since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.)
Jesus has told the crowd that defilement never comes from outside a person. Indoors with His disciples He explains why — food passes through the body and never touches the heart — and Mark adds a note that reaches far beyond one meal.
The Reason Given: Food Reaches the Stomach, Not the Heart
The Lord's argument turns on where food actually goes. The body handles it and gets rid of what it does not need.
Leslie M. GrantWhatever physical food one eats does not have any spiritual effect. It affects the stomach, and so the body's condition, but not the heart. Here the heart stands for the inner, spiritual part of the person. God provided for physical cleansing in the way the body disposes of waste. But spiritual defilement is a far more serious matter.
What matters most about a person lies deeper than digestion.
The Bible TreasuryThe soul was separate from man's body, and greater than it. What went into a man fed and maintained his body — the house of the soul and spirit. The things which mattered most were those which proceeded from a man. His schemes, his motives, his desires, his character, his moral colour — these made a man a centre of power, radiating influences either for good or for evil.
The Closing Clause: All Foods Declared Clean
Translations differ over the last words of the verse. Some make them part of the sentence about the body — "purging all meats." Others, like the ESV, read them as Mark's own comment: "Thus he declared all foods clean." Read that way, one line takes down a whole religious code.
William KellyWe learn from this passage how the Lord put an end to the whole taboo of the Sabbath, as, in Mark 7:19, He did to that of meats.
The food laws had never been about the animals themselves.
Leslie M. GrantIt is true that the law forbade certain meats to Israelites (Lev. 11), but not because eating them was sinful in itself. It was a picture-lesson to the Jews, teaching them to keep clearly separate from the Gentile nations... Acts 10 shows this clearly. God gave Peter a vision of a container let down from heaven holding every kind of animal, and told him, "Rise, Peter; kill and eat." When Peter objected, God said, "What God has made clean, do not call common."
Holding On to That Freedom
This is not just ancient history. Rules about what you may taste or touch keep coming back, and this verse answers them.
The Bible TreasuryThis freedom is an important teaching for the Lord's followers to hold today as much as ever. The Son has made us free, and we are urged to "stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery" (Gal. 5:1). Rules like "Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch" come from human teaching and human commands, and the death of Christ has set us free from them (Col. 2:20-23).
Why the Disciples Could Not Follow
The disciples still could not take it in. One thing blocks understanding more than anything else.
William KellyThere is nothing in the heart of man that so hinders his intelligence as the influence of religious tradition. Not only that: tradition darkens a disciple wherever it works, and one effect that always goes with it is a refusal to bow to the humbling truth that there is no good thing in man.
The Real Source of Uncleanness
If nothing from outside can defile, a person cannot blame his surroundings. He carries the problem inside him.
Hamilton SmithThe real source of defilement is not a man's environment but himself. It is true that man is a fallen creature. If he walks into scenes of evil and temptation, his surroundings will stir up the desires already inside him. Even so, the evil comes from within. An angel could pass through Sodom without being defiled, but Lot could not. The angel had no evil heart to respond to sin; Lot did.
What Is Needed Instead
Since the trouble is internal, washing, diet and ceremony cannot reach it. The cure must be something else entirely.
W. W. FeredayWhat stronger proof could we have that it is not reformation men need, but a new creation! What proof, too, that outward practices can never be enough on their own, because they cannot reach what is inside!
And that new life is a Person, not a rule.
William KellyI need another One, perfect in every way, outside of me, to be my life — and I have such a One in Christ.
Summary
- Route. Food goes to the stomach, not the heart, so it can touch the body but never make a person morally unclean.
- Ruling. So the Lord ended the food rules. Peter learned the same lesson in his vision: what God has made clean, no one may call common.
- Release. Hold that freedom. "Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch" comes from human commands, not from Christ.
- Root. Rule out outside causes and the true source stands exposed. An angel could pass through Sodom undefiled; Lot could not, because the evil was inside him.
- Remedy. Such a heart does not need reform. It needs a new creation, and a perfect life outside ourselves — Christ.