There is a strange comfort in routines. They give us something solid to hold when the world feels uncertain. We know how to stand, when to speak, what to say, and how to appear faithful. Over time, those routines can begin to feel like righteousness itself. We mistake the shape of obedience for the substance of obedience. We learn the motions of holiness without learning the weight of love. And slowly, almost without noticing, the soul becomes quieter than the schedule. Mark chapter seven presses directly into that quiet place and refuses to leave it untouched.
Jesus is walking among people who believe deeply in God, who study Scripture, who teach the law, who are respected as spiritual authorities. These are not pagans or rebels. These are the guardians of religious life. They notice something small but important to them. The disciples eat bread with unwashed hands. Not dirty in the modern sense, but ceremonially unwashed. The issue is not hygiene. The issue is ritual. The issue is that the disciples are not performing the tradition of the elders before they eat. What they see is a failure of outward observance, and they interpret it as a failure of inward devotion. That is how religion often works when it is disconnected from compassion. It looks for visible mistakes and assigns invisible guilt.
Jesus does not brush the question aside. He goes straight to the heart of it. He quotes Isaiah and says, “This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” It is one of the most unsettling statements in Scripture because it reveals a possibility we would rather deny. A person can sound holy while being distant from God. A person can speak the language of faith while living in a different spiritual country. A person can honor God with words while ignoring Him with their life. The problem Jesus names is not ignorance of God’s law. It is replacement of God’s commandment with human tradition. The tragedy is not that people love rules. The tragedy is that they sometimes love rules more than truth.
Tradition is not evil by nature. Memory matters. Practices carry wisdom. But tradition becomes dangerous when it replaces the very thing it was meant to protect. God’s law was meant to shape hearts. Human traditions began to shape appearances. Over time, the shell grew thicker than the seed. Jesus exposes that shift with uncomfortable clarity. He tells them that they have found a way to avoid caring for their parents by calling their resources Corban, meaning dedicated to God. On paper, it sounds spiritual. In reality, it becomes an excuse to withhold compassion. Religion becomes a loophole. Obedience becomes a shield against responsibility. What was meant to honor God is used to avoid loving people. That is the precise moment faith loses its soul.
This is not only a first-century problem. It is a human problem. We are very good at learning systems. We are not always good at learning mercy. We can memorize verses and still misunderstand their purpose. We can attend church and still avoid transformation. We can become experts in behavior without becoming students of the heart. Mark seven shows us a Jesus who refuses to let the heart be ignored. He does not say that rituals are meaningless. He says they are insufficient. Washing hands does not cleanse motives. Saying prayers does not automatically soften pride. Performing religion does not guarantee surrender.
Jesus then gathers the people and teaches something that sounds shocking even now. He says that nothing from outside a person that goes into them can defile them, but the things that come out of a person are what defile them. This turns religious thinking inside out. The focus shifts from what touches the body to what shapes the soul. The disciples do not understand at first, and privately they ask Him to explain. Jesus lists what comes from within: evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. It is a long list, and it is uncomfortable because it places the source of corruption inside the human heart rather than in the surrounding environment.
We often want sin to be something that happens to us rather than something that comes from us. It is easier to blame influence than to face intention. It is easier to guard the outside than to heal the inside. But Jesus is not interested in cosmetic holiness. He is interested in true cleansing. And true cleansing requires honesty about where the problem begins. The heart, in biblical language, is not just emotion. It is the center of will, desire, and thought. It is the control room of the person. If the heart is disordered, the life will be disordered. No amount of external polish can compensate for internal fracture.
This teaching is not meant to crush us. It is meant to free us. If defilement came from outside, we would be trapped in endless fear. We would need to control every surface, every food, every contact. But if defilement comes from within, then transformation is possible. The same God who can forgive can also renew. The same Lord who sees the heart can reshape it. The problem being internal is also the promise of healing being internal. God does not merely adjust our environment. He aims to restore our nature.
Immediately after this teaching, Mark tells a story that seems at first unrelated. Jesus travels to the region of Tyre and Sidon, Gentile territory. A woman whose daughter is possessed by an unclean spirit comes and falls at His feet. She is a Syrophenician, a Greek by nation. She does not belong to the religious system that criticized the disciples. She does not know the traditions of the elders. She knows only desperation and faith. She asks Jesus to cast the devil out of her daughter. Jesus responds with a phrase that has troubled many readers. He says it is not right to take the children’s bread and cast it to dogs. The language reflects the cultural division between Jews and Gentiles. The covenant people were the children. The outsiders were called dogs.
