How did the Pharisees hear Jesus’ call to perfection?

The Pharisees believed that their best would be good enough for God—especially if they adorned their religion with as many carefully crafted ceremonies and rituals as possible. That’s where all their trust and all their hope for heaven lay. They of course formally recognized that they, too, were imperfect, but they minimized their own imperfections and covered them with public exhibitions of piety. They were convinced that would be good enough for God, mainly because it made them seem so much better than everyone else.

Yet any Pharisee who may have been in the audience for the Sermon on the Mount would have understood Jesus’ message plainly enough: Their righteousness, with all its stress on pomp and circumcision, simply did not meet the divine standard. They weren’t really any better than the tax collectors. And God would not accept their imperfect righteousness. Jesus was as direct as possible about that.