The Great Inversion: Text: Matthew 23:1-12
Introduction: The Religion of the Lapel Pin
We live in an age that is drowning in hypocrisy, and the tragic thing is that it has forgotten how to blush. The world is full of men who want to legislate the contents of your refrigerator while their own houses are filled with rot. They want to police your pronouns while their own souls are incoherent. This is nothing new. The technology changes, but the sin remains the same. The Pharisees had their tassels, and modern man has his lapel pins, his Twitter bio, and his carefully curated public persona. Both are forms of the same disease: a religion of the exterior, a righteousness designed for public consumption.
When Jesus turns His attention to the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23, He is not engaging in a mild critique. This is not a suggestion for process improvement. This is a blistering, frontal assault on the entire edifice of a man-centered, works-based, pride-fueled religious system. This is a declaration of war against the counterfeit kingdom. The Pharisees had constructed a system that appeared to be about God but was, in reality, all about them. It was a machine for generating honor, status, and control, and it ran on the fuel of human pride.
We must not make the mistake of thinking this is simply a historical rebuke of first-century Judaism. This chapter is a mirror, and if we look into it honestly, we will see our own faces staring back. The temptation to perform our piety, to love the honor of men more than the honor that comes from God, and to mistake religious activity for true righteousness is the native temptation of the human heart, and it is particularly potent for those of us who are religiously observant. It is easy to start by loving God's law and end by loving the fact that you love God's law. The line between devotion and self-congratulation is razor thin.
In this passage, Jesus diagnoses the disease of the Pharisees and, in so doing, provides the only cure. He exposes their love of status and then systematically dismantles it, replacing it with the logic of His upside-down kingdom, where the way up is down, and the greatest is the servant of all.
The Text
Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples, saying: “The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; therefore all that they tell you, do and keep, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them. And they tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger. But they do all their deeds to be noticed by men; for they broaden their phylacteries and lengthen the tassels of their garments. And they love the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and respectful greetings in the marketplaces, and being called Rabbi by men. But do not be called Rabbi; for One is your Teacher, and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. Do not be called instructors; for One is your Instructor, that is, Christ. But the greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.
(Matthew 23:1-12 LSB)
The Authority of the Office, The Bankruptcy of the Man (vv. 1-3)
Jesus begins by making a crucial distinction that our anti-authoritarian age has almost entirely forgotten.
"The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; therefore all that they tell you, do and keep, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them." (Matthew 23:2-3)
The "chair of Moses" refers to the seat in the synagogue from which the Law of Moses was read and expounded. It was a symbol of the teaching authority that God had established in Israel. When a Pharisee sat in that chair and read from the Torah, he was handling the very oracles of God. Jesus’ command here is therefore stunning. He tells the people to obey the teaching that comes from the office. Why? Because the authority resides in the Word being taught, not in the worthiness of the teacher. God's truth is still God's truth, even when it is spoken by a hypocrite. A crooked signpost can still point the right way to the city.
This is a profound principle of submission to God-ordained authority. We are to honor the office, even when the man in the office is a scoundrel. But this respect for the office does not extend to imitating the man. The command is immediately qualified: "but do not do according to their deeds." Here is the chasm, the fatal disconnect. They were orthodox in their public reading but heretical in their living. Their lives were a loud, clanging rebuttal to the Scriptures they taught. They said, "Love God," but their lives said, "Love the applause of men." They said, "Be humble," but their lives screamed, "Look at me!" This is the essence of hypocrisy: a contradiction between the creed and the conduct.
The Crushing Weight of False Religion (v. 4)
Next, Jesus exposes the practical outworking of their hypocrisy. It was not a victimless crime.
"And they tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger." (Matthew 23:4)
The "heavy burdens" were not the Law of God itself. The Law, for the regenerate man, is a delight. As David says, "Oh how I love your law!" These burdens were the mountain of man-made traditions, the meticulous and suffocating regulations they had piled on top of Scripture. This is the very definition of legalism. Legalism is not high standards; legalism is adding our own rules to God's Word and then judging others by them. It is manufacturing righteousness through a checklist.
And notice the cruelty of it. They lay these burdens on others. Legalism is always a tool of control. It is about making others perform for you. But the legalist always exempts himself. "They themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger." They knew the loopholes. They knew how to appear righteous without bearing the actual weight. They were harsh spiritual taskmasters, not shepherds. A true shepherd gets down in the ditch with the sheep. The Pharisee stands on the bank and yells instructions.
