Mark 7:14-23
14 Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15 Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.” 17 After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. 18 “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? 19 For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.) 20 He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. 21 For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23 All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”
The conversation of cleanliness keeps going. Now, not on traditions but on the real issue. The heart.
At face value, Jesus’ words are somewhat puzzling for a 1st century Jew. From childhood, you’ve read the law of Moses where certain things make defile you.
There are extensive lists of animals that are unclean in Leviticus. Ex, Lev. 11-12. As well as Deuteronomy 14:1-21.
So, what was the point of these laws?
First, the law was only a shadow of the things to come. It came to prepare the way for Christ. Gal. 3:23-29.
Second, what the laws concerning purity and impurity were meant to do was to create a clean/unclean conscious in the Jews so that they may be distinct from the rest of the nations of the world.
When Christ came, now the promise is no longer for the jews only but for everyone. Therefore, the laws about cleanliness have fulfill their purpose and no longer required to be followed.
The disciples don’t seem to get it at all. In fact, they thought Jesus was speaking in parables again!
How often times do we fall in the same trap? We try to “reinterpret” what Jesus has said so clearly.
So now Jesus doubles down on his teaching. What makes someone unclean is not what comes into their body, but out of their heart. Jesus is getting at something beyond what we can see. He’s getting at the heart of the matter.
Notice the note from Mark there. (Remember, Peter is Mark’s source) Read Acts 10:9-16 / 25-19 / 44-48
The things that make someone unclean in the eyes of God is not what they eat, how they dress, their vocation, etc. It is what comes out of their heart. Their sin. Our sin.
Wouldn’t the Christian life be so easy if we just had to focus on food?
Bede: This is an answer to those who consider that evil thoughts are simply injected by the devil and that they do not spring from our own will. He can add strength to our bad thoughts and inflame them, but he cannot originate them.
Then Jesus gives a list of those things that actually defile a person.
The Christian life is not about just not doing bad things but about creating habits of holiness.
NT Wright: The passage should disturb us. Jesus is precisely not saying that external and physical things are irrelevant or bad and internal or spiritual things are good. He is not saying that if we get in touch with our deepest feelings, or learn to listen to what our heart is truly telling us, we will find our real identity and thereby discover happiness, fulfilment, or whatever. He is insisting that good and bad external and physical actions come from internal and spiritual sources, and that therefore the poisoned wells of human motivation are the real problem to which the purity laws are pointing. We cannot isolate one part of our human make-up and blame it for evil. We can’t suggest that ‘getting in touch with our truest feelings’ will sort us out. What if the feelings that most truly express who we currently are turn out to be murderous, adulterous, envious, and the rest? The fact that they are there, in our hearts, does not mean they are thereby validated. On the contrary, it means we have a problem, a problem that runs right through us. There is a crack in the building which isn’t just a bit of damaged stonework on the exterior; the whole structure is faulty. Keeping physical purity laws can be a way of papering over the crack; so can ‘getting in touch with your feelings’. If there is evil, it infects the whole. That’s what purity and impurity are really all about.