Matthew 23 is Jesus's extended confrontation with the religious leaders in the temple courts, delivered in the final week before the cross. He is not criticizing the Pharisees for being too religious; he is criticizing them for being religious in the wrong direction — meticulous about the small and indifferent to the large. They tithed garden herbs — a devotion so precise it counted individual mint leaves — while walking past justice, mercy, and faithfulness as if they were optional extras.

From the writers we read together

Nancy Pearcey

cultural apologist, author of Total Truth and Love Thy Body

Pearcey writes about the tendency of conservative Christians to retreat into the private and devotional while ceding the “weightier” public spheres — law, justice, economics, the arts — to secular frameworks. Her reading of Matthew 23:23 is diagnostic: the Pharisaic error is not unique to the first century. Every generation of believers can find ways to be meticulous about religion while neglecting the heavier obligations. Tithing mint and dill and cumin is whatever your tradition has decided counts as careful obedience; justice and mercy are whatever costs more than counting herbs.

The verse ends with a word that cuts both ways: “without neglecting the others.” Jesus is not dismissing precision or correct practice; he is insisting on proportion. The weightier matters do not replace the smaller ones. They reveal what the smaller ones are for. You tithe your herbs because you belong to a God of justice and mercy. When the tithes arrive and the justice is still absent, the tithes have become disconnected from their source — religion detached from the God it claims to serve.