Today in God’s Word

Today in God's Word—May 2023

East Tallassee Church of Christ

May 17, Mark 7

The Jewish leaders who opposed Jesus, scrutinizing and criticizing every action and word, were meticulous in their ritual observances. They were good at following the rules they emphasized. The outward show of piety was probably impressive to those who witnessed their painstaking observance of the traditions handed down from their elders. When they criticized the disciples for eating with defiled hands, it was not a sanitation issue, but a ceremonial one.

The Pharisees and their associates made a serious error in judgment when they asked Jesus about his disciples’ non-conformity. He responded, calling them hypocrites, and they were. Their ‘obedience’ was more about allegiance to a code of external, visible acts of piety that did not engage their hearts at all. Their doctrines spawned incessant debate and ruthless judgment and were really only human traditions, not the actual law of God.

Jesus accused them of robbing the word of God of its effect by putting loopholes in their traditions to escape the law’s demands. Their spirituality was cold and heartless. They felt no pain at denying aid to helpless, aging parents. They claimed any resources that could support mother and father had already been pledged to God. With one clever twist of tradition, their self-calibrating consciences excused them from honoring their parents.

Jesus sounded like one of the old prophets, exposing the emptiness of their external rituals and the wickedness of their hearts. He told the people that true holiness was not determined by regulations about clean

and unclean food. We’re used to it because we’ve read it lots of times. But to a Jew who had lived under the influence of dietary restrictions of the law and the massive extensions of them in the traditions, it was radical teaching. Jesus said defilement didn’t come from taking in food, which only passed through the digestive tract. Instead, he warned that what came out of the heart was what defiled someone.

Could our worship be vain, too? A preoccupation with form and ritual could mask the unconverted heart of a so-called Christian. We can still sing, give, fast or pray for show, while hiding from our peers (but not from God) a heart that is cold, dead and far from the one we’re supposed to be worshiping. It is so easy to make our tradition as binding as what God commanded, but we have no more authority to do that than the Pharisees had when they did it long ago. Most traditionalists probably mean well, building helpful restrictions and strengthening the rules to hedge in the faithful. But human tradition tacked onto and taught as the word of God makes worship worthless.

Let’s resist the urge to measure spirituality by displays of righteousness that may have nothing to do with our hearts. Hypocrisy is offensive to people who find it in us, and to God who always looks at the heart.

From The Abiding Companion: A Friendly Guide for Your Journey Through the New Testament, Copyright © 2010 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.