Jesus declared all foods clean - or did He? Should Christians Follow the Dietary Laws? [Part 3]
Jesus Declared all food clean – or did He?
“But surely,” I hear you say, “Jesus declared all foods clean, so that settles the matter”. Well, I thought so too – until, that is, I looked into it much more closely.
The favourite verse and the one most often quoted to say the dietary laws are abolished, is in Mark 7v19:
“Thus He declared all foods clean”
And they take this as proof positive that the food laws are obsolete.
Mark 7 and Matthew
15
Let us therefore, turn to Mark 7v1-23 and the parallel passage, Matthew 15v1-20 and examine them a little more closely. As Scripture interprets Scripture, it is helpful to look at both passages and indeed any other passages that might throw some light on this issue. These two passages give an account of the same event, with some slight differences, which gives us a greater understanding of what is being said here.
Ritual cleanliness and hand washing
The first thing to notice is that the Pharisees saw that some of Jesus’ disciples were eating without washing their hands, thus their hands were ‘defiled’ (Mark 7v2; Matt 15v2). They then challenged Jesus about this:
“Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?” (Matt 15v2)
Mark explains what this tradition was:
“Now holding to the tradition of the elders, the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat until they wash their hands ceremonially. And on returning from the market, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions for them to observe, including the washing of cups, pitchers, kettles, and couches for dining.” (Mark 7v3-4)
So the subject of the passages is the washing of hands, but not just normal washing – washing ceremonially. You see, God’s law said that they could eat anything that was ‘clean’ as defined by God; the Pharisees had added a tradition to that law – if you had come into contact with something ‘unclean’, then your hands were defiled and you could thereby contaminate the food and make it unfit for consumption, which in turn would defile you. They based this on such verses as Leviticus 20:25:
"You are therefore to distinguish between clean and unclean animals and between clean and unclean birds. Do not defile yourselves by the unclean creatures that crawl on the ground or fly, which I have set apart as unclean for you.”
Eating something ‘unclean’ defiled a person, or made them ritually unclean too. That meant they could not enter the Temple for a set period.
But did God really then say that if you touch food with unclean hands then the clean food was no longer fit to eat? No, He did not. You won’t find that anywhere in the Torah (Law of God). But you will find in Torah some rules about what happens if a person becomes ritually unclean – ie they have done or touched something that makes them defiled. As an example:
“Whoever touches any dead body will be unclean for seven days. He must purify himself with the water on the third day and on the seventh day; then he will be clean.” (Numbers 19v11,12)
But nowhere will you find a prohibition on eating clean foods or by doing so you will be made unclean yourself. That only applies to eating something unclean.
Back to Mark 7: Jesus challenges the Pharisees, asking why they teach as commandments from God the things that are merely manmade rules, and why they set aside the Torah of God for these manmade rules:
“Jesus
answered them, “Isaiah prophesied correctly about you hypocrites, as it is
written:
‘These
people honor Me with their lips,
but
their hearts are far from Me.
They
worship Me in vain;
they teach as doctrine the
precepts of men.’
You have disregarded the
commandment of God to keep the tradition of men.”
He went on to say, “You neatly set
aside the command of God to maintain your own tradition.” (Mark 7v6-8)
“Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake
of your tradition? “ (Matthew 15v3)
So the passage is not addressing laws God gave, it isn’t even about types of food; it is about manmade traditions – traditions which set aside the commandments of God. God said they could eat clean things; the Pharisees said, you can eat clean things but only if those clean things have not been defiled because you touched something unclean and haven’t washed your hands ceremonially.
Now we come to verse 19 in Mark’s gospel:
“Are you still so dull?” He asked. “Do you not understand? Nothing that enters a man from the outside can defile him, because it does not enter his heart, but it goes into the stomach and then is eliminated.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)” (Mark 7v17-19)
“Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.” (Matthew 15v16-20)
Matthew clarifies that the subject matter under discussion is ritual defilement from eating with unwashed hands. Remember this passage is about ritual cleanliness, not whether you can eat a bacon sandwich. Being clean to enter God’s presence did not depend on washing your hands ceremonially before eating. You could be perfectly clean when washed, but still defiled because of the impure things that come from the heart. So what can this part in parenthesis possibly mean? Why is it there? The KJV sheds some light on this question:
“Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?” (Mark 7v19)
In the original Greek, there is no mention of ‘thus He declared’ (ESV) at all. The KJV sticks closely to the original here and has these words as part of Jesus’ speech, not as a comment in brackets by Mark. Food eaten with unwashed hands does not make you unclean or defiled because it does not enter your heart (from where evil emanates), it enters the stomach and then ‘goeth out into the draught’ (ie the toilet). It is digestion and toileting afterwards that is ‘purging all meats (foods)’. But it doesn’t affect your status before God.
"You are therefore to distinguish between clean and unclean animals and between clean and unclean birds. Do not defile yourselves by the unclean creatures that crawl on the ground or fly, which I have set apart as unclean for you."
"So keep my charge never to practice any of these abominable customs that were practiced before you, and never to make yourselves unclean by them: I am the LORD your God.” (Leviticus 18:30)
What is the result of ‘defiling yourself’ by eating unclean things? The KJV renders ‘defile yourself’ as ‘make yourself an abomination’.
“They have chosen
their own ways,
and they delight in their abominations;
so I also will choose harsh treatment for them
and will bring on
them what they dread.” (Isaiah 66v3-4)
“Those who consecrate and purify themselves to go into the gardens, following one who is among those who eat the flesh of pigs, rats and other unclean things—they will meet their end together with the one they follow,” declares the Lord.” (Isaiah 66v17) Or, in another translation, “will be consumed together”.
