This morning I was reading Luke 11 and focusing upon Jesus’ conversation with some Pharisees. Jesus was teaching about what’s “inside the cup,” that is, about our motives.

Here’s the passage:

While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. And the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you. (Lk 11:37-41, ESV)

This episode is so illustrative of Jesus’s way of getting to the heart of the matter. The Pharisee was “astonished” at Jesus. Why? It was because Jesus didn’t wash before eating. The Pharisee was concerned with the outward show of propriety and cleanness. But Jesus flipped the Pharisee’s script. How? By contrasting the Pharisee’s preening with external cleanness with the vastly more important issue of one’s internal state of rottenness vs. cleanness.

What’s more important, in other words, clean hands or a clean heart? The question answers itself.

Nothing’s changed, of course. We all know folks that are more concerned with looking the part than being the part. It’s the great theme of appearance vs. reality.

Jesus knows our hearts. God knows our motives. God sees not only what we do but why we do it. And that should drive us to keep short accounts with God.