NOTES for Luk 11:42-46

How often, on encountering Christ's denunciations of the Pharisees, do we pray: God, I thank You that I am not like this Pharisee. (Luke 18:11) By doing so, of course, we immediately turn ourselves into him. There is only one way to keep this cruel irony from happening to us: however unpleasant it may be, we must take every new “woe to you” as addressed to us personally. If we learn to stand like this before the Lord's reproving judgment, to stand daily in our prayer of repentance before possible accusations of pharisaism, then we have already grown a little stronger in spiritual warfare.

For the sin of resembling the Pharisee in some way may be the least obvious, yet the most dangerous thing that can happen to us. Almost every inward sin, hidden from other people, is a sin of pharisaism. When we do something plainly wrong, it is not as dangerous, because those around us can help: they can point out the sin, help us recognize it, and show us how to escape it. But only we and the Lord know about the sin of pharisaism, as we may provisionally call it. We therefore fight it alone, with God's help alone, as we stand before Him in prayer. This is more dangerous, more difficult, and much more common. All the more worthy, then, is the task that lies before us.