Preface: My aim here is not to swing at the entire church or to question the sincerity of every believer. In fact, many of you already share these concerns and are laboring quietly to live differently. As you read, if the critique resonates rather than offends—if you find yourself nodding along and longing for more Christlikeness—then this article is not aimed at you, but written with you in mind.

“But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore produce fruit consistent with repentance; and do not assume that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you that God is able, from these stones, to raise up children for Abraham.”

— Matthew 3:7–9 (NASB 2020)

John’s words cut across the centuries.

The Pharisees and Sadducees show up for baptism. On the surface, that sounds like a win for the kingdom. Religious leaders coming to a revival movement, standing in line with tax collectors and soldiers, ready to be washed in the Jordan.

But John doesn’t celebrate. He explodes.

“Who warned you to flee…?”

“Produce fruit consistent with repentance.”

“Do not assume… ‘We have Abraham as our father.’”

The issue is not that they have come. The issue is why they have come and what they refuse to surrender.

They want the sign without the repentance. They want the symbol without the surrender. They want spiritual legitimacy without spiritual poverty. Their confidence is not in God’s mercy, but in their pedigree.

And that is not just their problem.

This is a warning passage for us.

Pride in Lineage: Their Story and Ours

The Pharisees and Sadducees relied on a kind of religious inheritance:

  • “We have Abraham as our father.”
  • “We are the guardians of orthodoxy.”
  • “We are the ones who know the Scriptures and traditions.”

Jesus and John confront not irreligion, but religious confidence without repentance.

Modern believers have our own versions of “Abraham is our father”:

  • “I grew up in church. I’m not like those people ‘out there.’”
  • “Our denomination has been faithful for 150 years.”
  • “We hold the right doctrinal statement, unlike those compromised churches.”
  • “We’re from a Christian nation. Our foundations are biblical.”

None of these are evil in themselves. Spiritual heritage is a gift. Orthodoxy is essential. But when heritage replaces humility, and orthodoxy replaces obedience, we quietly slide into the same position as the Pharisees and Sadducees: assuming that our lineage, our theology, or our history exempts us from ongoing repentance.

John’s message undercuts that assumption. God can raise up children from stones. God does not need our institutions, our denominations, or our traditions. He is not trapped inside our structures.

The question is not, “Do we have the right lineage?”

The question is, “Do we have fruit that matches our repentance?”

Jesus and John vs. the Religious Establishment

When we read the Gospels, we easily nod along as Jesus and John rebuke the Pharisees and Sadducees. We instinctively place ourselves in the crowd that “gets it,” never in the crosshairs of the rebuke.

But we need to face the uncomfortable fact:

Jesus and John were consistently against the religious leaders of their day.

Not because they were religious, but because their religion kept them from repentance.

Consider the contrast.

1. Where they stood

  • Jesus and John stand with crowds of sinners, tax collectors, soldiers, the poor, the sick, the unclean.
  • The Pharisees and Sadducees stand over those same crowds, as examiners and gatekeepers, concerned above all with maintaining religious and social distance.

2. How they used Scripture

  • Jesus and John use Scripture to call people to God, to expose their own hearts, to invite the broken to repent and be healed.
  • The Pharisees and Sadducees use Scripture to secure their own authority, to justify their place, and to test and trap rather than to submit and obey.

3. What they did with power

  • Jesus and John relinquish control. John is content to decrease as Jesus increases. Jesus refuses the devil’s offer of the kingdoms of the world and embraces the cross instead.
  • The Pharisees and Sadducees cling to influence. They fear losing “our place and our nation” (John 11:48), and this fear drives them to oppose the very Messiah they claim to await.

4. Where the people went

  • The crowds leave the orbit of the religious establishment to flock to John in the wilderness and to Jesus in forgotten towns and dusty roads.
  • The religious leaders keep their institutions, but lose the hearts of the people.

Jesus and John are not “moderate reformers” within the Pharisaic system. They are prophetic voices standing outside it, often in direct collision with it.

That should sober us.

If Jesus walked through our cities today, would he affirm the way our churches hold power, talk about enemies, and handle outsiders? Or would his harshest words be aimed, once again, at the people most certain they are on the right side?

The Modern Church as Pharisee and Sadducee

We do not wear phylacteries or sit on the Sanhedrin, but we have our own pharisaical and sadducean instincts. They show up in concrete, uncomfortable ways.

1. When we prize cultural power over Christlike presence

  • We lobby harder for political leverage than we labor to love our actual neighbors.
  • We speak of “taking back the culture” more than laying down our lives in service.
  • We measure victory in terms of elections, laws, and influence rather than repentance, holiness, and quiet faithfulness.

This mirrors the Sadducees’ anxiety over their political position and the Pharisees’ fear of losing control. It reveals that our functional hope may not be the crucified and risen Christ, but access, advantage, and control.

2. When we build walls instead of bridges

In Quietness, Not Coercion, I argued that much of the American church’s loss of evangelistic traction flows from a posture of shutting out the world instead of embedding, embracing, and engaging it for the sake of the gospel.

You see this when:

  • Churches retreat into Christian subcultures where every relationship, event, and resource is safely “inside,” and non-Christians are theoretical, not personal.
  • We view the surrounding culture primarily as a threat to be walled off from, not as a mission field to be entered with humility and compassion.
  • We define holiness almost entirely as separation, not as presence-with-purity.

