Dealing with the Inside of the Cup

Inside: It’s easy to appear godly on the outside, but God sees our hearts. Are we dealing with the hidden sins we’ve learned to ignore?

A white coffee cup with a clean exterior but stained and dirty interior, illustrating the biblical warning against appearing clean outwardly while harboring sin inwardly.

It’s really easy to look good on the outside. The Pharisees were masters at “cleaning the outside of the cup,” but Jesus rebuked them because the inside was full of greed and self-indulgence:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.”
~ Matthew 23:25

How often do we seek to deal with the garbage that’s inside the cup of our own hearts?

I Can Be a Good Rule-Follower

I can dress modestly, use gracious speech, and serve others with a cheerful demeanor—and yet still harbor sinful thoughts and attitudes that no one sees but the Lord. And that’s the key: the Lord sees.

He sees the thoughts I try to justify.
The grumbling spirit behind my quiet service.
The pride I mask with politeness.

“How often do we deal with our sinful heart issues?”

Pride, jealousy, judgmentalism, envy, discontentment, anger, comparison, lust, thinking more highly of myself than others—these are sins we may manage to hide from others, but they are never hidden from God. And He is not indifferent to them.

All sin, whether visible or secret, is an offense against a holy God.

It’s easy to clean the outside of the cup like the Pharisees did, but are we dealing with the sin hidden in our hearts? God sees what no one else does.

We Are Not the Standard

“Our spiritual comparisons are also incredibly biased. We have an amazing ability to compare things in a way that causes us to come out on top. And when we come out on top, it’s hard not to look down on people who don’t measure up.”
~ Larry Osborne, Accidental Pharisees

We have no right to feel morally superior to someone whose sin is out in the open. The Lord does not rank sin the way we do. We must be just as grieved by the hidden sins of our hearts as we are by the sins we see in others.

There is no such thing as a respectable sin in God’s eyes.

The Secret Life Is the Real Life

The life we live in secret—that only the Lord sees—is who we truly are. This is why we need the regular mirror of God’s Word to reveal and correct the thoughts and intentions of our hearts:

“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
~ Hebrews 4:12

It is not enough to appear godly. We are called to be holy as He is holy (1 Peter 1:15–16). That holiness begins on the inside.

Let us be women who walk in repentance, who confess and forsake sin, and who cling daily to the mercy and grace of Christ.