A Pharisee's Confession

By Jose Reaño

I lived in Jerusalem about two thousand years ago. I was very knowledgeable and
deeply grounded in God's law. I studied with the strictest religious party of the Jews in
Israel at the time, the Pharisees. We were doing quite well before Jesus became well
known. We loved it when people greeted us because we were in control of Jewish
religious learning and were very respected by all. We were also the most important
Jewish group to have a strong relationship with the Roman authorities who were ruling
our nation at the time. We were not like the Sadducees, a minor group of erroneous
heretics.
When Jesus started preaching, our people went to hear him. Obviously we didn't like
his preaching because he wasn't a part of us, nor was he from our educational
background. There were times he preached against us. He said many things about us
that were true. However, we pretended to be insulted by trying to make people believe
that they were not true.
I remember that Jesus kicked out the merchants from the temple twice. We had given
them authorization to sell animals and coins which people needed for their offerings on
the temple grounds. It didn't matter to Jesus that we had given them authorization, so
we questioned his right for expelling the merchants. When he called the temple "my
father's house", I felt bad because it was obvious to me that he was the son of God and
therefore owner of the temple.
Jesus was able to do miracles that none of the Pharisees were able to do. He became
prominent and we felt that we had been shoved to the sidelines. What could we do?
We tried to set him up to put him in trouble with the Roman authorities and get rid of
him. Unfortunately, Jesus' wisdom was greater than we had expected. Finally, we
pressed false charges against him and used political pressure to crucify him.
When one of our leaders said that it was better for one single man to die than for all
our nation to perish, he did not realize that he was actually making a prophecy about
Jesus. For, in the long run, that is exactly what happened. When he was crucified, we
tempted him to come down from the cross but ours was a ridiculous instigation,
because we knew he never made miracles for his own benefit. In addition, if Jesus
came down from the cross, we wouldn't be redeemed and have the salvation that God
provided through him.
But that's not all. When the guards who were placed at the entrance of Jesus' tomb
informed us that he was raised from the dead, we bribed them and asked them to say
that his disciples stole his corpse while he they slept.
We, the Pharisees, made many mistakes, and perhaps the greatest mistake was to put
our personal and collective interests above God's interests. For that reason, my
message is to ask people not to put their interests before God's interests. God's interest
is to save you; you just have to leave your sinful life and open your heart to Jesus
Christ, make him your Lord and start a new life in Christ. If you look for reasons to
avoid this decision, you're probably making the same mistake that we, the Pharisees,
did.