Clean and Unclean
“Do you not yet realize that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then is eliminated? Matthew 15:17 · Berean Standard Bible
Jesus explains simply: food goes into your stomach and eventually leaves your body. It doesn't change who you are on the inside.
God cares about your heart, not your diet. External rituals can't make you right with God if your heart isn't in it.
Jesus explains the physical process to make a spiritual point.
Jesus makes this as simple as possible. Food is temporary. It passes through you. But what's in your heart stays and shapes who you are.
Jesus uses straightforward physiology: food enters the stomach (koilian) and is expelled into the drain (aphedrōna). The biological process of digestion and elimination demonstrates that food cannot affect the moral/spiritual center of a person.
This teaching implicitly challenges the theological basis of the Levitical food laws by arguing that physical consumption has no bearing on spiritual purity.
Jesus explains the physical reality of how food works in the body.
Jesus uses basic biology to make a theological point: what you eat passes through you. It doesn't touch the part of you that matters to God.
15Peter said to Him, “Explain this parable to us.”
16“Do you still not understand?” Jesus asked.
17“Do you not yet realize that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then is eliminated?
18But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these things defile a man.
19For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, and slander.
Read all of Matthew 15 — Jesus dismantles the purity codes the Pharisees have built and shows that what defiles a person comes from within, not without.
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