANCE? But someone observed, Nobody is wholly tolerant. The more one believes in tolerance, the less he can tolerate the intolerant! Notably absent from these awful words, however, is any evidence of bitterness or resentment or rancor. In fact, our Lord is not haughtily cursing these sectarians, eloquently raining savage damnation on them. But neither are His assertions empty accusations. His unswerving denunciations are like calmly fired, deadly salvoes of righteous anger, aimed with absolute precision, an awesome moral bombardment that hits with telling force right on target, illuminating the entire battlefield when they explode. Nevertheless, through it all there is the sorrow of a loving heart. When the flame and the fury are over, only the broken heart is heard (Matthew 23:37-39). Jesus-' disapprobation here is, in effect, a sentence of eternal doom against which there can be no hope of appeal, except through sincere repentance. (Contrast Romans 8:31-35.) So, these woes ring with the familiar trumpet-blast of prophetic denunciation. (Cf. Isaiah 5:8-23; Isaiah 10:1; Isaiah 10:5; Isaiah 23:1; Isaiah 29:1; Isaiah 29:15; Isaiah 30:1; Isaiah 31:1; Isaiah 33:1; Isaiah 45:9 f.; Jeremiah 22:13; Jeremiah 23:1; Ezekiel 13:3; Ezekiel 13:18; Ezekiel 34:2; Amos 6:1; Habakkuk 2:6-19.) Study Jesus-' earlier use of woe: Luke 6:24-26; Luke 11:52.

SPECIAL STUDY: ON THE MAKING OF A HYPOCRITE

The usual definition of a hypocrite depicts him as a person who consciously pretends to be what he is not or better than he really is. This definition implies that he knows and understands the standard he imitates, even if he secretly rejects it on many points. But this common definition is inadequate, because it refers only to that deceiver who is fully aware that under an elaborate mask of godliness, he hides a heart ruled by godless desires. Unquestionably, there was much of this sort of pretense among the Pharisees and scribes, but is this all Jesus meant?

No less than five times Jesus referred to these hypocrites as blind guides and blind fools (Matthew 23:16-26). Blindness, however, denotes an inability to see and connotes the inability to comprehend. How, then, can hypocrites be correctly described as blind, if by the previous definition they comprehend the standard perfectly? It is because, in Jesus-' concept, there are TWO KINDS OF HYPOCRITE:

1.

Those common frauds who see and understand the disconnection of their inner motivations from their outward conduct, and accept it. These conscious deceivers pose as good men outwardly, even though, inwardly, they do not share the motives for goodness that stir really good men to action, because these hypocrites-' mainspring is self-interest. Our experiences with these frauds leads to the common definition mentioned above.

2.

Jesus clearly sees a second type of hypocrite: those who neither see nor accept the fact that they are involved in bad actions that contradict their good principles. Marshall (Challenge of NT Ethics, 60) explains this brand of hypocrisy so typical of the scribes and Pharisees:

The trouble with them was that they sincerely thought that they were good men who were championing the cause of true religion, while all the time they failed to see that their goodness was largely counterfeit as well as lamentably deficient, and that what they regarded as the essentials of true religion were not its essentials at all.. Moral and spiritual blindness was their chief defect, though all the time they fondly supposed that nobody could see so clearly as they did.. The Pharisee was as self-righteous in his innermost thinking as in his outward demeanor, so that there was no contrast between his inner and his outer self. He honestly thought of himself a model of piety and virtue. Their main fault was that they were blind to their actual state, so that a hypocrite in the Gospel sense of the term is rather one who is firmly convinced that he is pious and virtuous but is blind to his actual condition.

But how did this binding process get started?

