“’This People Honors Me
With Their Lips,
But Their
Hearts
Are Far From Me’”
So the Pharisees and the scribes asked
him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders,
but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about
you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but
their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human
precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human
tradition.”
Then he said to them, “You have a fine
way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For
Moses said, Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of
father and mother must surely die.’ But you say that if anyone tells father or
mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’
(that is, an offering to God) – then you no longer permit anything for a father
or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you
have handed on. And you do many things like this.”
In the day of Jesus, the scribes and
Pharisees rationalized their violation of the spirit of God’s law. Jesus
exposed their hypocritical practice when He cited the commandment to “honor
your father and your mother.” They had been declaring a portion of their income
as a gift they would make to God, in order to keep from using it to care for
their aged parents. So they gave God lip service. As we enter the new year realize that the Bible is not a tool to get what we
want. Instead, we must ask God to help us understand its intended purpose.
Obeying the
letter of the law is good; obeying the spirit of the law is better.