The Pharisees were a group of zealous Jews who were contemporaries of Jesus Christ. They believed that the way they would please God and make it to heaven was by meticulously following a long list of religious rules and regulations.

The Mosaic Law

The foundation of the Pharisaical rules was the “Torah” – the law that God gave through Moses to the Jewish people of the Old Testament (OT). 

The Law was important. It reflected God’s purposes and boundaries for his chosen people, Israel.

Deuteronomy 6:17 You must diligently obey the commands of the Lord your God – all the laws and decrees he has given you.

The most famous part of the Torah is the 10 Commandments, but these are actually just 10 of a total of 613 commandments given to the ancient Israelites.

The Mishnah

While following 613 commandments would be hard enough, over time Jewish leaders began to slowly add to these laws in the Mishnah. This additional teaching is an ongoing compilation of sermons and sayings by Jewish rabbis meant to interpret the original Mosaic Law. The original intent of these additions was to clarify the law, but it ended up adding many layers of complicated regulations. This Mishnah was already lengthy in Jesus’s day and continues to grow to this day. So for the Pharisees, they not only tried to follow the 613 commandments of the Mosaic Law, but the literally thousands of new commandments that were created to clarify the original 613 commandments.

[External Resource: What is the Mishnah? What is a midrash?]

For example, in the Mosaic Law, one of the commandments is to keep the Sabbath holy, which means that Jews were not supposed to work on Saturdays. But to clarify this, the Jewish scholars created thirty-nine separate categories of what “work” means, and within those thirty-nine categories there are many sub-categories. So to follow the rule of not working on the Sabbath, there are literally thousands of sub-rules to follow, including how many steps you can take, and how many letters you can write on the Sabbath.

Where the Pharisees Went Wrong

While most average Jews in Jesus’s day didn’t even attempt to follow all of these additions to the original Mosaic Law, the Pharisees did. They prided themselves on following not just the letter of the Mosaic Law, but even the letter of the Mishnah. Most notably, the Pharisees sought to abide by the external laws that distinguished the Jewish people from all of the other nations – the laws that made them outwardly distinct. These included laws about what to eat, what to wear, circumcision, how to pray out loud, etc.

The impulse that drove the Pharisees was good. When Israel returned from exile, they were repentant - at least for a while. But the influence of Greek culture in the middle east after Alexander the Great led Israelites astray. The area where the Jews lived was ruled by Greek generals. Greek (or “Hellenistic”) culture become prominent. The Pharisees arose as a movement to return Israel to faithful obedience to God. But their idea of how to do what was misguided. It went in the wrong direction.

In one instance, Jesus critiqued how the Pharisees’ use of the Mishnah actually went against what God valued most. Tell the story of healing a man’s hand on Sabbath day.

Mark 3:1-5 Jesus went into the synagogue and noticed a man with a deformed hand. Since it was the Sabbath, Jesus’ enemies watched him closely. If he healed the man’s hand, they planned to accuse him of working on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the deformed hand, “Come and stand in front of everyone.” Then he turned to his critics and asked, “Does the law permit good deeds on the Sabbath, or is it a day for doing evil? Is this a day to save life or to destroy it?” But they wouldn’t answer him. He looked around at them angrily and was deeply saddened by their hard hearts. Then he said to the man, “Hold out your hand.” So the man held out his hand, and it was restored!

The Pharisees valued slavish obedience, not just to God’s Law, but to their interpretation of it, more than they valued the people who belonged to God.

Another time, Jesus critiqued how Pharisees used their additional traditions to get out of what the Law of God actually required of them.

Mark 7:9-13 Then Jesus said, “You skillfully sidestep God’s law in order to hold on to your own tradition. For instance, Moses gave you this law from God: ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and ‘Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.’ But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’ In this way, you let them disregard their needy parents. And so you cancel the word of God in order to hand down your own tradition. And this is only one example among many others.”

In this situation, Jesus saw how the Pharisees manipulated the application of the Law to benefit themselves rather than fulfill what the Law was actually trying to accomplish. 

Jesus’s main critique of the Pharisees was that they were legalistic – only concerned with the external appearance of keeping the Law rather than the inward spirit of the Law. The inward spirit of the Law was emphasized by prophets, especially after Israel failed to keep God’s commandments and were exiled from the land as a result. For example, God told the prophet Jeremiah, “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33). To Ezekiel, he said, “I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations” (Ezekiel 36:27). But instead of heeding this prophetic promise, the Pharisees doubled down on outward conformity and human effort. The result was a disconnect between external appearances and a person’s inner life.

Matthew 23:27-28 What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness.

This explains why people, even today, are drawn to legalism. They want to outwardly look like righteous people, “beautiful on the outside.” 

So what is the purpose of the Mosaic law today? If God has promised to write the law on our hearts, why was the law written on tablets to begin with? The law shows us how sinful we are, which leads us to Christ.

Galatians 3:24-25 Let me put it another way. The law was our guardian until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith. And now that the way of faith has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian.

Romans 3:19-20 Obviously, the law applies to those to whom it was given, for its purpose is to keep people from having excuses, and to show that the entire world is guilty before God. For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are.

The apostle Paul was once a Pharisee. But in his encounter with Jesus Christ, he came to a new understanding of the role of the Old Testament law.

Galatians 3:10-14 But those who depend on the law to make them right with God are under his curse, for the Scriptures say, “Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the commands that are written in God’s Book of the Law.” So it is clear that no one can be made right with God by trying to keep the law. For the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.” This way of faith is very different from the way of law, which says, “It is through obeying the law that a person has life.” But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. For it is written in the Scriptures, “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” Through Christ Jesus, God has blessed the Gentiles with the same blessing he promised to Abraham, so that we who are believers might receive the promised Holy Spirit through faith.

Paul admitted that his old way of living was wrong. Depending on the law to be right with God just places us under a curse, because no one can obey the whole law perfectly. Yet Jesus took that curse upon himself, so that we might be forgiven and might receive the promise of the Holy Spirit (as God promised to Ezekiel).

For Christians today, we should take care not to fall into the trap of Pharisaism – caring more about the letter of the law than the true meaning and power behind it. We’re not bound by the specific provisions of the Law. So why should we be obedient to God? 

Ephesians 2:8-10 God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

We are created for obedience - to do good things. But that doesn’t happen by making detailed rules and prescriptions to govern every situation in life. It happens when we’re led by the Holy Spirit throughout each day.

The apostle Paul summarized God’s plan for the Christian life. It’s not found in keeping the law, but in living a new life by the power of Jesus Christ.

Romans 3:1-4 Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we may also live new lives.