Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, were listening to all these things and were scoffing at Him. And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God. The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John; since that time the gospel of the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it. But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the Law to fail. Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries one who is divorced from a husband commits adultery.” (16:14–18)

It is a paradoxical truth that those who are the most dangerous enemies of God are not the ones who openly oppose Him, but rather those who outwardly appear the most devoted to Him. Many assume that such seemingly pious people, especially those who identify themselves with the God of Scripture, must surely have His approval, when in reality, false forms of worship directed at the God of the Bible are hated by Him. Apostate Judaism and false Christianity, along with all their deceiving teachers, are haters of divine truth and of God.

God’s harshest condemnations were reserved not for irreligious fools who deny His existence (Ps. 14:1; 53:1) but for those who professed to be His people and to worship Him. Isaiah’s prophecy records God’s rejection of even Israel’s apostate form of false worship:

Amos records a similar condemnation:

In Isaiah 29:13 the Lord condemned those Jewish hypocrites who “draw near with their words and honor Me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from Me, and their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote,” while in Isaiah 48:1 He denounced those “who swear by the name of the Lord and invoke the God of Israel, but not in truth nor in righteousness.”

Jeremiah delivered God’s strongly-worded rebuke of the false religionists of his day:

Incredibly, God instructed Jeremiah not even to pray for those false religionists: “As for you, do not pray for this people, and do not lift up cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with Me; for I do not hear you.” (7:16). The Lord then explained the reason for that shocking command:

In today’s society, with its postmodern denial of absolute truth and emphasis on tolerance, many—including some who claim to be evangelicals—teach that God accepts people of any religion. But Scripture teaches just the opposite: “The perverse in heart are an abomination to the Lord” (Prov. 11:20). “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord” (Prov. 15:8). “The way of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord” (Prov. 15:9). “He who turns away his ear from listening to the law, even his prayer is an abomination” (Prov. 28:9).

Those who deny the gospel are God’s enemies, no matter how outwardly religious they may appear to be. They have—wittingly or unwittingly—taken their place with Satan in attacking God and the advance of His kingdom, and will receive from Him the severest judgment. Those who reject Jesus Christ are damned to hell (cf. 1 Cor. 16:22).

Collectively the Pharisees, the religious leaders of Israel in Jesus’ day, fit into that category. They were studiously devoted to interpreting and applying the Old Testament law and fastidiously observed Mosaic rituals and ceremonies. They gave every outward indication of being devoted worshipers of the true God of Israel. Yet they were fiercely hostile to and hateful of the Lord Jesus Christ, God incarnate. Initially they had been curious about Him and His teaching, even inviting Him into their homes to learn more about Him (Luke 7:36–50; 11:37–54; 14:1–24), but even in those gatherings there was an undercurrent of animosity that sought to trap and discredit Him. Eventually, that animosity hardened into the vicious rejection that led to bloodthirsty demands for their Messiah’s murder.

A comparison of the present passage with the previous chapter of Luke’s gospel reveals the escalating hostility of the Pharisees toward Christ. In Luke 15:2 “both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them.’” They saw Jesus’ associating with the riffraff of Jewish society as proof that He was not sent from God, since He fellowshiped and ate with those whom they deemed to be Satan’s people. In the current passage, they moved beyond grumbling to scoffing at and mocking Jesus—just as their ancestors had done to God’s prophets (e.g., 2 Kings 2:23; Jer. 20:7–8) and the Old Testament had predicted would be done to the Messiah (Ps. 22:7–8; Isa. 53:3).

The Lord’s reply to them reveals seven reasons or motives for the Pharisee’s hostility toward the truth: they had corrupt motives, they were antagonistic to God’s demands, they were self-justifying, they sought human approval, they were evil at heart, they rejected the gospel of the kingdom, and they had no category for grace. Since those same features still motivate false teachers today, they provide a model to identify them in any era.

THEY HAD CORRUPT MOTIVES

Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, (16:14a)

The Pharisees were motivated by greed, avarice, and covetousness—the same things that motivated Judas to become a follower of Christ (cf. John 12:5–6). The adjective philarguros derives from two words: phileō, “to love,” or “to have affection for,” and arguros, “silver.” Fallen, sinful people greedily desire to satisfy their needs: thus many are “lovers of money” in addition to being “lovers of self” (2 Tim. 3:2).

Greed is especially a driving force within false teachers. The Bible calls them greedy dogs (Isa. 56:11), “greedy for gain” (Jer. 6:13; 8:10), and says of them, “When they have something to bite with their teeth, they cry, ‘Peace,’ But against him who puts nothing in their mouths they declare holy war” (Mic. 3:5). Paul warned of those who “are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things” (Phil. 3:18–19), as did Peter, who cautioned his readers that “in their greed [false teachers] will exploit you with false words” (2 Peter 2:3), because they have “a heart trained in greed” (v. 14). Therefore an elder or spiritual leader in the church must be “free from the love of money” (1 Tim. 3:3) and not “shepherd the flock of God … for sordid gain” (1 Peter 5:2).

