Ritual impurity vs spiritual impurity

We are picking up in the middle of the Mark 7 passage that we started expositing yesterday.

14 And calling to himself again the crowd, he said to them, Listen to me, all, and understand.  15 There is nothing from the outside of the person that going into him is able to defile him. But things going out of a person are what defile the person. 

Some ancient texts include a verse here: 16 If someone has ears to hear, let him hear.

17 Ane when he entered the house, away from the crowd, his disciples were asking him about the parable.  18 And he said to them, Are you also without understanding?  Don’t you realize that everything from the outside going into the person is not able to defile him?  19 That it does not go into him, into the heart but into the stomach, and then goes out into the latrine?  Cleansing all foods?

There are several things to notice here.  First, Jesus makes two distinctions: outside vs inside, and stomach vs heart.  He is concerned with what defiles a person on the inside, in his heart.  It is clear that Jesus does not think food defiles a person in his heart.

His focus in the whole passage was on handwashing, and here he does not refer to kosher rules that were about permitted and unpermitted foods.  In fact, his defense of Mosaic law just a few sentences before (see yesterday’s post) suggests that he would never abrogate Moses.   His only point here is that no food, presumably even that which is not permitted by kosher laws, can defile a person in his heart.

That suggestion–that food itself can defile a person in his heart or in an inner spiritual way–is what the Pharisees presumed by their innovation of handwashing.  Jesus is not saying that unpermitted foods are suddenly permitted for Jews, merely that foods in and of themselves do not make a person unclean in his heart. In other words, there is a difference between ritual impurity and spiritual impurity.  The kosher laws are about the former and not the latter.  Jesus knew this, most Jews knew it then, most all observant Jews know it today.

That is what Torah already presumed, according to top scholars (and I will show this next week).  So Jesus is not overturning Torah, which clearly forbids certain foods to Jews, but merely defending it against a new rule with an implication about food itself that is foreign to Torah.

Besides, as I said two days ago, Mark’s audience was undoubtedly Gentile, and the last words from Jesus’ mouth above, which I underlined, were meant for Gentiles: all foods are cleansed for Gentiles because Torah’s food laws are not meant for Gentiles anyway.

There is yet another interpretation of those last words (cleansing all foods).  First of all, notice that the Greek text does not contain the words which most translations use, “Thus Jesus declared.”  These words are added by translators in order to bring out what they consider to be the meaning.

The lack of these words in the Greek, and the presence of the simple phrase “cleansing all foods,” might mean that what Jesus is saying is this: the fact that all food goes into the stomach and not the heart and then gets digested and travels out of the body into the toilet and then sewer proves that food itself does not change the person in any permanent way.  For food comes in and then goes out, and the person remains the same spiritually.  Duh (perhaps Jesus is saying), look at the biological facts: the person is not changed in his heart by the food.  Only sins can change the heart, which apart from grace means permanent defilement.  He goes on to say in vv 20-23 exactly what sins can change the heart, and thus permanently change the person, apart from the forgiveness and spiritual cleansing of God.

Bottom line today: Kosher laws are for Jews not Gentiles.  They are about what is permitted and not permitted for Jews to eat.  They are about ritual impurity not spiritual impurity.  Food passes in and out of the body and so does not change the person permanently.  Only sin can do that.  Jesus was not overturning Mosaic law on foods for Jews.  He was simply drawing a distinction between Jews and Gentiles, and between ritual impurity and spiritual impurity.