Every Christian who has read the Gospels probably knows that the Pharisees hated Jesus. They in fact hated him so much that they actively conspired against him, even to the point of discussing how to have him killed.[1]

Their grievances against Jesus were many and varied—they disliked his teachings about money,[2] and they must have detested his many criticisms of their behavior, since he reproached them for being unjust, unrighteous, and hypocritical.[3] They also accused him of blasphemy for claiming the authority to forgive sins.[4]

But their principal grievance against Jesus seems to have been that, in their view, he routinely violated the Sabbath. They challenged him when his disciples picked and ate grain on the Sabbath,[5] and they were appalled by him repeatedly healing people on the Sabbath.[6] Indeed, their hateful conspiracy against him appears to have begun immediately after he healed a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath.[7]

I see parallels between the Pharisees of Jesus’s time and some Christians today.

Let’s keep in mind that the Pharisees believed they had God and scripture on their side. After all, they were God’s chosen people—the people God had selected to be his people out of all the nations in the world.[8] And God had clearly laid down a rule about the Sabbath:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. For six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God; on it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male slave or your female slave, or your cattle, or your resident who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and everything that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; for that reason the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.[9]

Furthermore, God said that the penalty for failing to keep the Sabbath was death:

You must keep My Sabbaths; for this is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, so that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you. Therefore you are to keep the Sabbath, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it must be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord; whoever does any work on the Sabbath day must be put to death.[10]

The Pharisees must have thought they were doing the Lord’s work by defending the Sabbath, and that Jesus was obviously profaning the Sabbath.

But what they were truly defending was not the Sabbath, or scripture, but their own interpretation of scripture. The Old Testament did not say that healing on the Sabbath violated the Sabbath—that was their interpretation of the rule. And while Exodus 34:21 does say that the Sabbath day of rest must be honored even during “plowing time and harvest,” picking grain and eating it was not plainly within this prohibition. That was merely how the Pharisees interpreted that verse.

So what does all this have to do with Christians of today? The Pharisees arrogantly believed that their interpretation of scripture was the only right, proper, and correct interpretation, and therefore Jesus was clearly in the wrong. I see similar arrogance among some Christians today regarding controversial issues on which scripture is silent or open to differences of opinion—such as homosexuality, LGBTQ issues, abortion, the role of women in marriage, and the role of women in the church. Each of these—and I’m sure there are others[11]—are topics on which sincere, reasonable, thoughtful Christians have reached different conclusions.Yet some Christians act as if they have a monopoly on truth, and that their interpretation of scripture is the only right, proper, and correct interpretation—just like the Pharisees of Jesus’s time. And I fear that their arrogance and intolerance are doing real harm to the cause of the gospel, similar to the impact of the Pharisees in Jesus’s time.[12]

To be clear, I am not criticizing any person, Christian or not, for holding strong beliefs about any of these issues. I am only being critical of Christians who insist that people who merely disagree with them about such issues are immoral, heretical, or even evil. Each of us can make up our own mind about such difficult questions, and each of us is free to live what we believe. But none of us is God or Christ, so all of us should approach such topics with humility and tolerance—the humility of recognizing that we could be wrong, like the Pharisees were about Jesus, and tolerance for other Christians who simply disagree with us.

And above all, let us always remember and obey the last commandment Jesus left us with: “love one another.”[13] That command applies even to those who disagree with us about controversial issues.

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[1]. See, for example, Matthew 12:14, Mark 3:6, Luke 6:11, Luke 11:53-54.

[2]. See Luke 16:10-15.

[3]. See, for example, Matthew 21:33-46, Matthew 23:1-7, Matthew 23:13-15, Matthew 23:23-28, Mark 7:1-13, Luke 11:42, Luke 11:44, Luke 11:46, Luke 12:1, and John 12:42-43.

[4]. Luke 5:20-21

[5]. Matthew 12:1-8, Mark 2:23-28, Luke 6:1-5

[6]. Matthew 12:9-14, Mark 3:1-6, Luke 6:6-11, Luke 14:1-6, John 9:13-16

[7]. Matthew 12:9-14, Mark 3:1-6

[8] See, for example, Exodus 3:7, 3:10, and 8:20-23, and Leviticus 26:11-12.

[9]. Exodus 20:8-11

[10]. Exodus 31:12-15

[11]. Card playing, gambling, and drinking alcohol come to mind.

[12]. See Matthew 23:13-15: “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut the kingdom of heaven in front of people; for you do not enter it yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.”

[13]. John 13:34, 15:12, and 15:17