Like all false teachers, the Pharisees’ motives were corrupt and impure. They had no real love for people, but were obsessed with riches and wealth; they were “full of robbery and wickedness” (Luke 11:39), even stooping so low as to devour widows’ houses (Luke 20:47). Even their charitable giving was merely an ostentatious show seeking honor from men (Matt. 6:2). Rather than help their own parents when they had a need, the Pharisees would just as likely say to them cynically, “Whatever I have that would help you is Corban (that is to say, given to God)” (Mark 7:11). In short, the Pharisees operated out of impure, corrupt, self-aggrandizing, greedy motives.

THEY WERE ANTAGONISTIC TO GOD’S DEMANDS

were listening to all these things and were scoffing at Him. (16:14b)

While the Pharisees were listening to all these things Jesus was saying, what triggered their scorn was His teaching concerning the proper use of money (vv. 1–13). The Lord’s teaching that people are to invest in the kingdom of God to reap spiritual dividends in heaven, and to serve God, not money, indicted the money-loving Pharisees. And those obsessed with obtaining riches responded to the teaching that they did not want to hear by ridiculing and mocking Jesus, the teacher.

Their aggressive, hostile reaction signified that they were false worshipers, with no capacity to receive and respond to the truth. They were spiritually blind (2 Cor. 4:4), dead in their sins (Eph. 2:1), and unable to understand and accept the things of God (1 Cor. 2:14). “This is the judgment,” Jesus declared, “that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). They are “unwilling to come to [Christ] so that [they] may have life” (John 5:40). Such people may even call Jesus Lord, but they have no capacity to obey Him (Luke 6:46). As a result, their spiritual life has no foundation, and they will be swept away by the torrent of divine judgment (v. 49; cf. John 12:47–48). The redeemed, on the other hand, are those “who hear the word of God and do it” (Luke 8:21; cf. 11:28), and as a result have “eternal life, and [do] not come into judgment, but [have] passed out of death into life” (John 5:24). The evidence that they “have come to know Him” is that they “keep His commandments” (1 John 2:3).

THEY WERE SELF-JUSTIFYING

And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves (16:15a)

This indictment of the Pharisees is a succinct summary of all false religion. Pharisaic Judaism was a system of works righteousness; of self-justification; of trying to make oneself acceptable to God, earning salvation through good works, maintaining certain ethical and legal standards, and performing religious rituals and ceremonies. There is no doubt that they had a zeal for the idea of God (Rom. 10:2). But zeal divorced from knowledge of the truth is useless. Like all false religious systems, that of the Pharisees was doomed to fail, as the zealous Pharisee Saul of Tarsus eventually realized (cf. Phil. 3:2–12). All of the religious fervor and legalistic efforts that made him a rising star in first-century Judaism (Gal. 1:14) and a persecutor of the church (1 Cor. 15:9; Gal. 1:23) he later acknowledged to be worthless rubbish (Phil. 3:8).

The biblical teaching on salvation is clear and unmistakable: “the righteous will live by his faith” (Hab. 2:4; cf. Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11; Heb. 10:38). That truth permeates the New Testament, and only the willfully blind could miss it: “By the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight” (Rom. 3:20); “being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (v. 24); God is “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (v. 26); “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law” (v. 28); “But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness” (4:5); “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (5:1); “nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified” (Gal. 2:16); “The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith” (3:8); “Now that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, ‘The righteous man shall live by faith’” (v. 11); “Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith” (v. 24); “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8–9).

The tragic reality was that the Pharisees had led the people in the direction of hell. They were “blind guides of the blind” (Matt. 15:14), leading the spiritually blind “lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 10:6) into the pit of hell (Matt. 23:15). Their fatal mistake was that “not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God” (Rom. 10:3). Seeking to establish their own righteousness and save themselves required them to downplay God’s righteousness to make that goal achievable. But doing so overlooked the clear Old Testament teaching regarding God’s absolute holiness (Lev. 11:44–45; 19:2; 20:26; Ps. 99:5, 9; Isa. 6:3) and salvation by faith (Hab. 2:4). Through their futile efforts to earn their way into the kingdom they barred the door of salvation for everyone else (Matt. 23:13).

