Mark 7:5-23

The Pharisees and the teachers of the law said to Jesus, “Why don’t your followers obey the unwritten laws which have been handed down to us? Why do your followers eat their food with hands that are not clean?” Jesus answered, “Isaiah was right when he spoke about you hypocrites. He wrote, ‘These people show honor to me with words, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is worthless. The things they teach are nothing but human rules.’ You have stopped following the commands of God, and you follow only human teachings.” Then Jesus said to them, “You cleverly ignore the commands of God so you can follow your own teachings. Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and ‘Anyone who says cruel things to his father or mother must be put to death.’ But you say a person can tell his father or mother, ‘I have something I could use to help you, but it is Corban—a gift to God.’ You no longer let that person use that money for his father or his mother. By your own rules, which you teach people, you are rejecting what God said. And you do many things like that.” After Jesus called the crowd to him again, he said, “Every person should listen to me and understand what I am saying. There is nothing people put into their bodies that makes them unclean. People are made unclean by the things that come out of them. [Let those with ears use them and listen.]” When Jesus left the people and went into the house, his followers asked him about this story. Jesus said, “Do you still not understand? Surely you know that nothing that enters someone from the outside can make that person unclean. It does not go into the mind, but into the stomach. Then it goes out of the body.” (When Jesus said this, he meant that no longer was any food unclean for people to eat.) And Jesus said, “The things that come out of people are the things that make them unclean. All these evil things begin inside people, in the mind: evil thoughts, sexual sins, stealing, murder, adultery, greed, evil actions, lying, doing sinful things, jealousy, speaking evil of others, pride, and foolish living. All these evil things come from inside and make people unclean.”