Jesus, simply profound, profoundly simple

It strikes me as a preacher how simple Jesus' teaching is presented, and how profound it is at the same time. As a confessional Christian I am wary of many modern over simplifications, the tendency to reduce our faith and practice to bumper sticker catch phrases. The simplicity of Jesus is not that. In Matthew 15: 11, Jesus says, "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man, but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man." This was given to the crowds to counter the Pharisees' insistence on the washing of hands before one ate. The disciples balk at at this and ask him to explain, which is given by Matthew in verses 16-20.

Jesus' explanation boils down to this: Our sin is not due to the corruption of the world outside (food goes in the mouth and out into the pot, so to speak), but sin comes from our own corrupt heart. Sin originates from within. That's it, complete simplicity. But that simplicity has depth.

Let's look at our natural habits. We shift our sin onto the evil influences of the world: we blame TV, video games, the internet; we point our finger at schools and universities; we condemn upcoming generation's youth culture. But we don't sin because we are corrupted, we sin because we are corrupt. And, of course, that means when we want to assign guilt to the corruptions of our world we need to turn the finger to ourselves.

But this also has profound consequences for our salvation. If the heart is the source of corruption, then we cannot look there for our salvation. We cannot look there for righteousness. We cannot look to the heart of men for the reconciliation of the world. We must look outside ourselves. We must look unto Christ, the one given for the reconciliation of the world, the Holy One of Israel, the LORD our Righteousness. This is the good tidings of the gospel, that God has come to help those who cannot help themselves.