THEY SOUGHT HUMAN APPROVAL

in the sight of men (16:15b)

The Pharisees were like those whom Paul warned the Galatians, “desire to make a good showing in the flesh” (Gal. 6:12). They wanted the adulation and respect of people, and tried to appear noble and virtuous. Jesus rebuked them because they “like[d] to walk around in long robes, and like[d] respectful greetings in the market places” (Mark 12:38), and because “they [did] all their deeds to be noticed by men; for they broaden[ed] their phylacteries and lengthen[ed] the tassels of their garments. They love[d] the place of honor at banquets and the chief seats in the synagogues, and respectful greetings in the market places, and being called Rabbi by men” (Matt. 23:5–7). The only reward for those who parade their self-righteousness is the honor they receive from men; they will receive nothing from God (Matt. 6:1–2, 5, 16).

THEY WERE EVIL AT HEART

but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God. (16:15c)

The Pharisees’ external façade of piety and holiness may have deceived men, but God in His omniscience knew what was in their hearts. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” Jesus warned, “For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matt. 23:27–28). In 1 Samuel 16:7 God reminded Samuel that He “sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart,” since He “alone know[s] the hearts of all the sons of men” (1 Kings 8:39; cf. 1 Chron. 28:9; Ps. 44:21; 139:2; Jer. 17:10; 20:12; Rom. 8:27; Rev. 2:23) and “sees what is done in secret” (Matt. 6:18). Jesus “did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man” (John 2:25).

God not only knew what was in their hearts, but disapproved of it, for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God. God finds all false forms of religion exalted among men detestable (the Greek word can refer to something that stinks; that is abominable, disgusting, revolting); that is, not at all a sufficient offering to satisfy Him. The world’s religious wisdom is mere foolishness in God’s sight (cf. Rom. 1:22; 1 Cor. 1:20).

THEY REJECTED THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM

The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John; since that time the gospel of the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it. (16:16)

Anyone makes himself detestable in God’s sight by rejecting the gospel of the kingdom, even the most zealous religionists. The phrase the Law and the Prophets refers to the Old Testament (cf. 24:27, 44; Matt. 5:17; 7:12; 22:40; John 1:45; Acts 13:15; 24:14; 28:23; Rom. 3:21). The Old Testament era, the era of promise, concluded with the ministry of John the Baptist, the last of the Old Testament prophets. In addition to being the final representative of the Old Testament era of promise, John was also the first representative of the New Testament era of fulfillment; his ministry bridged the two eras. He not only predicted Messiah’s appearance, but also witnessed it. Because of his unique position and his privilege to be Messiah’s forerunner, Jesus declared John to have been the greatest person who had ever lived up until his day (Matt. 11:11). In his outpouring of praise to God, John’s father, Zacharias, had noted the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises in the coming of the Messiah (Luke 1:67–79). John’s ministry reached its climax when he baptized Jesus the Messiah. The transition from John to Jesus, from the Old Testament era of promise to the New Testament era of fulfillment was complete. “He must increase,” John said of Jesus, “but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Not long afterward, John was imprisoned and executed by being beheaded (Matt. 14:3–12).

The phrase since that time and similar phrases are important time markers in Luke’s gospel, denoting turning points (cf. 1:48; 5:10; 12:52; 22:18, 69). After the conclusion of John’s ministry, Jesus became the focal point; the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises (cf. 24:27, 44; John 1:45; 5:39; Acts 4:12; Rom. 1:1–3).

That people were forcing their way into it is another reminder that entering the kingdom is a hard, difficult struggle. While salvation is by no means a purely human effort, true repentance nevertheless involves the will acting in self-denial. “If anyone wishes to come after Me,” Jesus solemnly declared, “he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me” (Luke 9:23; cf. 14:26–27), since “whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it” (Luke 9:24). There is a monumental struggle in the sinful human soul to crush pride and self-will and come to total penitence.

THEY HAD NO CATEGORY FOR GRACE

But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the Law to fail. Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries one who is divorced from a husband commits adultery.” (16:17–18)

At first glance, these two verses appear to have no connection to the preceding ones. They are not random statements tacked on here for no apparent reason, however, but actually do fit logically into the Lord’s flow of thought. The Pharisees were offended by Jesus’ relationships with tax collectors and other despised sinners (Luke 15:1–2). It was an outrage that offended their spiritual sensibilities that He would mingle with people whom they viewed as the corrupt dregs of Jewish society. In response to that outrage, Jesus had told three parables emphasizing God’s joy when sinners repent and embrace salvation (15:3–32). There was no place in the Pharisees’ thinking for the joy that comes from that kind of grace and forgiveness. On the contrary, they believed that by preaching grace and forgiveness Jesus was assaulting the law and undermining their entire system of salvation by human achievement, further strengthening their conviction that Jesus was from Satan, not God.

