Rev Harry Newton preaches on Luke 11:37–54 at Sumner Redcliffs Anglican Church
A Sunday sermon on legalism, grace, and the nature of God's love, drawn from Jesus's confrontation with the Pharisees at dinner.
Summary
Rev Harry Newton delivers a sermon at Sumner Redcliffs Anglican Church on Luke 11:37–54, in which Jesus arrives at a Pharisee's dinner and deliberately declines to perform the ritual hand-washing expected of him. Newton uses this passage to explore the Pharisees' theology of ritual purity and legalism — their belief that strict adherence to over 3,000 self-imposed laws on top of the Torah could earn God's approval and avoid his judgment. He argues that legalism is not merely a quirk of ancient religion but a distortion of spiritual reality that produces anxiety, hypocrisy, and fear, and that it is equally present in secular culture today. The central claim of the sermon is that the gospel of Jesus inverts the legalistic framework entirely: acceptance before God is not earned through performance but received as a gift through grace, made possible by Jesus's substitutionary death on the cross. Newton concludes that understanding this grace is what frees people from hypocrisy and compels genuine, unforced love toward others.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jesus at the Pharisee's Dinner: Setting the Scene
Rev Harry Newton: What's going on here? Jesus is being invited for dinner at someone's house. He turns up, doesn't wash his hands, and his host is a little bit surprised.
Now, who here has ever eaten something gross that a kid has given them? Yeah. All right. A little while ago, we helped out a family — something involving the fire brigade — and then the family turned up on the following Saturday to say thank you. This kid comes up, and he's got snot, he's got all the fluids. And he walks up and just holds out this cookie to me. The mum says, "Oh, he made it for you." I'm like, "Oh, that's really kind. Thank you." Into the pocket. And the mum goes, "Oh, he'd really like it if you could eat it." And the firefighter next to me, who shall remain nameless — Kate — just goes, "Come on, Harry, eat it." So I took a bite, and all I could do was taste the snot. It's probably all in my head. They're probably not real. But it's just that gross.
That's why we tell kids to wash their hands, right? And COVID sort of reminded us about the need to wash our hands. But what's going on in this passage is not just about the importance of washing hands for being physically clean.
Who Were the Pharisees?
The Pharisees were a strange bunch by our modern standards, but they weren't all bad. They get a bit of a bad rep in the Bible — for good reason. Some of them were actually quite good people. Some of them were a bit twittish. And the ones today who Jesus is interacting with are a bit of a twittish group.
They had a really extreme view of ritual purity. Some Jews at the time believed that ritual purity laws that came from the Torah — the Jewish law — only applied in the temple. So when you left the temple, you could go about your business. Others had a kind of Diet Coke version — dare I say, a very Anglican approach — which is: yes, it 100% applies in the temple, and it kind of applies out there too, but it's also inconvenient, so, you know... That's me all the time. That's mildly inconvenient. No, no, no — I'm called to be different. But the reality is that living a very strict religious Jewish life is hyper-inconvenient. It actually would have been. And so some people were a little bit diet-cokey on the rules.
The Pharisees, on the other hand, believed that the ritual purity laws applied 100% in the temple and 100% out of the temple. And all their laws stemmed from the Jewish law. They themselves added approximately 3,000 extra laws or rules on top of the ones already in the Bible. That's a lot of laws.
Now, they did all this because they believed that if they could just live to a very specific standard, they would be able to remove any spiritual impurity contracted throughout the day by engaging with people who didn't take things as seriously as they did, or with objects considered unclean. So when they came to dinner, they would pour water on each hand twice and then wipe them in a particular motion, in a particular way. It's all very elaborate, and it was all part of trying to be pure.
They even had this belief that if you poured water out of one container into a second container — you know, like brushing your teeth and it's coming out of the tap — if the water up here becomes dirty and you turn it off, if a little bit of that dirty water manages to flow back through, it pollutes everything beneath. So there's this idea of a constant stream of potential contamination. You can't pour water out of one thing into another in case there might be a little bit of dust. It's all very intense.
But what's going on here is that they want to be okay in the sight of God, and they believe that if they can just behave a certain way, then they'll be there.
Jesus Deliberately Offends His Host
Now, here's the thing. Jesus knew this. He knew how they lived. He knew what they believed. He knew what was expected of him. And yet he still did what he did when he got to dinner. And they knew that he knew. Hence their surprise that he wouldn't perform the ceremony of hand-washing. It's very impolite.
