Hear me, all of you, and understand.
Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person;
but the things that come out from within are what defile.
Those like the Pharisees who were preoccupied with what enters from outside would not readily accept this. They preferred external ritual purity, purity that could be maintained perfectly without any need for conversion of heart. In another place Jesus would criticize this about them, saying, "For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence" (see Matthew 23:25).
When he got home away from the crowd
his disciples questioned him about the parable.
Even the disciples, whose motives were not as inherently corrupt as those of the Pharisees, had a hard time understanding this teaching of Jesus. For much of the law seemed to be about matters of ritual purity. Could such things be truly set aside? And in any case, what was to be done about the thing that Jesus said was actually the problem, the human heart? After all, about this spiritual center of the person Jeremiah had said, "[t]he heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (see Jeremiah 17:9).
“Are even you likewise without understanding?
Do you not realize that everything
that goes into a person from outside cannot defile,
since it enters not the heart but the stomach
and passes out into the latrine?”
Jesus went on to explain that external ritual purity could not truly effect the change it was meant to symbolize. It was meant to point to the need to transformation of heart but could not itself achieve that transformation. Only by the coming of Jesus among his people was there any hope that the heart could be healed. By declaring all foods clean Jesus set aside what would be henceforth only a distraction. Rather than pursuing a legalistic and external perfection according to ritual, people were now meant to pursue Jesus himself, and allow themselves to be transformed by him. Rather than ritual washing, baptism would truly regenerate the soul. In place of food laws that excluded the Gentiles all people would be invited to the feast of his own Body and Blood. There was no need any longer to pursue that which was only a symbol and a reminder of the need for purification. Even the Gentiles could be welcomed into fellowship without risk of contamination.
And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God (see Hebrews 10:11).
This is good news for us, whose hearts are still in some measure defiled by sin. Jesus himself desires to heal us of evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, and folly, in whatever form they take within us. Even if we aren't given over to the full blown form of any of these, it is likely that none of them are completely absent. If we had to change ourselves on our own, especially at this level of our being, we would despair. Even if we had the wisdom of Solomon on which to rely it wouldn't make much of a dent at the level of the heart. But we have the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who himself promised to give us new hearts.
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh (see Ezekiel 36:26).
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