Tim on a path

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also

Matthew 6:21

What you hold most dear, what your treasure in life is, there you will find your heart – you will find that your innermost being is fixated on that thing, that your whole world is predicated on that thing. When you have that thing or are making progress towards that thing you live at peace, content knowing your heart is being filled. But when that thing is challenged or at risk, we find ourselves ravenous in defense of it.

What do I mean? An Olympic athlete has winning a medal as their treasure. They train, physically exert themselves, day in and day out, for the off chance that they may even compete for a medal. When asked if they want to go out at night, they first consider if that would help or hurt their chances at competing. When deciding how to fill their day, even when they decide what food to eat – all of these things are dictated by what they hope will bring the best chances of their heart receiving the thing it treasures most. 

It’s a meme by now to say that “gym bros” have never heard of a spice. In order to gain the massive amounts of muscle that weight lifters are aiming for, they need to take in massive amounts of calories and nutrients. We’ve all seen the videos where someone like Dwayne Johnson, the old WWF wrestler, would eat a dozen oversized plates of food. This isn’t because they’re gluttonous – they need to take in those nutrients or else  they won’t receive their treasure, the muscle gains they’re suffering every day at the gym for. 

But what they eat looks plain. White rice, steamed veggies, and protein. No sauces, no spices, nothing other than the nutrients. We look at their plates and think “why would someone choose to eat that?” or “how can they enjoy eating that?” We need some zest in our meals, at least some salt and pepper, right? But to them, it’s not a meal, it’s their hourly intake of nutrients. What we count as something to be experienced and enjoyed they view as mundane and purely necessary in order that they may reach their goal or receive their treasure. 

Everything in life, down to the very food they eat, is done purely because they believe it will lead them towards their treasure. What is your treasure? Where is your heart? See, it’s not just these athletes that are pursuing a treasure – all of us are. Jesus didn’t say “for where really dedicated people’s treasure is” or “where some specific special people’s treasure”. He said where your treasure is, there too your heart. What is your treasure?

Well, if our treasure is where our heart is,  where is our heart? That's the million dollar question – if every choice we make follows from where our heart is, if even the food we eat is chosen by that heart, knowing where that heart is might be one of the most important questions we have. But as the prophet Jeremiah said 

The heart is deceitful above all things
    and beyond cure.
    Who can understand it?

Jeremiah 17:9

When we just ask ourselves “hey, self, why are we doing these things?”, the self has a way of deceiving us. This is plain to see: every year, come January, the gyms are packed with people because their hearts told them “this is important”, only for it to pull them away come March. Or, more seriously, every day people are joined in marriage only to have a divorce when they “grow apart” or their partner “isn't who I married.” Their heart deceived them both to get married and to get divorced. 

When we ask ourselves why, when we interrogate what is actually in control of me, our heart, our innermost being, deceives us into doing whatever it wants. We get married because the heart thinks it'll bring it closer to its treasure, we get divorced because the heart believes that will move the needle. We change jobs because this new job will satisfy us, this new car will fulfill Me. 

If the heart was being truthful, that new spouse would fix all of our personal problems and we'd have no need for a divorce. If that new job actually did bring us the satisfaction the heart claimed it wanted, we'd have no reason to be on Indeed for the third time this year. If the heart wasn't deceitful, we'd never run into the Kodak moments or what I call the “photo feeling.”

When I was growing up, I wanted to be many things, often to the chagrin of my parents. In my pre-teens I wanted to be a professional inline skater, in my teens I wanted to be a rockstar, and in my late teens/early twenties, I tried my hand at being a professional poker player. For each of these things, I had in my head some “photo”, some end state that I thought would bring me joy. I would picture myself on stage at a packed area during a world tour, I imagined winning a World Series of Poker bracelet, I saw myself competing for gold at the X-Games. When I played the guitar until my fingers bled, I would picture the end state and all of the joy and fulfillment I would feel and power through.

But then, I started doing shows in Nashville, I started releasing CDs, I got signed to some indie, low-rent “record label”. I got to the place where the photo in my head would actually come to fruition and…nothing. After all the toil, stress, lost sleep,  suffering for the goal of the heart that I did, there was nothing even close to the “photo feeling” that sustained me during my practice. 

