Pharisees Quotes

“Sometimes, you will go through awful trials in your life and then a miracle happens--God heals you. Don’t be disheartened when the people you love don’t see things like you do. There will be Pharisees in your life that will laugh it off, deny that it happened, or will mock your experience based on righteousness they think you don't possess. God won't deny you a spiritual experience because you are not a spiritual leader. He loves everyone equal. The only people that really matter in life are the people that can “see” your heart and rejoice with you.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“God told us to love everyone. However, when you don’t like someone then you need to walk away and focus not on him or her, but the hatred you’re harboring. Otherwise, you will allow your piety to take over. Before you know it, you’re using the gospel as a sword to slice other religious people apart, which have offended you. From your point of helplessness, it will be is easy to recruit people that will mistake your kindness as righteousness, when in reality it is a hidden agenda to humiliate through the words of Christ. This game is so often used by women in the Christian faith, that it is the number one reason why many people become inactive. It is a silent, unspoken hypocrisy that is inconsistent with the teachings of the gospel. If you choose not to like someone, then avoid them. If you wish to love them, the only way to overcome your frustrations is through empathy, prayer, forgiveness and allowing yourself time to heal through distance. Try focusing on what you share as sisters in the gospel, rather than the negative aspects you dislike about that person.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“I dwell mostly upon the religious aspects, because I believe it is the religious people who are to be relied upon in this Anti-Slavery movement. Do not misunderstand my railing—do not class me with those who despise religion—do not identify me with the infidel. I love the religion of Christianity—which cometh from above—which is a pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of good fruits, and without hypocrisy. I love that religion which sends its votaries to bind up the wounds of those who have fallen among thieves.
By all the love I bear such a Christianity as this, I hate that of the Priest and the Levite, that with long-faced Phariseeism goes up to Jerusalem to worship and leaves the bruised and wounded to die. I despise that religion which can carry Bibles to the heathen on the other side of the globe and withhold them from the heathen on this side—which can talk about human rights yonder and traffic in human flesh here.... I love that which makes its votaries do to others as they would that others should do to them. I hope to see a revival of it—thank God it is revived. I see revivals of it in the absence of the other sort of revivals. I believe it to be confessed now, that there has not been a sensible man converted after the old sort of way, in the last five years.”
― Frederick Douglass

“The Holy Spirit did not go into such detail about the Pharisees in the New Testament just so we could understand a group unique to the first century. Pharisaism is a poisonous weed that grows in every garden of orthodox religion. Pharisaism is every bit the threat to the orthodox today that it was then.”
― J.D. Greear, Humble Orthodoxy: Holding the truth high without putting people down

“What we fail to realize is we often become like Pharisees in our ruthless attempts to identify Pharisees (and impostors). While indeed some people use the old laws of religious pride to tear down men of God, others use the new laws of anti-religious anger to tear down men of God.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“To those who rejected Him, righteousness would one day appear as a terrible justice; to the sinful men who accepted Him and allied themselves to His life, righteousness would show itself as mercy.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ

“The sentiments attributed to Christ are in the Old Testament. They were familiar in the Jewish schools and to all the Pharisees, long before the time of Christ, as they were familiar in all the civilizations of the earth — Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian, Greek, and Hindu.”
― Joseph McCabe, The Sources of the Morality of the Gospels

“There exits within the ecclesia and among its citizens a phenomena I refer to as 'Spiritual Correctness'. Essentially it says: 'Don't say anything that could offend anyone, focus on what is right with the 'church' and its leadership, don't be critical, speak the truth in 'love', promote the status quo, don't make 'waves', don't call anyone 'out', respect 'authority', don't expose 'wrong-doing', cover those who 'spiritually abuse' others, keep it 'secret' within our family; don't ask any hard questions. Sounds exactly like the textbook definition of a highly dysfunctional family system. The only 'system' and its enablers that Jesus spoke out against vehemently was the religious system of His day and its leadership."

~R. Alan Woods [2013]”
― R. Alan Woods, Pharisee's Among Us: False Authority vs. Servant Leadership

“Jesus did not define the kingdom as being in the hearts of the Pharisees or anyone else. The kingdom is an objective reality when the King is present.”
― J. Otis Yoder

“If we continue to focus solely on the sinner/saint duality in our person and conduct, while ignoring the raging opposition between the Pharisee and the child, spiritual growth will come to an abrupt standstill.”
― Brennan Manning, Reflections for Ragamuffins: Daily Devotions from the Writings of Brennan Manning

“A man is more or less of a Christian only in proportion to the speed with which he advances towards infinite perfection, irrespective of the stage he may have reached at a given moment. Hence the stationary righteousness of the Pharisee is worth less than the progress of the repentant thief on the cross.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The First Step: An Essay On the Morals of Diet, to Which Are Added Two Stories

“Legalism has killed more faith than doubt ever has.”
― Andrena Sawyer

“If ever someone had the right to protest, This isn't right, this isn't fair, I don't deserve this, it was Jesus.

If ever someone had the right to walk out and walk away, it was Jesus.

If ever someone had an excuse to complain, feel sorry for Himself, find fault with God, it was Jesus.

If ever someone had the right to retaliate and - literally - condemn those who mistreated Him, it was Jesus.

Instead, Jesus entrusted Himself to God. He knew His beloved Father well enough to know that these very religious people, although they considered themselves God's representatives on earth, were nothing of the sort. They were wicked, sinful pretenders who would one day stand beffore God and give an account for what they had done.”
― Anne Graham Lotz, Wounded by God's People: Discovering How God's Love Heals Our Hearts

“What we do know is that while Jesus' enemies accused Him of Sabbath-breaking, of drinking too much wine, and of associating too closely with tax collectors and other disreputable types, at no time did they raise a question about sexual immorality.”
― Alice Mathews, A Woman God Can Lead: Lessons from Women of the Bible Help You Make Today's Choices

“Jesus reproaches the Pharisees for an older version of the same ploy when he sees them build tombs for the prophets their fathers killed. The spectacular demonstrations of piety toward the victims of our predecessors frequently conceal a wish to justify ourselves at their expense. If we had lived in the time of our fathers, the Pharisees say, we would not have joined them in spilling the blood of the prophets. The children repeat the crimes of their fathers precisely because they believe they are morally superior
to them. This false difference is already the mimetic illusion of modern individualism, which represents the greatest resistance to the mimetic truth that is reenacted again and again in human relations. The paradox is that the resistance itself brings about the reenactment.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“One cannot despise Christians and love Christ at the same time. Too many are fooled into the self-righteous notion that those who stand boldly in the faith are nothing more than religious zealots and Pharisees, and that they themselves are closer to Jesus by communing with the mockers.”
― Criss Jami