Monday: Clean Hands or Clean Heart?

Daily Lesson for Monday 5th of August 2024

Jesus’ words in this passage have been a conundrum for many as they ponder their relationship to the teachings of Leviticus 11:1-47 regarding clean and unclean foods. Is Jesus doing away with such distinctions? Are Seventh-day Adventists mistaken in teaching that church members who eat meat are to eat it only from the clean-animal list?

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First, it would be odd for Jesus suddenly to dismiss Mosaic instructions in Mark 7:14-19 when He had just defended Moses against tradition in Mark 7:6-13. Second, the very tradition that the Pharisees were promoting does not have a basis in Old Testament teaching; the food laws, in contrast, do. Third, what Mark 7:19 means when it says that Jesus cleanses all food is not that the food laws are abolished but instead that the tradition of touch contamination that the Pharisees had made was invalid. This, for example, is that false notion that if you could be contaminated by coming in contact with Gentiles, then you also could be contaminated through contact with food that they had touched.

In Mark 7:19, Jesus notes that food does not go into the heart but into the stomach and then passes out through the intestinal tract. But in Mark 7:21-23, He notes that evil comes from inside the heart, from the center of who a person is. He presents a list of vices that start from evil thoughts but then end in evil actions.

When the reference to the fifth commandment in Mark 7:10 is included with the vice list, every commandment of the second table of the Decalogue is there. Further, Jesus refers to vain worship, in Mark 7:7, the breaking of what is at the heart of the first four commands of the Decalogue. Thus, Jesus stands as a defender of the Law of God throughout this passage.

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/24c-06-clean-hands-or-clean-heart/