Why are the Lawyers the Bad Guys?

Passage: Matthew 22:34-40

When you read through the New Testament Gospels, you notice a trend: most of Jesus’ opponents are religious experts or “teachers of the law” (read: Lawyers).  If you, or someone close to you, is a lawyer, you may find this unsettling.  What’s Jesus’ problem with lawyers?  And what’s their problem with him?

The reason the experts in the law keep showing up is that Jesus very quickly developed the reputation of being a legal expert in his own right.  Every time Jesus talked about God’s Law, his audience was astonished at his insight and authority.  So the resident experts wanted to see what Jesus was made of.

On the other hand, Jesus gives the lawyers a hard time because he’s interested in teaching not the Law itself, but the principles behind the Law.  And Jesus recognizes in the religious leaders and experts of his day a dynamic that endures in ours: those who know the law best are best equipped to exploit its loopholes.

I’m a big fan of the program The Good Wife.  The show’s central character, Alicia Florrick, is an up-and-coming associate at a Chicago law firm.  As the show progresses, Alicia becomes an increasingly adept trial lawyer.  But her growing success is accompanied by a growing discomfort with the incongruity between the outcomes of her cases and her deeper sense of justice.  She wins in favor of defendants who did what they were accused of.  She wins against doctors or corporations who aren’t really responsible for her clients’ suffering.  She recognizes that the best lawyers are the ones who are most skillful at working the law to their advantage. 

Jesus recognizes this about experts in God’s Law.  Those of us who are most familiar with the letter of the law know its loopholes and grey areas.  We know how to justify stuff that is objectively wrong or generally bad for us and the world around us based on what is or isn’t spelled out explicitly.  But as the author of God’s Law, Jesus is less concerned with the rules than he is with the principles behind them.  His response to the experts of the Law is sometimes hostile, but just as often conciliatory.  Why?  Because what he wants is for all of us to stop fooling ourselves into thinking we’re better than we are.  And to respond to God not as a judge who we have to work around, but as a Father who only wants us to live the way were created to live.  It turns out that getting around the rules isn’t as good for us as we think.