"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness." [Matthew 23:27-28 NASB]
Jesus was referring to the practice of whitewashing the tombs before the feast of Passover, so that the city would look good for all of the people who were visiting Jerusalem for the celebration.
A Pharisee would never touch a dead body, or its bones because that would make them ceremonially unclean. A Pharisee could boast that he had gone his entire life without being unclean.
For Jesus to compare them to whitewashed tombs is to say that they, the Pharisees, were full of dead men's bones, so that they exist in a perpetual state of uncleanness. He could not have devised a more cutting comparison.
Jesus is telling them that all of their ceremonial cleanings, sacrifices, and abstinence are worthless because they give the appearance of righteousness, but don't change the impure heart.
I have known men with great willpower. If they want something in life, they find a way and get it. If they see something in themselves that they don't like, they squash it. Yet they continue to deny God. So no matter how much they appear to be in command of themselves, it is only an illusion.
There is a principle in the Bible found in Ephesians:
"Lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry, and yet do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity. He who steals must steal no longer; but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with one who has need." [Ephesians 4:22-28 NASB]
The principle is to replace undesirable behavior with desirable behavior. I have heard this preached in churches, and repeated by secular psychologists. But there is a problem with the way this is generally taught. We are told to exercise our own will to replace bad habits with good habits. Put this way it is just another form of trying to work for your own sanctification.
The use of willpower to control your behavior is an attempt to follow the Law, and is an act of the flesh. The more your flesh tries to make you holy, the stronger your flesh becomes, and less holy. Even if you manage to change your behavior, you haven't change who you are on the inside.
We become more holy in the same way that we were saved. By the grace of God, and faith in Him.
The principle is sound, "put off the old and put on the new", but only within the context of faith and grace. If I were an habitual liar, I could tell myself, "don't lie, but tell the truth". Even if I exert a great deal of willpower to tell the truth, my nature will still be that of a liar. But if I stop trying to change myself, and pray to God to change me into His image, the Spirit of Truth that lives within me will change my nature from "liar" to "truth teller".
God doesn't want you to change yourself. He wants to be the One to change you. He wants to renew your mind and make you to be like Him.
"And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." [Romans 12:2 NASB]
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