Rotten on the Inside
A few years ago, I was cutting down a large oak tree near my parent's house. From the outside, this tree looked perfectly healthy. I went through my normal cutting procedure: I made my notch on the side I wanted the tree to fall. However, as I started making my cut to drop the tree in a controlled fashion the tree suddenly and unexpectedly began to topple. What I didn’t know when I started cutting this tree was that even though it looked healthy on the outside, it was rotten on the inside. We know how true this can be in our lives. Things can look good and wonderful from the outside, but they are rotten on the inside. Appearances can be deceiving. Think of examples where from the outside it seems that someone is living an upright and virtuous life, but in reality, they’re concealing a host of sins: a police officer who’s convicted of falsifying evidence or a pastor who’s caught embezzling from the church.
When we hear about situations like this we are greatly offended. We instinctively dislike people who claim to be one thing but are really something else. This is one of the reasons that we dislike the Pharisees so much. They appeared to be pure and holy from the outside, but they were rotten on the inside. The Pharisees serve as a powerful warning of how easy it is for Christians to become inwardly focused. Instead of completely relying on Christ, we foolishly think we can add to our salvation. We quickly forget that all our good works are tainted by sin. We can do nothing to contribute to our salvation. We must be reminded daily that we are not good people; we are sinners. And it is only because of our God’s great love and mercy that we have been washed and purified in the blood of our Savior.
Our Gospel lesson begins with some of the scribes and Pharisees making the journey to Galilee to confront Jesus. As they were watching his disciples, the Pharisees noticed that the disciples were not washing their hands before eating. Now to a modern reader washing your hands seems like something perfectly good and reasonable. It’s good to wash your hands before eating to remove germs and dirt. But this isn’t the kind of hand washing that Pharisees were obsessed with. In the laws that God had given to Israel through Moses, he had declared that many things could make a person ceremonially unclean. Over the centuries the religious leaders of Israel had added to God’s law. They thought that keeping God’s law was good, but if they could keep all these additional requirements that would be even better. They foolishly thought that slavish obedience to these manmade traditions could earn them salvation and they harshly judged anyone who failed to live up to their standards of purity and holiness.
Jesus knew the hearts of the Pharisees. He understood that even though they looked pure and clean on the outside they were rotten on the inside. They did not believe they needed God to get into heaven because they could earn salvation on their own. They were skilled at following the outward requirements of God’s law, but their hearts were not in it. They kept God’s law to show how they were better than others and purer than everyone else. This is why Jesus says, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites. As it is written: These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. They worship me in vain, teaching human rules as if they were doctrines.” Jesus further explains to the crowd the error of the Pharisees. They did not understand that the purpose of God’s law is to show us our sins, not give us a blueprint for earning heaven. The law exposes the evil inside of us and reminds us how filthy our sins make us in the eyes of God. Jesus said, “What comes out of a man, that is what makes a man unclean. In fact, from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual sins, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, unrestrained immorality, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and make a person unclean.”
As Christians, we understand this. We know our sins and our desperate need for a Savior. However, we also know that Satan is constantly seeking to undermine the message of the Gospel. It is very easy for us to fall into the same trap as the Pharisees. We like to think that we are better than we are. We don’t like facing the hard truth that we are by nature rotten on the inside. As we compare ourselves to the list of sins that Jesus talks about, we realize that we are guilty. We have failed to keep God’s law perfectly. And yet what do we so often do? We make excuses to try and justify ourselves. We blame others for the sins that we have committed. Or we draw comparisons between ourselves and others. We are willing to admit that we are a little rotten, but others
are far worse. We foolishly think that God will compare us with others instead of judging us for our own sins. This makes a mockery of how serious all sins including our sins are in the eyes of God.
Or maybe we have the opposite problem. Our sins are always on our minds. We carry around our guilt and shame every day. We want God to see how very sorry we are because we think that this will make God love us more. We think that carrying our burden of guilt will somehow make up for the evil that we have done. Or when we manage to keep from sinning, we want God to see what a good job we have done. But what are these things? They are simply other forms of works of righteousness. When we carry around that burden of guilt, we are making a mockery of the cross. We are saying that Jesus didn’t do everything on the cross and that we need to do something extra to ensure our forgiveness. This is the same trap the Pharisees fell into.
Dear friends, we can do absolutely nothing to add to our salvation because even our best good works are tainted by sin. We can do nothing to make ourselves clean. But this is the amazing message of the Gospel. We do not need to make ourselves clean because we have been washed and purified through the waters of baptism. Through baptism, we are connected to the death and resurrection of Christ. On the cross, our perfect and holy Savior took all our sin and guilt on himself. He offered his perfect life as a sacrifice to make full and complete payment for all our sins. We have been washed and purified by the blood of the Lamb. Through the waters of baptism, we have been made a new creation that is no longer rotten on the inside, but pure and holy. This amazing gift of forgiveness is ours by faith, not by works.
The Apostle Paul illustrates this great truth in Romans 3 where he writes, “But now a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.”
We have been declared not guilty in the eyes of God. We have been washed and purified by the blood of Christ. We no longer need to carry around a burden of guilt and shame because every sin we have ever or will ever commit has been paid for by the death of Christ. We don’t need to fear the wrath of God because Christ was punished in our place. We have been freed from the burdens of God’s law. We do not need to keep God’s law to be saved which is why Paul says, “Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”
If we have been freed from the requirements of the law, why do we still talk about the 10 Commandments? Why does Jesus still encourage us to do good works and live according to God’s holy law? We do this because this is what our God desires. We have been reborn through the waters of baptism to live in service to our God. We are grateful for the many blessings that he has given us and so we want to live according to his will. God’s law serves as a guide for our lives. We see and know his will and desire to live according to it. We do good works because they are good and pleasing to our Father in heaven. We love our neighbor, and we flee from impurity because this is what we have been called to do. Our identity is in Christ Jesus, so we no longer conform to the patterns of this world, but instead live as God has called us to live.
From the outside, the Pharisees looked good, but they we rotten on the inside. By nature, we too are rotten on the inside. But through faith in Christ, we have been reborn. We are no longer unclean, but clean. We have not cleaned ourselves, but instead, we have been made clean by the blood of Christ. We don’t need to worry about doing good works or carrying around a burden of guilt for our sins because our salvation was won on the cross of Christ. We have been freed to live our lives in service to God in thankfulness for all that he has done for us.