October 5
October 5
God is not satisfied with behavioral reformations alone; he wants to own and rule our hearts.
Several years ago I lost about fifty pounds. I didn’t follow some miracle diet that I had found on the internet. I didn’t starve myself. The reason so many people yo-yo back and forth between weight gain and weight loss is that they do not address the deeper cause of their weight gain. What I mean is that they address behavior only and not the heart. So they do well for a while, but eventually they revert to their old bad habits. By God’s grace, I became deeply convicted that my excess weight was not just a matter of bad behavior; it was about issues of my heart. I had to confess to gluttony. I enjoyed the pleasures of food more than pleasing my Lord, and I was carrying around with me the physical evidence of my idolatry. My confession was followed by crying out for God’s rescuing and empowering grace, and the commitment to change my whole relationship to food. It was very hard, as sacrifice always is, but new, God-honoring habits replaced old sinful habits, and I have maintained my weight since.
Now, I am not a hero, but a sinner in need of God’s powerful grace. I have learned that living in the power of that grace begins with confessing that you need it. This is what the New Testament Pharisees never seemed to do. Matthew records Jesus’s condemnation of the false spirituality of the Pharisees. Jesus condemns them for their public pride, self-righteousness, legalism, and complete lack of compassionate love. Each of Jesus’s condemnations of a particular part of their religiosity begins with the word woe. That word signals that you are about to hear a condemnation rather than a commendation. There are seven woes, and the sixth one is a metaphoric way of saying that the Pharisees never deal with their heart issues: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean” (Matt. 23:25–26).
In Jesus’s illustration, the outside of the cup is behavior and the inside of the cup is the heart. The Pharisees’ religion was all about their “right” behavior, mostly done in public for all to see. But, despite their outward actions, the inside of the cup was still dirty; that is, it was filled with idolatrous greed and self-indulgence. This is not true biblical religion. Then Jesus says something that should get our attention: “First clean the inside of the cup and plate, that the outside also may be clean.” You can’t do this with your dishes at home, but that is exactly what happens when you deal with sins of the heart. Your behavior will go wherever your heart has already gone. Behavioral reformation without heart transformation never works. As the control center of your personhood, the heart is the target of God’s redeeming grace. Today, confess your need for grace that transforms the heart.