Editor’s Note: You can read the previous articles in this series below!
How to (Not) Parent Like a Pharisee
Legalism, the Religious Elite, and Parenting
Parenting and the Gospel: How Jesus Condemned the Legalism of the Pharisees
Jesus hates legalism. What is legalism? There are two main facets of legalism. (1) Elevating the traditions of men to be equal to the commandments of God. 2. Seeking salvation through obedience to the law. Jesus absolutely despises legalism, because it is antithetical to the gospel.
We see time and time again in the gospels that Jesus reserves his harshest rebukes for the self-righteous legalism of the religious elite. In Luke 11:37-54, we see Jesus issue a series of stinging rebukes to the Pharisees and lawyers. They had elevated their own man-made rules to be equal to the commands of God. They had also embraced the belief that rule-keeping could make you right before God. They said the right things with their lips, but their hearts were filled with sin and far from God.
As Christian parents, it can be easy to drift into legalism in how we raise our children. As we teach our children to obey God’s commands, we should never forget about their hearts. We don’t want to raise children who look good from the outside, but have hearts that are far from God. Their greatest need is to receive a new heart by placing their faith in Christ. That’s not something that can be earned by keeping the rules.
As parents, our primary focus should be on addressing sin in our children’s hearts and their need for Jesus to save them, not merely their external behavior. In this series of articles, we’ve been using Luke 11:37-54 as a framing device to inform our parenting. We’ve been looking at how Jesus rebuked the Pharisees and the Lawyers to identify forms of legalism we should avoid in our parenting.
In our first article, we looked at the setup for the confrontation where a Pharisee judged Jesus for not keeping the man-made tradition of ceremonially washing His hands before a meal. In our last two articles, we looked at the first several condemnations that Jesus leveled at the Pharisees and Lawyers:
- Focusing on Keeping the Rules and Ignoring the Heart
- Obsessing Over Image and the Praise of Man
- Ignoring Internal Sin
- Focusing on Law and Not Grace
In this final article, we’ll look at Jesus’ remaining rebukes and summarize what we can learn from them as we parent our children.
The Sins of the Lawyers
Being Self-Righteous and Hypocritical
Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. So you are witnesses and you consent to the deeds of your fathers, for they killed them, and you build their tombs. Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute,’ so that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation.
verses 47-50
Jesus condemns the Pharisees for honoring the prophets of old while having the same behavior and mindset as those that martyred them. Basically, he’s saying that if they were alive at that time, they would have gladly participated in the murder of the prophets. They were about to do even worse to the Messiah. Jesus is calling out their self-righteousness and their hypocrisy. As Christian parents, we need to make sure that we are not teaching our kids to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to or that we’re better than others.
With my own kids, we’ve had to have conversations that our family is not better than non-Christian families from school because we go to church. We’re not better than anyone, so we shouldn’t be pridefully looking down on anyone for not following the Lord. We should pray for their salvation. We need to humbly recognize that we are sinners saved by grace. This was the attitude of Paul:
The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.
1 Tim 1:15
Knowing the Bible is a good thing, but it isn’t the basis of our salvation. Obeying the Bible is also a good thing, but it’s also not the basis of our salvation. Our salvation is based on the finished work of Christ alone on the cross and that is a gift of grace. We did nothing to earn it.
We should also recognize sin in our own hearts and not be hypocritically blind to our sin. We need to be honest with ourselves about our sin and not see ourselves as perfect. We must teach our children to search their hearts and ask God for help in putting sin to death through the Holy Spirit.
Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
Ps 139:23-24
What Should Parents Do Instead?
- Teach Humility and Honest Self-Assessment
How Should We Do That?
- Don’t let them feel superior to non-Christian friends or family members.
- Don’t let me base their confidence on their works or their Bible knowledge.
- Teach them that salvation is a gift of God’s grace.
- Show them how to honestly assess their hearts.
Focusing on Facts, but Not the Truth
Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.
Lastly, Jesus condemns the lawyers for hiding the “key of knowledge” from the people. What does that mean? Well, the lawyers were the experts in the law. They were rabbis who instructed the people on what the law meant and how it should be applied. What Jesus is saying is that in all of their misguided teaching, they were actually taking away the keys to understanding the knowledge of God. They were elevating man-made traditions with the command of the law and teaching that salvation was found in obeying the law. They weren’t teaching the truth of salvation. They were damning people in the lies of legalism.
Jesus says that the religious leaders hadn’t entered into salvation themselves and that they hindered those who were entering. He’s talking about the knowledge of the kingdom of God. They were damning people with a false gospel of works based righteousness. They weren’t entering heaven and they were preventing the people from understanding how to enter as well.
As parents, this should be a warning to us. The lawyers knew the OT inside and out, but they missed the point. They understood facts, but they didn’t understand the truth. It can be easy for us to fall into a similar trap. Maybe our kids know all the popular Bible stories and know a ton of Bible trivia. That’s not bad, but if they don’t understand the deeper truth of how that fits into the gospel and God’s plan of salvation, they are missing the forest for the trees. Understanding the Bible from an academic standpoint is a far cry from loving the truth of God’s Word.
It doesn’t matter if your kids have memorized the twelve tribes of Israel if they don’t know the gospel. It doesn’t matter if they’ve memorized a whole chapter of an epistle if they don’t understand what it means. It doesn’t matter if your child can recap the main plot points of every Bible story if they don’t know Jesus. We need to teach our kids to understand the true meaning of the Bible and love God’s word from the heart.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
Col 3:16
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.
Ps 1:1-2
I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes.
Ps 119:48
What Should Parents Do Instead?
- Don’t Let Bible Knowledge Be Merely Academic
How Should We Do That?
- Don’t just teach facts about the Bible, focus on the heart of the Bible.
- Teach the meaning of Bible stories, not moralism.
At this point, Jesus has ripped the Pharisees and the Lawyers to shreds. What is their response to this?
As he went away from there, the scribes and the Pharisees began to press him hard and to provoke him to speak about many things, lying in wait for him, to catch him in something he might say.
They are not happy at all. They began to verbally attack Jesus in their rage. The NIV says they began to “oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions.” The NKJV says they began to “assail Him vehemently, and to cross-examine Him about many things.”
They were hoping to catch him in something they could use to trap him. The NASB says they were “plotting against Him.” They wanted to destroy him. The true heart of the Pharisees was revealed. They hated Jesus and wanted to kill Him. They didn’t care about true righteousness that only comes from him. They cared about moralism. They cared about image. They cared about status. They loved their false system of works-based righteousness, not God. So, they sought to destroy Jesus. This is the true heart of an unredeemed legalist.
Conclusion
As Christian parents, we should pray that we don’t fall into the trap of teaching our kids legalism. As we pray for their salvation, we should pray for God’s help in teaching them the gospel. We should pray for help teaching them the grace of God. We should pray for help in teaching them to love God and love Jesus. By the saving power of God, he can give them a new heart and love for Christ. He can alone prevent them from becoming little legalistic Pharisees and make them true followers of Jesus from the heart.
