Jesus hated and still hates lies and hypocrisy. The religious leaders had created a system of 'holiness' which depended on obeying complex rules. The message they gave was that if people could discipline themselves enough, to achieve 'good marks in the tests', then they could consider themselves 'holy'. In Matthew 15:1-20 the 'rule', which was considered so important, was the obsessive washing of hands to avoid getting dirt into the body.
 
Jesus heavily criticised those rules, saying that holiness and inner cleanliness cannot be achieved by religious activities. When the disciples came to Him privately, they were also perplexed that He had dismissed traditional religio-cultural routines as meaningless. So He explained that spiritual uncleanness did not come from dirt entering the body; it was already in everybody's hearts. Unholiness could not be 'made better' by some physical action. Its roots were too deep.
 
God sees the heart. We can only see the spontaneous overflow of people's hearts, but what we see and hear is bad enough. Hatred, lust, greed and malice lurk in every heart. When the pressure is on or the circumstances provide an opportunity, these attitudes are expressed as murder, sexually immorality, theft and destructive words. The outward social shame of such wickedness is only a small manifestation of the evil within.
 
However, the majority of religious people still think that if they can do enough good things, they will outweigh the bad things and God will be pleased. Jesus would heavily disagree. Sin is so deeply entrenched in our hearts that no amount of religious activity can sanitise it. Only Jesus can remove sin and implant holiness. He took our sins into His own body when He died on the cross (1 Peter 2:24). Apart from trusting in Him and receiving His cleansing, there is no other way to be holy. That is why the gospel is so powerful: it alone offers true hope to religious failures, peace to moral failures and joy to spiritual failures (www.crosscheck.org.uk).