When read in their cultural contexts, Jesus’ responses to the Jewish teachers look far less harsh than what many have assumed.
(Published in the July Issue of Premier Christianity.)

The word “pharisee” has not so much been spoken as spat by Christian preachers down through the centuries.

To be a pharisee is to be pompous, hypocritical, legalistic and self-righteous. Here’s how 19th-Century minister Frederick Robertson put it: “I will tell you what to hate. Hate hypocrisy, hate…oppression, injustice; hate Pharisaism; hate them as Christ hated them with a deep, living, Godlike hatred.”

Did Christ really hate the Pharisees with a deep, living, Godlike hatred?

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