Churches Together: 'Sometimes we mistake following rules for being good'

Sometimes we mistake following rules for being good: good people follow the rules and don’t break the speed limit or steal, they give time and money to charity.

We judge people by what we see of them, how they seem. Religious people are especially prone to making and following rules and to judging by outward appearances.

Sometimes the rules have meant not doing certain things on Sundays (especially not fun things), not gambling or drinking or dancing. On their own, though, the rules don’t make us good. We know that some of the people who follow the rules can be horrible.

The religious experts of Jesus’ day had rules about everything, including how to wash the dishes. They weren’t as extreme as the Taliban, but they were heading that way.

They meant well: to stop people breaking God’s law they made strict rules. If you kept the human rules, you were safe from breaking God’s law. The problem was that the rules couldn’t make us better people.

Jesus identified the real problem, which is the human heart. We break the rules (commit sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, etc) not because the rules are difficult or wrong, but because of what is in our hearts (vv20-23). The rules might help us to know what’s right and wrong, but they are powerless to change our hearts.

When we can’t (or won’t) keep the rules, these days our response is often to dismiss them as oppressive, irrelevant or wrong.

Perhaps we would do better to turn to the One who offers to renew our hearts, so that we might genuinely love God and love our neighbours. If we did that, we would still make mistakes sometimes, but we wouldn’t need to worry about the rules.