EXCEPT YOUR RIGHTEOUSNESS EXCEEDS THE PHARISEES'

Except your righteousness exceeds

                      the Pharisees’

^“For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.{Matthew 5:20}”

 This is a statement made by Jesus which many pastors have misunderstood. I hereby want to explain the true meaning of this statement.

Now let’s look at that statement critically. You will find out that there are two kinds of righteousness mentioned there. The first one is the Pharisaic righteousness and the other one is the exceeding righteousness. I will start by explaining the pharisaic righteousness and I will start with questions.

(1)Are the Pharisees actually righteous?

(2) Were they not the same people Jesus convicted of sin when the woman caught in adultery was brought before Jesus?

(3)Were they not the people Jesus told would die in their sins if they didn’t believe in Him?

(4)Were they not the ones Jesus called hypocrites standing on street corners to pray?

(5)Is their righteousness (if any) based on the laws of Moses or on faith in Christ Jesus?

I wonder if these people are really righteous. Let’s see some scriptures about the Pharisees that could help you answer my questions

 “Make certain you do not perform your religious duties in public so that people will see what you do. If you do these things publicly, you will not have any reward from your Father in heaven.

² “So when you give something to a needy person, do not make a big show of it, as the hypocrites do in the houses of worship and on the streets. They do it so that people will praise them. I assure you, they have already been paid in full. ³ But when you help a needy person, do it in such a way that even your closest friend will not know about it. ⁴ Then it will be a private matter. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.

⁵ “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites! They love to stand up and pray in the houses of worship and on the street corners, so that everyone will see them. I assure you, they have already been paid in full. ⁶ But when you pray, go to your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you. {Matthew 6:1-6}

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

⁹ Jesus also told this parable to people who were sure of their own goodness and despised everybody else. ¹⁰ “Once there were two men who went up to the Temple to pray: one was a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood apart by himself and prayed,^[a] ‘I thank you, God, that I am not greedy, dishonest, or an adulterer, like everybody else. I thank you that I am not like that tax collector over there. ¹² I fast two days a week, and I give you one tenth of all my income.’ ¹³ But the tax collector stood at a distance and would not even raise his face to heaven, but beat on his breast and said, ‘God, have pity on me, a sinner!’ ¹⁴ I tell you,” said Jesus, “the tax collector, and not the Pharisee, was in the right with God when he went home. For those who make themselves great will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be made great.”{Luke 18:914}

The above verses certainly have shown you some truths about the Pharisees but I have some more for you. If you didn’t read the verses above please endeavour to read the ones below. You will find out about the pharisaic kind of righteousness and decide for yourself if you want that kind of righteousness. This is what Jesus said about the Pharisees:

Religious Fashion Shows

23 ^1-3 Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. “The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law. You won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all spit-and-polish veneer.

^4-7 “Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’

^8-10 “Don’t let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ.

^11-12 “Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you’ll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you’re content to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty.

Frauds!

¹³ “I’ve had it with you! You’re hopeless, you religion scholars, you Pharisees! Frauds! Your lives are roadblocks to God’s kingdom. You refuse to enter, and won’t let anyone else in either.

¹⁵ “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You go halfway around the world to make a convert, but once you get him you make him into a replica of yourselves, double-damned.

^16-22 “You’re hopeless! What arrogant stupidity! You say, ‘If someone makes a promise with his fingers crossed, that’s nothing; but if he swears with his hand on the Bible, that’s serious.’ What ignorance! Does the leather on the Bible carry more weight than the skin on your hands? And what about this piece of trivia: ‘If you shake hands on a promise, that’s nothing; but if you raise your hand that God is your witness, that’s serious’? What ridiculous hair-splitting! What difference does it make whether you shake hands or raise hands? A promise is a promise. What difference does it make if you make your promise inside or outside a house of worship? A promise is a promise. God is present, watching and holding you to account regardless.

^23-24 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but on the meat of God’s Law, things like fairness and compassion and commitment—the absolute basics!—you carelessly take it or leave it. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required. Do you have any idea how silly you look, writing a life story that’s wrong from start to finish, nit-picking over commas and semicolons?

^25-26 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You burnish the surface of your cups and bowls so they sparkle in the sun, while the insides are maggoty with your greed and gluttony. Stupid Pharisee! Scour the insides, and then the gleaming surface will mean something.

^27-28 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You’re like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it’s all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you’re saints, but beneath the skin you’re total frauds.

