#DailyDevotion What Makes You Clean & Unclean?

Mark 7:14–23 ¹⁴Then He called the people again and said to them, “Listen to Me, all of you, and understand this: ¹⁵Nothing that comes from the outside into a person can make him unclean, but what comes out of a person makes him unclean.” ¹⁷When He had left the people and gone home, His disciples asked Him about the illustration. ¹⁸“Are you just as dense as the rest?” He asked them. “Don’t you know that nothing coming from the outside into a person can make him unclean, ¹⁹because it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach and so passes through?” (Here Jesus made all foods clean). ²⁰He added: “What comes out of a person makes him unclean. ²¹Instead, from the inside of men’s hearts come out evil thoughts, sexual sins, stealing, murders, adulteries, ²²greed, wickedness, cheating, lust, a jealous eye, slander, pride, foolishness. ²³All these evils come from within and make a person unclean.”

In Mark’s Gospel clean and unclean are much used words. In other Gospels they might use holy and wicked or demonic. This particular discourse continues from the previous Sunday where the Pharisees challenged Jesus as to why his disciples eat with unclean hands. You might remember the Jews in his day were following the traditions of the elders (much like practicing Jews of today do) and not what Moses gave through the Torah. So Jesus follows up that discussion with those who were following him and his twelve disciples.

Now there were plenty of things that could make a person ceremonially unclean in the Torah, touching a dead body, having an issue of blood, being a leper and the like. But these things did not make a person internally unclean. Jesus here even takes it a little further now in saying that unclean foods (pork, shellfish, rabbit etc.) also don’t make a person unclean, i.e. unholy or wicked.

Jesus tells us nothing that comes from the outside of the body can make us unclean but rather what comes out of a person that makes them unclean. Now the twelve don’t understand this. Jesus seems to snap at them when he tells them, “Are you just as dense as the rest?” What we eat does not enter into our hearts (the center of our being, soul, mind) but passes through our digestive system. Mark notes when Jesus did this he made all foods clean (isn’t it great we can eat bacon, boiled crawfish, shrimps and crabs?). You might note here also Mark is also Peter’s Gospel who had the vision of unclean food on the rooftop in Acts 10.

However, what makes us unclean is what comes out of our hearts. Look at what Jesus lists, “evil thoughts, sexual sins, stealing, murders, adulteries, greed, wickedness, cheating, lust, a jealous eye, slander, pride, foolishness.” This list is not exhaustive by any means. I might even go a little further here, these things don’t make us unclean but rather it is the heart that is unclean that things, ponders and does such things. If we will be clean and do clean things and put aside unclean wicked things we’re going to need a new hearts. Jesus provides us that new hearts. Through baptism into Jesus’ name, through the proclamation of the forgiveness of sins, the Holy Spirit creates in us a new heart and fills that heart with Himself so we may produce clean thoughts and action, i.e. peace, love, patience, kindness, forgiveness, etc..

Heavenly Father, through your Word and Spirit, create in us clean hearts so we may put aside the works of the flesh and produce the fruits of the Spirit. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.