What Defiles: Mark 7:1-23

The Pharisees had traveled from Jerusalem, and they came with eyes sharpened for violations. They found one quickly: Jesus' disciples eating with unwashed hands.

Not hygiene—ritual. The tradition of the elders demanded ceremonial washing before meals, a specific number of pourings, a precise technique. Cups, pitchers, kettles—all required purification. The rules were endless, and the disciples had ignored them.

"Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?"

Jesus' response was not diplomatic.

"Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: 'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.'"

The crowd gathered, sensing conflict. Jesus turned to address them all:

"Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them."

The Pharisees' faces darkened. Jesus had just dismissed centuries of dietary law with a sentence.

Later, in private, the disciples asked for explanation. How could food not defile? The laws of Moses were explicit.

"Don't you see?" Jesus replied. "Nothing that enters a person from outside can defile them. For it doesn't go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body."

Mark adds an editorial note: In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.

One sentence, and the kosher laws—the laws that had defined Jewish identity for a thousand years—were transformed. The revolution was breathtaking.

Then Jesus listed what actually defiles: "For it is from within, out of a person's heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person."

The problem was never bacon. The problem was hearts that produced evil. All the hand-washing in the world couldn't clean that.