In my morning study today, I was
reading the Book of Mark, Chapter 7, verses 14 through 23 from The Daily Study
Bible Series by William Barclay, copied below, in which Jesus talked about the
spiritual cleanliness of man. In these days of political chaos and societal
unrest, I feel the words of Jesus in this scripture to be very useful in
helping us to better understand and cope with our circumstances and struggles.
It begins:
He called the crowd to him again and said,
“Listen to me, all of you and understand. There is nothing which goes into a
man from outside which can render him unclean; but it is the things which come
out of a man which render the man unclean.” When He came into the house, away
from the crowd, His disciples asked Him about this hard saying. He said to
them, “So, then, are you too unable to grasp things? Do you not understand that
everything that goes into a man from outside cannot render him unclean, because
it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach? (The effect of this saying
is to render all foods clean). But He went on to say, “What comes out of a man,
that is what renders the man unclean. It is from within, from the heart, that
come evil designs, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, covetous deeds,
evil deeds, guile, wanton wickedness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these
evil things come from within, and they render a man unclean.
Mark 7: 14-23
Although it
may not seem so now, this passage, when it was first spoken, was well-nigh the
most revolutionary passage in the New Testament. Jesus has been arguing with
the legal experts about different aspects of the traditional law. He has shown
the irrelevance of the elaborate handwashings. He has shown how rigid adherence
to the traditional law can actually mean disobedience to the law of God. But
here he says something more startling yet. He declares that nothing that goes
into a man can possibly defile him, for it is received only into his body which
rids itself of it in the normal, physical way.
No Jew ever
believed that and no orthodox Jew believes it yet. Leviticus 11 has a long list
of animals that are unclean and may not be used for food. How very seriously
this was taken can be seen from many an incident in Maccabean times. At that
time the Syrian king, Antiochus Epiphanes, was determined to root out the
Jewish faith. One of the things he demanded was that the Jews should eat pork,
swine’s flesh but they died in their hundreds rather than do so. “Howbeit many
in Israel were fully resolved and confirmed in themselves not to eat any
unclean thing. Wherefore they chose rather to die, that they might not be
defiled with meats, and that they might not profane the holy covenant; so then
they died.” (1Maccabees 1: 62,63.) Fourth Maccabees (chapter 7) tells the story
of a widow and her seven sons. It was demanded that they should eat swine’s
flesh. They refused. The first had his tongue cut out, the ends of his limbs
cut off; and he was then roasted alive in a pan’ the second had his hair and
the skin of his skull torn off; one by one they were tortured to death while
their aged mother looked on and cheered them on’ they died rather than eat meat
which to them was unclean.
It is in face
of this that Jesus made his revolutionary statement that nothing that goes into
a man can make him unclean. He was wiping out at one stroke the laws for which
Jews had suffered and died. No wonder the disciples were amazed.
In effect
Jesus was saying that things cannot be either unclean or clean in any real
religious sense of the term. Only persons can be really defiled; and what
defiles a person is his own actions, which are the product of his own heart.
This was new doctrine and shatteringly new doctrine. The Jew had, and still
has, a whole system of things which are clean and unclean. With one sweeping
pronouncement Jesus declared the whole thing irrelevant and that uncleanness
has nothing to do with what a man takes into his body but everything to do with
what comes out of his heart.
Let us look at
the things Jesus lists as coming from the heart and making a man unclean.
He begins with
evil designs(dialogismoi). Every
outward act of sin is preceded by an inward act of choice; therefore Jesus
begins with the evil thought from which the evil action comes. Next comes fornications (porneial); later he is to
list acts of adultery (moicheiai);
but this first word is a wide word—it means every kind of traffic in sexual
vice. There follows thefts (klopai).
In Greek there are two words for a robber—kleptes
and lestes. Lestes is a brigand;
Barabbas was a lestes (John 18: 40) and a brigand may be a
very brave man although an outlaw. Kleptes
is a thief; Judas was a Kleptes when
he pilfered from the box (John 12: 6). A kleptes
is a mean, deceitful, dishonourable pilferer, without even the redeeming
quality of a certain audacious gallantry that a brigand must have. Murders(Phonoi) and adulteries come next in the list and their meaning is clear.