The Theater of Piety (vv. 5-7)
Jesus now reveals the motive behind their entire system: the approval of men.
"But they do all their deeds to be noticed by men; for they broaden their phylacteries and lengthen the tassels of their garments. And they love the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and respectful greetings in the marketplaces, and being called Rabbi by men." (Matthew 23:5-7)
Their entire religious life was a performance for a human audience. God was the pretext, but man was the audience. The phylacteries were small leather boxes containing Scripture, worn on the forehead and arm. The tassels were fringes on their garments, commanded in Numbers 15 as a reminder of God's law. These were meant to be signs of covenant faithfulness. But the Pharisees turned them into billboards for their own piety. By making them bigger and more conspicuous, they were saying, "Look how obedient I am. Look how much I love the law." They turned a reminder to obey God into an advertisement for themselves.
And what was the payoff for this performance? Status. They loved the perks of being seen as holy. The best seat at the dinner party, the front-row seat at church, the respectful "Hello, Pastor" in the town square. They loved being called "Rabbi," which means "my great one" or "teacher." These were the wages they sought: the honor, the deference, the social capital that came from their manufactured righteousness. They traded the approval of God for a round of applause from the cheap seats.
The Family of God (vv. 8-12)
Having exposed the counterfeit, Jesus now lays out the true nature of authority and greatness in His kingdom.
"But do not be called Rabbi; for One is your Teacher, and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. Do not be called instructors; for One is your Instructor, that is, Christ." (Matthew 23:8-10)
Jesus gives three prohibitions, all aimed at dismantling the human-centered hierarchy the Pharisees had built. He is not forbidding the use of the words "teacher" or "father" in their ordinary senses. Paul calls Timothy his son in the faith, and he himself was a teacher. The point is about ultimate allegiance. In the church, there are no gurus. There are no spiritual masters who have a private pipeline to God. There is one Teacher, one Father, one Instructor, and the rest of us are all on the same level ground before the cross: we are brothers.
This is a radical leveling of the playing field. The pastor and the new convert are brothers. The seminary professor and the layman are brothers. All human authority in the church is delegated and derivative. The pastor does not speak on his own authority; he speaks as a messenger, pointing everyone back to the one Teacher, Christ. The moment a man in the church begins to cultivate a following that is more loyal to him than to Christ and His Word, he has become a Pharisee.
Jesus concludes with the foundational law of His kingdom, the great inversion:
"But the greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted." (Matthew 23:11-12)
The world says, "Climb the ladder. Get the title. Secure the best seat." Jesus says, "The way up is down. True greatness is not found in being served, but in serving." This is not just a nice sentiment; it is a fixed law of the spiritual universe. God Himself is opposed to the proud. He actively works to bring down those who exalt themselves. But He gives grace to the humble. He lifts up those who take the low place.
The Pharisees were on the path of self-exaltation, and it would lead to their utter humiliation in the judgment that fell upon Jerusalem. Jesus is calling His disciples to a different path, the path of humility and service, which is the path to true and lasting glory. This is the path He Himself would walk, all the way to the cross.
Conclusion: The Gospel for Performers
The root sin of the Pharisee is pride. It is the desire to be the source of one's own righteousness and to be praised for it. And if we are honest, every one of us has a little Pharisee living in our heart. We all want the best seats. We all polish our phylacteries for others to see. We all perform.
The solution is not to try really hard to be humble. Trying to be humble is just one more performance, the most subtle and deadly of them all. The only cure for the Pharisee in us is the gospel of grace. The gospel announces that our best performances are filthy rags in the sight of God. It tells us that our righteousness is a joke. It humbles us completely.
But then it exalts us. It tells us that Jesus Christ, the one true Teacher and Lord, lived the perfect life we could not live. He was the ultimate servant who humbled Himself, not just to the low seat at the banquet, but to the shame and agony of the cross. He was humbled so that we, the proud performers, might be exalted. He took our sin and shame, and He offers us His perfect righteousness as a free gift.
When you are clothed in the righteousness of Christ, the frantic need to manufacture your own righteousness evaporates. When you are secure in the love of your heavenly Father, you no longer crave the applause of men. You are free, finally, to stop performing. You are free to forget about yourself. You are free to serve.