The Filth of Fake Piety Text: Mark 7:1-13
Introduction: The War Between the Word and the Weeds
Every generation of the church faces the same fundamental temptation. It is not the temptation to be wildly and openly wicked, like a pack of carousing pirates. No, the more subtle and therefore more deadly temptation is the one that afflicts the most earnest among us. It is the temptation to improve on God. It is the temptation to think that God’s law is a good starting point, a solid foundation, but one that requires our helpful additions, our clarifying footnotes, our protective fences. We take the pure Word of God and we plant our own little garden of traditions all around it, and we tend to those traditions with such ferocious care that they grow up like weeds and choke the life out of the very thing they were supposed to protect.
This is the story of all legalism. It does not begin with a hatred of God’s law, but rather with a misguided, fleshly zeal for it. The Pharisees were not lazy liberals; they were the most zealous conservatives of their day. They were the ones who were serious about holiness. But their seriousness curdled into a system that replaced the authority of God with the authority of their own religious opinions. They built a hedge around the law, and then they began to worship the hedge.
And we must see that this is not simply an ancient squabble over ritual hand-washing. This is a perennial war that is fought in every church, in every denomination, and in every human heart. It is the war between divine revelation and human tradition. It is the conflict between what God has actually said and what we, in our piety, think He ought to have said, or what He would have said if He had our level of insight. Whenever a church, a family, or an individual begins to measure righteousness by any standard other than the plain Word of God, they have stepped onto the path of the Pharisees. They have begun to trade the gold of God's commands for the fool's gold of human regulations. And as Jesus demonstrates here with surgical precision, this is not a harmless error. It is a direct assault on the authority of God Himself, and it turns worship into a vain and worthless exercise.
The Text
And the Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered around Him when they had come from Jerusalem, and had seen that some of His disciples were eating their bread with defiled hands, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash themselves; and there are many other things which they have received in order to observe, such as the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots.) And the Pharisees and the scribes asked Him, “Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with defiled hands?” And He said to them, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME. BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE COMMANDS OF MEN.’ Leaving the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.”
And He was also saying to them, “You are good at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. For Moses said, ‘HONOR YOUR FATHER AND YOUR MOTHER’; and, ‘HE WHO SPEAKS EVIL OF FATHER OR MOTHER, IS TO BE PUT TO DEATH’; but you say, ‘If a man says to his father or his mother, whatever you might benefit from me is Corban (that is to say, given to God),’ you no longer leave him to do anything for his father or his mother; thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that.”
(Mark 7:1-13 LSB)
The Pious Police and Their Regulations (vv. 1-5)
The conflict begins with an official delegation of religious watchdogs.
"And the Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered around Him when they had come from Jerusalem, and had seen that some of His disciples were eating their bread with defiled hands, that is, unwashed." (Mark 7:1-2)
These are not local Galilean critics. This is the A-team, sent from the headquarters of religious orthodoxy in Jerusalem. They come to inspect, to scrutinize, and to find fault. And they find it. The disciples are eating with "defiled hands." Mark, writing to a Gentile audience, has to explain that this has nothing to do with hygiene. This is not about soap and water; it is about ceremonial purity. The disciples had failed to observe a ritual cleansing, a tradition that was not commanded anywhere in the Law of Moses.
Mark gives us a parenthetical explanation of this man-made system of piety. They washed their hands in a particular way, they washed after coming from the marketplace, they washed their pots and pans. This was all part of what they called "the tradition of the elders." This was an oral law, a body of rulings and interpretations that they believed had been passed down from Moses, but which in reality was a massive accumulation of human regulations. Their stated goal was to protect the law, to build a fence around it so no one would even come close to breaking it. But the result was that the fence became more important than the law itself.
So they issue their challenge in verse 5: "Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders...?" Notice the standard of judgment. They do not ask, "Why do your disciples transgress the law of God?" They could not, because no law was being broken. Their standard was their tradition. They had elevated their own rules to the status of God's Word, and were now judging the Son of God Himself by their own fabricated playbook. This is the very definition of legalism: judging a man's righteousness based on extra-biblical standards.
The Prophetic Diagnosis (vv. 6-8)
Jesus does not answer their question about the disciples. He ignores the presenting symptom and goes straight to the diseased heart.
