2nd Opinion: Beware whitewashing

Jesus called the religious leaders of his day “whitewashed tombs.” When we read this in Matthew 23:27, spiritually speaking, we high-five Jesus and say, “Go get ’em, Lord.” But I wonder if we’re not missing another passage from Matthew 7, where we are reminded we must deal with our own hearts before we can disciple others.

Now, I am not one of these people who just blindly go along with someone when they say Christians are not supposed to judge. This is not what Jesus said, but rather that we would be judged with the same measure we use to judge. In fact, Matthew 7 says we are to help our brother get the speck out of his eye, but we have to deal with our own log first.

You see, we are in danger of whitewashing our churches today. We get fired up over issues like homosexuality, marriage and abortion. And don’t get me wrong; these are all things that the Lord takes very seriously. But what we are trying to do in our churches and in our country is to just whitewash things. We want people to behave rightly, or to at least appear as if they are behaving rightly. We have policies and voices that say they want to help the hurting, but push them away when they don’t look like us, behave like us, or when they have the audacity to walk through the doors of our church.

Heart change is what is needed, and a good place to start is our own hearts.

If I recall, didn’t Jesus spend time with prostitutes and thieves and tax collectors and those with illnesses that pushed them out of society? And don’t we call ourselves followers of Jesus? Brothers and sisters, we cannot have it both ways. We are either like Jesus or we are like the Pharisees.

So, what is the difference? Jesus and the Pharisees both required change of those living in sin, and so must we. But the difference between the two was that Jesus sought a heart change, and the Pharisees sought an action change. It is the same difference between donating fish to people who are hungry or teaching them to fish for themselves.

God is not looking for a change in action alone. If that is all we are teaching or all we are doing in our own lives, then we are just whitewashing the church and our lives. We look good on the outside, but we are decaying within. Heart change is what is needed, and a good place to start is our own hearts.

We live sometimes as if we aren’t sinners, and then we have no reason to talk about grace. We forget what we once were. We don’t remember the only difference between us and those who are lost is Jesus has saved us. We were not and are not worthy of that grace, but he gives it freely.

I fear we’re so consumed with making sure everyone is living right that we are imposing the law on others the way the Pharisees did and not the way Jesus did. Jesus was consumed with character, not empty actions. We lose our reward when we do things just because they are right. Jesus wanted us not to have different actions, but to have a different heart.

If we fight culture on the changes to its actions, we are going to continue losing the battles and will lose the war for the soul of our nation. But if we start focusing on the heart, starting with ourselves, God will bring us back to him, and we’ll see a change in our time unlike anything that’s been seen for generations.

Chris Moore is pastor of Navarro Mills Baptist Church in Purdon, Texas.