In our study of Mark we are in Mark 12:38-40; and the parallel passage in Matt 23; where Jesus is condemning the progressive Jewish leadership because they were teaching evil manmade religion rather than the grace and truth of God's Word.
Remember evil occurs when people try to force their idea of what is good or right on others and try to get them to comply apart from free volition. This means that all social action and religion is evil. The vocal minority that is demonstrating in the USA today is a perfect example of evil.
The so called "good" people of the "community" who are really evildoers need to read and comply with what God clearly states in Rom 13:1-10; and Jesus has words for those who refuse to comply. Mark 8:33b;
Last time we left off in Matt 23:26;"You blind Pharisee," anyone who emphasizes the external to the exclusion of the internal is blind. Religion is blind, legalism is blind, and pseudo-spirituality is blind.
This means that those who believe the modern religion of pseudo science that teaches anthropocentric cosmology, evolution, or that burning fossil fuels cause anthropogenic climate change are blind.
They are blind to God's policy of grace where God does and man receives and God has given them over to their blindness. They are blind because they have rejected the truth to the point where God has given them over to stew in their blindness so that He can make an example out of them. Rom 1:20-32; 2Cor 13:8;
They are legalistic and/or religious where man does the doing and they think that it is doubtful that God exists but if He does He is supposed accept the "good" things that they do but of course God will not. Matt 7:7;
Under grace God gets the glory; under legalism, religion and anthropocentric pseudo science man gets the glory. They worship the creation rather than the creator.
Matt 23:26b;"first clean the inside of the cup and platter so that the outside may become clean also." This is a principle regarding salvation that applied to the unbelieving Pharisees but it also applies to believers.
For the unbelieving Pharisee to first clean the inside means to believe in Jesus Christ. So cleansing the inside refers to the unbeliever facing the cross and accepting God's solution of believing in Jesus Christ for the resolving the problem of mankind's separation from God and receiving the righteousness of God by imputation.
The Pharisee regarded his human good works that were rejected at the cross as his way of salvation. The Pharisee and everyone else can only fulfill the principle of the aorist active imperative of "clean" at the point of believing in Christ.
The aorist tense refers to a point of time when the individual believes in Christ; the active voice: the individual has faith, he freely chooses to believe under the common grace ministry of God the Holy Spirit; the imperative mood is God's mandate to all unbelievers to believe in Jesus Christ to be saved. Acts 16:31;
Jesus wasn't addressing believers in this passage but the principle also applies to believers. In the case of believers it means you are not in fellowship with God and in the position of being filling with the Holy Spirit and the cleansing of the outside refers to the acknowledgment of known sin.
Jesus is addressing two concepts. Clean the inside refers to the permanent cleansing that occurs at the moment of believing in Jesus Christ Eph 2:8-9; and He then refers to the temporal cleansing of 1John 1:9; with the phrase "so that the outside may become clean also.
The inside must be clean before the outside can be cleaned and God cleans both. As always mankind the recipient of God's work of grace because from God's point of view man is not in a position do to anything.
One of most important concepts we must understand is that dead people can't do anything. Spiritually dead people can't do anything to be saved and carnally dead people can't do anything to be restored to fellowship.
The only thing that works is compliance with God's mandates that are compatible with his work of grace through faith.