Have you ever found yourself striving to be the perfect Christian, convinced that your actions and behaviors are the key to your salvation?
You might be surprised to learn that this mindset isn’t new—it’s a hallmark of what some call a “Christian Pharisee.” In the hustle to be holier-than-thou, it’s easy to slip into the traps Jesus warned against. How do you recognize when you’ve become a Christian Pharisee?
In Trust in an Age of Arrogance, C. FitzSimons Allison has three chapters devoted to the topic: “The Pharisee Yeast,” “Anglican Pharisees,” and “Protestant Pharisees.” Inspired by those chapters, here are six signs of being a modern Christian Pharisee.
1) You believe that salvation depends on being good.
This is the main sign. Instead of believing in salvation by faith apart from works (Ephesians 2:8-9), you think it depends on your behavior:
“The object of Pharisee teaching is that by good works one can justify oneself before God and man” (p. 70).
2) You believe the New Covenant is more lenient than the Old Covenant.
Unless the Christian Pharisee is a sociopath who is deluded about his perfect moral purity, people who teach salvation by works will usually lower the standard of how many works are required. Allison quotes Jeremy Taylor as an example of a Pharisee who lowered the demand of salvation from perfection to something more lenient:
“Under the first covenant, the covenant of works no endeavour was sufficient because there was no allowance made for infirmities, no abatements for ignorance, no deductions of exact measures, no consideration of surprises, passions, folly and inadvertency; but under the new covenant, our hearty endeavour is accepted” (p. 89, emphasis added).
In other words, instead of having to be perfect, the Pharisees say we’re saved by doing our best. I call that preaching “cheap law.”
3) You define faith to include works.
The Bible clearly states that salvation comes through believing in Jesus (e.g., John 3:15-18; Galatians 2:16; Acts 16:31, etc.). To get around that simple condition, Christian Pharisees will redefine faith to include good works, such as forsaking our sins. Allision uses Taylor as an example of that, too:
“Taylor frequently uses the phrase ‘justification by faith’ but claims that ‘by faith in Christ we are admitted to the pardon of our sins, if we repent and forsake them utterly” (p. 88, emphasis added).
4) You believe God grades on a curve.
Since salvation is based on a lower standard of good works, Christian Pharisees often think that God must grade on a curve, which then leads the Pharisee to constantly compare his or her behavior with others:
“If God grades on a curve I must find as many people as I can who are greater sinners than I am. Then I will pass. If this were true, there would always be room for boasting and pride and an insatiable need to know, and to find glee in, how bad others are” (p. 80).
5) You look to your behavior for assurance.
If you believe salvation is based on your works, you will doubt your salvation. Christian Pharisees will then counsel you to base your assurance on your behavior. Writing about Protestants, Allision explains that while the early Calvinists taught that “assurance is not to be based on anything in ourselves,” later Calvinists and Puritan Pharisees like Theodore Beza taught people to base their assurance on their good works:
“When anxiety arose as to whether one was of the elect, Beza’s reassurance was to urge one to look at one’s life to see if the fruits of good works are sufficient to demonstrate that one’s election is true…The result was that if the doubter succeeded in assuring himself of his election because of his goodness he was hardly different from the Pharisee in our Lord’s parable. If he is not reassured by the quality of his life he is thrown into despair” (pp. 112-13).
6) You focus on trivial or external matters.
If you are basing your salvation and assurance on your behavior, you will tend to ignore the more significant and deeply rooted sins of your heart and mind and focus instead on relatively minor external behaviors you think you can control:
“The needs of our self-righteous malignancy always drive us to concentrate on minutiae or external matters that seem more amenable to self-control: dancing, card playing, the externals of proper behavior, and suspicion of ornaments and vestments. This certainly happened in Scotland and within Puritanism in general. A certain lack of joy characterizes Pharisaic malignancy” (p. 115).
Are any of these signs familiar?
No one wants to be a Christian Pharisee.
Let’s remember that the essence of Christianity isn’t about our perfect behavior but about our perfect Savior.
Stop obsessing over what you and your neighbors are doing, and put your faith in what Christ has done.
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Send your questions or comments to shawn@freegrace.in.
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