This was their confidence despite the fact that the Lord had said, in His teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, that far from depreciating the law He upheld it down to the minutest detail, actually raising the standard far above where they placed it. The Pharisees were concerned merely with external observance, but He focused on internal obedience from the heart (Matt. 5:17–48).

His declaration that it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the Law to fail expresses Christ’s absolute confirmation of the permanence of God’s law. The Bible reveals that heaven and earth will indeed pass away (Ps. 102:25–26; Isa. 51:6; Matt. 24:35; 2 Peter 3:7, 10). But it would be easier for that to happen—for the entire created universe to go out of existence—than for the smallest, seemingly most insignificant detail of the law to fail. Not only will the smallest letter of the law (in Hebrew the letter yodh, which looks like an apostrophe) not pass away (Matt. 5:18), not even one stroke of a letter of the Law will fail. A stroke was a minuscule mark that differentiated two Hebrew letters, like the small mark that distinguishes a capital F from a capital E, or a capital R from a capital B in English.

This statement and the similar ones in Matthew 5:18 and 24:35 are probably the clearest internal defense of the verbal inspiration of Scripture. Jesus emphasized that the words of Scripture—down to the smallest part of a letter—are divinely inspired (cf. 2 Sam. 23:1–2; 1 Cor. 2:13).

Despite their professed devotion to the law, it was clear that the Pharisees depreciated it. If they truly believed that all of God’s promises would be fulfilled, they would have acknowledged the overwhelming evidence that Jesus was the Messiah. Instead, they rejected Him. Neither did they uphold the law’s unchanging moral standards, as Jesus demonstrated by pointing out a command that they ignored.

The Old Testament taught that everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries one who is divorced from a husband commits adultery. The Pharisees did not, of course, openly condone adultery. Instead, they simply divorced their wives and married a woman they preferred. They justified that action by misinterpreting Moses’ teaching in Deuteronomy 24:1–4 as condoning divorce on the grounds of “uncleanness” (v. 1 NKJV). That uncleanness was not a reference to adultery, since the death penalty for adultery was in effect (Deut. 22:22), but rather to something else that a woman did that her husband might find shameful. Some Pharisees, and others following their example, seized on that statement and saw in it a blanket permission to divorce their wives for any reason. Needless to say they interpreted uncleanness in the broadest possible terms, and in practical usage it came to mean whatever a man decided he did not like about his wife. (Some of the reasons on record were being a poor cook, being disrespectful to her mother-in-law, failing to give her husband a son, being less beautiful than another woman, etc.)

But the Old Testament text was neither condoning nor commending divorce, much less commanding it. It was merely acknowledging that divorce happened and there was a need for divinely regulating it. The text was actually a warning from God that if a man divorced his wife without just cause, and she remarried, if her second husband died, or divorced her, the first could not remarry her. Since there was no biblical grounds for the divorce and thus the remarriage was wrong, both she and her second husband would be guilty of adultery, and remarrying again her first husband would make him guilty of marrying an adulteress. Illegitimate, unrestricted divorce and remarriage would result in the proliferation of adultery, which would be “an abomination before the Lord” and “bring sin on the land” (v. 4). The point of Deuteronomy 24:1–4 was to prevent divorce and remarriage. The Pharisees had turned it on its head to give them freedom to divorce their wives for any reason.

Jesus did allow divorce in the case of persistent, unrepentant, hard-hearted adultery (Matt. 5:31–32; 19:1–9). Since God in His common grace had allowed the death penalty for adultery to disappear, that concession was an act of mercy toward the innocent parties, ensuring that an adulterer could be divorced (rather than executed) so that the spouse would not permanently be held in the grip of a spouse’s wretched, sinful, unchaste behavior. The apostle Paul gives the word of the Spirit that a believer can also be divorced and remarried if an unbelieving spouse leaves (1 Cor. 7:15).

The Lord’s words regarding divorce are an illustration designed to expose the Pharisees’ blatant hypocrisy. Despite their professed devotion to the law, they in fact were gross violators of it. And they collectively stood condemned as adulterers through their proliferation of divorces.

The conflict between those who faithfully proclaim the Word of God and false teachers has not changed. The leader of the conflict, Satan, hasn’t changed. His emissaries, both human and demonic, still purvey the doctrines of demons that have been developed and propagated since the fall.

The issue is truth. False religion damns. It does not save, and must be exposed for what it is and its followers warned of damnation and challenged to adhere to a true understanding of God’s word. Telling the truth about deceiving liars is the only merciful, compassionate and loving thing that one can do. Jesus confronted those of His day so that they could repent, and so that the people who followed them would see them for who they really were. That is still the responsibility of those whose eyes have been opened to understand the glory of divine truth (cf. Luke 20:45–47).