3 Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’ 5 But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,’ 6 he is not to ‘honor his father’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. 7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: 8 ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 9 They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’”

Jesus reserved His harshest denunciation for those who maintained an ostentatious show of spirituality while lacking inner integrity. Simply put, this committee of Pharisees and “teachers of the law” accused Jesus of breaking their man-made traditions, while they themselves were guilty of breaking God’s commandments. This group, probably representing the Sanhedrin, made a big deal of the fact that Jesus and His disciples didn’t wash their hands before they ate (vs. 1-2). Their concern was not for personal hygiene, but the presumption that since Jesus and His disciples associated with common people who were presumed to be unclean, they must have become unclean themselves. Yet they took no care to ceremonially purify themselves before eating.

Jesus saw through their duplicity, exposing it by pointing out that one of their traditions specifically broke the 4th commandment, to honor one’s father and mother (Ex 20:12). Honoring parents included caring for them in a material way when needed. Yet the Pharisees devised a ruling that allowed people to circumvent that obligation. This is how it worked: A man could set up a sort of spiritual trust fund in which he could earmark a certain part of his wealth as a gift to God—resources that could otherwise be used in support of his parents. By declaring these things to be “corban” (Luke 7:11), which means “gift,” they were no longer available for helping the parents in need. This practice was nothing more than a legalistic loophole, a 4th commandment avoidance technique. Jesus identified this as a flagrant violation of the Word of God; they had elevated their traditions above the commands of the Lord.

In scathing rebuke, Jesus calls them hypocrites, the true object of Isaiah’s stinging, prophetic condemnation. Their worship was completely devoid of spiritual value. Samuel’s admonition reverberates, “It is better to obey than to sacrifice (1 Sam 15:22). We note that only Jesus can unhypocritically accuse others of hypocrisy—He alone was without sin as even His enemies “found no fault in Him” (Luke 23:4) and He alone knows the hearts and minds of men.

Lord, help me see my own hypocrisy and confess it as sin.