You ever had someone for dinner and they're just really weird? No? Just us. Amy and I have done a lot of hospitality over the years, and when we went to the North Island, we had this one time where I decided to invite a bunch of my colleagues — sorry, Amy — for a dinner party, and it ended in tears. Literally, people gnashing of teeth and wailing. Very awkward. Afterwards, they left. Amy goes, "Well, that was awkward." I went, "Yes, it was."
Now, it pales in comparison to what's going on here, because Jesus is offending them at a deep, deep level. Their surprise stems from the lack of action on Jesus' behalf, and that's what kicks off our story. Jesus notices their surprise, and he turns to his host and says, "You Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people — did not the one who made the outside make the inside also?" Not exactly polite dinner conversation.
What Is Really at Stake: The Nature of God
What's going on here? The interaction between Jesus and the Pharisee is about more than just ritualistic hand-washing. It's also about more than just simplistic religious hypocrisy — and that is definitely something at play here, as we'll see in a moment. But most importantly, what's at stake in this story is how one understands the very nature of God, and what a faithful response to that God looks like.
A key aspect of the Pharisaic perspective of God is that God is a lawgiver — or the lawgiver. God had given the Torah, the Jewish law, and as I say, from that stem all the other laws they had. The Torah was a guide to living a holy and righteous life in the eyes of God, and the Pharisees believed that if they could strictly adhere to these laws, they would ensure God's favour and protection. Does that sound like any particular people you may have met? It might do.
Now, they also saw God, at the same time, as a judge who would hold people accountable for how well they lived in adherence to these laws. So purity isn't just a reflection of God's nature — it's also a requirement for being judged as acceptable in God's eyes. And because of this, the Pharisees' legalistic observance of purity law was driven by a desire to live in a way that would, A, earn God's approval, but B, avoid his judgment.
Legalism and Its Dangers
Now, this is similar to an Islamic perspective of God — the idea being that God is removed from our reality, he's very different, Allah is out there, and I can try and live up to Allah's standards, and when I die, I just kind of hope that I'm okay in Allah's sight. There's nothing relational, there's no element of being okay — you've got to earn your status, which must be pretty stressful.
Now, there's a problem with all this legalism. Legalism isn't just a set of behaviours — it's a mindset that actually underpins our behaviour. Legalism is a belief that we can earn our way to acceptance in God's eyes through our own efforts and secure his approval. And what's dangerous about legalism is that it masquerades as devotion, and it offers an illusion of control in our lives. If I can just follow the rules, if I can just do the right thing and tick certain boxes, then I can be sure that I'm okay with God.
Hence Jesus' first woe to his hosts. As weird as it would be to stand up at a dinner party and say this, this is what he said: "Woe to you Pharisees. Why? Because you have given a tenth of your garden, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practised the latter without leaving the former undone."
The Pharisees were amazingly attentive in tithing. That means giving 10%. Actually, that's not even quite true — giving 10% is not actually a thing in the way we often describe it. We draw that out of this story. Tithing was simply giving a proportion of your wealth to God. But for them, their religion had become a matter of outward ceremony instead of a matter of the heart. And they had fallen into this legalistic trap of thinking they would be okay in the eyes of God if they could just follow the rules.
But there's a problem with that. That's a mindset that is actually fundamentally opposed to the good news of Jesus. Because the gospel tells us that we're accepted by God not because of anything we do, but because of what Jesus has done for us. It flips it around.
Legalism isn't just a weird religious mindset. It's actually a serious distortion of a spiritual reality. And it can lead to a life of anxiety and fear. Because how can you ever know that you have done enough? How can you ever be sure that you've met God's standards? Seriously, how can you ever?
Legalism Leads to Hypocrisy
Legalism also turns into hypocrisy. Legalism leads to hypocrisy because no one can live up to a perfect standard 100% of the time. Which is exactly what happened to the Pharisees. Hence Jesus' second woe: "Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in the marketplaces."
Jesus was showing that their lack of love and their focus on legalistic adherence to the law had resulted in them becoming hypocrites. They were busy spouting religious words, looking the part, and making others think they had it all together, while their inner lives — their hearts and their minds, their very souls — were completely at odds with the will of God.
