Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.
Matthew 23:27
Jesus used this saying to give a picture of the hypocrisy of the religious crowd, the Pharisees of His day, but the picture He used also reaches to the religious of our day. A white sepulcher is a tomb that was “white-washed”, covered in something like white paint. The reason for this is to let travelers know where a tomb lay where otherwise may not have been so obvious. Jewish travelers coming in to worship would want to avoid touching the tombs otherwise he or she would find themselves “unclean” under the law of Moses. So the tombs themselves would look nice and clean, but still, of course, contain death and corruption inside.
Jesus’ use of the picture was to say that the religious crowd knows how to clean-up outward behavior so as to appear clean, but they knowingly harbor corruption in their heart.
The world today is full of religion, Islam, Catholicism, Buddhism, Daoism, yet none of them provide cleansing from sin. At best they can cover you will an appearance of knowledge or wisdom, but the corruption of sin will still reside in the heart. Our only hope of being cleared and transformed on the inside is to believe on the Lord Jesus. Beliving on Him is not a ritual, a recited prayer, or some other physical religious act. But believing in Christ is simply trusting Him from the heart, giving Him your sin for which He died for, and believing He will raise you to life one day in the future. If you are able to trust Jesus from the heart you need nothing else in order to be saved.
Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.
Matthew 10:32
J. C. Walz – Faith, Fiction, and DEvotional Writing 
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