Maybe you had a “photo feeling” of what would happen when you graduated school or landed your first “big kid” job or married your spouse. Did you actually receive what the heart promised? Did you actually stay in the gym past March?

If we can't ask the heart what it treasures without being deceived, how do we know what our heart truly values, what is actually dictating my actions? If you wanted to see what a bodybuilder or an Olympic athlete truly treasures, how would you do it? If you wanted to understand how someone else’s worldview dictates their actions, what would you do? The same way you might tell what type of plant is sprouting: by seeing the fruit that it bears.

By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

Matthew 7:16-20

By their fruit you will recognize them. We see that the Olympic athlete’s heart is fully focused on, their true treasure is, competing by the fruit they produce. We can tell that a body builder’s focus is muscle growth by their fruit. When the rubber meets the road and they have to make difficult choices, the fruit they produce shows themselves what they truly treasure. What fruit do you produce? What fruit does going to the gym for a month a year produce? Or marrying only to get divorced? 

You see, the heart uses those photo feelings in order to persuade you towards what It treasures. The way that it produces fruit in you is through those photo feelings, by feeding you snippets of the actual treasure to convince you into performing some action. 

Let's suppose your actual treasure is to be popular; when we get down to it, your heart values acceptance and admiration from others above all things. It might tell you that going to the gym is the treasure it wants, feeding you whatever it has to in order to motivate you into action. But, soon, it realizes that being in shape isn't the easiest path towards that and starts feeding you another photo feeling instead. 

What you held so dear, what you understood to be your ultimate goal is thrown away and discarded by the heart, only to be replaced by the next photo feeling. And then the next thing. And the next thing. It's only by looking at all these things, all the fruits your heart has produced, that you can say “wait a minute…somethings off here.”

What is your treasure? Where is your heart? What fruit are you producing? Do you even care? 

The thing about the heart being deceitful is that it makes it impossible to truly know if it's being truthful when interrogated. When we do something bad, something that goes against what we purport to hold dear, we don't usually say “I know this is bad and I'm a bad person for doing it.” Instead, our heart finds escape hatches to deflect the blame elsewhere. 

When we cut someone off in traffic, a mortal sin on par with leaving your shopping cart in the middle of the parking lot, we don't think “well, I'm a doo-doo head so that's why I'm doing this.” No, we come up with reasons why that was justified. We had to make our exit, they weren't letting me merge; I gave them a heads up, it's their fault they didn't see me. Each and every time we try to introspect this heart, it hides and feeds us these photo feelings to persuade us into stopping. 

Oftentimes when playing a new video game, it feels like you're making amazing progress. You're catching all the butterflies, you're beating every boss the game sends your way, you're conquering other players' lands. Everything's coming up Millhouse. But then, you realize that the point of the game wasn't to catch butterflies or beat Bowser but instead was to get gold coins. You see everyone else gaining ground as you fumble to sell off resources you so gleefully grabbed in order that you might win the actual prize. 

Or better yet, when you first learn to play poker, you might think that a pair of aces is always and forever the best hand. You might even win some money believing that. But eventually you learn about two pair or flushes. You realize that the point of the game wasn't to have the best hand before the flop but the best hand at the end of the round. 

In this same way, our hearts feed us half truths that feel productive and make us feel as if we are making true progress towards what we feel is our true goal, our hearts treasure, only to find that the heart was playing chess while we were playing checkers. The heart tells us “oh yes, you are correct. My true goal is butterflies” only later to say “no no no, You misunderstood. My goal is to get gold coins.”

Perhaps your heart tells you that your true treasure is family. That you work long hours to provide what's best for them, you suffer and toil so that they may have a better life than what was afforded to you. But then, little Timmy's recital is the night of your big presentation. What do you do?

Your heart chooses what it truly treasures. If you truly treasure family above anything else, which one would you choose? Ah, you say, if I don't do that presentation I won't have that job and my family will suffer! Oh, how deceitful the heart. Is that job the only way God could possibly give us our daily bread? Is that presentation actually so important that you'll get fired? Is being fired actually detrimental to our family?

