The scribes and Pharisees were highly educated and deeply dedicated to understanding and keeping the law. This serves as a warning for us. The Bible is clear enough for any Christian to understand its basic meaning; nevertheless, the Word of God in every generation becomes distorted and misunderstood. These distortions happen not because there is something wrong with the clarity of the Word of God but because there is something wrong with us. We come to the Bible with our minds clouded by sin. We must resist the temptation to read into the Bible something that is not there or to try to use the Bible, as Luther said, as a wax nose that we can twist to support our own biases and prejudices. Here our Lord undertakes an important warning about how we are to understand the law of God.