What happens next is one of the most remarkable moments in the Gospels. The woman does not withdraw in offense. She does not argue for her worth. She accepts the metaphor but redefines its meaning. She says that even the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs. Her reply is not defiance but persistence. It is humility mixed with confidence. She does not deny Israel’s place. She simply believes that mercy is larger than borders. And Jesus responds by granting her request. He says that because of this saying, the devil is gone out of her daughter. When she returns home, she finds the child lying on the bed and the spirit departed.
Placed next to the earlier teaching, this story becomes a living illustration of it. The religious leaders focused on external boundaries. Jesus shows mercy crossing boundaries. They worried about ritual purity. He responds to trusting faith. They guarded tradition. He heals a child. The contrast could not be sharper. The woman has no ceremonial standing, no temple access, no lineage claim. What she has is a heart that believes Jesus is good and powerful. That heart receives what rules could not secure.
Then Jesus travels again, this time through Decapolis, another Gentile region. People bring to Him a man who is deaf and has an impediment in his speech. They beg Him to put His hand upon him. Jesus takes the man aside privately, away from the crowd. He puts His fingers into his ears and touches his tongue with spittle. Then He looks up to heaven, sighs, and says, “Ephphatha,” which means, “Be opened.” Immediately the man’s ears are opened and the string of his tongue is loosed, and he speaks plainly. Jesus charges them to tell no one, but the more He commands them, the more widely they publish it. And they are astonished beyond measure, saying, “He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.”
This miracle is intimate. It is not shouted. It is not staged. It is quiet and personal. Jesus does not simply speak healing from a distance. He touches the places of brokenness. He engages the man’s isolation. Deafness in that culture meant exclusion. Speech difficulty meant misunderstanding. Jesus enters that loneliness with physical presence. He sighs, a small detail that reveals emotional weight. It is the sound of compassion meeting suffering. And when the man speaks plainly, it is more than restored function. It is restored connection. He can now hear others and be heard. He is returned to community.
Mark seven weaves together teaching and healing in a way that reveals Jesus’ priorities. He confronts false holiness. He defines true defilement. He honors persistent faith. He restores broken communication. At every point, the focus moves from surface to substance. The chapter asks us where we locate righteousness. Is it in our habits or in our humility? Is it in our appearance or in our love? Is it in our group or in our God?
There is a quiet warning here for anyone who takes faith seriously. We can become experts in the wrong things. We can defend doctrine while neglecting devotion. We can guard forms while losing the fire. We can be offended by broken customs and unmoved by broken people. Jesus does not condemn reverence. He condemns substitution. When rules replace relationship, something holy has been lost.
The heart of the chapter is the heart itself. What comes out of us reveals what is forming us. Words expose desires. Actions disclose values. Reactions show what we worship. If bitterness comes out, bitterness has been living in. If pride comes out, pride has been ruling in. This is not a message of despair. It is a message of diagnosis. And diagnosis is the first step toward healing. God is not shocked by what is in us. He already knows. What He waits for is our agreement with His truth. Confession is simply joining God in saying what is real.
The Syrophenician woman shows what that agreement looks like. She does not pretend to be entitled. She does not demand fairness. She trusts mercy. Her faith is not built on status but on character. She believes Jesus is good, and that belief becomes her access. The deaf man shows another side of healing. He does not speak first. He is brought by others. Sometimes faith arrives through community. Sometimes our healing begins when someone else carries us to Jesus. And Jesus honors that too.
Mark seven dismantles the idea that holiness is fragile and must be protected by distance. Instead, it reveals a holiness that heals by contact. Jesus is not contaminated by broken people. Broken people are restored by Him. He does not avoid impurity. He overcomes it. This is the difference between religion as defense and faith as transformation. Religion builds walls. Christ builds bridges.
The chapter leaves us with a question that cannot be answered quickly. What is the condition of my heart? Not my schedule. Not my reputation. Not my theology. My heart. What do I love when no one is watching? What do I resent when I feel threatened? What do I excuse when it costs me comfort? These are not academic questions. They are spiritual ones. And Jesus asks them not to shame us but to save us.
If we only ever clean the outside, we will live in constant fear of stains. If we allow God to cleanse the inside, the outside will follow naturally. The kingdom of God does not begin in the hands. It begins in the will. It does not begin in the mouth. It begins in the mind. It does not begin in behavior. It begins in belief.