Legalism in Modern Life
But here's the thing. Legalism isn't just something that applies to weird religious people in funny outfits living 2,000 years ago. It's around us everywhere today, isn't it? Both secular and religious. You can find legalism online in cancel culture, can't you? People feel increasingly pressured to legalistically adhere to all sorts of spoken and unspoken moral absolutes. And if you fail to adhere to someone's expectations, you get cancelled.
I got cancelled once on a gluten-free Facebook page. It was a thing. I said something that someone didn't like and they reported me to the Book Face. And Mark Zuckerberg, in his wisdom, cancelled my membership to that group and kicked me off Facebook. People will wipe their hands of you and they will declare you anathema — completely unacceptable in polite society. Which, interestingly enough, is exactly what the Pharisees feared the most 2,000 years ago: being cancelled, either by others or by God.
The Third Woe: Unmarked Graves
Hence Jesus said, "Woe to you — you are like unmarked graves, which people walk over without knowing it." What's going on there? In ancient Jewish times, they believed that if you walked over a grave, you became ritually unclean. You couldn't go to worship God. Now, remember, if you're a halfway person who believes you only have to be ritualistically clean at the temple, this still applies to you, because you have to go to the temple to offer your sacrifices. You can't enter there for seven days if you've come in contact with a dead animal or a dead person. If you're someone with the Diet Coke version — kind of 100% on board in the temple and kind of half on board out in real life — you've still got the same problem. And if you're a Pharisee who's very strict about your adherence to religious law, you've got a serious problem if you come in contact with someone who's dead.
So they would whitewash the outsides of tombs. They would cover them white — graves on the ground — so that if you were coming along and saw a bit of white on the ground, you'd walk around it, because you knew there was someone buried under there. So that's what Jesus is referring to. He's saying you are like an unmarked grave that people walk over. What's he saying? He's saying you are hypocrites, and you make others spiritually unclean through your teaching and through your example. The very thing they were desperate not to be.
The point is, those of us who rely on legalism — be it religious, spiritual, secular, liberal, conservative, progressive, fill in the blank adjective — those of us who rely on legalism for making us acceptable, either to God or to others, the problem is that we can never be sure we're good enough. And you'll live your life in a state of fear. You'll fall into the insecurity, the touchiness, the pride, the discouragement, the weariness reminiscent of people who are never sure they have worth unless they continually earn it. You'll be like — dare I say it — a 13-year-old teenage boy. Legalism turns life into a treadmill, an exhausting, never-ending effort to prove yourself. What a horrible way to live.
The Good News: Grace, Not Performance
But the good news — and this is genuine good news, not just wishful thinking — is that Jesus offers a different way. The good news of Jesus is that you are already accepted, already loved, and already justified, not because of what you have done, but because of what Jesus has done for you on the cross.
Now, that is such a churchy sentence. If you come to church for more than five minutes, you'll have heard someone say that, and you go, "Oh, right, right." As I said last week in the evening service, I grew up in the church, and I remember people talking about, "Oh yeah, Jesus died for us on the cross." And I remember saying, "Why? What do we actually mean by this?"
So, super quick. Scripture tells us that God is holy — that means God is perfect. Imagine a little white orb up in the air. And because of his perfectness, God can't ignore evil, no matter how small it might be, because ignoring it would compromise God's holiness and therefore result in him not being God. Which is why in ancient Judaism, people would sacrifice animals at the temple — to make things right with God, hoping the bloodshed would atone for their sins and make them acceptable in the eyes of God.
We explored this last Sunday evening, and it's really intense. They had to give sacrifices on certain days of the week, certain weeks of the month, certain months of the year, for certain types of people, depending on your social standing, what sin you had done, and your economic situation. Really, really complex stuff. But the reality is that no one can remain sinless, and so you have to keep going back all the time to make more and more sacrifices. And Scripture itself says blood from an animal doesn't actually make you okay. It might feel okay in the moment if you're not squeamish, but it's not magic.
The Substitutionary Death of Jesus
So when Jesus gave himself on the cross, he made a sacrifice which is what we call in theological terms substitutionary — meaning on behalf of, or in place of. And the substitution is why the Jesus story is such good news. It's why the Jesus story is so revolutionary. Because Jesus's death wasn't a generic sacrifice like any old lamb. It was a substitutionary one. He didn't simply buy us a second chance to try and earn God's favour. He did all we need to do but can't. By dying on the cross and rising from the dead, Jesus paid the price for our failures, and as such, we can never fall back into judgment or condemnation from God. That's good news.
