Our outward actions are the result of our inner lives.
Having dealt with the question of religious authority, Jesus returned to the issue originally raised: religious cleanliness. From castigating the Pharisees for their personal rejection of God’s law he turned to give a general principle which applied to everybody (“the people,” 7:14). The principle was expressed in a brief and somewhat cryptic parabolic saying which required the careful attention of the audience (7:14b). The disciples asked for an explanation privately (cf. 4:33f.), only to be told that they should have grasped the meaning for themselves. As 7:19 makes clear, Jesus was thinking of foods entering the body and being evacuated. They do not enter a man’s heart and therefore cannot make him religiously unclean. It is a man’s heart—the word refers to the whole inner personality of man and not simply to his emotions—which is the source of the evil thoughts listed by Jesus, and it is the appearance of these which defiles him.
Thus Jesus makes certain basic lessons clear:
God is concerned with the moral behavior of mankind. This truth was plain to read in the Old Testament, but Pharisaic pettifogging had effectually obscured it. It is conduct that matters, and not all the religious ritual in the world, sacrifices, ablutions, fasting and penance, can alter the color of a man’s heart in God’s sight (Psalm 51; Isaiah 58; Amos 5:21-24).
By this declaration Jesus rendered obsolete all distinctions between clean and unclean foods, vessels and people. A whole section of Old Testament legislation, which had served a purpose in its time, was thus “fulfilled” and finished by Jesus. Yet the early church was slow to realize the implications of Jesus’ words. There were to be anxious debates whether Jewish Christians might eat with uncircumcised Gentiles, and what the Christian attitude was to be to foods sacrificed to idols. Paul surely knew this saying of Jesus (Romans 14:14) and applied it to the problem, but it took a long time for its truth to be recognized.
Jesus here speaks in the plainest terms about human sin and its source in the human heart. He did not use the word very often (2:5,9f.; 2:17; 3:28; 8:38 and 14:41 are the only uses in Mark), but the idea was a prominent one in his teaching. In what other ways does he speak of it (see 3:4f.; 4:24f.; 6:6,11,52)?
