And you say, “If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been participants with them in the killing of the prophets”.
The Pharisees were trying, by their words, to distance themselves from the sins of their ancestors, declaring that they would never have taken part in the killings of the prophets. But Jesus shows the hypocrisy of their words: they had the same spirit as their ancestors and, even at that very moment, were preparing to reject and kill the Son of God. Their words sounded like a justification, but in reality they became a confession that condemned themselves. This saying reveals that a person cannot be righteous by words alone if the condition of his heart and his deeds contradict what is said. The Pharisees condemned the past, but by their present conduct they were repeating the same sin.