Like John the Baptist in 3:7-12, Jesus savages the false security of the religious establishment. To grasp the full impact in today's language we might compare the scribes with ministers or religious educators and the Pharisees with the most pious, Bible-believing laypeople (although there was some overlap between the two groups). Pharisaic ethics emphasized "inwardness" as much as Jesus did, but Jesus challenges not their traditional ethics but the actual condition of their hearts (Odeberg 1964).

It is possible to agree with everything Jesus taught in this sermon yet fail to live accordingly (23:3). That is why Jesus indicates that the best of human piety is inadequate for salvation-whether it be Pharisaic or Christian. Nothing short of a radical transformation, what other early Christian writers called a new birth (Jn 3:3-6; 1 Pet 1:23), can enable one to live as a disciple (compare Mt 18:3).