Hardened to Truth – Matthew 23:13-15

One of my favorite Christian apologists (defenders of Christian faith) is Hugh Ross. He is a scientist who has developed a huge reservoir of scientific defenses of the Biblical teaching. He was an atheist until he began researching the evidence for Christian faith and gives testimony to that. It is remarkable that people who seem so hardened to the truth can be so wonderfully converted.

Jesus is talking to the people about the hardened-to-the-truth Pharisees and then begins to address the Pharisees directly. His remarks are harsh but need to be seen as a challenge to break out of this hardness.

“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. (Matthew 23:13-15 ESV)

Jesus pronounces seven woes on the hypocritical scribes and Pharisees.  No one received a more scathing denunciation since no one else was so privy to the truth and yet hard-heartedly dismissed it.

The first anticipation of judgment (woe is the result of judgment) is for their failure to enter the kingdom by faith in God’s Messiah and, what is perhaps worse, dissuading others from believing in Jesus as Messiah and so preventing others from entering the kingdom.  The people looked to the scribes and Pharisees to help them identify Messiah when he came and would gladly follow Jesus if the Pharisees approved of him, but they failed in their God-given purpose to proclaim him Messiah.

The second anticipation of judgment stems from their great zeal to make converts to their beliefs but which conversion only resulted in the convert being more susceptible to hell than they were.  The apostle Paul was one of their converts, having studied under the great Pharisee rabbi Gamaliel.  Paul became more zealous than his teachers and wreaked havoc in the church until his marvelous conversion to Jesus. 

There is hope even for the Pharisee.  As in any woe God pronounces, it serves as a warning and an opportunity to repent. Jesus is giving the Pharisees a chance to turn things around. Some Pharisees did so, Paul, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea being prominent examples. And there is hope for any who have hardened their hearts to the Messiah.