Now, the thing about his sacrifice is that it was done out of what we call grace — that means unmerited favour, out of love. And when this good news clicks, and you understand that your acceptance by God is based on grace and not on your work, you'll realise your relationship with God is not transactional. It's not based on your performance. It's not based on any form of legalism. It's a gift.
We don't — and actually we can't — earn God's love. You know that annoying person in your family you can never buy a present for because they've got everything? God already owns everything. You can't give him anything. So you can't buy it off him. You can't earn it. You can simply receive it as a gift.
And this grace will transform us from the inside out. It frees us from legalism, from the need to perform, to prove ourselves, to keep up appearances. It compels us to love God and to love others with genuine, unforced love.
Why Jesus Pushed Back on the Pharisees
The reason Jesus pushed back on the legalism of the Pharisees — their obsession around purity laws — is because he wanted them to stop trying to earn God's approval and start living in the light of God's love. Jesus died for each one of us not because we've earned it. He died because he loves us, because he loves you. And you are loved despite yourself.
It's like my kids. I love them even when they're irritating. And as much as I love kids, I've got to admit, occasionally I'm not in the mood, and sometimes they are irritating. But it doesn't take away from the love I have for them. And yet how imperfect am I? How much more does my perfect God, the Father, love me?
We do not have to earn God's approval. We simply have to live in the light of his love. And it's important to grasp hold of this, because to the degree to which you and I understand it, we will then respond in kind towards others.
The Macedonian Christians: Grace in Action
In 2 Corinthians — this is a book in the Bible — Paul, the guy who writes it, is writing to a group of Christians in Corinth. He's asking them to give money towards the first international collection that's going to go back to Jerusalem to help Christians who are living in poverty. There's been a horrific famine that swept through the region. We're pretty sure it started in Egypt and pushed its way north, killing, we think, thousands of people. Horrific. And Paul is travelling around, and he writes to the Corinthians and says, essentially, "You're really wealthy, and you're barely giving anything."
The Macedonian Christians, on the other hand, live in abject poverty, and they begged him to be allowed to give — and to give in extreme. Not because of the amount they gave, but because comparative to what they had, it was hyper-sacrificial. The reason they did that was that they understood the unbounded love of God. It captured their hearts, and as a result, they wanted to respond compassionately to the needs of others.
Jesus wanted the Pharisees to be the same. He wanted them to stop trying to earn God's approval and to start living in the light of his unmerited love. And he wants the same for you and for me. He wants us to realise that our religiousness or spiritualness does not increase God's love for us. There is nothing that you can do or say that will make you more loved or accepted by God — nor less. Your performance is irrelevant.
As Paul, the same guy who wrote to that church in Corinth, said in his letter to the church in Ephesus: "By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing. It is the gift of God, not the result of works." In other words, you are accepted and loved by God not on your merits, but simply because of God's unmerited favour, out of love.
Freedom from Legalism
And here's the thing. When we stop trying to earn God's approval and start living in the light of his grace, we're set free. We become free from this crushing burden of religion. We become free from the need to prove ourselves. We become free from legalism in all its forms. We become free from hypocrisy. And we also become free from the fear of failure.
And in this freedom, we find joy and peace and the power to live the life that God wants us to live. We find the power to love God and others with this genuine, unforced love that spills out in acts of astounding generosity. Because the more we come to appreciate our acceptance in Jesus, the more we're driven by love and gratitude to do good for the sheer beauty of doing good.
That's why Jesus said to the Pharisees in our reading this morning, "Now as for what is inside you, be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you." Because the mark of a heart that has been touched by God's grace is sacrificial generosity towards others. Because true faith energises true love. Because the love that comes out of a heart that has been touched by God's grace is extreme — just like the love Jesus has for you.
Closing Reflection
That's all I've got. Hope it's helpful. Just a word of advice: when you go to the next dinner party, don't say "woe to you" to your host.
But maybe do think about this. It's easy to read these Scripture stories and go, "Oh yeah, all those people." But actually, maybe think about how it applies to me. Am I prone to doing the same? I don't know about you, but I am. I'm prone at times, without even realising it, to thinking that my acceptance before God is based on my performance. I'm prone at times to not treating others with the same love that God shows me. And I'm prone at times to being a hypocrite. We all are — or anyone who calls themselves a Christian. We are, because we can't live up 100% to the standard.
But the key to not being a hypocrite is not being legalistic. And the key to not being legalistic is to realise that you are loved because of grace, not because of your performance. Simple as that.