"And He said to them, 'Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME. BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE COMMANDS OF MEN.’" (Mark 7:6-7)
He calls them hypocrites. The Greek word means a stage-actor, someone playing a part. Their religion was a performance. It was all external, all for show. They had the script down, they knew their lines, their costumes were perfect, but it was just an act. Their hearts were not in it. They honored God with their lips, with their meticulous hand-washing and their pious talk, but their hearts were a thousand miles away.
And because of this heart-disconnect, their worship was "in vain." It was useless, empty, and worthless. God is not impressed by religious choreography performed by cold hearts. And Jesus gives the precise reason why their worship was vain: they were "teaching as doctrines the commands of men." They took their own ideas, their own regulations, their own traditions, and they stamped "Thus saith the Lord" on them. When you place human opinion on the same level as divine revelation, you have poisoned the well of worship. Your service becomes an insult to the God you claim to honor.
Jesus summarizes their entire corrupt system in verse 8: "Leaving the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men." It is a zero-sum game. You cannot serve two masters. You cannot hold to God's Word and man's traditions when they conflict. Inevitably, one must give way. The Pharisees had made their choice. They let go of the solid rock of God's commands in order to grasp the handful of sand that was their own tradition.
A Case Study in Corrupt Piety (vv. 9-13)
Jesus is not content with a general denunciation. He provides a specific, damning example of how their tradition actively subverts and cancels out the clear Word of God.
"You are good at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition." (Mark 7:9)
This is biting, holy sarcasm. "You have a real talent for this. You have perfected the art of nullifying God's law with your pious-sounding workarounds." He then brings up one of the Ten Commandments, the bedrock of God's moral law: "Honor your father and your mother." This command, He reminds them, was so serious that the penalty for cursing a parent was death. This is not a sentimental suggestion; it is a non-negotiable requirement that undergirds all social stability. And honoring parents absolutely includes providing for them in their old age.
But the Pharisees had devised a clever loophole. A man could declare his property or money "Corban," which means "a gift devoted to God." By doing this, he could tell his needy parents, "Sorry, I can't help you. Everything I have that could benefit you is Corban. It's dedicated to the temple." It sounded incredibly spiritual. He looked like a man wholly devoted to God. But in reality, it was a wicked sham. He could still use the "devoted" property for himself, but the vow gave him a religious excuse to neglect his fundamental duty to his parents. He was using a "spiritual" commitment to disobey a clear command of God.
Jesus delivers the final verdict in verse 13: "thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down." Their tradition did not just sit alongside the Word of God; it actively made the Word of God of no effect. It cancelled it out. It rendered it void. And this was not a one-off problem. Jesus adds, "and you do many things such as that." This was their entire method of operation. Their whole religious system was built on this foundation of substituting their words for God's Word.
Conclusion: The Only Cleansing That Matters
The central issue in this passage is authority. Who gets to define righteousness? Who sets the terms for acceptable worship? Is it God, speaking in His inerrant Word, or is it religious men, speaking in their ever-expanding traditions? The Pharisees chose the latter, and in so doing, made their religion a hollow performance.
We must bring this challenge into our own churches and our own hearts. Where have we set up our own "Corban" rules? Where have we used a spiritual-sounding excuse to avoid a plain command? Perhaps we are zealous about our particular standards of dress, or entertainment, or education, and we look down on other Christians who do not share them. We have added to the Word. Or perhaps we say, "I know the Bible says to honor my parents, but my situation is complicated." Or, "I know the Bible commands forgiveness, but you don't know what they did to me." We have invalidated the Word. We are all natural-born Pharisees.
The problem is not external defilement. As Jesus will go on to say, what defiles a man comes from within, from the heart. The Pharisees were meticulously washing their hands while their hearts were filthy with greed, pride, and rebellion. They were whitewashed tombs, clean on the outside, but full of death within.
The only solution to a defiled heart is a divine cleansing. The good news is not a new set of traditions, but a crucified and risen Savior. True purity does not come from ritual washing, but from being washed in the blood of Jesus Christ. He is the one who honored His Father perfectly. He is the one whose heart was always, perfectly, in tune with His lips. He came to save hypocrites. He came to take our vain worship and, by His grace, make it true. The call of the gospel is to repent of our traditions, to abandon our self-made righteousness, and to cling to the Word of God alone, which is Christ Himself. For it is only when we are cleansed by Him that we can offer up worship that is not in vain.