If we say that losing weight is our heart’s true treasure, but when we're presented with the option to be gluttonous we take it, we have been deceived by the heart in both instances, when it told me the photo feeling of losing weight and when it told me the photo feeling of being gluttonous. When I say that family is the most important thing to me and then choose work over it, both times the heart deceived me. 

As Jesus said 

No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Matthew 6:24

Our master is that which we treasure. Where your treasure is, so too your heart. And where your heart is, that Thing is what we are slaves to. Where is your treasure? What fruit are you producing? What I found most helpful in answering these questions was by finding the incongruencies in my life. 

When I say “I want to lose weight” but then choose to indulge my ice cream desires, that is an incongruence. My heart tells my soul “we want to lose weight”, it tells Me that is its treasure, its guiding principles are rooted in that. It tells me all the reasons why losing weight is good, why we have to. It makes Me think it's My idea to lose weight and every choice I make is based on that. But. My fruit. The actions it produces. The eating of the ice cream. It is incongruent with what I understood to be our goal. 

An athlete has to notice these incongruencies in order to ever hope to become an Olympian. You have to be able to notice when your actions lead away from the goal or you'll never win the gold. No matter how many reps you put in, if you're not taking in the nutrients you won't gain muscle mass. No matter if they put all this effort over here but don't notice their actions over there deterring from their goal, they'll never make progress. 

No amount of saving a dollar will help if you're spending $10 every time. If you say that your treasure is a larger savings account so you save a dollar every week but you waste $10 every day, there is an incongruence in your actions. If you truly wanted to save money, you would not waste $70 for every $1 you save. The only way to actually save, to actually make progress towards your goal, is to notice those moments, the fruit that you are producing, and be able to prune those branches that don't lead towards that goal. 

In the same way, if we profess to be followers of Jesus Christ, we must notice the incongruencies in our actions. We must first start to notice the times in our lives where the heart is deceiving us into producing fruit that is not of the Spirit:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23

If you claim to follow Christ, you are claiming that the treasure of your heart is Christ. You claim that all of your actions are rooted in this and come out of this. You claim to have a heart that produces this fruit. Is that true or are you merely a New Year's Resolution Christian, to be gone by March when the heart's photo feelings change? The only way to know for sure is to notice the incongruencies between the fruit you produce, the actions you choose to do, and the goal you profess to follow. 

When you say your true goal is to lose weight, when do you have chances to prove that? When you say your true treasure is in Christ, in what moments of your day do you find yourself having to make a choice between producing His fruit versus the fruit of the Flesh? 

When your kid wakes you up for the fourth time and you haven't slept in what feels like months, at that moment, you have a choice. It may not feel like a choice, your heart may tell you that the only option is anger or resentment. But. We have a choice. We can produce the fruit of the Spirit or we can produce the fruit of the Flesh. Either we are truly saving money or we aren't but we have that choice. Either we are going to lose weight or not, but we have that choice. Either we are Christians and we will produce the fruit of Christ or we aren't and we won't. But it is a choice. As Paul said 

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26 Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. 27 No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27

As hard as the athlete trains their body, Paul says we are to train ours. The RSV says to “pummel” the body, here in the NIV it says “strike blows.” Paul isn't saying we're to kindly work with our hearts, our Flesh, he is saying we're to battle and overcome it, to pummel it into submission. That sparring takes place in the tiny moments where the Flesh gives us its photo feelings and asks us “wouldn't it be great if we….” The true competition isn't the marathon, it's the lifestyle of noticing the small choices that build us up into the type of person that races marathons. 

Where you think your treasure is must align with where your actions are or your heart is deceiving you. The only way to know if you're being deceived is to notice the moments when you're making a choice that either helps or hinders reaching that treasure. The moments of incongruence are invitations for us to look deeper. We must realize that this heart is not in control, that what I feel isn't always the best course of action, and if I confess to have a treasure, a central desire of my life, I must pummel the body into submission. 

Something starts to happen when you do. See, every time you make the choice to either pursue or abandon what your heart told you its treasure was, be it consciously or not, we are strengthening the actual treasure we are chasing, building up the muscle to either fight back or to give in to the deceit of the heart. As we build that muscle, whatever we have chosen becomes more and more ingrained within us. 