Then comes covetous
deeds (pleonexiai). Pleonexia
comes from two Greek words meaning to
have more. It has been defined as the
accursed love of having. It has been defined as
“
the spirit which snatches at that which it is not right to take,”
“
the baneful appetite for that which belongs to others.”
It is the
spirit which snatches at things, not to hoard them like a miser, but to spend
them in lust and luxury. Cowley defined it as, “Rapacious appetite for gain,
not for its own sake, but for the pleasure of refunding it immediately through
all the channels of pride and luxury.” It is not the desire for money and
things; it includes the desire for power, the insatiable lust of the flesh.
Plato said, “The desire of man is like a sieve or pierced vessel which he ever
tries to, and can never fill.” Pleonexia
is that lust for having which is in the heart of the man who sees happiness in
things instead of in God.
There follows evil deeds. In Greek there are two words
for evil—kakos, which describes a
thing which in itself is evil, and poneros,
which describes a person or a thing which is actively evil. Poneriai Is the word used here. The man
who is poneros is the man in whose
heart there is the desire to harm. He is, as Bengel said, “trained in every
crime and completely equipped to inflict evil on any man.” Jeremy Taylor
defined this poneria as “aptness to
do shrewd turns, to delight in mischiefs and tragedies; loving to trouble our
neighbour, and to do him ill intercourse.” Poneris
not only corrupts the man who has it; it corrupts others too. Poneros—the Evil One—is the title of
Satan. The worst of men, the man who is doing Satan’s work, is the man who,
being bad himself, makes others as bad as himself.
Next comes dolos; translated guile. It comes from a word which means bait; it is used for trickery and deceit. It is used for instance
of a mousetrap. When the Greeks were besieging Troy and could not gain entry,
they sent the Trojans the present of a great wooden horse, as if it was a token
of good will. The Trojans opened their gates and took it in. But the horse was
filled with Greeks who in the night broke out and dealt death and devastation
to Troy. That exactly is dolos. It is
crafty, cunning, deceitful, clever treachery.
Next on the
list is wanton wickedness (aselgeia).
The Greeks defined aselgeia as “a
disposition of soul that resents all discipline, “ as “a disposition of soul
that resents all discipline, “as a spirit that acknowledges no restraints,
dares whatsoever its caprice and wanton insolence may suggest.” The great
characteristic of the man who is guilty of aselgeia
is that he is lost to decency and to shame. An evil man may hide his sin, but
the man who has aselgeia sins without
a qualm and never hesitates to shock his fellow-men. Jezebel was the classic
instance of aselgeia when she built a
heathen shrine in Jerusalem the Holy City.
Envy is literally the evil eye, the eye
that looks on the success and happiness of another in such a way that it would
cast an evil spell upon it if it could. The next word is blasphemia. When this is used of words against man, it means slander; when it is used of words
against God, it means blasphemy. It
means insulting man or God.
There follows pride (huperephania). The Greek word
literally means “showing oneself above.” It describes the attitude of the man
“who has a certain contempt. for everyone except himself. The interesting thing
about this word, as the Greeks used it, is that it describes an attitude that
may never become public. It may be
that in his heart of hearts a man is always secretly comparing himself with
others. He might even ape humility and yet in his heart be proud. Sometimes, of
course, the pride is evident. The Greeks had a legend of this pride. They said
that the Giants, the sons of Tartarus and Ge, in their pride sought to storm
heaven and were cast down by Hercules. That is huperephania. It is setting oneself up against God; it is “invading
God’s prerogatives.” That is why it has been called “the peak of all the
vices,” and why God opposes the proud.” (James
4: 6).
Lastly comes folly (aphrosune). This does not mean
the foolishness that is due to weakness of intellect and lack of brains; it
means moral folly. It describes, not the man who is a brainless fool, but the
man who chooses to play the fool.
It is a truly
terrible list which Jesus cites of the things that come from the human heart.
When we examine it a shudder surely passes over us. Nonetheless it is a
summons, not to a fastidious shrinking from such things, but to an honest self
examination of our own hearts.
The Daily
Study Bible Series, Revised Edition
By William Barclay
The Word speaks for itself.
This is Ronald Miller
