Nielsen’s Nook

Nielsen’s Nook
Nielsen’s Nook
Contemplative, reflective, and irenic we pray.
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Essential Righteousness - Part III

Will Nielsen
February 13th, 2006
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View Other Posts in this Series:
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII

II. The Law of Pharisee

If the Law of God was the description of True Righteousness but lacked the power to transform the deadness at our very core, the Law of the Pharisee was something subtly other than that.

The Pharisees were the religious leaders of the day who had won the esteem and the fear of the masses by vigorously establishing the Jewish culture over against the pagan cultures that were impinging upon it. They saw the Law of God as a prescription of what one was to do in order to be righteous (i.e., a list of things to do and not do). For example, the Law required that a person fast once a year. The Pharisees would fast twice a week and make sure that everyone understood that they were the religious over-achievers.

They did not understand that since the creation of the world, God has always been primarily concerned with our hearts, with the inner disposition that His creatures have with Him as their Creator. In Matthew 23 Jesus will call the Pharisees hypocrites, play-actors and whitewashed tombs, being polished shinny on the outside and full of the rancor and stench of death on the inside.

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