If I constantly choose to give into the fickle Flesh, it becomes harder and harder to even consciously fight back. The corollary is also true: as we start to notice these small, insignificant moments where we have a choice to be congruent with what we profess to be our treasure, it becomes easier to choose that in the future. It seems that as we become congruent with our stated goals, as we start to ask “if I truly wanted to lose weight, would I eat this ice cream?”, we can start to actually want to lose weight. We can produce the fruit of weight loss. 

It seems that this battle over the Flesh is a constant feedback loop where my heart gives me the photo feeling of what it wants. I compare that to the fruit I want to produce, and over many battles where I choose the action that produces that fruit, my heart actually ends up wanting that thing. This is the exact thing Jesus says when talking about our treasure being where our heart is. 

Not only does the true treasure we are chasing come out in the desires of the heart, it seems that by choosing a different treasure to be congruent with, we can change the treasure our heart desires. As we notice ways in which we are incongruent and choose the congruent path, we pummel the body into submission. By choosing to wake up early and train, the athlete makes it easier for future them to run the marathon. As we choose to not spend money, we make it easier for our future selves to save money. 

The opposite is also true. When we decide that sleeping in is more important than training, that reinforces the heart’s deceitful goal and minimizes your purported one. When we choose the incongruent path, we feed into where that path leads. The battle for your treasure is not won or lost when the photo is taken but in the moments no one is looking. 

Over time, battle after battle after battle, eventually you come to a decision point – either your treasure is what you said or you realize it's not your treasure. There's only so many times you can say “I want to lose weight” and still indulge in gluttony before you either stop indulging or you accept that's not your true goal. Either you pummel the Flesh or it pummels you. But.

The heart is deceitful. It has a treasure that it is leading you towards, with great persuasion, and is able to convince us otherwise. Jesus tells us this plainly:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

Matthew 7:21-23

There are those of us that claim to be Christian, that claim Christ is the true treasure of our hearts, those of us that will do literal miracles in the name of Jesus, that will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. They on one side of their body see the good they are doing but never notice the other side devouring ice cream. Jesus points out a group of people in His time that fell to this same deceit of the heart

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. 24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

Matthew 23:23-24

They professed to be following God’s Law, pointing towards all of the good they did, all of the checkboxes that they fulfilled, and when their hearts tell them “Yes, you are following God, not me”, they only see half of the story. While thinking they were fighting against the Flesh, they merely were overcome by its lies. Jesus is saying that if the Pharisees truly had their hearts after God, they wouldn’t have missed the opportunities to fulfil the other parts of the Law – if what the Flesh told them was true, that they truly treasured God’s kingdom above all other things, they would have practiced justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Even more directly to this point, in the following verses

“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.

Matthew 23:25-26

The Flesh does everything in its power to persuade us that we are actively doing God’s will, that we are clean because the outside of our cup is clean. We are good Christians because we tithe or go to Sunday school or lead a Bible Study and we even perform miracles in the name of Jesus, there’s no need to look over there. There’s no need to interrogate the heart, see, look at how good you are doing. 

Where is your treasure? Where is your heart? Is it only in God? How could you know? Paul says as we pummel the body to do it with fear and trembling. 

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,

Philippians 2:12

If you believe “Oh, I said a prayer when I was 10 and I go to church every Sunday so I know I’m saved”, search for your incongruencies. Find the ways in which you may be doing miracles but your treasure is not in God as if your life depends on it. As James wrote

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. 19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

20 You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless?

James 2:17-20

What fruit are you bearing to prove that your heart isn’t deceiving you? It is easy to say “Go and be well fed”, it takes pummeling the body to actually go feed them. It feels rewarding to say a prayer for another, it takes sacrifice to help them. Simply saying “I believe there is a God and I have done good works” is not enough to know for certain that your heart is set on God. Even the demons believe that and they shudder at the realization. Many of us will say “Lord, Lord” and will not enter His Kingdom. With fear and trembling we must work out our salvation.

There are those of us that say “I am saved, unlike those other people.” They take the dirtiness of the outside of the cup of others and the cleanliness of the outside of theirs as proof positive that they are saved – overlooking the log in their eye for the splinter in their brothers; overlooking the adultery being permitted by the divorcee being remarried, the pastor that adores money over God, the congregation that murders others with their anger while praising God they aren’t like them. In Luke, we are told

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Luke 18:9-14

The Pharisee’s true treasure, the reason they fasted and tithed wasn’t because of who God is but because of what their Flesh got in return. If your treasure is being not like them, your whole religion and world view becomes about not being them. As Jesus says in Matthew

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.