Mark seven is not an attack on discipline. It is a call to depth. It is not a rejection of order. It is an invitation to life. It is not about abandoning practice. It is about restoring purpose. When God’s commandment becomes the root again, tradition can become a branch rather than a cage.
And somewhere in that teaching, somewhere between the washing of hands and the opening of ears, Jesus shows us the kind of holiness heaven recognizes. It is a holiness that listens before it judges. It is a holiness that heals before it lectures. It is a holiness that values the unseen more than the visible. It is a holiness that believes the heart can be changed.
The crowd marveled and said He has done all things well. They were right, though they could not yet see how deep that truth went. He had not only healed a man’s hearing. He had begun to heal a culture’s understanding of God. He had not only corrected a practice. He had revealed a path. And that path does not start with water on the hands. It starts with surrender in the soul.
The confrontation in Mark chapter seven is not merely a dispute between Jesus and religious leaders. It is a revelation of how easily sacred things can be reduced to safe habits. The Pharisees were not inventing faith; they were preserving it. Their intentions, at least at the beginning of their tradition, were to honor God and guard holiness. But something subtle happened over time. The fence they built around the law became more important than the law itself. The method became more important than the mission. And when Jesus arrived, they recognized neither the voice of God nor the work of God because He did not move within their familiar lines.
This is one of the most sobering realities of spiritual life. We can become so accustomed to the form of God’s work that we fail to recognize the substance when it stands in front of us. The Pharisees knew the Scriptures. They taught the Scriptures. They built their lives around the Scriptures. Yet when the living Word spoke, they accused Him of being careless with tradition. They mistook obedience to custom for obedience to God. Jesus did not accuse them of lacking knowledge. He accused them of lacking closeness. “Their heart is far from me.” Distance, not disbelief, was the problem. They believed in God but did not dwell with Him.
Distance is rarely dramatic. It does not usually announce itself. It grows quietly inside routine. It develops when prayer becomes performance instead of presence. It settles in when Scripture becomes ammunition instead of nourishment. It takes root when worship becomes habit instead of hunger. None of these things look sinful from the outside. In fact, they often look admirable. But inside, the soul begins to starve while the schedule stays full. Mark seven shows us that Jesus sees that hunger even when it is hidden beneath layers of respectability.
When Jesus says that what goes into a person does not defile them but what comes out does, He is not abolishing the law. He is completing its purpose. The dietary laws and purity rituals were never meant to be ends in themselves. They were signs pointing toward a deeper truth: that God desires a people whose lives are shaped from the inside out. The old system taught Israel to distinguish between clean and unclean. Jesus reveals that the true line between clean and unclean runs through the heart. It is not about what touches the lips but about what directs the will. This is not a lowering of God’s standard. It is a raising of it. External rules can be obeyed while the heart resists. Internal transformation requires surrender.
This teaching forces us to consider the origin of our actions. Jesus lists what comes from within: evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. These are not random. They trace a movement from desire to deed. Thought becomes intention. Intention becomes action. Action becomes character. Sin is not merely a violation of rules. It is a distortion of love. We love the wrong things in the wrong way and in the wrong order. That is why cleansing must go deeper than behavior. It must reach affection.
The gospel does not say, “Control yourself better.” It says, “Be made new.” That difference is everything. Self-control can restrain the hand. Renewal reshapes the heart. Control can hide sin. Transformation heals it. This is why Jesus does not merely teach about defilement. He demonstrates deliverance. The stories that follow His teaching are not separate episodes. They are living answers to the question He has raised. If the heart is the source of uncleanness, then the Savior must be the source of restoration.
The Syrophenician woman’s story is one of the most revealing in this chapter because it shows faith without familiarity. She does not belong to the covenant community. She does not possess the Scriptures as Israel does. She has not been trained in the law. What she has is a desperate love for her child and a belief that Jesus can help. Her request crosses ethnic, religious, and cultural lines. She approaches a Jewish teacher as a Gentile woman, which already places her outside the expected order. When Jesus speaks of children and dogs, He is echoing the common Jewish understanding of Israel’s priority in God’s redemptive plan. But the woman hears something deeper. She hears that there is bread. And she believes that even crumbs of that bread carry power.
Her reply is not cleverness for its own sake. It is theological insight expressed in humility. She agrees with the structure but trusts the abundance. She does not deny Israel’s place. She simply believes that God’s mercy is not exhausted by one table. Her faith is not offended by order. It is emboldened by grace. This is the kind of faith Jesus honors. It is not loud. It is not entitled. It is persistent. It is rooted in who Jesus is rather than in who she is.
