Evangelical Pharisees: The Gospel as Cure for the Church’s Hypocrisy by Michael Reeves
The following are 15 quotes from Michael Reeves’ new book Evangelical Pharisees: The Gospel as Cure for the Church’s Hypocrisy. Evangelical Pharisees is the follow-up to Gospel People: A Call for Evangelical Integrity
- “What is the most urgent need of the church today? Better leadership? Better training? Healthier giving? Orthodoxy? Moral integrity? Each of these are undoubtedly needs, but underneath them all lies something even more vital: gospel integrity.”
- “Cloaked by impressive performance and words that profess the gospel of grace, [Pharisaism] can lurk in the hearts of the most ardent ‘gospel-centered’ folk as much as those who can clearly articulate justification by faith alone or maintain a confession of faith.”
- “Orthodox belief is vitally important, but it is not exactly the same as gospel integrity. For it is quite possible to have dead orthodoxy, or an orthodoxy that is only skin-deep: to affirm the truth on paper but deny it in the heart and in practice.”
- “The leaven of the Pharisees was a matter of both the intellect and the affections. They were intensely proud of their orthodoxy, but despite all their study, they failed to see either the depth of their need or the liberality of God’s kindness.”
- “It is quite possible to maintain a facade of orthodoxy but without integrity. We can profess the language of grace but deny its nature by a prickly, severe manner or disdain for the weak.”
- “The danger of the Pharisees lies deeper: I can diligently study how all the Scriptures proclaim Christ, I can ‘get to Christ’ as the endpoint of every sermon—and still not preach him. I can preach about Christ without preaching Christ. ‘Seeing Christ in all of Scripture’ can be an exegetical game we play in which we show Christ as the solution to the textual puzzle. But preachers can then fail to introduce and offer Christ. Readers of the Bible can assent to the understanding that Christ is the right “answer” but not come to him, trust him, or worship him. Better exegesis is always good, but to think that better exegesis is the silver bullet here is actually to fall into the very trap of the Pharisees, for whom ignorance was the problem.”
- “Tribalism is the inevitable consequence of allowing tradition—or anything else—parity with the word of God. As soon as we adopt any rallying banner other than the gospel, we sacrifice evangelical unity.”
- “If we are to have integrity as people of Scripture, we must honor Scripture, not merely by looking at Scripture but by looking along the beam of divine revelation at the glory of God in the face of Christ. Only there will we overcome our tribalism as we find a unity, not in our traditions, but in a humbled, shared adoration of Jesus.”
- “It is only when we appreciate Christ’s complete sufficiency as a Savior that we will be weaned off our self-sufficiency. Far from being an intellectual game, the truths of the gospel are the animating soul of Christian integrity.”
- “If Christians are to have integrity as people of the gospel, the message of the cross and the justification offered through Christ’s blood alone cannot be treated as a message beyond which anyone graduates. It must be our humbling and happifying meat and drink. It must continually ring in our ears and sound on our lips, tearing down our self-confidence and giving us instead faith’s bold gladness in God.”
- “The church today is surely in great need of reformation, but true reformation of lives happens from the inside out as the Spirit heals hearts with the balm of the gospel.”
- “The one who is the very glory of God does not acquisitively seek glory. Instead, he is glorified by his Father, and glorified precisely through his self-giving death that bears much fruit.”
- “In polar contrast to our sinful human understanding of glory, which avoids the needy and seeks its own good, in Christ crucified we see a divine glory that shines light into darkness, that confers good, that gives life and righteousness to helpless and unworthy sinners.”
- “Through the gospel shines the light of the knowledge of the glory of a speaking God, a merciful and gracious God, a God who is love and who therefore looks more on the heart than the appearance. The gospel brings us to enjoy him.”
- “When Christians have appreciated and adored God as all-necessary, all-sufficient, all-beautiful, and all-satisfying, they have been awakened and made fruitful.”
Get a copy of Evangelical Pharisees: The Gospel as Cure for the Church’s Hypocrisy here.
