Mark 7:14–23

The Things That Make a Person Unclean

¹⁴Then Jesus called the crowd to him once more and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand. ¹⁵There is nothing that goes into a person from the outside which can make him ritually unclean. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that makes him unclean.”ⁿ

¹⁷When he left the crowd and went into the house, his disciples asked him to explain this saying. ¹⁸“You are no more intelligent than the others,” Jesus said to them. “Don’t you understand? Nothing that goes into a person from the outside can really make him unclean, ¹⁹because it does not go into his heart but into his stomach and then goes on out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared that all foods are fit to be eaten.)

²⁰And he went on to say, “It is what comes out of a person that makes him unclean. ²¹For from the inside, from a person’s heart, come the evil ideas which lead him to do immoral things, to rob, kill, ²²commit adultery, be greedy, and do all sorts of evil things; deceit, indecency, jealousy, slander, pride, and folly- ²³all these evil things come from inside a person and make him unclean.”