True Purity from Within

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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!

Picture a society where the path to God is blocked by invisible barriers of ritual impurity, where even a slight touch can render someone unworthy to approach the divine. This was the burden imposed by the Law of Moses, which had evolved into a complex web of manmade traditions by Jesus’ time. As the Pharisees enforced these laws, their rigid adherence overshadowed the essence of God’s commandments and His message of grace and forgiveness. In our text from Mark 7, Jesus confronts this distortion head-on, revealing a more profound truth about what truly defiles us and how we can genuinely draw near to God.

The Law of Moses contained a series of statutes about what could make a person “unclean.” This was not a question about sanitation or good personal hygiene but applied to ritual purity. Unclean things defiled a person so that he could not draw close to God without first purifying himself through ritual washing.

 The priests had stringent statutes concerning purity, for they handled the holy things of God in the temple. But by Jesus’ time, the Pharisees had begun to apply these statutes to laymen also, and among the Jews who were faithful to the Law there was a propensity to take care with such ritual purity. Within the Qumran sect, which we know about because of the scrolls found at the Dead Sea, such statutes were observed with scrupulous accuracy, and men perpetually washed to live free from all defilement.

The rules for these washings were part of the oral instruction of the Law that the scribes observed. It was a firmly formed teaching tradition, learned in the rabbis’ schools and preserved with the help of a highly developed ability to memorize things. In the New Testament, this knowledge that was communicated from generation to generation was called by the Greek word παράδοσις. No English words do it justice, but it means “something handed over” from the fathers to their descendants or from a rabbi to his disciples. Some translations use the phrase “the tradition of the elders.”

In Mark 7:1-13, the opponents of Jesus ask why His disciples do not live by these traditional laws. How can they eat without purifying themselves from defilement that was so easy to incur by touching something or someone impure in the streets and town squares? It took only a handful of water to be clean again.

Jesus answers by taking up the whole question of the traditions of men and their outward purity. He accuses His opponents of putting God’s commandments aside and keeping the tradition of men instead. He cites Isaiah 29:13 and says that Isaiah’s prophecy refers to “you hypocrites” (the Pharisees). “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me; in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (Mark 7:6–7).

Jesus offers an example. Scripture clearly teaches that a man shall honor his father and mother by caring for them in their old age. But they had invented a loophole. Now, a Jew could escape this obligation by declaring that he had given the maintenance money to the temple instead. Mark uses the Jewish term corban, which he translates as “given to God.” If a man declared something corban, he did not have to give it to anyone else. In this way, much like a modern trust, he could receive the dividends during his lifetime and leave the capital for the temple after his death. It was a finely calculated plan to keep what he ought to use to take care of his parents for himself.

But Jesus does not simply refute and criticize the Pharisees. He also teaches the people the correct understanding of God’s will and human nature. God expects perfect holiness. Holiness is displayed by what comes out of a person’s heart, not by what he avoids eating or touching.

This was necessary for all of them to hear, since all the people had been brought up to honor and respect the Pharisees and teachers of the Law but were not aware of how their teaching had undermined the main thrust of the Old Testament—the promise of the coming Savior and salvation only through Him. Because of this, we also need these words of Jesus: “Hear Me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him” (Mark 7:14-15).

Jesus turns the pharisaical conception of impurity upside down. The Pharisees’ outward practice of ritual washings was aimed at mere food and utensils: items that had no bearing on actual impurity. The word for “defile” is κοινῶσαι, a relatively rare word meaning to make common, impure, or to defile. It is related to the much more common noun κοινωνία, meaning association or communion. While κοινωνία is a positive idea in the New Testament, the verb κοινόω is a damaging corruption. The words and actions from one’s sinful heart do not defile but demonstrate the defiled nature already within.

Still, Jesus' disciples don’t get it. When everyone else leaves, and they are inside the house, they ask about the parable. “Are you also without understanding?” Jesus asks. He had already had to confront their hard-hearted confusion when they were terrified after the storm (Mark 6:52). Now, on a calmer, more straightforward matter, they are still puzzled. He chastises them for understanding so little and then gives a few simple propositions concerning the view of purity that has become obvious to us. No food is unclean in and of itself. What makes a man unclean before God comes from the inside.

“Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus He declared all foods clean.) And He said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mark 7:18-23).

And here, the words of Jesus are as burning a reality as they ever were. Men believe that evil comes from without and enters a man. They lay the blame on the world’s catastrophes, environment, societal ills, poverty, inequity, and systemic racism. These are the things that pervert a man. And for His part, Jesus does not deny that such perversions come from outside. “Woe to the world for temptation!” (Matthew 18:8). However, the real source of evil in this world is what lies within us, our sinful hearts. This is why humanity needs salvation and not just reform.

Dear Christians, it is essential to our eternal welfare that we understand the seriousness of our situation. Sin, the transgression of God’s Law, is not limited to outward sinful acts. You are fooling yourself if you think you’re doing alright because you haven’t killed anyone, had a marital affair, committed grand theft, or perjured yourself in court. We have all sinned against God and our neighbor through anger, lust, covetousness, failure to help one another, and so on. Jesus looks into our hearts and sees the source of evil thoughts and actions. Out of the heart proceeds nothing but sin and iniquity. This has been the case for all men since the birth of Cain and Abel.

Now, the world has its own ideas about the moral state of mankind. One popular notion is that man is basically good, and that it’s the evil found in society that corrupts him. Another one that is popular among some Christians is that man is born neutral—that your children are neither good nor sinful, and their upbringing will determine what kind of people they are to become.

Scripture, however, says something else entirely. It tells us that the desires of man’s heart are only evil continually, that through one man, Adam, sin came into the world, and on account of sin, death. Scripture further declares that we are brought forth in iniquity and conceived in sin. So much for being basically good or even morally neutral! But can’t we do something about it? Knowing that we have original sin, doesn’t that mean we need to try harder?

Well, what does Scripture say? It says that the wages of sin is death and that one who breaks the minutest detail of the Law is guilty of breaking it all. So much for evening the score and making up for our sin and guilt! Jesus points to the condition of our hearts because He wants us to recognize our fallen nature—that we’re not sinful because we sin, but instead, we sin because we are sinful. It all begins in the heart, which is sinful and deserving of everlasting death even before one is born and breathes air for the first time.

But this is not the end of the story. Despite our uncleanness before God that we can never wash away, God Himself washes us and makes us clean. The Lord cleanses our hearts. In fact, Scripture describes it as replacing our sinful heart of stone with a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36)—a heart that trusts in Him. This is the heart that the Pharisees lacked, no matter how good they looked on the outside. The Lord must grant all the good works God expects of His people that testify to their faith and let their Gospel light shine before men. For whatever does not derive from faith is sin, even the good works of non-believers.

Dear brothers and sisters, your gracious Lord cleansed and changed your heart in Baptism. There, He cleansed you in the washing of water with the Word. When the goodness and lovingkindness of God appeared in Christ Jesus, He saved you—not on account of the righteous deeds you’ve done, but by His mercy in the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit, which He poured out richly upon you through Christ Jesus your Savior, that you might be justified by His grace and made an heir of eternal life. In Jesus, you can approach the holy divine. He’s taken your sin and uncleanness upon Himself and paid for it on the cross. In Holy Baptist, Christ has clothed you with His perfect righteousness.

Through this washing, God, in His love and mercy toward you, enables you to trust in Him and live a life that is pleasing to Him. A true and living faith will produce good works. For though God looks to the heart and knows whether one truly believes, the believing heart will show its faith to others. As Luther put it, God saves by His grace through faith alone, but true faith is never alone. While your works don’t save you, they are the natural outgrowth of the faith God gives you through His means of grace—His Word and Sacrament.

As we prayed together in the collect, we ask our gracious Lord to nourish in us every virtue and bring to completion every good intent that we may grow in grace and bring forth the fruit of good works. You cannot bring these things forth yourself, but God can and promises to give them to you. For Christ Jesus shed His blood for you, and His blood continues to plead on behalf of sinners. He has promised and continually delivers the forgiveness of all your sins and therein has made you an heir of everlasting life.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

 

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.