भाष्य सध्या फक्त इंग्रजीत उपलब्ध आहे. मराठी भाषांतर प्रगतीपथावर आहे.
Mark 7 — There Is Nothing From Without That Can Defile a Man
Pharisees come from Jerusalem to confront Jesus about His disciples eating with unwashed hands. He answers with Isaiah — this people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me — and exposes how Corban (a vow) was being used to evade caring for parents. To the people He explains: defilement comes from within, not without. He moves into Tyre and Sidon, where the Syrophoenician woman pleads for her daughter — yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs — and her faith wins the deliverance. Returning, He opens the ears of a deaf-mute with Ephphatha.
“There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.”
— Mark 7:15
- v.1-13 Tradition versus the commandment
- v.14-23 Defilement is from within
- v.24-30 The Syrophoenician woman
- v.31-37 The deaf-mute healed
Of none effect through your tradition. Tradition can be a guardian of truth or its substitute. Here Christ exposes how human additions had silenced the divine commandment — the Corban vow was being invoked to avoid honouring parents (vv.10-12).
A perennial test: do your settled religious practices serve God's Word or replace it? Where any tradition contradicts Scripture, Scripture must rule. Where tradition serves Scripture, it is honoured. The order matters.
Christ's anthropology — sin is internal before it is external. The heart is the source; the actions are downstream. Cleansing rituals that work only on the outside can never reach the real problem.
A list follows in vv.21-22 of thirteen evils, all from within. The implication is grim and freeing. Grim, because no human technique reaches the source. Freeing, because Christ does — He gives a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26), and only such a gift can change what comes out.
A Gentile woman, addressed by a metaphor that sounded harsh, answers with brilliant humility. She does not dispute her place; she claims the crumbs. She would rather have a fragment from His table than a feast anywhere else.
This is the faith Christ honors — humble persistence, asking for what one has no right to demand, sure that there is enough at His table to spill over to the floor. The crumbs of His grace are richer than any other inheritance.
He hath done all things well. Echoing Genesis 1:31 — God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. The same hand that made the original is now restoring it.
A summary the whole Gospel earns. Where Christ is at work, the work is done well. The ears that were closed hear; the mouth that was silent speaks. He is the restorer of every faculty He first gave.
Verse 15 is a diagnosis you can use this week. When you sin, your first instinct is to blame the circumstance — the person who provoked, the temptation that surrounded, the system that pressured. Christ overturns this. The evil came out of you because it was first in you. The provoker only opened a door already locked from the inside. This is why moral self-improvement is insufficient; what is needed is a new heart, which only Christ gives.
The chapter shows Christ's authority over religion and over flesh. He sets aside man-made tradition with one quotation from Isaiah, and He gives a Gentile woman the deliverance the religious of Israel will not seek. The same hand that opens the deaf ear can give a new heart — and the same Lord who said Ephphatha over a closed faculty will say it over yours.
Lips and heart. The two can be at any distance from each other. Religion can be very near God on the lips while the heart wanders. The lip-honoring is not nothing — but it is not enough, and where it covers a far-off heart it becomes hypocrisy.
Christ's indictment is not of irreligion but of unreal religion. The most dangerous spiritual condition is not unbelief outside the church but careful religious performance inside it, paired with a heart that has migrated elsewhere.