The Heart of the Matter
Mark 7:1-23
Main Idea: Jesus diagnoses the source of our sin and provides the solution to our uncleanness.
I. Outside-In Traditions (7:1-13)
The Pharisees and Scribes (cf. 3:6, 22) accuse Jesus’ disciples of “defiling” themselves by not washing their hands before eating. This is not an argument over hygiene but over ritual purity and how one can be clean before God.
There are two problems with the approach of the religious leaders:
They elevated the traditions of men with the word of God (7:1-5)
The Pharisees used the Mishnah (“the tradition of the elders”) to develop elaborate cleansing regulations. None of the ‘washing’ in these verses are actually prescribed in the Old Testament, however. The Mishnah was intended to be a “fence” around the Torah, but it led to the people treating the letter of the law as more important than the spirit of the law (cf. Mt. 23:27-28).They encouraged hypocrisy and vain worship (7:6-13)
Jesus quotes Isaiah 29:13 to show that the issue is not defiled hands but defiled hearts. The Pharisees and Scribes were engaged in practices (like “Corban”) to find loopholes to avoid obeying God’s Word, baptizing their disobedience in spiritual language.
“The Pharisees are described as hypocrites, but not in the sense that we usually use that term, meaning someone who says one thing but lives in a different way… they are hypocrites because they are not unified in heart and action; they actually do the right things, but they are not the right kind of people because their hearts are wrong… Because righteousness is whole-person virtuous living, for a religious community the most serious potential opposite to this is not blatant immorality but a skin-deep righteousness.”
~ Jonathan Pennington
Matthew 5:20: For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
II. Inside-Out Transformation (7:14-23)
Jesus and religious leaders agree on the problem of uncleanness, but they disagree on both the source and the solution.
1. The Source of Our Problem
Jesus graphically explains with an illustration/parable that it is not what is “out there” that defiles us, but what is “in here.” Sinful actions and attitudes come from within, not from the outside (cf. Sermon on the Mount, John 3)
“The heart is the center of life, the core of being, the place where manhood maintains its throne; and what a terrible statement this is, that out of the very center of life there proceed from man “evil thoughts, wickedness, blasphemy,” and the like! ... By the heart is meant mainly the affections, but it often includes the understanding and the will; it is, in fact, the man’s vital self. Sin is not a thing ‘ad extra’ that comes to us and afflicts us like robbers breaking into our house at night; but it is a tenant of the soul, dwelling within us as in its own house. This evil worm has penetrated into the kernel of our being, and there it abides. Sin has intertwisted itself with the warp and woof of our nature; and none can remove it but the Lord God himself. As long as the heart remains unchanged, out of it will proceed that which is sinful. “Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually. (Gen. 6:5)” ~ Charles Spurgeon
Hebrews 4:12–13: For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
2. The Solution to Our Problem (7:19)
Mark’s editorial note that Jesus “declared all foods clean” points to a far greater reality. Jesus has been breaking all sorts of ceremonial cleanliness regulations in the gospel of Mark, not because he disregards these laws, but because he has come to fulfill what they were pointing to all along (cf. Mt. 5:17).
Jesus touches unclean things and makes them clean, rather than becoming unclean himself. The ceremonial laws anticipated a complete and total cleansing that comes through the blood of Christ (1 Pet. 1:18-19, 1 Jn. 1:7)
Hebrews 9:13–14: For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh,how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
