They Honor Me With Their Lips

6 He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. 7 Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. 8 For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do. 9 And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. Mark 7

This is a continuation of my last few blogs in recognizing that there are those out there who put their beliefs and traditions before God. Those who add rules or doctrines apart from scripture even when they don't directly deal with salvation are being just like the Pharisees. Now I am not crying legalism or hypocrite for the sake of justifying or legitimizing my sin, but looking at the very nature of churches today and how they portray Jesus to others. These men who would rather worship their idea of God and their traditions rather than obey the Word of God and be a united body of Christ are those who offer Lip service to God. Those who would change the gospel to advance their ambitions or careers their hearts are far from God. If love believes all things, endures all things, hopes all things, if it is patient and kind, if it is not arrogant or boastful and we are known to be Christ's by our love then why are we bombarded by churches that do not exemplify this? Why do we not have churches that are ready for every good work?
And with all caution and humility I say this regarding not those that are designated "Christian" by the world, but those who so flippently throw around the phrase " born again". And even though they use this phrase to indicate through their vernacular that they are different than the works oriented denominations of Christianity they don't understand what it means to be born again. If I am reborn than I am not myself I can no longer live in the darkness, I have died to who I am to live out Christ. Now I admit this is a daily occurrence, but if there is no initial commitment to die to self or pick up our cross then there never will be. So we don't live to rules or traditions,but we live so that we might die daily. Warring against our flesh, struggling against this world, we sacrifice our desires to show love to our brothers and sisters and share Jesus with the world.