Washed Hands and Dirty Hearts

“‘And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?'” Mark 7:5

February 28, 2024

One ritual some of us remember was our parents’ insistence that we wash our hands before we eat. But this kind of hygiene was not the criticism the Pharisees made about Jesus’ disciples. The Pharisees observed ritual washing to protect themselves from “unclean” Gentiles. They had committed a monstrous error of turning ritual requirements of the Old Testament into mechanical spirituality. They missed the truth that people with washed hands and unclean hearts think they are clean when they are actually dirty within. We must not be content with raw duty as gaining merit with God. For example, we might think, wrongly, because we go to church means that afterwards we can be mean to our spouses and our children. In other words, the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart. What are we doing about that? God’s grace is needed if we are to live the life that pleases Him. All the good deeds in the world can’t move us one-eighth of an inch closer to God.
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“The deceitfulness of the flesh says, ‘You ought to pray, so pray, ought to tithe, so tithe; now you’ve done your duty, so go and do what you want.’” Kris Lundgaard, The Enemy Within