Matthew 6:5

The Pharisees came to God with ulterior motives, with those motives being fulfilled in adoration or self-confidence, not in God’s will. And because of that, they did not receive the promise of God. 

The tax collector, the sinner, the unrighteous person in Jesus’s parable is the one Jesus commends. Why? Because his true treasure was in God. He understood his true position, his true motives, and understood how far he fell short. Have mercy on me, a sinner. He saw the incongruencies in his life and instead of pointing at some other things to shield himself and his heart from closer examination, he pleaded to God for mercy. Where is your true treasure? What fruit are you producing?

When I need a reality check, when I want to understand if I truly have a heart after God or not, I ask myself one question:

If I misunderstood God and there was no afterlife, if all of the sacrifices He was asking me to make were purely and only for His glory, would I still battle the Flesh? If there is no carrot of Heaven and there is no stick of Hell, would I still want to follow Him, to daily take up my cross? 

In the parable of the seven brothers, Jesus speaks of how a sect of the Jews didn’t understand what God was pointing at with the afterlife:

At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”

24 Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? 25 When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.

Mark 12:23-25

These men, the people of God that have studied the Bible more closely than I ever can imagine, had some idea of what the afterlife would be and Jesus calls them “in error”. If I today misunderstand what the afterlife is, would I still follow God?

The disciples often misunderstood what Jesus was offering or desiring. In Luke 9, we see Him rebuke them for their ideas on what Jesus wanted

As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; 53 but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. 54 When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” 55 But Jesus turned and rebuked them. 56 Then he and his disciples went to another village.

Luke 9:51-56

Or my favorite example, when Jesus tells his disciples about the yeast of the Pharisees

When they went across the lake, the disciples forgot to take bread. 6 “Be careful,” Jesus said to them. “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

7 They discussed this among themselves and said, “It is because we didn’t bring any bread.”

8 Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked, “You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread? 9 Do you still not understand? Don’t you remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered? 10 Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered? 11 How is it you don’t understand that I was not talking to you about bread? But be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” 12 Then they understood that he was not telling them to guard against the yeast used in bread, but against the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Matthew 16:6-12

This idea that I, a feeble human, have misunderstood what Jesus is telling me is a very likely probability. Perhaps I have misunderstood what He meant about Heaven and Hell. Perhaps all of this, all of this, is for His glory alone.

Would I still follow Him? Would you? If all God offered you was suffering for His glory alone, would you still say that is your true treasure? 

When I am working out my salvation, in fear and trembling as a sinner in need of mercy, when I ask myself that question, I see a work inside of me. I see the battle Paul writes about 

 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.

Romans 7:23

I see that even when I profess that God is my true treasure, the Flesh is alive and well inside of me. I see that while my heart tells me it's after God, the fruit I am producing is often lacking. I see that while I profess and feel and believe that I want to lose weight, I still eat ice cream. 

When I actually look at what my true heart desires, I beat my chest and cry  ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner’ as every day I see choice after choice of incongruence. Every day, when I honestly try to pummel my body, when I give it the ol’ college try, I see the acts of the Flesh, not of the Spirit

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Galatians 5:19-21

I see that the treasure I seek when I want a new job isn’t to glorify God but selfish ambition. I see the jealousy, rage, envy, dissension within me, offering me the photo feeling of a future, telling me it’s okay because… It’s okay to sleep around because at least I’m not gay. It’s okay to hate my neighbor because they deserve it for how they voted. It’s okay to idolize my work because that’s the only way to get ahead in life. It’s okay for me because…

I see the incongruencies between the faith I profess to have and the desires that swell within me, between the fruit that I want to produce and the fruit I am producing. As Paul wrote to the Romans

15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

Romans 7:15-20

The Pharisees never saw the incongruencies in their actions. They saw themselves eating the massive nutrients needed for muscle gain but never went to the gym. They professed to be followers of God but their fruit was not of the Spirit. They washed the outside of the cup but never the inside. What is your treasure? Where is your heart?