by Eerika Rummukainen
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!
You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.
Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.”
(Matthew 23:25-26)
Growing up I never considered myself as a Pharisee. They were the bad guys of the New Testament and I could never be one of those! But am I one? One thing from class that really struck me was when Shane said that if you are not consistent with your ethical values and judgments, you pretty much are a hypocrite. Because what you say about one thing may not be the way you act when or if that circumstance was to actually happen. Jesus calls the teachers of the law and the Pharisees hypocrites because they are not consistent with what they say and what they do. That sounds a lot like me at times!
Thankfully, Jesus gave some instructions on what to do. To keep hypocrisy out of our lives we need to ensure that the insides of our cups and dishes are clean, only then will outside cleanliness matter. We need to make sure that we have the right ethical values and morals instead of only worrying about our actions and decisions. If we have messy, dirty, shaky ethical values, it doesn’t matter how clean or good our actions are because we are still dirty! But, if we clean the inside of our cup and we have the correct ethical morals, then the outside of our cup will also be clean because our actions and decisions will flow out of our clean ethical value system.
Lord, save me from being a Pharisee, and help me be consistent with what I believe and what I do. Cleanse me first on the inside so that my outside can be clean.
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