Read Matthew 23:23-28

“²⁵ 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. ²⁶ You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, so that the outside also may be clean.”

Have you ever taken a coffee cup out of the dishwasher to make yourself a cuppa only to realise that while it looked clean on the outside, the inside is still full of unremoved grime or detergent? Jesus says that this externally gleaming, but internally grimy cup is representative of a person that spends an inordinate amount of time striving to meet moral or religious expectations, but internally is at least as dark as those over whom they claim moral superiority.

This teaching of Jesus comes right before his execution on the cross. It’s interesting to note that at this culmination of all of his teaching, he is actually asking for what’s humanly impossible – to not just purify our behaviour but to perfectly cleanse our hearts. For more of Jesus’ teaching on this cleansing, review the first three chapters: Be Born Again, Repent, Follow Me.

When our family is on “kitchen duty” there is inevitably one sibling who doesn’t meet the “washing up” expectations of another. The repeated reprimand is, “Oi! This bowl isn’t clean. Wash it again. If you don’t wash all the food off it properly one of us could get sick!” While this rarely leads to an illness, the warning mirrors Jesus’ warning. If we are content to scrub the outside of our lives but leave scraps to rot internally, a sickness will manifest within us. Jesus calls this sickness, ‘sin’. It’s his primary goal to free us from not just the effects of sin, our external behaviour, but the sickness itself, our internal sinful nature.

This is the essence of Jesus’ message. Not simply that we are to love those around us, but that we need God’s love to invade our hearts. Not simply that we be generous to those in need, but that we invite the truly generous God to dwell within us. Not just that we sacrifice for the good of others, but that we grow a heart like that of Christ who made the ultimate sacrifice for us all. It would be wonderful to see a future in which Jesus’ followers are recognised for their good works. However, the ultimate future is one in which followers of Jesus are understood as people with good hearts – restored by God’s internal forgiveness of sin, not their external moral striving.

Understanding Jesus’ teaching here is critical for not only our own lives but how we relate to those around us! Once we realise that our own, well-intentioned efforts are destined for failure without an internal cleansing, then we can apply the same gracious judgement to those around us. Rather than speaking condemnation upon others for their immoral behaviour, we can share with them that the internal cleansing that Jesus speaks of is available and effective to every one of us. In fact, if they let him clean them, they can cease striving to cleanse themselves. Have you put your faith in Jesus and his promise to cleanse you from the inside out?