^29-32 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You build granite tombs for your prophets and marble monuments for your saints. And you say that if you had lived in the days of your ancestors, no blood would have been on your hands. You protest too much! You’re cut from the same cloth as those murderers, and daily add to the death count.

^33-34 “Snakes! Reptilian sneaks! Do you think you can worm your way out of this? Never have to pay the piper? It’s on account of people like you that I send prophets and wise guides and scholars generation after generation—and generation after generation you treat them like dirt, greeting them with lynch mobs, hounding them with abuse.

^35-36 “You can’t squirm out of this: Every drop of righteous blood ever spilled on this earth, beginning with the blood of that good man Abel right down to the blood of Zechariah, Barachiah’s son, whom you murdered at his prayers, is on your head. All this, I’m telling you, is coming down on you, on your generation.

^37-39 “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Murderer of prophets! Killer of the ones who brought you God’s news! How often I’ve ached to embrace your children, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you wouldn’t let me. And now you’re so desolate, nothing but a ghost town. What is there left to say? Only this: I’m out of here soon. The next time you see me you’ll say, ‘Oh, God has blessed him! He’s come, bringing God’s rule!’”{Matthew 23:1-39 MSG}

An entire chapter was dedicated to lambasting the Pharisees, yet Jesus said except your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven .It means that the pharisaic kind of righteousness which is based on the Law of Moses and which is always faulted can never take any man to heaven. Most preachers think that to exceed the pharisaic righteousness you will need to obey more laws than they did. No sir! That is a wrong teaching. I have stated before in this book that no man can keep all of God’s laws by himself.

To explain the second kind of righteousness, The Exceeding righteousness, let’s look at the verse of scripture below

 I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness.{Philippians 3:9 MSG}

Now you must understand that the righteousness that exceeds that of the Pharisees, is the robust kind of righteousness and it has nothing to do with rule keeping. It is not connected to obeying more laws than the Pharisees did. It is simply a product of faith in Christ Jesus. It is the righteousness gift He gave us when He alone fulfilled the laws for us. It is God’s righteousness through faith in Christ Jesus. It exceeds that of the Pharisees. The laws of Moses and the prophets bore witness to this exceeding righteousness. They prophesied about it long ago. It is this exceeding righteousness that makes men perfect as their heavenly Father is. It is the saving righteousness that Jesus meant when He said “with God all things are possible” It is only possible through Him. 

. It is the righteousness that came with the kingdom of God. It proceeded out of heaven. It is not an earthly righteousness based on earthly rules. When Jesus announced the kingdom, the first thing on His mind was the exceeding righteousness. He said except you have this exceeding righteousness, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. 


A lot of people have the pharisaic kind of righteousness and the more laws they keep the more pharisaic righteousness they have but the truth is that no matter how much of that law -based righteousness you have, you still will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Only the exceeding righteousness by faith gives us access into the kingdom of heaven. Under this kingdom righteousness, we don’t judge each other because we all have the same value of righteousness by faith. We all know that without God’s help we are nothing and can never attain righteousness. But under the pharisaic righteousness, one person feels more righteous than the other because of how many laws he could obey. There is a judgemental spirit operational in the supposed righteous ones and a spirit of pretence in the seemingly unqualified ones because they want to appear outwardly righteous too.

The pharisaic righteousness based on the laws of Moses had been before Christ came but He said Repent for the kingdom of Heaven is here when He arrived our earthly realm. The first thing about God’s kingdom is Righteousness. If the righteousness by laws was sufficient there wouldn’t have been need for the arrival of the kingdom with a righteousness that is based on faith.

 ¹⁷ From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.{Matthew 4:17}

¹⁷ For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.{Romans 14:17}

This exceeding righteousness that came with the kingdom has peace and joy in the Holy Ghost with it. It is based on faith for being justified {declared righteous} by faith we have peace with God. The pharisaic righteousness is not based on faith and lacks peace and joy. It is based on the law and the law is not of faith. Remember, whatever is not of faith is sin. No wonder Jesus said REPENT for the kingdom of heaven {with a faith righteousness} is here.

¹¹ But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith.

¹² And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.{Galatians 3:11-12}

²³ And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.{Romans 14:23}

I decide to enjoy this exceeding righteousness from Jesus. I reject the pharisaic righteousness with all its laws and religious rituals. Make your choice today. Jesus’ righteousness without the laws or the pharisaic righteousness with the laws? The choice is yours.