This is taken from a book by Mark Driscoll

The Pharisees were a very zealous and conservative sectarian movement that Paul had been a part of prior to his conversion. They were highly committed to getting back to the Scriptures and their brand of hard-line old-time religion. They developed a litany of laws to separate themselves from others in an effort to maintain their purity and righteousness by living in their own isolated culture. The Pharisees basically believed that they were good and clean before god, so they looked down on everyone else and conveniently overlooked their own sins and hypocrisy.

Isn't this same rut traveled in our day whenever something posing as the gospel emphasizes anything we must do for God over what God has done for us in Jesus? We also travel this rut whenever we impose man-made rules on people in the name of achieving holiness by avoiding sinners and hiding out in a Christian culture. we travel this rut whenever we hold a self-righteous and judgemental attitude that sees the sin in others but not in ourselves.

Sadly, many people despise Christianity because all they have known are arrogant, self-righteous, and judgemental people claiming to be Christians, who avoid them as if they were infected and do little more than yell at them to be moral when they should be explaining how to be redeemed. Flipping through a phone book once, I saw one such church advertising itself as "Separated" and "Reaching Out to Seattle," presumably much like a boxer reaches out to an opponent with a jab.