Character Inside Out

In Alexander Dumas' classic The Three Musketeers, d'Artanian meets his future friends when he alternately offends and then challenges each of them to a dual on the same day. His encounter with Porthos is a point of warning for us, I think. As d'Artanian rushed to catch up to another gentleman with which he had a dual (he sure fought a lot of duels), he literally ran into Porthos. Porthos was showing off his new suit of eye-popping, finely embroidered, rhinestone-studded clothes to his friends when the rushing d'Artanian became entangled in his cape. The cape tore loose, revealing the fact that Porthos' distinctive suit was only distinctive in the front. He only had enough money for half a suit; the part that was covered by the cape was not very fine at all. Porthos had wanted to impress his friends with his fine clothes, but d'Artanian's clumsiness revealed him to be a fraud.

I wonder how many of us play the part of a spiritual Porthos. We give a great deal of attention to the part of our religious lives that shows to other people-- we attend services, become involved in church programs, and defend what the Bible teaches. And yet, on the inside our hearts don't really belong to God. It's all a facade; it is a suit of clothes only decorated on one side. Which sounds a lot like the metaphor Jesus uses to descrine the Pharisees in Matthew 23:25-28

25 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. 27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

God wants us to be an inside-out people. He wants us to give attention to the way we are, not how we seem to other people. It is from the heart that we speak and act (Matt. 12:34). We cannot impress God with religious rite, right doctrine nor good behavior unless it is a reflection of our heart. God will take a humble tax collector over a full-of-himself Pharisee every time. Why? Because God knows our hearts!