DEFILED FROM INSIDE
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.” [ 16 ] Mark 7:14-16
These words of Jesus cut right across the practices of man-made religion. Why did God give the Jews dietary laws in the first place? The nation of Israel was nurtured in the cradle of Egypt – a pagan nation which had no notion of clean and unclean foods, i.e., foods which were good for the body, or health risks because they were unhealthy or not prepared properly.
God built His health laws into His religious system to ensure that the people would obey them for their own sake. But, as in all religious systems, they began to interpret the prohibition of certain creatures for food as religious taboos, and they built an entire religious superstructure on these taboos. This became part of the heavy religious yoke they were wearing that weighed them down.
Jesus exposed their foolish thinking and lifted the yoke in one sentence. “It’s not what goes in that pollutes but what comes out of the ‘belly’ – the inner being.” How does this work? What one eats has no effect upon one’s spirit unless it is the expression of the “yetzer harah” as in the story of the rich man and Lazarus. The evil and corruption of sin is already in the heart, and the mouth becomes the instrument which reveals what is inside.
Surely this makes a whole lot more sense than believing that what a person puts in his mouth defiles him. It is only the foolishness of men’s hearts and the blindness caused by sin that distorts the understanding, producing a senseless belief that something amoral and neutral, as food, can somehow pollute a person’s soul.
By declaring all food clean, Jesus pulled the rug from under the Pharisees’ feet. Much of their ammunition against Him and His disciples was based on their food taboos and their scrupulous washing of hands and cooking utensils. Jesus made it clear that human need took precedence over religious food taboos and the Pharisees hated Him for exposing their hypocrisy.