Mark 7:17 ”After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. 18 "Are you so dull?" he asked. "Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him 'unclean'? 19 For it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body." (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods "clean.")”
What happens after the crowds leave? This passage is an insightful glimpse into the relationship Jesus had with His disciples. Jesus has just completed a rather intense confrontation with the Pharisees followed by a short lesson to the multitudes. In light of the volatile relationship that Jesus maintained with the religious leaders of the day it is certain that this was a tense and potentially stressful. Yet Jesus is still available to speak into the hearts of His disciples. He doesn’t seek refuge in solitary prayer on this occasion. Nor does He seek rest by sleeping in the boat on the way to a new destination.
It appears that as a result of this encounter where He has so directly confronted the religious hypocrisy of the Pharisees that He is still fired up with passion to see truth restored. This passion is in His voice as He responds to the questioning of His disciples. He is very direct and even short it seems as He holds back nothing in this exchange. “Are you so dull?” he asks them directly. “Don’t you see…?” He presses them. Imagine the blow this must have been to the hearts of the disciples as their master corrects them for their slow and insensitive reaction to what He has been teaching. How many times has each one of us been that disciple who doesn’t catch on? How many of us have deserved that stinging rebuke as the words of Jesus speak so clearly to us and yet we do not understand?
Jesus relates to the word of God and to life in such a practical way. In His response to both the Pharisees and His deeper explanation to the disciples Jesus blows away the religious cloud that distorts their interpretation of the commands of scripture. In these two simple verses Jesus gives a science lesson, teaches on the nature of the heart of man and reinterprets their relationship to all foods. “Nothing that enters a man from the outside can make Him ‘unclean?’” This little phrase achieves much as it states that the issue of sin and cleanness before God is a matter of the inner man not the exterior forces of life that we encounter.
Jesus causes His disciples to think practically about food and how it passes through the body. In doing so He also addresses the subject of food. It is not the food that makes the glutton, nor the alcohol that makes the drunkard. It is the person’s relationship with those things, how they respond to them within their hearts that makes someone clean or unclean. What we lust for or crave, those things that we attach emotional comfort to, those things that we relate to in an addictive way, it is these that result in uncleanness. This is not the result of participation in these areas. It is the result of what takes place in the individual’s heart in how they relate to it.
Be careful, how and what you judge to be unclean or unholy. Paul enlarges on this principle profoundly in 1 Cor 6:12-13 "Everything is permissible for me"-but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for me"-but I will not be mastered by anything.” In this verse Paul brings us to ask ourselves the question: “what happens to me when I participate in this area?” “What things that I participate in gain an unhealthy influence or control over some area of my life?” This is the source of uncleanness and the answer will be different from person to person. The Pharisees sought to enforce laws and traditions in such a way that stripped all men of their individuality. But with God this is not the case. Paul speaks on this subject again in Rom 14:1-4 “Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. 2 One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 3 The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. 4 Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls.” Each one of us lives before God and must respond to Him according to what He asks of us personally.
Purity is a walk of faith. It is a life of responsiveness to the dictates of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and must not be reduced to a system of rules, universally enforced. For each man purity may be a fluctuating reality as from season to season the Holy Spirit requires different things of us according to the things that He is seeking to accomplish both in us and through us. Live before God and live with a responsive heart!
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