Although being quite different from the context we live in (we’re in the New Covenant, not the Old Covenant), Jesus’s exhortation to the Pharisees in Mark 7 is quite helpful to us as we examine our lives in light of what the New Testament teaches.
There’s no doubt the Pharisees talked a good game. The problem, however, was that they did not always live according to what they said. Jesus addressed this reality directly when he said, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice”(Matthew 23:2-3). This way of living would then get them into trouble as it did in Mark 7. In response to their way of living Jesus quoted the prophet Isaiah when he said, “ ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men’ ” (Mark 7:6-7).
Our application and thus response to Jesus’s exhortation is not to feel awful about ourselves (that’s the work of the devil and has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit’s work of conviction). Instead, it’s to recognize those similar tendencies and work through them.
When I work through applying what Mark 7 has for me I come to one root cause: idolatry. I want people to think well of me and if I can help make that happen by talking a good game then more often than not I’ll go ahead with that. This is idolatrous. I would sometimes rather people think well of me than grow closer to Jesus.
Man, I need the grace of God, huh?
What I gather from Mark 7 is that it makes no difference what I say if my heart is messed up. And by messed up I mean, doing its own thing apart from God.
Any and everything that comes out of my mouth should always be towards to main goals: 1) loving God and 2) loving people. If loving God and others are my main two goals then what I say will not, in its most immediate context be for me; instead, it will be for those who I’m speaking to as they (by God’s grace) see Jesus in me.
When I get to the points when I find myself wondering what people think of me a flag should come up. I then have a decision to make. Am I going to be like the Pharisees who wanted to control those around them because their hearts were far from God? Or am I going to submit to the leading of the Spirit as I speak so that what I say is out of love and not gain?
Submission was the path of Jesus and if Jesus thought it a worthwhile way to live then how could I choose to live differently?