Let’s move from words to deeds.

In the USA, they have recently done a campaign called `clean hands.’ It was to draw attention to the importance of handwashing. Researchers observed people, noting how many washed their hands after going to the toilet. Their findings were surprising. Many adults neglected even this most basic hygiene rule. We teach young children to wash their hands when they come home from school or the playground before they eat because unwashed hands carry a lot of germs and transmit diseases, but we do not comply.

But how does this relate to the gospel? Just as basic hygiene is not followed, neither are spiritual principles. “For they speak and do not act” (Matt. 23:3).

For such behavior, Jesus sharply rebukes them. He tells them that they are zealous for God’s law, but they remain only with the letter of the law. They were not proving it with their lives. When love for a person required them to leave something out, they would sacrifice a person rather than break the Sabbath.
There are quite a few such Pharisees in our ranks. This is not so much about keeping Sunday. With us, God’s law is being broken in several areas of life.

Let us lay our hand on our hearts, each to his own, that we are not so much concerned about pride, covetousness, gluttony, which have a destructive effect on our souls. We often do not take it seriously. But we risk much more than just some money we lose after a bad investment or some piece of our property that is a plain waste of what we lose. We risk losing the kingdom of heaven. Pride is a grave sin. If it appears, we must nip it in the bud. Imagine weeds in a garden. How much we have to weed, dig, how to destroy it. If we neglect the park, the weeds will ruin the whole crop.
This is what pride does in our heart – it destroys the life of God in us. It has already happened in Eden. “You will be like God!” the devil tempted Adam and Eve. And he does this in various forms today.

Let us think about whether we are also not acting hypocritically like the Pharisees in the Gospel. We command one thing and do another. How often do we point out the sin of our neighbors and often live in sin ourselves? If we want to cleanse the world of sin, let us first renounce sin. Let us live our Christianity in silence. Let us not be like the Pharisees who point out what good they have done, how good and godly they are, but in secret, they are sometimes worse than those they rebuke. Let us throw off the duplicity and begin to live our Christianity.

Today’s world needs witnesses who faithfully live out their Christianity according to Jesus Christ. Let us witness our lives show that we are Christians even without words.

Let us strive, even in this holiest sacrifice, to ask for the courage to truly witness so that we may first take off our mask, see the speck in our eye, and only then be able to draw the attention of the brother who is next to me.