The Pharisees mastered separation. Jesus mastered presence without compromise. The church’s retreat into fortress modes of discipleship looks far more pharisaical than Christlike.

3. When our actions contradict our message

The Pharisees and Sadducees preached piety but protected hypocrisy. Their lives did not match their teaching, which is why the crowds left them to hear John and Jesus.

We see similar contradictions when:

  • We say “Jesus loves the broken” but subtly center church life around the already put-together.
  • We preach forgiveness but handle internal conflict with gossip, sides, and quiet ostracism.
  • We defend biblical marriage in public while ignoring patterns of abuse, neglect, or lovelessness in our own homes and congregations.
  • We celebrate mission trips yet show no patience for the marginalized across the street.

The world is not blind to these tensions. Our inconsistency undercuts our evangelism as surely as the Pharisees’ hypocrisy undercut theirs.

4. When we trust our heritage more than our repentance

  • “Our church has always been faithful.”
  • “Our denomination stood tall when others compromised.”
  • “Our country was founded on Christian principles.”

Those statements may contain truth. But the moment they become shields against present repentance, they become deadly. The Pharisees’ confidence in Abraham did not exempt them from judgment. Our confidence in our theological statements, historical stances, or national myths will not exempt us either.

God can raise up children from stones. He can plant vibrant gospel communities in places where our institutions have withered. He can bypass us.

Christ Against Religious Leaders

We prefer to imagine Christ beside religious leaders, gently offering a little correction and encouragement.

But in the Gospels, Christ repeatedly stands against them:

  • He calls the Pharisees “whitewashed tombs” and “blind guides.”
  • He says tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom ahead of them.
  • He predicts judgment on a temple system that has become a den of robbers.
  • He tells parables where the stewards of God’s vineyard kill the Son and lose the vineyard.

This does not mean Christ is against the idea of leadership or the institutional church. He established his church and gave leaders as gifts to it.

It does mean Christ will not hesitate to oppose the church when it begins to look more like the Pharisees than like him.

The question is not, “Is our church against the culture?”

The question is, “Is Christ currently against us?”

A Concrete Call to Action: Repentance That Bears Fruit

John refuses to let the Pharisees and Sadducees hide behind baptism. He demands fruit consistent with repentance.

The same call lands on us. Not vague guilt. Not hand-wringing over “the state of the church.” Concrete repentance that takes shape in real practices.

Here are some places to start.

1. Personal: Trade religious confidence for confessed need

  • Ask: Where am I secretly relying on my spiritual resume instead of Christ’s mercy?

    Church involvement? Theological sharpness? Moral track record?

  • Practice: Make confession a regular part of your prayer life. Name specific sins, not just general weakness. Ask the Spirit to uncover self-righteousness, not only obvious failures.

  • Move: For every criticism you make of “the church” or “the culture,” bring at least one specific area of your own life before God in repentance.

2. Relational: Move toward people, not away from them

  • Identify one neighbor, coworker, or acquaintance who is far from church but near to you.
  • Instead of inviting them first to a service, invite them into your life. Share a meal. Listen to their story without rushing to correct.
  • Ask the Lord to shift your imagination from “protecting my family from the world” to “bringing my family with me into the world as witnesses.”

This is the way of Jesus and John: not withdrawal into safe religious enclaves, but costly presence with real people.

3. Corporate: Let your church tell the truth about itself

  • If you are a leader, create spaces where your community can corporately confess. Not just individual sins, but shared patterns: ways your church has ignored the poor, mishandled conflict, or protected reputation over truth.
  • If you are a member, gently but clearly raise questions when you see patterns that look more like Pharisees than like Jesus: defensiveness, image management, power preservation.
  • Measure health not only by attendance and budgets, but by signs of repentance:
    • Are enemies reconciled?
    • Are the unseen dignified?
    • Are the powerful held to account, not excused?

4. Missional: Replace cultural war with cruciform witness

  • Refuse to stake your hope on political wins, legal protections, or majority status.
  • Instead, intentionally practice a quieter, cruciform obedience:
    • Serve in hidden ways.
    • Give without announcement.
    • Love those who cannot advance your position.
    • Speak truth with gentleness, not with contempt.

Our relevance in culture will not be recovered through coercion. It will be recovered, if at all, through the slow credibility of lives that actually resemble the Christ we proclaim.

On Which Side of History?

The Pharisees and Sadducees assumed they were on the right side of history: guardians of tradition, defenders of orthodoxy, protectors of a way of life. Yet when God’s Messiah walked onto the stage, their story turned. Their zeal for religious preservation placed them on the wrong side of God’s purposes.

The danger for the church is not that we will be too serious about doctrine or holiness. The danger is that we will confuse our place, power, and heritage with God’s kingdom, and then resist him when he disrupts us.

Christ still walks among his churches.

Christ still warns religious leaders.

Christ still calls his people to bear fruit consistent with repentance.

The question is not whether we can prove ourselves faithful descendants of Abraham, the apostles, or the Reformers.

The question is whether our lives, our churches, and our public posture look more like the humble, self-emptying Jesus and John in the wilderness… or more like the respectable, established, defensive Pharisees and Sadducees.

The call to action is simple and costly:

Repent. Examine. Turn. And then, in the power of the Spirit, bear fruit that proves our confidence is not in our lineage, but in the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.