Mark 7:14-19
14 And he called the people to him again, and said to them, "Hear me, all of you, and understand: 15 there is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him." 16 [1] 17 And when he had entered the house, and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18 And he said to them, "Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him, 19 since it enters, not his heart but his stomach, and so passes on?" (Thus he declared all foods clean.)
In this passage Jesus is teaching that moral defilement from bad thinking is the true defilement, not eating forbidden foods. If foods defiled us, they would go into the place where we think, i.e. our hearts, not into our stomachs! See The Heart.
- ↑ v. 16 If any man have ears to hear, let him hear. is omitted in the RSV and other modern scholarly translations.
