Lips and Hearts (1 of 2)

How to Read the Distance Between Them — and What Closes It

“This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me, and they worship me in vain, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”

— Matthew 15:8–9 (NET)

The Oldest Problem in Religion

Jesus is quoting Isaiah 29:13 in Matthew 15:8. This means the problem He is diagnosing in the Pharisees is not a first-century invention. It is the oldest problem in the history of organized religion. Lips that honor God and hearts that are far from Him. The exterior performance and the interior reality moving in opposite directions. The worship that is technically valid and spiritually empty.

Isaiah identified it in the eighth century BC. Jesus identified it in the first century AD. It is present in the twenty-first century church in every form that the Woes describe, and in forms that the Woes only imply. The problem does not go away. It adapts. Every generation produces a new vocabulary for lips that honor God and a new set of circumstances in which hearts can be far from Him while using that vocabulary.

Chapter Twenty-Two asks the question that Parts Four and Five of this volume have been building toward: How do you read the distance between lips and heart? And what, specifically, closes it?

How to Measure the Distance

The distance between lips and heart is not always visible from the outside. The Pharisees looked righteous to the crowds. The whitewashed tomb looks like architecture. The cleaned cup looks like a clean cup. The distance is an interior reality, and it is measured by interior instruments.

Four instruments for measuring the distance honestly:

Instrument One: What Do You Think About When Nothing Is Required of You?

In the hours when no one is watching, no performance is required, no obligation is pressing — what does your mind move toward? What do you desire? What do you fear? What do you plan?

Jesus said in Matthew 6:21: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” The treasure is not what you say you value. It is what your mind returns to when it is free to go where it wants. If the mind returns to God — to gratitude, to prayer, to wonder at His character, to longing for His Kingdom to advance — the heart is not far from the lips. If the mind returns to status, to wealth, to resentment, to entertainment, to the opinions of people whose approval you are managing — the treasure is somewhere other than where the lips are pointing. And the heart is there too.

Instrument Two: What Does Obedience Cost You, and Do You Pay It?

The person whose heart is close to God obeys at cost. Not perfectly, not without struggle, not without failure. But when obedience requires something — comfort, money, reputation, a relationship, a professional advantage, a social position — the person whose heart is with the King pays it.

The person whose lips honor God but whose heart is far obeys when obedience is cost-free and defers when it is not. He has a sophisticated set of theological reasons for the deferral. The reasons are real enough to satisfy his own conscience. But the pattern, observed over time, is clear: the cost is consistently avoided while the profession is consistently maintained.

The parable of the two sons in Matthew 21:28–31 is the clearest illustration. One son said yes and did not go. One son said no and went. “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” The one who went. Not the one who said the right thing. The lips that said no and the heart that obeyed were closer to the Father than the lips that said yes and the heart that did not.

Instrument Three: How Do You Respond to Correction?

The person whose heart is close to God receives correction with grief and gratitude. Grief because he genuinely wants to please the King and has failed. Gratitude because the correction is itself a mercy — the King attending to his formation, the vinedresser with the pruning knife.

The person whose lips honor God but whose heart is far responds to correction with defensiveness, explanation, or counter-accusation. Not because he is consciously dishonest — but because the correction threatens the performance rather than touching the heart. The heart that is oriented toward the audience experiences correction as an attack on the reputation. The heart that is oriented toward the Father experiences correction as an invitation to come closer.

Peter’s response to Jesus after the resurrection is the model. Jesus asked three times: “Do you love me?” Three times, Peter answered: “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” And John 21:17 says: “Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time.” The hurt was real. The hurt did not produce defensiveness. It produced the “Yes” that allowed restoration to proceed. A heart that grieves over the distance between lips and reality is a heart that is already closer than it knows.

Instrument Four: What Is Your Interior Life During Corporate Worship?

Corporate worship is the most diagnostic context in the Christian life because it is the context in which the exterior performance is most explicitly demanded. The songs, the posture, the responsive readings, the communal prayers — all of these are contexts in which the lips are most clearly engaged in honoring God.

The question the Pharisaic warning raises is: what is the heart doing during that time? Not whether you feel the right emotions — emotions are not a reliable indicator of the heart’s orientation. But whether the worship is directed at the Father or at the performance of worship that others can observe. Whether the confession of sin in the liturgy or the prayer time is a genuine transaction with the living God or a routine recitation that maintains the appearance of a contrite heart.

The person who cannot sing a worship song without thinking about how he appears to others, who cannot confess sin without calculating the impression the confession makes, who cannot hear a sermon without evaluating it for doctrinal correctness rather than receiving it for personal application — this person is worshiping with his lips while his heart performs for the audience. The audience may be other people. It may be his own self-image. Either way, the Father is not the primary recipient of what is being offered.

What Closes the Distance

The Woes are diagnostic. They identify the disease. Chapter Twenty-Two closes by naming the specific medicine.

The distance between lips and heart is not closed primarily by trying harder. The Pharisees were trying very hard. Their trying produced the Woes. The distance is not closed by more discipline. The Pharisees were extraordinarily disciplined. The distance is not closed by correct doctrine. The Pharisees had substantially accurate doctrine. None of these things — effort, discipline, doctrine — closes the distance between lips and heart because none of them addresses the root cause of the distance.