Matthew 15:1–20

Jesus Teaches about Inner Purity

Some Pharisees and teachers of religious law now arrived from Jerusalem to see Jesus. They asked him, ²“Why do your disciples disobey our age-old tradition? For they ignore our tradition of ceremonial hand washing before they eat.”

³Jesus replied, “And why do you, by your traditions, violate the direct commandments of God? ⁴For instance, God says, ‘Honor your father and mother,’^* and ‘Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.’ ⁵But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’ ⁶In this way, you say they don’t need to honor their parents.^* And so you cancel the word of God for the sake of your own tradition. ⁷You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote,

⁸‘These people honor me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me.

⁹Their worship is a farce,

for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’”

¹⁰Then Jesus called to the crowd to come and hear. “Listen,” he said, “and try to understand. ¹¹It’s not what goes into your mouth that defiles you; you are defiled by the words that come out of your mouth.”

¹²Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you realize you offended the Pharisees by what you just said?”

¹³Jesus replied, “Every plant not planted by my heavenly Father will be uprooted, ¹⁴so ignore them. They are blind guides leading the blind, and if one blind person guides another, they will both fall into a ditch.”

¹⁵Then Peter said to Jesus, “Explain to us the parable that says people aren’t defiled by what they eat.”

¹⁶“Don’t you understand yet?” Jesus asked. ¹⁷“Anything you eat passes through the stomach and then goes into the sewer. ¹⁸But the words you speak come from the heart—that’s what defiles you. ¹⁹For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander. ²⁰These are what defile you. Eating with unwashed hands will never defile you.”