8 Bible Verses about Formality

While these men were going back, Jesus began to say to the crowds with reference to John: "What did you go out into the Wilderness to look at? A reed waving in the wind? If not, what did you go out to see? A man richly dressed? Why, those who wear rich things are to be found in the courts of kings! What, then, did you go for? To see a Prophet? Yes, I tell you, and far more than a Prophet.

Then some Pharisees and Teachers of the Law came to Jesus, and said: "How is it that your disciples break the traditions of our ancestors? For they do not wash their hands when they eat food."

Alas for you, Teachers of the Law and Pharisees, hypocrites that you are! You pay tithes on mint, fennel, and caraway seed, and have neglected the weightier matters of the Law--justice, mercy, and good faith. These last you ought to have put into practice, without neglecting the first.

But now that you have found God--or, rather, have been found by him--how is it that you are turning back to that poor and feeble puerile teaching, to which yet once again you are wanting to become slaves? You are scrupulous in keeping Days and Months and Seasons and Years! You make me fear that the labor which I have spent on you may have been wasted.

Since, with Christ, you became dead to the puerile teaching of this world, why do you submit, as though your life were still that of the world,

Be sure of this, that in the last days difficult times will come. Men will be selfish, mercenary, boastful, haughty, and blasphemous; disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, impure, incapable of affection, merciless, slanderous, wanting in self-control, brutal, careless of the right,read more.
treacherous, reckless, and puffed up with pride; they will love pleasure more than they love God; and while they retain the outward form of religion, they will not allow it to influence them. Turn your back on such men as these.

But, perhaps, you bear the name of 'Jew,' and are relying upon Law, and boast of belonging to God, and understand his will, And, having been carefully instructed from the Law, have learned to appreciate the finer moral distinctions. Perhaps you are confident that you are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in the dark, an instructor of the unintelligent,read more.
And a teacher of the childish, because in the Law you possess the outline of all Knowledge and Truth. Why, then, you teacher of others, do not you teach yourself? Do you preach against stealing, and yet steal? Do you forbid adultery, and yet commit adultery? Do you loathe idols, and yet plunder temples? Boasting, as you do, of your Law, do you dishonor God by breaking the Law? For, as Scripture says-'The name of God is reviled among the Gentiles because of you'! Circumcision has its value, if you are obeying the Law. But, if you are a breaker of the Law, your circumcision is no better than uncircumcision. If, then, an uncircumcised man pays regard to the requirements of the Law, will not he, although not circumcised, be regarded by God as if he were? Indeed, the man who, owing to his birth, remains uncircumcised, and yet scrupulously obeys the Law, will condemn you, who, for all your written Law and your circumcision, are yet a breaker of the Law. For a man who is only a Jew outwardly is not a real Jew; nor is outward bodily circumcision real circumcision. The real Jew is the man who is a Jew in soul; And the real circumcision is the circumcision of the heart, a spiritual and not a literal thing. Such a man wins praise from God, though not from men.

Though I, if any man, have cause to rely even upon them. If any one thinks he can rely upon external privileges, far more can I! I was circumcised when eight days old; I am an Israelite by race, and of the tribe of Benjamin; I am a Hebrew, and the child of Hebrews. As to the Law, I was a Pharisee; As to zeal, I was a persecutor of the Church; as to such righteousness as is due to Law, I proved myself blameless.read more.
But all the things which I once held to be gains I have now, for the Christ's sake, come to count as loss.