NOTES for Luk 11:42-46

How often, when we encounter Christ's denunciations of the Pharisees, do we pray, ‘God! I thank You that I am not like this Pharisee’ (Lk 18:11)—and in doing so, of course, immediately turn ourselves into one. There is only one way to keep this cruel irony from happening to us: however unpleasant it may be, we must hear each new ‘woe to you’ as addressed to us personally. And if we learn to stand in this way before the Lord's judgment that exposes our faults, to face possible accusations of Pharisaism each day in our prayer of repentance, then we have already grown a little stronger in spiritual warfare. For becoming like a Pharisee in some respect is perhaps the least obvious, but also the most dangerous, sin into which we can fall.

Practically every inward sin, invisible to other people, is a sin of Pharisaism. When we do something obviously bad, it is not as dangerous, because those around us can help: they can point out the sin, help us recognise it, and show us a way out of it. But only we and the Lord know about the sin of Pharisaism, as we shall provisionally call it. So we fight it alone (with God's help alone), standing before Him in prayer. This is more dangerous, more difficult, and far more common, but it makes the task before us all the more worthy.