How Jesus Reached the Pharisees

The Pharisees are, in many ways, the main bad guys of the gospel accounts. They were the ones who rejected Jesus because He called out their sin, and they were the ones leading the charge to have Him arrested and crucified. They were evil, and in some ways they were the worst kind of evil, because they were the kind of evil that genuinely thought they were good. The Pharisees are the foil for the true purity and holiness of Jesus. They seem to be almost without hope.

But there is one little verse in Scripture that throws this nice, clean little paradigm on its head. In Acts 15 we find the young church in the midst of the heated debate over whether Gentiles should be required to keep the Mosaic law. In the middle of that discussion, Luke throws us this little nugget: “But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying, That it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses” (Acts 15:5). 

Now, it’s not necessarily surprising that Pharisees who believed in Christ would think Gentiles should keep the Mosaic law. To be fair to them, this was a more difficult question at the time than we might think. Why wouldn’t followers of the Jewish Messiah expect non-Jews to start living like Jews if they wanted in? This issue hadn’t been officially decided yet by Jesus or the apostles. That was the point of the council they were calling. But what might be surprising in all of this, if we are paying close attention, is that there were Pharisees who were followers of Jesus! As the early Christians were debating this very live issue, we hear that there was a group of Pharisees who had converted to the faith! 

With this in mind, I want us to go back to the gospels and look carefully at Jesus’ interaction with the Pharisees. Too often I fear that we read the gospels and think that Jesus was simply scorched earth when it came to the Pharisees. We might get the impression that Jesus saw the Pharisees as a lost cause and simply wanted to see them and their movement burn to the ground. Now, Jesus did have strong words for the Pharisees and their followers. But Jesus loved the Pharisees. And whatever Jesus did, it apparently worked, because we find Pharisees in the early church.

I want to suggest three principles for how Jesus reached the Pharisees. I think that doing this will be an encouragement to us to not give up on the Pharisees in our life, or on anyone for that matter. So, what did Jesus do that worked so well?

Jesus Didn’t Shut Down Conversations

Jesus is often remembered for His harsh words to the Pharisees. Passages like Matthew 23 come to mind, where Jesus calls them whitewashed tombs and warns that they are making their converts into twice the child of hell they are. But those weren’t the only conversations Jesus had. In fact, early in His ministry a very prominent Pharisee named Nicodemus came to Jesus by night (John 3:1), and Jesus welcomed Him. We don’t know why Nicodemus came during the night, but some have suggested it was out of fear. If that was the case, it didn’t stop Jesus from engaging with him. On another occasion, Jesus is invited to the home of a Pharisee for a meal, and He accepts (Luke 7:36).

Jesus didn’t see the untouchables as untouchable, and for this reason His love and mercy rightly stand out in our minds. But He also didn’t view the Pharisees as untouchable. He was willing to interact with them just as much as He was ready to interact with anyone else. He listened, discussed, and on occasion He even commended the Pharisees when they got things right (compare Matthew 22:34-40 with Mark 12:28-34). Nobody was beyond the mercy of Jesus. Not the pagan sinners, and not the self-righteous hypocrites. Both groups were in sin and in need of salvation, and it’s true that in many ways the self-righteous hypocrites were in a more dangerous position. But Jesus loved both and didn’t consider either group to be out of reach. 

Jesus Wasn’t Afraid to Confront Sin

Jesus’ friendship with Pharisees and His love for Pharisees didn’t mean that He took it easy on them. He didn’t smooth over what He really thought to avoid offending them. He expressed surprise that Nicodemus was not able to understand what He was talking about (John 3:10). He called out Simon for his lack of hospitality and confronted his wrong thinking (Luke 7:40-48). And of course, in Matthew 23 Jesus gives an extremely strong message on the hypocrisy and error of the Pharisees. Jesus’ love didn’t lead Him to go easy on the Pharisees. They got the full dose of the truth, not in spite of Christ’s love, but because of it.

This is because Jesus spoke the truth, but He did it in love. His care didn’t keep Him from saying the hard thing. John describes this as Jesus being full of grace and truth (John 1:14). He never backed away from the truth, but truth never came at the expense of grace. Jesus did this well, and I doubt I’m alone in saying that I struggle with this balance. I tend to be either all truth (in the harshest, most unkind way), or all grace (in the slipperiest, most cowardly way). But Jesus was both of these all the time. His love motivated Him to speak the truth, and that truth eventually made an impact in the lives of Pharisees.

Jesus Didn’t Give Up On Anyone

The book of Jonah isn’t really about Nineveh repenting of their sins, or about Jonah learning to obey God the first time, or even about a giant fish. The point of the book of Jonah comes in Jonah chapter four, where Jonah wishes he was dead because God didn’t wipe out the people he hates. As pathetic as this is to watch, what is incredible is the patience of God in dealing with His rebellious prophet. Through a creative illustration, God points out how selfish and cruel the prophet was. We’re tempted to ask at the end of the book if Jonah got the lesson. Probably, as someone had to write the book of Jonah, but the real question we are left with is, “Am I more like Jonah or more like God?” 

The way God got ahold of Jonah is a lot like the way Jesus reached the Pharisees. He engaged in a conversation filled with love but also ready to say the hard things. He pointed out the sinfulness of Jonah’s stubborn heart. And finally, God didn’t give up on Jonah. In the book of Jonah we see Jonah had a harder heart than the pagans of Assyria, but God wasn’t quitting on Jonah. In a similar way, Jesus doesn’t give up on the Pharisees. He goes to their homes, speaks with them when they approach Him, and even calls out their sin in very black and white terms. While we might have seen them as a lost cause, Jesus saw people with eternal souls and He reached out to them.

One day we’re going to reach eternity and find Pharisees there. They will be there because Jesus didn’t quit on them, and because through the conviction of the Holy Spirit the glorious light of the gospel pierced their proud hearts and they realized their need of a Savior. Jesus told the story of a proud Pharisee who prayed “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are… even as this tax collector” (Luke 18:11). Sadly, that was the mindset of many Pharisees, but one day in eternity we will see Pharisee and tax collector join hands as they together sing “I’m only a sinner, saved by grace…” 

There are modern-day Pharisees. If we’re honest, the pull of pride, hypocrisy, and a harshly critical spirit tugs at the corner of all of our hearts. But Jesus loved the Pharisees during His ministry, and He still loves Pharisees today. And God can save Pharisees, even Pharisees like us. So if you find someone hardened in their pride and self-righteousness, don’t give up. Build a relationship where possible. Continue to share the truth of God’s Word. And don’t give up, because the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness can cause the light of the glorious gospel to shine in the hearts of even the proudest Pharisee.