I am a Pharisee

This is a post three days in the making. Since the sermon at church this past Sunday, these thoughts have been cycling through my head. I have been trying to think of a clear way to put them on paper so someone else can see what I have been thinking and understand my mind.

The sermon this past Sunday was from Luke 12. When the end of verse 1 was talked about I got cut deep to the heart. "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy". Ouch. When I heard that it hurt. When I mean hurt, really it felt like my body shuttered and I felt an ache. That verse hit me hard. Almost immediately images and moments in my recent life flashed before my mind. Times when I was a hypocrite, just like the Pharisee, shown in my minds eye. I grimaced in pain as I realized men in the Bible I did not like, I was like. I am a hypocrite. There I will say it again, I AM A HYPOCRITE. And even as I say it now it still
hurts.

As I started to think about the times in my life I am a Pharisee (I will use this word from now on because I think it stings in a different way than hypocrite) I realized that I could split the times up into 2 groups. The first group was times I did what was right and said the right think but not with the right motive. The second group was times when I sinned in private and no one saw me, my sin was not public, my own, my precious, my private sin. Let me try and expose what I mean in each group and then finish with what I have realized since that gut check.

The first group was moments in my life when I was not necessarily sinning but I was not doing anything good. I was a Pharisee to the core. This was times when I gave money to a friend, with the thought then he would have to owe me back. Or the time I gave someone a ride when their car was in the shop but I knew that they would buy me lunch. Maybe it was the time I told someone about Christ because I knew another Christian was listening. These were the moments in my life I did something that was good or showed mercy, not because I loved Jesus but because I had a selfish motive. The more I have thought about these moments, I have come to the conclusion it is a sin, because my pride and selfish motive is driving my action, not my love for God. What should drive these moments in my life and what should push me to show love to others in word or action is my affections for Jesus, not my pride. The Pharisee's did everything for show and their pride, not for their affections for God. I am a Pharisee.

The second group of moments that flashed before my eyes is when my sin or action happened in the dark. Times in life when my sin was mine, it was my private sin that no one else knew or saw. The time when a coworker offended me in the morning so at lunch I just sat in my car festering over it thinking bad about him. The time when I became jealous over a good friend of mine getting something that I have always wanted. These were moments when I lived deep in my sin and no one else knew it. I thought about the time when I said I was going to do something, then never did and lied about it. These were moments in my life when no one but God knew I sinned. These were times when I knew I sinned and I wallowed in it because it was my sin, my own, my precious (I know I sound like Gollum but I think Tolkien was making a reference to this as the ring). And that is what the Pharisees did, they hid their sin from others. They wanted to look good and seem good, but Jesus called them white washed tombs. That would be a good description of me in these moments. I am a Pharisee.

But there is hope. I have discovered this over the last few days as these times and moments in my life keep coming back to me. The blog I read today reminded me that sanctification (or the act of growing as a follower of Jesus) is an act of God's grace in our lives. Life is a war zone, it is a battle. But the grace of God is sufficient to carry me through to the end and make me a stronger lover of Him.  That means God knows I am going to stumble and be a Pharisee but He still loves me in those moments and will love me enough to grow me to not be a Pharisee as much and fight the moments I tend to be a Pharisee. Now I am not saying that I am not responsible for the Pharisee moments and I need to not do them but I have hope that in this battle zone and fight of sin, God is on my side giving me strength to fight the moment. So yes I am a Pharisee sometimes but God will guide me through to beat them back and give me strength to be a lover of Jesus more than I am a Pharisee.