All of us, even the most gifted and fortunate, are born with limitations, handicaps, disadvantages, shortages and problems, in comparison with those who do not share our specific hindrances or weaknesses. Everyone else seems to be bigger and better and to have more of everything than we do. So we reject ourselves as we are and begin immediately to compensate for our shortages by imitating others-' strong pointswhatever it costs. We accept what others have or are, because this seems better than anything we have or are, so we struggle to catch up in various ways.
Even in religion there is no escaping this contrast and its resultant struggle. There is no relief in a perfectionist religion of endless rules that holds before us an unreachable ideal, but which, all the while, lashes us to meet its standards. We must hate ourselves as we are, so we thrash on desperately to achieve our goal of perfection, but without the psychological satisfaction of success. Apparently others are succeeding at our religion, otherwise they would have given it all up long ago. But, why are we not as imminently pious as they seem to be? Perhaps we should fake it until we make it. The more the frustrated believer fails to measure up to the piety perceived in others, the more he must hate himself for his inability to live up to what he perceives as God's will for his life. But, because he just cannot keep up with everything, the social pressure of his religious community pushes him to be selective. He is thus prodded into deciding which precepts to practice and which to ignore or postpone. So, to quiet potential criticism for appearing not to measure up, he lays greater stress on the precepts that enjoy a high visibility, the externals. He dare not admit his inward failure to others, for this admission would be his emotional and theological damnation, both in his own eyes and in the estimation of his co-religionists. So, this blinding process is spawned in a psychological need to justify oneself, to make oneself appear orthodox and godly, hence to compare favorably with one's peers.
This explains the high importance of grace and expiation in Christianity, as opposed to a perfectionist religion of legalism. (Grace existed first, of course, in true Old Testament religion, but the Pharisees and their spiritual ancestors buried it under tons of legal restrictions, traditions and the highly praised, but non-existent, merits of the fathers (cf. Pirke Aboth, Matthew 2:2), and left it no effective function in their sectarian system.) Grace and expiation mean that, through forgiveness, God makes us worthy in His beloved Son, quite apart from our ability to live perfectly. When we accept ourselves as we really are, i.e. by accepting the fact that we are not perfect, but sinners, and by confessing our sins, this new honesty clears the way for real change and new hope. We are no longer faking it with God. By accepting our actual state, i.e. dead spiritually, licentious, ill-tempered or whatever, now without any pretense we furnish God a solidly honest base from which to make us over. From that moment we not only see the logic of the method, but really feel motivated to make the changes necessary to become what we could not before. Self-acceptance, i.e. confession, is the threshold of transformation.

The hypocrite, then, is the person who cannot accept himself as he is, cannot confess his inadequacy and real sinfulness, because his pride has backed him into a corner from which there can be no escape except by confession. This explains the phenomenal conversions of the publicans and prostitutes during the ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus. When they came along preaching repentance (confession of what one really is and expressing a readiness to abandon it for God's gracious forgiveness and a resultant new life-style), these sinners flocked in, because this message made perfect sense to them. Contrarily, the Pharisees could not respond correctly to John or Jesus, because they did not accept themselves for what they actually weresinners damned without hope except that held out by a merciful God. They continued to judge themselves according to what they thought they ought to be or according to what they esteemed themselves to have already become, never according to what they really were. Hence, they never succeeded in admitting their true spiritual condition, and consequently never gave God a chance to save them. They refused to admit their difficulties, imperfections and temptations, and so they tranquilly, but fatally, assumed that everything was in order between themselves and God.
This also explains the hypocrites-' insensitivity toward others. Because they cannot accept themselves as sinners in need of help, they have little sympathy for others. In the light of a graceless system of law, they see others as simply sinners who ought to exert more effort to be perfect and, since they apparently are not doing this, should be condemned.

In the teaching of Jesus, then, the hypocrite is not only or merely the person who poses as godly while perfectly aware of his ungodliness, but also the person who consciously and intentionally refuses to see some unwelcome aspect of the truth as it affects him personally. To this extent he permits himself to believe in self-deception. Ironically, however, this tool attacks the user, so to speak. Chosen primarily to cover up what he did not want to see, this self-deception later conceals from him what he truly desires to see, without his being aware of his loss. From this point on, this self-deceiver who has manipulated truth, can plunge placidly on into the most unthinkable error and the most vicious folly, while presuming himself to be acting with perfect correctness and orthodoxy. (Cf. John 9:39-41; Acts 26:9; Acts 23:1.)

Peter and Barnabas at Antioch exemplify this latter type of hypocrisy precisely. (Galatians 2:11-21, esp. Galatians 2:13: sunupekrìthesan ... hupokrìsei) Although both men unquestionably accepted Jesus Christ as their only Savior and Lord, yet, by withdrawing table fellowship from the Gentiles in order to follow Jewish customs, they were unconsciously denying a fundamental tenet of Christianity: justification before God is based on the same faith shared by Gentiles, not upon practices originating in the Mosaic Law. They had not thought out the practical application of their own principles in relation to the Gentiles, hence in this practical test, they were found to be living in contradiction of their own principles. The inward principles of these otherwise good men were not in harmony with their external conduct. This is why Paul correctly describes their conduct as hypocrisy.

Fanatic Sectarianism

Matthew 23:13 Woe ... because ye shut the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye enter not in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering in to enter. How could legalistic theologians shut the kingdom of heaven against men? Certainly not in the absolute sense, because the purposes of the Almighty God cannot be thwarted by a few obscurantists and bigots. Their success in doing this was only relative to their influence with others. There are not really two opposing views of the Kingdom involved here, i.e. that of the Jewish scholars and that of Jesus. Both, in fact, have in view the rule of God proclaimed and acknowledged by the righteous. Rather, the dissimilarity lies in their opposing views as to what constitutes that righteousness which qualifies men for participating in the Kingdom and as to how this righteousness is to be achieved. The kingdom of heaven, for Jesus, is the rule of God proclaimed by John the Baptist and by Jesus Himself. This reign was to take more definite shape at Pentecost with the descent of the Holy Spirit and the establishment of the Church. But, even as Jesus was speaking, publicans and harlots, who ignored the Pharisees, were flocking in by preparing themselves to believe and obey anything God says. (Matthew 21:28 ff.; cf. Special Study; The Kingdom of God, my Vol. III, 160ff.) In their own view, the scholars esteemed themselves amply qualified to enter the Kingdom, but according to Jesus-' estimate, they stood as much outside its portals as anyone else they hindered. There is strident irony here, because the Pharisees-' ideal was to render entrance into God's Kingdom possible! (See Bowker, Jesus and the Pharisees, 15ff.) But, says Jesus, the practical result of your interpretations of God's Word makes your own ideal impossible, so you keep people out of the Kingdom! How did this work? Several answers are possible!

1.

By adhering to their ideal of righteousness based on perfectionist adherence to their own man-made system of minute rules, they taught that only in this fashion could anyone possibly know that they have fulfilled all that God requires of them. However, since God had not legislated such minutiae, the theologians had filled in the gaps in the Law of God with their own human conclusions elevated to the status of divine revelation. However, by binding men's consciences with an ever-growing list of rules to keep so as to be perfect enough to merit God's approval, they made it harder than ever for anyone to be confident of ever being really qualified to enter the Kingdom. Thus, since no one could meet the Pharisean ideal, in practice no one could really enter into the Kingdom. Worse, discerning people, who could foresee this inevitable outcome, would be tempted to reject the whole procedure, only to find themselves without any viable alternative. For most Jews, law-keeping, to have any value, meant doing it according to the authorized interpretations. But vast numbers of conscientious people could not always be as scrupulous about keeping all the minute, traditional regulations. The rabbis, then, treated these folk as sinners, impious, ignorantoutside the Kingdom, damned (cf. John 7:49). Even more ironic is the realization that, although the Pharisean ideal had theoretically been to make total righteousness possible for everyone, their approach actually rendered it absolutely unattainable for those who had any conscience, even within their own brotherhood: You enter not in yourselves! If perfect observance of God's Law be the only door into the Kingdom, then not even the best Pharisee could ever enter there! In their blindness they had not grasped this.

2.

By their personal and collective rejection of John the Baptist who prepared the way that people might be ready to enter the Kingdom, they undoubtedly discouraged many who, otherwise, would have entered by taking advantage of all John offered the nation. (Study Matthew 21:23-32.) He demanded that they humble themselves and repent of their self-admiration and self-justifications (Matthew 3:7-10). This galled them. How could they deny themselves, abhor the luxury and condemn the life of ease which they put down as unshakable evidence that they had really earned God's approval upon their lifestyle?!

3.

By their adamant opposition to Jesus who was really leading people into the Kingdom, they exerted an unhealthy influence over weaker souls less able to throw off their evil spell and follow Jesus. Because the orthodox determined to reject and oppose Jesus in every way possible, they swayed the unthinking and bullied the hesitant into a position of confused and undeciding neutrality. Thus, not only did they despise Jesus-' invitations to enter the Kingdom on His terms, but they effectively cooled the enthusiasm of many others who might have accepted. (Cf. John 9:22; John 9:33 f.; John 7:13; John 7:45-52; John 12:42; Luke 6:22.)

4.

By their overt sectarian spirit they consciously implied that anyone who did not belong to their party was unfit for the kingdom of heaven. Were door-keeping duty their private privilege, only Pharisees could enter. With a mob of theologians and unbending sectarians barring the Kingdom's entrance, it is not surprising that anyone must use violence to elbow his way through these spiritual and sociological obstructions to get in! (See notes on Matthew 11:12 and Luke 16:16.)

5.

Earlier, Jesus had condemned experts in the Law who had taken away the key of knowledge (Luke 11:52). The key that admitted entrance to God's Kingdom is a correct knowledge and true interpretation of the Scripture, because to interpret accurately the Old Testament's meaning leads men to recognize Him of whom the Scripture speaks and, through submission to Him who is the focal point of all Scripture, they truly unlock the entrance to God's Kingdom. Further, this correct understanding about the Messiah is the clue to grasping His purpose and planning and to seeing that obedient love, reverence for God and respect for people is the heart and center of the Messiah's message and meaning. Scribal pretentiousness and interference missed all this and confused or discouraged others who had succeeded in discerning this much. By teaching the trash of tradition instead of the true, simple meaning of Scripture, they effectively hid the correct intention of the Bible both from themselves and from others.

Consider, by contrast, what contributions these Bible scholars could have made to the success of Jesus-' ministry by recognizing in the Old Testament prophets all the melodies of which Jesus of Nazareth is the fully developed symphony, and by pointing to Him in whom all the lines of the Law's righteous standard converge. Their voices might have furnished scholarly direction and convinced thousands to follow John and Jesus right into the Kingdom. Instead, they glorified the Law for itself and built sepulchers for the prophets, expecting no Messiah in their own time, at least not like the Galilean from Nazareth! Thus, they locked men out of the Kingdom.

This woe properly begins the list, because even more terrible to persecute God's prophets is really to possess His Word personally, but to withhold it from God's people to whom it is given. Our Lord must attack the presumption in the Pharisean spirit that would jealously snatch the precious water of life from the world's parched lips, so that its personal rights to that cup never be put in doubt. Should Jesus say nothing about this attitude that considered sharing God's good news unconditionally with everyone to be an unthinkable blasphemy and each instance of God's merciful healing of unworthy people an intolerable theological embarrassment?

Matthew 23:14 has apparently been inserted into Matthew's text by copyists from Mark 12:40 or Luke 20:47, since it is not found in the earliest, best manuscripts and since those who include it differ on where it should go in the text. (Metzger, Textual Commentary, 60)

Not only did they block the Kingdom. They also siphoned off members into their own sect:

Partisan Missionary Zeal

Matthew 23:15 Feel the bite of Jesus-' satire: You go all over the world to make converts, and what do you produce? One single proselyte. And what do you do with him once you get him? You make him twice as ready for hell as you are! Although separatistic Judaism was not an explicitly missionary religion, the tireless zeal of the Pharisean vision of legal holiness not only possible but absolutely essential in all of life, naturally prodded its adherents to do everything possible to proclaim these views wherever in the known world a synagogue might be located. Did they seek proselytes from among Jews of other persuasions within Judaism, or converts to Pharisean Judaism from among the pagans? Apparently both. (Cf. Josephus, Ant. XX, 2; XIV, 7, 2; Pirke Aboth, 1:12; 2 Baruch 41:3f.; 42:5; cf. Matthew 1:4.) Their goal would not be reached by making former heathen merely Jews by circumcision, as important as this was, but by making them what, in their separatist vision, is the true Israel of God, i.e. Pharisees, of course. Such evangelistic fervor is not at all alien to their character. While a few complacent ones may have crowed like the Pharisee in Luke 18:11, glad to be among God's chosen few and above the common herd, the ardent zeal to make converts to their party is part and parcel of their sectarian spirit (Cf. Ant. XVIII, 3, 5; Wars, II, 7, 10; Life of Josephus, 23, 31.) But theirs was a zeal without knowledge (Romans 10:2), because, although they were extremely incompetent to lead men to the truth, they were intensely eager to furnish that leadership, as Jesus explains next:

Ye make him twofold more a son of hell than yourselves is a strong indictment, almost as if some narrow-minded bigot deliberately planned this result. However, the Lord is laying bare their results, not their purpose. (Cf. Matthew 7:15-20.) A son of hell (Gehenna) is a Semitism for which we would use simple adjectives like hellish, diabolical, satanic, doomed and damned. (Cf. John 17:12.) They are the theological contrary of sons of the Kingdom (Matthew 13:38). Any unbelievers among the sons of the Kingdom will be rigorously uprooted (Matthew 8:12), because, in reality, they are sons of the devil (John 8:44). Twofold more a son of hell than yourselves contains a dual indictment:

1.

You Pharisees are children of hell yourselves! Why so? Because their setting aside the sovereignty of God in practice, their ignoring His righteousness and their substituting their own self-righteousness is the evil genius and explanation of their system, and unquestionably constitutes rebellion against God (Romans 10:3).

2.

Your converts are twice as bad as you are! In what sense?

a.

IN MATURITY. A new convert, because he has not yet learned all the good reasons why something cannot be done, is often supercharged with such enthusiasm for his new-found faith that he desires to learn and apply everything all at once. But, because the former pagan lacks broad grounding in God's Word, notions that seem important to him he turns into conclusions more extreme than those of his own teachers. Even sincere Bible college students today sometimes stretch the cautiously worded and carefully qualified positions of their professors, so that these teachers would be horrified to hear the doctrines attributed to them by their own students. This phenomenon does not result from their being taught this way, but because the immature, under less restraint from broader knowledge of the material, take their teachers-' conclusions farther than these intended.

b.

IN CHARACTER. The convert, whose zeal for the legalism of Pharisean Judaism leads him to master its principles, could push its perfectionist methodology to fanatical extremes undreamed of by his teachers, then twist them back on his mentors with a vengeance. Witness the legalistic ANTI spirit among the movements to restore New Testament Christianity, that spawns sects pulsing with self-righteous contempt for anyone not in fellowship with their particular group. Although the Pharisean rabbi Gamaliel gives surprisingly moderate counsel concerning early Christian leaders (Acts 5:33 ff.), his disciple, Saul of Tarsus (Acts 22:3), persecuted them with raging fury (Acts 26:11).

c.

