What Defiles a Man

The Pharisees made great efforts to avoid what would defile them under the Law of Moses.  They avoided eating unclean foods, touching unclean items or a dead body, sitting on an unclean seat or eating without first washing their hands according to the tradition of the elders.  Potential defilement was everywhere, and thus God-fearing people among the Jews spared no pains to carefully abstain from touching, eating or doing what would defile them.

What Jesus said offended the Pharisees in Matthew 15:10-11:  "When He had called the multitude to Himself, He said to them, "Hear and understand: ¹¹ not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man."  While the Pharisees continually laboured to keep traditions of men to avoid physical defilement, Jesus taught it is sin within a man that defiles him before God.  They kept commands not to touch, taste or handle with their perishing bodies and neglected the inner man, their eternal souls which would endure beyond the lifespan of human flesh.  You see, we are more than flesh, blood and bone having been created in the image of the eternal God with living souls.  A person can have dirty hands from working in the yard and at the same time can be clean and upright in God's sight by grace through faith in Jesus.

This teaching that offended the Pharisees also proved difficult for the disciples to receive.  In response to their question Matthew 15:16-20 reads, "So Jesus said, "Are you also still without  understanding? ¹⁷ Do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? ¹⁸ But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man.¹⁹ For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. ²⁰ These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man."  Eating without washing hands may contaminate our physical bodies, but even tainted food cannot corrupt our souls.  It is the sin within the heart and mind of a person which moves our hands to do evil, our mouths to speak lies and our bodies to burn with lust.  We might blame the influences around us for the sin it simply stirs up in our hearts.  The stick that stirs up silt in the pool did not create or introduce the dirt that clouds the water:  the stick was merely the means of bringing to light how dirty the pool already was.

It is what proceeds from the heart that defiles a man, and praise the LORD He is able to wash us clean by the forgiveness offered by Jesus to those who are in Him.  Our sinful condition is terminal without hope, and Jesus has become our living hope by the atonement provided on Calvary.  It is wisdom to avoid what causes us or others to be weak in faith or to stumble in sin, but it is our hearts which require cleansing and transforming by God's grace through the Gospel.  We cannot eliminate our sin that defiles us when it percolates within us and eventually proceeds out of us.  Only Jesus can do this for us when we confess our sins and repent, and He helps us to walk by faith in obedience to Him moving forward.  Jesus has done for us as promised in Isaiah 1:18:  "Come now, and let us reason together," says the LORD, "though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool."