We have not really learned all the lessons from the Pharisees that we need to learn. The first lesson is that the Pharisees were not all bad. Jesus was visited by one of their number by night, and Nicodemus was an honorable man. Some Pharisees at one point warned Jesus of a plot against His life. And Jesus Himself said that their teaching was good, at least in comparison to that of the Saducees. The apostle Paul considered himself to be a fulfilled Pharisee well after his conversion to Christ. The word Pharisee does not automatically equal wicked.
So where did we get the negative view of the Pharisees? This is the second lesson. Jesus was the one who trashed the reputation of those conservative, Bible-believing, resurrection-affirming Jews who belonged to the Pharisaical party. If we look at the history of the Pharisees, it is reasonable to say that Ezra was probably the founder of the movement. They really did sit in Moses’ seat. The etymology of their name indicated a desire for separation, for genuine holiness. If we wanted to find a name of a ecclesiastical party in our culture that has shared many of the same advantages and disadvantages, I would nominate the Puritans.
As mentioned, Jesus is the one who left their reputation a smoldering ruin. Consider for a moment what Jesus said about them. They were vipers (Matt. 3:7); they were deficient in righteousness (Matt. 5:20); they were strangers to mercy (Matt. 9:13; cf. 12:7); they were slanderers (Matt. 9:34; cf. 12:24); they were conspirators to murder (Matt. 12:14); they were evil and adulterous (Matt. 12:39); they were hypocrites who nullified the Word of God (Matt. 15:7); they were offended by the truth (Matt. 15:12); they introduced the leaven of hypocrisy into their teaching (Matt. 16:5-12); they were lustful adulterers (Matt. 19:3); they set ungodly traps (Matt. 22:15); they were showboaters (Matt. 23:5); they were greedy and cruel (Matt. 23:14); they were dedicated to the destructive impact of their mission work (Matt. 23:15); they had no sense of spiritual proportion (Matt. 23:23); they were lovers of extortion and excess (Matt. 23:25); they were blind (Matt. 23:26); they were full of all uncleanness (Matt. 23:27); they were the spiritual descendants of those who had killed the prophets (Matt. 23:31); their hearts were far away from God (Mk. 7:6); they refused the godly summons of John the Baptist (Luke 7:30); they loved little (Luke 7:39ff); they were full of ravening and wickedness (Luke 11:39); they were conceited lovers of praise (Luke 11:43); they had no compassion for the lost (Luke 15:2ff); they were greedy and covetous (Luke 16:14); and they went home unjustified (Luke 18:9).
Because we do not know the nature of human sin, particularly in its religious garb, we temd to bounce along the surface of this description. We take it at face value — superficially — and assume that the Pharisees were a bunch of orcs with flowing robes and wide phylacteries. But the chances are good to excellent that if we were shown an accurate picture of the Pharisees going about their business, without being told who they were, we would be more than a little impressed. In fact, something similar has happened in some sectors of New Testament scholarship, and men are working a rehabilitation of the Pharisees. They actually held to a religion of grace, and so on. And yes, they did — with their lips.
We also need to learn the rhetorical lessons of prophetic denunciation. When Jesus describes the Pharisees this way, we need to take His word as the accurate account. And the fact that His account was a generalization (there were exceptions) does not keep it from being an accurate account. In other words, generalizations (and caricatures) are not necessarily falsehoods.
I said earlier that the Puritans were a group comparable to the Pharisees. And I say this while describing myself as a Puritan — just as Paul cried out that he was a Pharisee while on trial before the Sanhedrin. But we have to remember what Paul was willing to give up as offal or refuse (as he says in Philippians) for the sake of knowing Christ. And we also have to remember that it is possible to belong to a solid, conservative group, and still fall under all the denunciations that Christ uttered above.
There is always a ditch on both sides of the road. We want to avoid both, and Christ is the only road between those ditches. Some modern Saducees are trying to rehabilitate the reputation of some ancient Pharisees, and Christ’s denunciations get in the way of their project. We also have a group of modern Pharisees who resist that attempt, and are busy themselves trying to be modern Pharisees. Christ’s rebukes speak to them as well.