Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents
Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed– Chapter 10 – The Class of Apparitions
Legalism
[Bible references: Matthew 23:1-39]
Some people make efforts to follow the “letter of the law” but ignore “the spirit of the law,” where appearances are important, but morality isn’t. The Torah was heart of all the Jewish traditions[1] and the Pharisees were most dogmatic about adhering to it, using the oral law to provide much of the detail on how go live out the law on a day-to-day basis. The desire was so strong that many Pharisees even kept apart even from other Jews in order to avoid contamination. The Essenes lived in isolated communities because they were even more concerned about getting contaminated. Jesus had much to say about how the Pharisees were trying hard to keep their external appearances looking “pure” by following all their regulations but at the same time their hearts were corrupt. Jesus sometimes called them “whitewashed tombs.”
[1] Gutierrez, Juan Marcos Bejarano. The Judaisms of Jesus’ Followers: An introduction to Early Christianity in its Jewish Context Yaron Publishing, 2017 (Locations: 366)
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