Okay, so that’s all right for Israel and the Jews, but it still doesn’t answer the question of whether Gentile believers today need to keep ‘kosher’ (permitted foods).
Another way
Let’s assume for a moment that ‘Jesus declared all foods clean’ is a legitimate interpretation (I say ‘interpretation’ because the words ‘He declared’ are not in the original and therefore it is not a translation; you cannot translate words that are not there). Is there another way to understand this passage? Yes there is!
What is ‘food’?
To us, food means anything we can eat. But we don’t eat everything – for instance we don’t eat things that are poisonous (eg arsenic, that smells like almonds but will kill you if you ingest it), we don’t eat African tree frogs (also poisonous) and numerous other items. There are some things that people do eat, but most people would not call them ‘food’ as such – for instance the puffer fish, or rats. Added to which, vegetarians, pescatarians, vegans, omnivores and others all eat what we call ‘food’ regardless of what it contains. So the word ‘food’ has many shades of meaning. Is there then a Biblical definition?
We have already seen from Genesis 1 and 2 that originally ‘food’ was green plants, with one notable exception. In Genesis 9, Noah was allowed to eat meat. Again this came with some prohibitions. By the time we reach Leviticus 11, there is a long list of prohibitions clearly defined for God’s people to set them apart from the nations. At this point, it is not important whether Noah could eat ‘all things’ or not – the fact is, after the time of Moses (including the time in which we live) the Biblical prohibitions were in place and remain in place to this day – any Jew will tell you that. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are for Gentile Christians to follow. Clearly when the Bible refers to ‘food’ it does not mean anything and everything you can put in your mouth and swallow. If God or His people are speaking about ‘food’ they mean only that which God had called food; anything else was not food. If they were not to eat it, it was not food. To call something ‘unclean food’ is a contradiction – if it’s unclean, it’s not food; food is only that which is ‘clean’, according to the Bible.
When we come to the New Testament, the word used for ‘food’ is the Greek word ‘broma’. The word literally means ‘food; anything eaten’. Like with the Old Testament rules about eating, the word means, in the biblical context, ‘food that is permitted’ (the word ‘kosher’ means ‘permitted’). So ‘food’ in the Jewish context of the New Testament is the same as in the Old Testament – food which is derived from those things that God has deemed ‘clean’. Anything else is ‘non-food’, not permitted and/or not fit to be eaten. Strong’s analytical concordance says this about ‘broma’ as used in the Bible:
Strong’s 1033
1. Food
2. Especially articles allowed or forbidden by the
Jewish law
Further reading: What is Food?
But again, as the context of the New Testament is Jewish, does this mean that Christians do not need to keep those laws? So what does it mean that ‘He declared all foods clean’?
As we have seen, the Pharisees were saying that clean foods were able to become unclean (they called it ‘common’ – more on that when we look at Acts 10) by contamination or association. Therefore they disallowed the eating of clean foods unless you had ceremonially washed before you ate. So what Jesus was saying here is ‘God has given you a list of clean foods; these foods are all clean; they are not to be treated as unclean or common’. Which reminds us of the words in Acts 10:
“Do not call common that which God has cleansed” (Acts 10v15)
In conclusion, then:
The subject under discussion is man’s traditions, not God’s laws; ritual cleanliness, not whether certain items were clean or unclean, or whether we can eat pork chops.
Jesus’ audience did not understand Him to be saying that what God had declared unclean was now clean. Had they thought that’s what He meant, they would have stoned Him there and then. It would have showed Him to be rebellious (against God) and the penalty for rebellion was death.
To have changed the laws regarding clean and unclean, would have meant He was not the Messiah, but a false prophet:
“If a prophet or dreamer of dreams arises among you and proclaims a sign or wonder to you, and if the sign or wonder he has spoken to you comes about, but he says, “Let us follow other gods (which you have not known) and let us worship them,” you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. For the LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love Him with all your heart and with all your soul. You are to follow the LORD your God and fear Him. Keep His commandments and listen to His voice; serve Him and hold fast to Him.” (Deuteronomy 13v1-3)
And, in a different context, but could equally apply here:
“To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light in them.” (Isaiah 8v20)
Not only that, but He would have been contradicting Himself:
“For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matthew 5v18)
“But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for a single stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law”. (Luke 16v17)
So now we can see that Jesus did not in fact declare all foods (as we understand the term ‘food’, not how the Bible defines ‘food’) clean; He did not say we could now eat anything we want, including things God said were not to be eaten. Closer examination has shown that He is simply saying that what God has called ‘clean’ is still clean, and manmade rules about it becoming contaminated and therefore somehow unclean is a nonsense. And it is even more a nonsense to claim that eating with unwashed hands will make the person eating unclean – a concept found nowhere in the written Torah. The Pharisees were accusing the disciples of breaking their manmade rule of ceremonial hand washing; they declared that perfectly ‘clean’ food (by God’s definition) was not fit for consumption if eaten with unwashed hands because the food was contaminated. Jesus said that clean food is clean regardless. The things that make a person unclean are those things that proceed from the heart, not the things you eat. But remember, the passage only refers to food that God has permitted as food and has no reference to unclean animals at all. It is about ritual hand washing, not whether pigs are fit to eat.
So did Jesus declare all foods clean? Yes and no. He did not declare that unclean things were now to be treated as clean and therefore we can eat anything. He did declare that the foods God has already declared clean are actually clean and not to be treated as unclean.
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