Friday: Internally Unclean

Mark 7:14–23

14 And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: 15 There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” 16*

17 And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18 And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, 19 since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Jesus begins this statement by saying, "Hear me, all of you, and understand this." This indicates what he is about to say is super important so we ought to pay specific attention to this. We tend to overuse words like "listen" in conversation so the emphasis here may be lost on us.

Jesus makes this first statement to the crowd, then as we have seen throughout the gospel, clarifies the teaching privately with his disciples.

You may have noticed that v. 16 is straight up missing in the ESV, NIV, NLT, RSV translations. It occurs in the NKJV, KJV and NASB. The text would read, "If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear." Most modern translators don't believe this to be original. Don't be alarmed. The inclusion/exclusion of this text doesn't do much to add or subtract from the meaning as a whole. Indeed, there are no textual variants in the Bible that dramatically affect a major doctrine. This verse is not found in some of the earliest and best manuscripts that we have. The Alexandrian manuscripts (the manuscripts from the region of Alexandria) don't have this verse. These words are likely adopted from 4:23 in which Jesus makes a similarly important pronouncement. This is a common occurrence and easily identifiable when it happens.

The statement in v. 15 is about as earth shattering as it gets. This statement completely upends how the Jewish culture thought of cleanliness. Not that this completely contradicts the Law. This has always been the intent of the Law (Ps. 51:16-17; 1 Sam. 15:22-23), but the traditions of the elders throughout the centuries had put the emphasis so much on the external purity aspect that people had neglected the internal reality. The culture had become so engrossed with ceremonial cleanliness that they had neglected purity of the heart. Jesus here reverses the flow of uncleanness. It isn't an outside-in direction. Instead, it is inside-out.

In verse 19 Mark interrupts his narrative to indicate that in saying this Jesus declared all food clean. This is a huge point of discontinuity between the Old and the New Testament, and one that the early church took quite a while to work out. It was clearly a contentious topic for the church in Rome as Paul addresses it at length in chapters 14 and 15 of his letter to the Romans. To Paul, the dietary laws as well as Sabbath adherence belong in the realm of Christian freedom. Some choose to adhere to them, some do not. His bottom line is that we should not pass judgment on each other over these matters in the new covenant community of Jesus.

The word "heart" in the Bible unanimously refers to the seat of the physical, spiritual, and mental life. It is a broad metaphorical usage, which is similar to how we often use it today. It is the center or the source of the whole inner life of humans—thinking, feeling and volition.

In the list of vices the Greek word order makes it clear that evil thoughts is more of the categorical designation for all of these vices. The first six (sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness) are plural, indicating Jesus is referencing evil acts. The final six are singular indicating evil attitudes. Jesus says that these all come from the heart. Moral purity in the kingdom of God is not solely a matter of ceremonial cleanliness or actions even; it is a matter of intent; it is a matter of our heart.

The scary part of this (as we talked about on Sunday) is this: we can clean our hands and a dish to declare them clean; the heart, however, is not so easily cleaned. That is something we cannot do on our own. It's completely outside of our control. Praise be to God our Father that through the work of Jesus on the cross and the gift of the Holy Spirit, he has fulfilled the words of the prophet Ezekiel, "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws." (Ezekiel 36:26-27)

Practice