Saints intro sampler - Flipbook - Page 29
Although the New Testament writers present some Pharisees as foils or as
archetypes of religious people, missing Jesus as the Messiah, we also have examples
like Nicodemus and Paul: Pharisees who at first resisted Jesus as the Messiah
but then end up changing their minds about Christ. Just because some of the
Pharisees misjudged Jesus or struggled to reconcile their interpretation of the law
with his claim to fulfill it doesn’t make all Pharisees the epitome of legalism or
enemies of the Christian faith. Two things can be true at the same time. Some
Pharisees in the Bible missed Jesus as the Messiah, and also, not all Pharisees were
“bad.”
Pharisees like Nicodemus can be reminders that accepting Jesus’ words—
especially when his truth challenges our worldview—is hard. Sometimes religious
people, the ones who are assumed to be the most likely to “get it” . . . don’t.
Or, if I may be so bold as to rephrase my point: Sometimes we don’t get it.
The Pharisees serve as a literary archetype in the Bible’s narrative. They are
the well-intentioned group of God’s people trying to find a way to live up to
the law’s standards while also accepting their humanness. When Jesus appeared
as the fulfillment of their way of life, some of the Pharisees missed it, including
Nicodemus.
What you are about to read is a story about a man who was curious enough
to approach Jesus with his questions but confused enough to reject his answers.
Nicodemus eventually came around to faith in Christ. But Nicodemus’s example
In popular Jewish imagination, the Pharisees are the respected
teachers of Second Temple Judaism: the ones who extended
the holiness of the temple beyond the priests to the people; the
ones who insisted on free will along with divine care; the ones
who, because of their openness to innovation and concern for
the Jewish people as a whole, helped the tradition survive the
destruction of the temple in 70 CE.1
Joseph Sievers and Amy-Jill Levine, The Pharisees
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SA I N T S
