Jesus answered and said to them, “Isaiah prophesied well about you hypocrites, saying, ‘This people honors Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.
Christ immediately exposes the very essence of the problem: hypocrisy. He does not enter into a petty dispute about the forms of washings, but goes straight to the issue of the heart. In the words of the prophet Isaiah He sees their true description. Honoring with the lips still does not mean worshiping with the heart. A person can use religious words, keep customs, respect traditions, and even outwardly exalt the name of God, but if the heart is far from God, all of that is empty. This word is sharp, but true. It cuts away the mask of outward piety and shows that before God the real issue is the inner bond with Him. Hypocrisy is precisely this: when a person keeps the form of faith, but has lost its living power.