Her daughter is healed at a distance. There is no visible ritual. There is no physical touch. There is only a word. This matters because it shows that the power of Jesus is not bound by place or procedure. The demon leaves because Christ wills it. The woman returns home and finds the child lying on the bed, and the spirit gone. The scene is quiet. There is no crowd. There is no applause. But heaven has moved. A heart that trusted has met a Savior who responds.
Then comes the healing of the deaf man in Decapolis. This miracle is different in tone and texture. The Syrophenician woman’s story is about speech and faith. The deaf man’s story is about silence and touch. Jesus does not heal him in the middle of the crowd. He takes him aside privately. There is dignity in that act. The man is not made into a spectacle. He is treated as a person, not a problem. Jesus uses gestures the man can understand: fingers in ears, touch on the tongue. Communication is part of the healing. Before the man can hear words, he can feel presence.
Jesus looks up to heaven and sighs. This sigh is not weakness. It is compassion. It is the sound of divine grief meeting human brokenness. The word “Ephphatha” means “Be opened,” but it is more than a command to ears. It is a word spoken over a life that has been closed to sound and speech. When the man begins to speak plainly, it is not only a physical restoration. It is a social one. He can now participate in the world that once passed him by. He can hear and be heard. The miracle reopens relationship.
The people respond with wonder: “He hath done all things well.” This echoes the language of creation, when God saw that His work was good. Mark is showing us that Jesus is not merely correcting religious misunderstandings. He is re-creating what has been damaged. He is not only teaching about the heart. He is healing what the heart cannot fix by itself.
What unites these stories is the movement from inside to outside. Jesus teaches that defilement comes from within. Then He shows that restoration also comes from within, but from His own heart to ours. The Pharisees are concerned with what enters the mouth. Jesus is concerned with what enters the soul. The woman believes that even a crumb of His power is enough. The deaf man experiences that power as touch and word. In each case, the boundary between clean and unclean is redefined. It is no longer about food or hands. It is about faith and grace.
This chapter challenges us to examine what we mean when we say we want to be pure. Do we mean careful, or do we mean changed? Do we want to avoid contamination, or do we want to be transformed? Avoidance can be achieved by distance. Transformation requires encounter. The Pharisees avoided defilement by separation. Jesus overcame it by engagement. He did not stand far from brokenness. He stepped into it.
There is also a lesson here about how God views tradition. Jesus does not reject the past. He redeems it. He quotes Isaiah to show that the problem is not Scripture but selective obedience. “Ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.” The danger is not remembering what others have taught us. The danger is forgetting why God taught us in the first place. Tradition should serve truth. When it replaces truth, it becomes an obstacle. When it supports truth, it becomes a bridge.
The heart is the battleground in this chapter. It is where corruption begins and where redemption must work. That is why Jesus’ list of inner evils is so specific. He is not offering a theory. He is naming realities people recognize. Pride is not ceremonial. It is internal. Deceit is not dietary. It is intentional. Covetousness is not about contact. It is about craving. These things cannot be washed off. They must be confessed and healed. That healing is what Jesus brings.
We see this healing at work in the Gentile woman’s faith. She does not ask for status. She asks for mercy. Her heart posture is her prayer. We see it in the deaf man’s restoration. His body responds to Christ’s word, but his life is also opened. The chapter shows that the heart’s condition determines how we approach God and how we receive from Him. The Pharisees approach with accusation. The woman approaches with trust. The man approaches through the help of others. Jesus meets each differently, but He meets them all.
This tells us something essential about the nature of holiness. Holiness is not distance from the unclean. It is nearness to the healer. Holiness is not the absence of struggle. It is the presence of grace. Holiness is not the perfection of routine. It is the transformation of desire. When Jesus says that what comes out of a person defiles them, He is also implying that what comes from God cleanses them. The same heart that produces evil can be made new by divine love.
Mark seven invites us to ask whether our faith is primarily about guarding ourselves or about giving ourselves. The Pharisees guarded themselves through tradition. The woman gave herself through persistence. The man gave himself through obedience to Christ’s touch. The difference is not in effort but in direction. One looks inward in fear. The other looks upward in trust.
There is also a message here about how God works across boundaries. Jesus moves from Jewish territory to Gentile regions. He heals a Gentile child and a Gentile man. This is not accidental. It shows that the kingdom of God is not confined to cultural expectations. The question of clean and unclean is being answered not only theologically but geographically. God’s mercy crosses borders. The bread of heaven is not limited to one table. The crumbs fall for all who believe.
