“Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.”(Luke 12:1, NKJV)
We are currently discussing the tenth fruit of pride, an unteachable spirit. This attitude to life is aptly illustrated by the Pharisees, and we are going to look at specifically how this is presented in John 9.
The apostle John offers us much to think about in this chapter, in particular concerning the unteachable spirit of the Pharisees. What marked them as group was their arrogance and pride, as they were absolutely convinced that they had access to the complete truth. A Pharisees could not relax for a moment – it had to seem as if he is constantly in complete control of an all-encompassing spiritual wisdom. Paul summarises this sense of spiritual superiority in Rom. 2:17-20: “Indeed you are called a Jew, and rest on the law, and make your boast in God, and know His will, and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law, and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having the form of knowledge and truth in the law.”
The Pharisee has a lot of trust in his own knowledge – he can always come up with an answer to every question, the phrase I don’t know does not exist in his lexicon. Paul continues in verse 21, and hits the nail on the head of this arrogance: “You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself?” This is a simple Biblical definition of an unteachable spirit.
It is then interesting to note that the Pharisees pride themselves on their detailed knowledge of the law, thus calling themselves “disciples of Moses” (John 9:28). To be a disciple of Jesus requires something completely different than being educated in the law or in theology, which is a form of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and this leads to spiritual death (Gen. 2:17). To be a disciple of Jesus requires denying oneself (Matt. 16:24), having “love for one another” (John 13:15); and bearing “much fruit” (John 15:8).
The main narrative in John 9 centres around the healing of the man born blind. The disciples are arguing about who needs to carry the blame for his blindness, and whether it is the result of inequities, which Jesus immediately rejects, in very strong terms, in verses 2-5. After he is healed this man becomes the focus of a conversation between the Pharisees, and they make a few radical statements with sure certainty – according to them Jesus is not God (v 16), the man was not really born blind (v 18), Jesus is a sinner (v 24), the man is blind because of sin (v 34). Here these spiritual know-it-alls display their absolute lack of knowledge and insight. More on this in the next teaching.
- Selah: Are you a spiritual know-it-all?
- Read: 7; Ps. 99.
- Memorise: 99 (how does this link to our teaching?).
- For a more in-depth understanding: Read Larry Osborne’s Accidental Pharisees: Avoiding Pride, Exclusivity, and the Other Dangers of Overzealous Faith.
