Word Live: Heart Religion
As you read today, pray that the Holy Spirit will give you an attentive heart and the insight you need as you ponder these words.
Bible passage
Mark 7:14–23
14 Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, ‘Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15 Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.’
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 person from the outside can defile them? 19 For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.’ (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)
20 He went on: ‘What comes out of a person is what defiles them. 21 For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come – sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23 All these evils come from inside and defile a person.’
Holy Bible, New International Version® Anglicized, NIV® Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Explore
Jesus warns against a religion that is merely external, based upon rituals and regulations. The faith he proclaims is more internal, a matter of the heart, and responding in faith and obedience to his word.
Just as ceremonial washing cannot cleanse us from sin, neither can the observance of strict dietary laws prevent sin from taking hold in our lives. Sin has its seat of power within us, in our fallen nature. None of us – including the most religious – is free from the possibility of sin, even of the most grievous kind. Given the right circumstances anyone could sin in the ways listed here (vs 21,22).
True religion requires us to know ourselves well, and to depend on God’s grace for the power to overcome our sinful tendencies. We must grow in self-awareness, recognising the deceitfulness of our own heart, and understanding our motivations and desires. Such self-knowledge is not easily found for we are all prone to self-deceit and the denial that comes from pride. Sometimes such insight comes only through failure; often it requires feedback from honest friends.
The disciples were dull of hearing (v 18). Part of their future training will be to grow in self-awareness.
Author
Tony Horsfall
Respond
It has been said that, ‘To know God is to know self; to know self is to know God.’ How can you increase your self-awareness? Who might help you in this task?
Deeper Bible study
‘Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow … Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.’1
Having dealt with the religious leaders, Jesus turns to the crowd, urging them to ‘Listen … and understand’ (v 14) a small parable (v 17 clarifies that v 15 is a parable). The disciples, like the crowd, do not understand its meaning (see vs 17,18). This episode harks back to Mark 4, where Jesus teaches many things in parables but neither the crowd nor the disciples understand. The disciples, however, go after Jesus to ask about the parables and, although he rebukes them for their lack of understanding, he explains (vs 17–23).2 Similarly, our lack of understanding should drive us to Jesus.
Jesus’ parable teaches that moral contamination comes from within rather than from outside. The human heart is the source of evil intentions and what contaminates us. In their pursuit of purity, the Pharisees had gone astray, focusing on outer rituals and forgetting that moral purity is a matter of the heart. Moses had addressed people’s obstinacy and urged them, ‘Circumcise your hearts’.3 Later, when Israel was exiled to Babylon, Ezekiel encouraged the people of Israel saying that God would cleanse them and give tham a new ‘heart’.4 Jesus alludes to this promise when he tells Nicodemus that people must be ‘born of water and the Spirit’ to enter God’s kingdom.5
The Bible tells us that the fall (referring to the first act of human disobedience to God) has affected the entire human race and that our sinful hearts and resulting behaviour have contaminated us.6 The human condition has always been about the heart and our need for cleansing and renewal. In much secular thought, this is offensive teaching, but the Bible also gives us the good news that Jesus can cleanse us from all contamination and that God specialises in heart transplants.
Read 1 John 1:5–10. Are you aware of what contaminates you? Come to Jesus, whether for the first or the umpteenth time, and let him cleanse you.
1Ps 51:7,10 2 Cf Mark 4:10,13–20,34 3Deut 10:16 4Ezek 36:25–27 5John 3:3–5 6 Eg Rom 1:18–32
Author
Cor Bennema
