Most of us owe our mothers for reminding us to wash our hands. The advent of hand sanitizer has taken this to a whole new level. One pastor who loved to shake hands with his members was rebuffed on a Wednesday night by members who had already washed their hands for supper. They agreed to wave at each other instead of shaking after they washed their hands. Hand washing is important, but is it of ultimate importance?
The religious leaders were forever critiquing Jesus. This became another opportunity. The milquetoast Jesus many imagine would not have answered them at all. Instead, Jesus went right at them, calling them hypocrites. Remember the word hypocrite originated in the world of drama. A hypocrite was one who wore a mask to pretend to be a character. Mostly, Jesus confronted their substitution of the external forms of religion for the internal force of transformation.
Beware of externalism and moralism which supplants the gospel. To this day if we keep the externals, we may ignore the spiritual reality behind them. For example, I grew up with a sense that if my language and behavior were right then I was right with God. “Don’t drink, smoke, cuss or chew . . .” If it makes you feel better, I still keep these to the best of my knowledge. What’s wrong with that idea of religion? Jesus said, “It’s not what you put in your body but what comes out of your heart which defiles you.” Morality is good, of course. But moralism says, “Let’s all try harder to do a little better.” For the record that is not what I preach. Here is the gospel: we have all broken God’s law but he loved us enough to send and sacrifice his only Son for our sins. We are worse off than we thought (our good deeds don’t earn God’s love), and more loved than we ever dreamed (by grace we are saved).
Like the Pharisees, we may subtly begin to believe that our good behavior puts God in our debt. Then if anything bad happens to us we may look at God and say, “I thought we were friends. After all I did for you, how could you let that happen to me?” Paul makes it very clear in Romans 11, the God who gave his life to give us the life that is really life, cannot be construed to owe us anything for our good behavior. All we can really say is, “I'm so grateful for what you have done God, that I don’t want to grieve you by misbehaving.” True discipleship focuses less and less on our own self-righteousness and more and more on God’s true righteousness. Do we see the difference? Let’s put it into practice.
