NOTES for Mat 23:13-22

We should understand the denunciations of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law more as road signs warning that there is a cliff beyond this turn or that ice may be found here. In other words, they should serve us more as a warning of danger to our spiritual life than as an occasion to share the Savior's anger by condemning one group of people or another. In Russian, the word “Pharisee” has lost every positive connotation and retained only negative ones. Yet these were highly educated people, many of whom were disciples of Jesus. We must not forget this.

In this passage Christ speaks of those for whom the temple is more important than God. And how often this happens among us. How often people endowed through their upbringing with the most refined aesthetic sense nourish their church life only on the beauty of ritual. And how often people go to church only for companionship that saves them from the loneliness of the metropolis, or indeed from any loneliness, forgetting that God is what matters most in the Church.