This does not erase Israel’s role in God’s plan. It fulfills it. The promise to Abraham was that through his seed all nations would be blessed. The Syrophenician woman’s story is one small fulfillment of that promise. The deaf man’s healing is another. The message is that the heart God seeks is not defined by lineage but by trust. Faith, not familiarity, becomes the doorway.
Mark seven also reveals something about how easily religious people can miss suffering. The Pharisees see unwashed hands. Jesus sees hungry hearts. They measure obedience. He measures need. This is not because they are cruel. It is because they are trained to look at the wrong thing. Training shapes perception. If we are trained to watch rules, we will miss people. If we are trained to love God, we will see His image in those who hurt.
Jesus’ response to the Pharisees is not merely corrective. It is protective. He is protecting the disciples from a system that would reduce their faith to performance. He is protecting the people from a religion that would judge them without healing them. He is protecting the meaning of God’s law by restoring its purpose: love God and love your neighbor. Everything else is commentary.
When the crowd says, “He hath done all things well,” they are not yet aware of how radical that statement is. They see miracles. They do not yet see the revolution of the heart. But Mark is leading us there. He is showing us that Jesus is not only powerful. He is purposeful. He does not heal randomly. He heals in ways that reveal God’s priorities. He opens ears so that people can hear truth. He loosens tongues so that praise can replace silence. He answers faith so that hope can replace fear.
The warning of Mark seven is that religion can become an excuse to avoid transformation. We can hide behind forms instead of facing faults. We can protect our identity instead of pursuing integrity. Jesus does not let us do that. He brings the conversation back to the one place we cannot hide: the heart.
And yet the chapter is not heavy with condemnation. It is rich with invitation. The woman is invited to persist. The man is invited to be opened. The disciples are invited to understand. Even the Pharisees are invited to see. Jesus speaks truth sharply, but He does so because He wants to heal deeply. He does not expose hypocrisy for sport. He exposes it so that life can begin.
This is why Mark seven matters for every generation. It tells us that God is not impressed by appearance. He is concerned with alignment. He does not ask whether we know the right words. He asks whether we desire the right things. He does not measure how clean our hands are. He measures how surrendered our hearts are.
If we read this chapter honestly, it will unsettle us before it comforts us. It will ask whether our faith is rooted in love or in habit. It will ask whether we are more concerned with being seen as righteous or being made righteous. It will ask whether we are willing to let God touch the places in us that do not respond to outward washing.
The Syrophenician woman teaches us that faith can grow outside familiar walls. The deaf man teaches us that healing often begins in quiet encounters. The Pharisees teach us that knowledge without humility can harden the soul. And Jesus teaches us that the heart is where heaven and earth meet.
In the end, Mark seven does not leave us with a new set of rules. It leaves us with a new way of seeing. We see that what defiles is not what we fear most. It is what we excuse most. And what cleanses is not what we perform most. It is what we trust most. Faith becomes the doorway through which God enters and changes what no ritual can reach.
Jesus does all things well because He does them from the inside out. He does not polish surfaces. He rebuilds foundations. He does not manage sin. He redeems sinners. He does not preserve tradition at the cost of truth. He fulfills truth in a way tradition never could.
Mark seven ends with astonishment. People marvel that the deaf hear and the mute speak. But beneath that wonder is a deeper miracle: hearts are being invited to awaken. The chapter calls us to that same awakening. It asks us not simply to watch Jesus but to let Him work. Not simply to admire His teaching but to submit to His healing. Not simply to clean what is visible but to open what is hidden.
This is the gospel’s quiet insistence. God does not want our routines without our repentance. He does not want our language without our loyalty. He does not want our traditions without our trust. He wants our hearts because He knows that when the heart is healed, the life will follow.
And so the question Mark seven leaves us with is not whether our hands are clean but whether our hearts are open. Not whether we know the rules but whether we know the Redeemer. Not whether we have kept tradition but whether we have received transformation. For in Christ, the deepest cleansing is not a matter of water. It is a matter of surrender.
And when that surrender comes, when the heart yields to grace, the words spoken over the deaf man become true for us as well. “Be opened.” Open to truth. Open to mercy. Open to the God who does all things well.
Your friend,
Douglas Vandergraph
Watch Douglas Vandergraph's inspiring faith-based videos on YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph
Support the ministry by buying Douglas a coffee
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/douglasvandergraph