Returning To God’s Heart

Returning to God’s Heart

Read: Mark 3:1-6

“Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?”

Mark 3:4

“God is not deceived by externals.”

—C. S. Lewis

IN WORD Why is Jesus so emotional in this passage? He does not simply condemn the Pharisees’ misunderstanding of the law; He glares at them in anger and is “deeply distressed” (v. 5). Throughout the Gospels He encounters overtly immoral prostitutes and dishonest tax collectors without expressing any such revulsion. But the deception of the religious leaders is different. And this isn’t the only time they have evoked such a reaction from Him. On other occasions, He calls them things like “whitewashed tombs,” “snakes,” and “blind fools” (Matthew 23, among other texts). What makes their sin so much worse? Why is He so hard on them? They’re just trying to obey God, aren’t they?

The sin of the hypocritically religious is not necessarily more offensive to God than other sins. All sin falls short of His glory and exchanges the eternal for the corruptible. He is offended and grieved by it all. But unlike other, more obvious sins, religious hypocrisy is hard to return from. Once you are there, it’s incredibly difficult to find your way out. The sins of the flesh are easily recognizable, and those who commit them know their corruption. All they must do is acknowledge their sin and repent. But the sins of hypocrisy are subtle and deceptive. They are a matter of motives, which are hidden deep in our hearts, often even out of our own view. In order to repent of them, we must see them. And seeing them is the hard part.

IN DEED The most loving thing Jesus can do for the self-deceived is to verbally rake them over the coals. We think He is being unloving when He rebukes fools and vipers. But He is actually being compassionate, trying to jolt them out of their illusion. We must let Him do the same for us—at times, we are all hypocritical. Sometimes His Word will wound us. He is brutally, lovingly honest. Suffer those wounds, if necessary. It’s the way back to His heart.