Jesus warns us against the presumption that our acts (acts of any kind!) are sources of rightness in the sight of God. This includes food purity laws. Our problem is not what goes in, but what comes out! What comes out of the heart is important. Jesus says, "What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person" ( Mk 7:20-23). Who can claim to have avoided this list? What good is it, if you can avoid eating shellfish on the one hand, but your heart is still polluted with all manner of wickedness?

 

But you might say (and all of us try!), "But I don't have wicked thoughts!" Oh, really? "Well, not too wicked, anyway. And, not too often." So do you think that Jesus is here giving you the "close, but no cigar" standard for the holiness of your life? Definitely not. What Jesus says here is "out of the heart of man...." Not some hearts. No, every heart. Every human. He is making a generic statement about fallen human beings. No one born of a woman is exempt.

 

This is not a discovery of Jesus based on scientific testing. This is His divine omniscient verdict: Jesus "needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man" ( Jn 2:25). And it wasn't good. This is not a verdict against some other people. This isn't about who is in and who is out. No, we're all on the outs. This is not a partial indictment of human bad-ness. This is the divine Judge's clear verdict against depraved humanity. We humans are so sunk in sin that whatever comes out of us is a defilement of us. I am iniquitous and conceived a sinner as King David says in Psalm 51: "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me" ( Ps 51:5). Everything that comes out of me testifies to my defilement.

 

Repent! We have refused to see sin, our own sin, focused as we are on our own illusions of self-generated piety and holiness. We will never have true faith or regard for God when we are unaware of the fullness of the depravity from which Christ our Lord has rescued us. Thank God that He has revealed the doctrine of original sin to us in His Word!