Proverbs 15:8 ESV
The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is acceptable to him.
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Heresy has dogged the steps of Israel and the church since its earliest days. In the days of Moses, the Israelites- at least the less honest of them- tried to substitute a golden calf for God’s prescribed method of worship (Ex. 32:1-6). In the days of the divided kingdoms, they sought to use high places similarly (1 Kings 13:2). In the days of Christ, in the dying days of Israel and the nascency of the church, the pharisees sought to achieve righteousness by their own works (Matt. 23:1-36). In the early church, before Jerusalem’s destruction, the Judaizers insisted that membership in the church required participation in the ceremonies of Israel, that faith in Christ must be joined to works of the Mosaic law (Gal. 2:15-6). Then, after the canon was closed and Jerusalem was sacked, a thousand heresies sprouted: Arianism, Docetism, Monarchianism, Mariolatry, Pelagianism, and more. Many of them, once examined, proved to be recapitulations of old heresies, new only in nuance and flavor. Thus the Catholic church repeated the Judaizers in requiring works; thus the saint-worship repeated the error of the golden calf. One particularly common heresy is works-righteousness.
Man has an innate desire to make himself the center of salvation- not as Christ the man is at the center, but as an individual. Man wants to either be his own savior or to need no savior in the first place. If the second is repudiated, he turns to the first. The question then naturally arises: how is man to save himself? The obvious and popular answer is that he saves himself by moral perfection. Pelagius held to a fairly honest version of this, asserting that since God demanded righteousness of man, man could be righteous (a position Arminianism evades primarily through intellectual confusion). Mormonism states that, “… it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” (2 Nephi 25:23), a statement other elements of their theology bears out. The pharisees too demanded works to reach righteousness; they cleaned their outwards actions most thoroughly, becoming paragons of apparent righteousness, not caring that they rotted their inward man (Matt. 23:25; Matt. 23:1-36 in general). The Judaizers had a similar error, demanding works alongside faith (instead of as a consequence, this being James’s position in James 2), for which Paul reproved them and called down anathema- damnation (Gal. 1:6-9, 3:1-14).
Nor is this a New Testament, New Covenant heresy only. Look at Isaiah 58:3, wherein Israel asks a question of God: “Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?” God answers, and His answer is a condemnation of their good deeds. They fast, He says, but only to “quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist” (58:4). As Isaiah 59:6-7 will proclaim, “Their works are works of iniquity…. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity….” Clearly, the apostates of Israel trusted in their works to save them, trusted in their adherence to the sacrificial law for righteousness.
Works, though, are entirely inadequate to save us. We condemn ourselves by our works; we do not save ourselves. All our righteous deeds are “like a polluted garment” (Is. 64:6). All our works are mixed with sin. Consider your life; consider the greatest and purest goods you have done. Was there not mixed with it a single thought of self-promotion, of proving yourself righteous, of proving somebody else wrong? I can’t absolve myself here, not without lying, and no man can truthfully say he is innocent. All men sin (Ps. 53:1-3); all Christians sin (1 John 1:8-10). Even if one work was pure in itself, we ourselves are sinful. We are sinful, and we are a part of our works, so that even if it were not sinful in itself, we would by being part of it pollute it, rending our greatest righteousness of no avail.
Thus it is that Isaiah condemns the supposed righteous of his time, saying, “He who slaughters an ox is like one who kills a man; he who sacrifices a lamb, like one who breaks a dog’s neck; he who presents a grain offering, like one who offers pig’s blood; he who makes a memorial offering of frankincense, like one who blesses an idol” (Is. 66:3). So too did Malachi condemn the hypocrites of his time; so too did Christ ravage the pretension of the pharisees (Matt. 23:1-36). As today’s verse from Proverbs proclaims, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord.” Apparent purity of deed is nothing when the heart-foundation it rests upon is fraught with sin.
Let us consider, then, how this magnifies the glory of God. He does not accept the prayers of men who have merited that acceptance by their own works. No, God accepts the prayer of the upright, but their uprightness, their right to acceptance, is not found in their own works. It is His mercy, instead, which grants them that; more, it is His sacrifice, the sacrifice by our great High Priest of the Lamb of God (Heb. 2:17; John 1:29). His sacrifice makes us upright first by justifying us, clothing us in His righteousness and taking our wickedness upon Himself (Is. 53:12), and second by sanctifying, glorifying, us, making us more and more like Him till we shall be perfected in the final resurrection of the body (1 Cor. 15:20-24; Rom. 8:29-30). This, then, is our hope: that God hears the prayers of those He has made upright.
God bless.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
