Mark 7:14-23

In or out?
Mark 7:14-23

Jesus was a straight foreword kind of guy, and sometimes it could get him into trouble.  It looks like he avoided trouble in this section of scripture, but He could have just as easily been stoned for the statement he made.

In a thinly veiled parable, Jesus said that “what goes into a man doesn’t make him unclean, but what comes out.”  So what’s wrong with that? Well, Jews were brought up with the understanding that there were things you just didn’t eat – things that were “unclean” like pork and shellfish (for a complete list, read Leviticus 11).  His disciples needed clarification on this statement too, because of their Jewish upbringing.  Was Jesus saying that it was now OK to eat these things – that it didn’t matter?  Let’s see…  I’m sure that Jesus and his disciples never broke from the Jewish menu. Jesus was a good Jew after all and he did not want to cause an uproar in this area.  His plate was already full with more pressing concerns.  Verse 19 does state in parenthesis, “thus He declared all foods clean,” so, yes, Jesus was saying that all food was fine for consumption, but not that it didn’t matter, for it did to the Jews. Jesus, being sensitive to his surroundings, would have kept with Jewish tradition by not eating “unclean” food. (This shows us that we need to be sensitive to cultural traditions, provided that they are not against God, when we witness so that people may concentrate on God’s good Word rather than our cultural offenses.)  Let’s not miss the point of His lesson though.  Jesus was not talking about abolishing God’s word, nor was He speaking against God (also called “blasphemy,” a stoning offense) when talking about things going in and out of the body.  Jesus was talking about thoughts and feelings in the hearts of men.  Jesus did say that anything going into the body went to the stomach, not the heart, so eating “unclean” food in and of itself did not make one unclean, but it was disobedience towards God in thought and deed that made one unclean.

We need to clean ourselves from the inside out today and every day by asking for God’s forgiveness.  This will work a whole lot better than a careful diet, because a careful diet doesn’t bring salvation.  Only Jesus does.