Our Lord’s whole teaching regarding God as the Father was a criticism of Pharisaic legalism. God is not primarily Lawgiver and Judge, but the heavenly Father. Religion is fellowship with God. The religious bond uniting God and man is grace on God’s part, trust and love and heartfelt obedi- ence on the part of man. In the relation be- tween God and man there is no room for the idea of merit (Lk 177°). God cares for individual sinners gud sinners, and throws the kingdom of heaven wide open to all who are willing to enter in. He sends Wiis Son to seek and to save the lost, and rejoices greatly when any lost one comes back. He rewards men, not according to the quantity of work they have done, but in accordance with His own sovereign grace (Mt 2011. Our Lord ex- plicitly criticises the externalism of the Pharisees. According to Him, the basis of the ethical life is not an external authority, but the personal rela- tion of an individual to God (cf. Mt 5%: 18%, Lk 7*7). What He demands is not outward correct- ness, but inner moral life (Mt 23-8, Lk 118-41), the surrender of the whole personality (Mt 22%7-*°), not the mere performance of a number of exter- nally good deeds. That which ‘defiles’ a man is the evil condition of his own heart (Mt 154, Mk 7“), No action is of any moral worth, unless it is the expression of the inward disposition (ef. what is said of almsgiving, prayer, and fasting Mt 65: δ. 16 git.) The righteousness of the king: dom of heaven is inward and spiritual ; it is the
fruit of a renewed heart and of a filial relation to
The purely formal ethics of the Pharisees led to a great many other evils. They paid no attention to the ethical content of a law. Ethically in- different precepts were as important as those bear- ing on really moral duties, simply because they were contained in the law or tradition. They accordingly busied themselves with minute trifles, to which ΠΟΥ even attached greater importance than to the discharge of duties to their fellow- men. They divorced morality and religion (Mt 151%, Mk 73%, Mt 23%, Lk 11 18, cf. Mt 5% 01 121°; justice and mercy, etc., are opposed by our Lord to a false way of serving God; mercy is better than sacrifice ; duty to parents takes pre- cedence of so-called religious Alte to be recon- ciled to one’s brother is more necessary than coming to the altar; the Sabbath is ‘sanctified’ by doing good; ‘the programme of genuine re- ligion’: ‘genuinely ethical deeds are more im- portant than the observance of ceremonial pre- scriptions ’—Jiilicher). Their externalism did not deliver them from the impulses of the natural man, such as covetousness and rapacity (Mt 23%, Mk 12”, Lk 9057, cf. 164) and the desire of receivin honour from men (Mt 23°, Mk 12%8-, Lk 114 147 2046) ; while it led inevitably to casuistry (e.g. in respect of the Sabbath;* oaths, Mt 23%"; dut to God outweighing duty to man, Mt 15%, M 7°". ; inventing statutes virtually cancelling more irksome ones, Mt 234, Lk 11"), ostentation and self-righteousness (Mt 61:18 23°, Mk 12”, Lk 16% 1895. 2047), censoriousness (Lk 18°), and hypocrisy (Mt 237-28, Mk 12°, Lk 11% 1616 2047), They paid external homage to the great men of the past,
ut were altogether void of their spirit (Mt 23%", Lk 114"-), By means of their false interpretations of scripture and their legal conception of religion they shut the kingdom of heaven both against themselves and others (Mt 23", Lk 11°?) ; while by means of their fencing of the law, they turned the commandments of God (e.g. as to the Sabbath), which were given to help men to live a true life (Mk 2”), into heavy burdens, grievous to be borne (Mt 234, Lk 11). There were doubtless in our Lord’s time many good men among the Pharisees, but the tendency of the whole system was to pro- duce hypocrisy (cf. what is said of proselytes Mt 23)5), or, in the case of earnest and sincere souls, self-torture and a sense of estrangement from God (cf. Mt 11%; see Weber, 320 f.).
LrreraTurg. — Schiirer, Οὐ ΡῈ ii. 8380 6, [HJP nm. fi. 1ff.}, also in Riehm’s H WB? 1906 ff., 1339 ff. ; Wellhausen, Die Phari- sder und die Sadducder, also IJG3 157-388 ; Weber, Jtidische Lf ie auf Grund des Talmud und verwandter Schriften; Montet, Essai sur les origines des partis saducéen et pharisien et leur histoire "ὰ la naissance de Jésus-Christ ; Hausrath, Neutest. Zeitgeschichte 1, 129 ff., also in Schenkel’s Bibellexikon, iv. 618 ff.; Sieffert, ‘Sadduciier und Pharisiier’ in Herzog, PRES xiii. 210 ff.; O. Holtzmann, Neutest. Zeitgeschichte, 158 {f., also in Stade, GVT il. 894 Π΄.; Ewald, GVI3 iv. 357 ff.; Cornill, His- tory of the People of Israel, 145 ff.; Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, passim ; Keim, Jesus of Nazara, i. 822; Davaine, Le Saducéisme, étude historique et dogmatique ; Bertholet, Die Stellung der Israeliten wnd der Juden zu den Fremden, 123 ff.; H. J. Holtzmann, Lehrbuch der neutest. Theo- logie, i. 28 ff., 62 ff.; Jacob, Jesu Stellung zum mosaischen Gesetz ; Bousset, Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judentum, Ehrhardt, Der Grundcharakter der Ethik Jesu im Verhaltniss zu den messianischen Hoffnungen seines Volkes, etc.; Jiilicher, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu, ii. 64 ff., 459f%. and passim ; Bruce, The Kingdom of God4 187 ff.; Mackintosh, Christ and the Jewish Law, 89 ff.; Fairbairn, Studies in the Life of Christ, 165 ff.; Ryle and James, The Psalms of Solomon, xlix ff.