Why Rules Cannot Change the Heart

Why Rules Cannot Change the Heart

By M.T. Clark — P-2066 | 09/11/2026 – Today’s Audio Podcast

Today’s Message on YouTube:

Today’s photo of a hillside overlook of a wide bay dotted with small green islands, under a dramatic sunrise sky with light beams streaming up through orange clouds over the horizon, comes to us from an anonymous FB friend who shared this hallelujah-worthy sunrise moment from a Caribbean island on social media back on September 23, 2024.

Well, it’s Friday, thank God, and I share this photo of a spectacular sunrise sky lighting up over a tropical bay to remind us that some mornings are so full of God’s beauty that all we can do is stop, look, and say thank You. So, take a good look around this morning at whatever the Lord has laid out in front of you, whether it is a sunrise, a quiet moment, or a person who needs to hear that you love them, and thank God for it as you head into your weekend.

When we practice gratitude in the presence of God on a regular basis, we are freed from our natural tendency to see the negative things in our lives. Our natural tendency is to look for trouble and to keep ourselves safe. The problem with that disposition is that it keeps us hypervigilant in our quest to solve problems with our own cunning and to make rules that try to control what happens to us, when the truth is that God is the One who provides for us, protects us, and moves us towards our destiny. So, look for the good, realize that God is in control, and let your heart be free to celebrate the life that He has given you.

Speaking of what actually sets a heart free when the rules cannot,

Our series, “Rooted in Him,” continues today with Paul’s plain judgment on rule-keeping, and why it can never change a heart.

Why Rules Cannot Change the Heart

The Apostle Paul closes out this section of Colossians with one of the most useful paragraphs in the New Testament for anybody who has ever tried to white-knuckle their way out of a sin. He writes in Colossians 2:20-23 (NKJV): “Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations—’Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,’ which all concern things which perish with the using—according to the commandments and doctrines of men? These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.”

Let’s read that last line again, because Paul is saying something the church often forgets. “Rules are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.” He isn’t saying rules are unimportant in life, and he isn’t throwing out God’s commandments. He is talking about man-made regulations adopted as a strategy for holiness, and he is telling us that they don’t work. They can restrain our desires for a while, but they can’t touch what is feeding our desires.

Paul even admits why the approach is so attractive. He says these things have “an appearance of wisdom.” Rules appear to be wise. A person who has fenced off a whole area of life with their rules or self-discipline looks more serious about God than the rest of us, and the fence they put up looks like progress.

But that is the deception. The appearance of wisdom is not always wisdom, and a life that looks controlled from the outside can be a life that is still ruled from the inside by the very thing it is hiding from.

Anyone who has fought a real besetting sin knows this in their bones. I know I sure do. In my drinking and using years, I made more rules for myself than I could count. I would set limits on the days I would drink, the amount I would drink, the places I could go, and the company I would keep. I made promises to myself and to the people I loved about what I would or wouldn’t do, and I meant every one of them at the time I made them.

Every rule I made would work for a while, but every rule I made would eventually fail, because a rule could only stand between me and my desire for a drink. It couldn’t do anything about the man who wanted to get drunk. Rules only manage behavior. They have no power over the heart, and the heart is where the trouble lives.

So, what gives us the power to change our hearts? Paul already told us in the first phrase of the passage. “You died with Christ from the basic principles of the world.” His argument isn’t to “try a better set of rules.” His argument is that we have died and been raised with Jesus, and that dead people don’t need rules.

The world’s system, with its rules and its scorekeeping and its endless requirements, was the operating system for a life we no longer live. Paul’s question is almost baffled in tone. Why would a person who has died with Christ go back and put himself under regulations again, as though he still belonged to that old order?

This is why identity comes before behavior, always. Real change doesn’t start with a tighter list. It starts with knowing who we actually are now.

When I finally began to understand, by God’s grace, that I was a new creation in Christ, forgiven and free and fathered by God, my behavior started to change from a different direction. The pull of my flesh for my sin of choice didn’t vanish overnight, and I am not going to pretend it did. But I stopped fighting from the position of a slave trying to earn his way out, and I started walking from the position of a son who was already free. That is the fight the Lord actually wins in a person. God changes the desires of our hearts to turn from our sins. If you put out the fire of sinful desire in our hearts, the smoke of our sinful attitudes and actions stops on its own.

There is another problem with the rule-keeping approach that we don’t talk about enough. Rules teach us to hide. When our acceptance seems to depend on our compliance, we have every reason to keep our failures to ourselves, and the sin that stays in the dark is the sin that keeps its grip. We are only as sick as our secrets, right? So, if we keep our sins a secret, we stay sick.

Grace works the opposite way. When we know that God has already dealt with the record of our sin and that His acceptance doesn’t rise and fall with our performance, we can bring our sin into the light, which is exactly where it loses its power. That is why a legalistic room is usually full of tired people who look fine, and a grace-filled room is usually full of honest people who are actually getting free.

Let me be clear about what Paul is saying here. Paul isn’t saying that structure and wise limits have no place in our lives. A recovering alcoholic who stays out of bars is being sensible, and a believer who guards what he watches at night is being wise. Those things are boundaries that serve us well.

What Paul is warning against is making them our savior. The moment a boundary becomes the thing we are trusting to make us holy, or the thing we point to as evidence that God is pleased with us, it stops being a tool of our obedience and slowly becomes an idol of pride and self-improvement. When that shift towards self-righteousness and self-sufficiency happens, our rules will eventually fail us every time.

So, if you are tired of carrying a set of rules that keeps breaking, hear the freedom in this passage. Your problem was never that your list wasn’t strict enough. Your problem is one that no list can solve, but Jesus went to the cross to set you free from it. When you died with Him, you were raised with Him, and the life you are living now is His life in you.

So, take the fences and rules down off their throne, and put Christ back on it.  We didn’t save ourselves, so why would we think we could change ourselves? Let the Lord do the deep work of transforming your heart and mind that only He can do, through your relationship with Him.

Grace changes what rules can only cover. That is not permission to be careless. That is the realization and the proclamation that the war is already won, and that you get to walk through life victoriously as a free son or daughter of God, in relationship with your Heavenly Father.

Every step we take toward the Lord is a step in the right direction. So, keep on walking and talking with God.

— M.T.

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“The views, opinions, and commentary of this publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries, or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the author may represent.”

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