Graced Pharisees Called Out of Slavery
The word Pharisee is synonymous with hypocrite. Many Christians don’t know when they are being hypocritical. Identifying our need to appear religious by spiritual performance or being a Bible know-it-all is difficult because doing religion seems like the right thing to do. It feels good to us and looks good to others, but our religion offends God.
If this is all true, if you and I are religious addicts and idolaters, we have a big problem on our hands. God’s anger against us is justified in the same way his anger was justified when the Israelites made the golden calf. Now is the time for repentance.
The good news is when we confess, he is faithful to forgive: 1 John 1:9 says the Israelites “drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.”
God has called us out of slavery. We are his treasured possession.
While we are faithless, he has remained faithful. Our idols are wrought with the unholy sacrifice of his good gifts. We have crawled up into God’s lap only to slap him. But thanks be to God, rather than punish us, he graces us. And his grace is big enough even for Pharisees like Paul, and like you, and like me.
He leads us out, he leads us through, he atones for sin, and he leads us home.
