Was Jesus unfair to the Pharisees?

[Wojo555]

A stumbling block for me is this…

The Pharisees knew the Law well and tried to follow it to the letter. And, I understand Jesus had charged them (or some of them) with hypocrisy. However, when Jesus came, it seemed He changed the rules on them! The rules in the OT were strict, were they not? Even violators were put to death at the command of God. However, when Jesus came the rules changed, or seemed to change. I have to admit, if I had been a Pharisee, and much more so a responbsible non-hypocritical one, even I would have taken it upon myself to challenge the teachings of Jesus. Forgiveness of sins, breaking the Sabbath, etc.

I don’t get why God created so many rules in the OT and then Jesus came to change them. Was it that He came to clarify the laws? Fulfill them? And, I must say, why weren’t they clear in the first place if he had to correct them? Were the people just illiterate (literally) and they had to trust the Pharisees at their verbal teaching, which may have been incorrect?

I have trouble with this, and I hope someone can shine a different light on this for me, because I love the Catholic Church and I am struggling with this.

Thank You!

 

[Fr.Charles_Grondin]

The main issue that Jesus had with some Pharisees in the Gospels is not the Law but how the Law was applied. What happened over the centuries was that the Pharisees had not just tried to apply the Law but built “a fence around the Law.” For example, the Law simply said to avoid work on the Sabbath. The “fence around the Law” decided by Pharisees and scribes then meticulously defined “work.” These decisions of men were considered equal to the Law.
There was also the matter of emphasis, not all laws are created equal. Jesus attacked the idea of following the “minutiae” to the detriment of the greater good those smaller laws were ordered towards.
And then there’s the issue every religion faces: enforcement of law without the context of love or true justice. This is essentially the hypocrisy of appearing to follow the law but our internal disposition is the exact opposite of the point of the law.

Obviously not all Pharisees were like this and Jesus had respect for the concept of a “fence around the law” but he was pointing out that it had gotten out of control. Many scholars have postulated that Jesus actually had the most in common with the Pharisees. Jesus never challenged the Law itself, He challenged how it was interpreted and applied.