JUDICIALLY BEFORE GOD. By conscientiously accepting the punctilious legalism of his teachers, the Pharisean convert's own conscience leaves him no respite, no redemption, no mercy from God, hence doubly damned, first by his following false doctrine already condemned by God, and second, by following it into the hopelessly endless stairway to perfection which human weakness must forever pronounce impossible and fall back in despair, beaten by his own system, or else, obstinate to the end, he could claim the all-covering merits of Abraham to eliminate any slight imperfection possibly remaining! (Other Jews, however, repudiated this doctrine. IV Ezra 7:102-115.).

The unusual severity of Jesus-' language is explicable in light of His own mission. He too had crossed far more than sea and land to make believers and save men for truth and righteousness for eternity. Now, instead of finding assistance among the leaders of God's people, He finds the mission of His heart blocked in two directions: inquirers were both denied access to truth which could have saved them (Matthew 23:13) and they were taught what was both false and fatal instead (Matthew 23:15).

However, no more unfounded conclusion could be drawn than that Jesus somehow meant to declare evangelism either out of style or wrong-headed today. Why?

1.

Because, although Pharisees held many false notions, their zeal for evangelism is itself commendable. Their unsparing labor shames, nay, damns the indifference of disciples of Christ, who, while believing the true Gospel, have neither the desire, the patience nor the determination required to labor assiduously to bring Christ's message of salvation to all the world! Jesus does not condemn Pharisean zeal itself, but its promoting doctrines that made men anything but godly. Zeal for righteousness is always timely and praiseworthy.

2.

Because aggressive foreign evangelism across cultural lines is not merely commendable, but imperative, because it was ordered by the King of kings (Matthew 28:18 f.) God's people cannot sit at home and pray for world evangelism without raising up evangelists qualified to travel over sea and land to make disciples of all nations. Christians who rest complacent in their inaction and excuses for not funding the projects necessary to accomplish this, will be startled at the Judgment, when Pharisees stand up and condemn them, because, even with their twisted view of truth, they at least travelled over sea and land to make one proselyte, but the Christians would not walk across the street nor send a missionary around the world to share the gloriously true tidings of Jesus!

3.

Because we may avoid the self-interested party spirit Jesus condemns, if we have the right goals, spirit and methods.

a.

We must continually ask ourselves these questions: to what are we winning people? What kind of convert are we making? What kind of human being do people become as the result of our efforts? Do our converts become more godly, more fully human than before, or only partially so, or, worse, even less so than before?

b.

For many, the only practical difference between evangelizing and proselyting depends on who is doing it. If someone leaves their sect, he is a dishonest renegade, proselyted by the enemy. But if he joins their sect, he is welcomed as an honest, open-minded convert, evangelized by the true Church. By contrast, our real concern must be whether what we are doing brings men to Christ or to our party creed. Does it lead to consecration to God, or foster party loyalty? Does it proclaim the whole counsel of God, or our human opinions? Do others notably glorify God because of what we are doing (cf. Matthew 15:31), or do they tend to brag about us, our achievements and our group?

c.

To lead someone from a partial understanding to a larger grasp of the truth of Scripture cannot be called proselyting in the sense Jesus disapproves. This is simply to teach this disciple to know and do all that I have commanded you (Matthew 28:20).

FACT QUESTIONS

1.

What is the kingdom of heaven that the Pharisees shut against men?

2.

In what sense did the Pharisees not enter into the kingdom?

3.

Who would have entered the kingdom, were it not for the Pharisees-' opposition?

4.

How or when did the Pharisees refuse to allow those who would enter to go in?

5.

What mental image does Jesus evoke by describing Pharisees as compassing sea and land to make one proselyte?

6.

What is a proselyte? What kind of proselyte were the Pharisees making?

7.

What effect did Pharisean doctrine have on their proselytes?

8.

Define a child of hell as Jesus used this expression here.

9.

Show how the fruits of Pharisaism demonstrated the falsity of their system.