Grant Abbott Child of Father, Follower of Son, Student of Spirit

God loves the whole world (John 3:16) and Jesus is God, therefore Jesus doesn’t hate anyone. The anger that Jesus expressed towards the Pharisees is because they had corrupted the law of God with their human rules and were leading the people astray. They were idolizing the law instead of worshipping God.

Jesus loves every sinner, but hates all sin because it pollutes, spoils and corrupts our human lives, so we cannot receive all the blessings God has planned, to give us an abundantly fulfilling and deeply satisfying human life.

August 31 2020 • 0 responses • Vote Up • Share • Report

Tim Maas Retired Quality Assurance Specialist with the U.S. Army

I would say that Jesus (in the same way as God the Father) hated sin, and the way that sin manifested itself in the actions and attitudes of the Pharisees, but He did not hate the Pharisees themselves as persons. Just as much as any other people, they were humans whom Jesus had been incarnated to redeem. But (also just as much as any other people), it was necessary for the Pharisees to first realize their sin and repent of it before they could be forgiven and saved. Jesus' multiple angry denunciations of the Pharisees that are found in the gospels (such as Matthew 23:13-28) were meant for that purpose. (And, in fact, it was a repentant Pharisee (Saul/Paul) who became one of the greatest missionaries and evangelists in church history.) 

In his book Mere Christianity, Christian commentator C. S. Lewis (who was an atheist before he became a Christian) indicated that, before his conversion, he used to think of the concept of hating the sin, but not the sinner as "a silly, straw-splitting distinction." However, he eventually came to realize that there was one person to whom he had been doing precisely that his whole life -- himself. He said, "However much I might dislike my own cowardice, or conceit, or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact, the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things."

August 31 2020 • 0 responses • Vote Up • Share • Report

Scott Broberg Fig Tree Ministries

Jesus was not happy when the Pharisees were acting hypocritically. 

The word Pharisee comes from a Hebrew word that means "set apart," so their group is called the "set apart ones." They wanted to be "set apart" from the world - to be Holy. But in their effort to be "set apart" they became irrelevant and antagonistic to the people they were supposed to be leading. 

As religious leaders within Judaism, they were supposed to be shepherds to the people of Israel. But their excessive rules were such that they were turning on the very people they were supposed to be reaching out to - the tax collectors and sinners.

At the same time, though, Jesus affirms the Pharisees:

Matthew 5:20 says: "For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven."

And in Matthew 23:2-3, Jesus says: "The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach."

Also, the Pharisees are the only ones who ever defended Jesus and the disciples. When Jesus upset Herod, it was the Pharisees who came and alerted him: Luke 13:31.

Nicodemus (a Pharisee) brings myrrh, a resurrection spice, for Jesus' burial - John 19:39. 

Gamaliel (a Pharisee) defends the apostles in front of the Sanhedrin - Acts 5:33-39. 

Finally, Paul says he is a Pharisee in Acts 23:6 and Phil. 3:5 which reads:

"...circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee;"

The lesson to be learned from the Pharisees is that we need to make sure we don't become hypocritical. The worst witness to an unbelieving world is a hypocritical Christian. Being hypocritical drags Jesus' name through the mud because it misrepresents who Jesus is by our actions.

September 02 2020 • 0 responses • Vote Up • Share • Report