The Gospel vs. Religion / Mark 7:1-37

The Greatest Confrontation

If you have your Bible with you, turn to Mark chapter seven. That is where we are going to be this week. If you are a guest with us, my name is Shay Simlin, and I am one of the teaching pastors here. If you have been with us in this series, man, we have covered quite a bit of ground in just a few weeks. We are six chapters into a view of the earthly life and ministry of Jesus Christ according to the lens of Mark’s account in his Gospel.

Throughout this series, we have seen Jesus confront a number of scenarios so far. He has faced a number of enemies and a number of impossible circumstances. Starting in chapter one, right out of the gate at Jesus’ baptism, he immediately confronts Satan in the wilderness for forty days and faces those intense temptations. Not only Satan, but Satan’s demons. Then he confronts disease and displays his absolute authority over sickness. In chapter three, he confronts his own family. Sometimes we might rather take disease over family, but nonetheless, he confronts them as well. Last week in chapter six, we saw Jesus address the need to feed five thousand individuals, not just physically but spiritually, and then turn right around, walk straight into a raging storm, and calm it by his sovereign power.

We have seen all these scenarios that Jesus has confronted, but the greatest confrontation Jesus is going to have thus far is right here in Mark chapter seven. Jesus is going to confront religion. It is going to be an ugly thing that Jesus stares right at.

When we think about religion in general, most of us think of a system or structures of faith that appeal to a higher deity. There are multiple religions out there that all appeal to their various gods and so-called gods. But when you study through the lens of the gospel and a biblical perspective, what real religion actually is is any effort by a human being to try and justify themselves or sanctify themselves before a holy God through their own human effort or external means at the expense of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is vehemently opposed to that idea of religion because it cuts the very legs out from why he came in the first place—to be our sole means of salvation and sanctification, not just an addition to all the other efforts that man tries to produce. Right here in Mark chapter seven, Jesus is going to confront religion. In doing so, he shows us the brokenness and futility of religious efforts to earn the merit of God and make oneself clean through behavior. Instead, he shows us that our greatest enemy is not external; it is within our own human hearts. Jesus hits that head-on.

The Tradition of the Elders

Notice the context we are dealing with right out of the gate in Mark chapter seven.

Mark 7:1-5 (NASB)

The Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered around Him when they had come from Jerusalem, and had seen that some of His disciples were eating their bread with impure hands, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, [thus] observing the traditions of the elders; and [when they come] from the market place, they do not eat unless they cleanse themselves; and there are many other things which they have received in order to observe, such as the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots.) The Pharisees and the scribes asked Him, ‘Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with impure hands?’

Something you need to know right off the bat: this idea of unwashed hands has nothing to do with hygiene. Jesus is not being anti-Purell here. This is not a parent saying, “Hey kids, go wash up before dinner.” It has nothing to do with that. In verses three and four, Mark inserts an editorial comment that gives us the background of what is actually happening.

He explains that the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, observing the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they cleanse themselves, along with many other traditions they have received, such as the washing of cups, pitchers, and copper pots.

This has everything to do with ritual and ceremonial cleansing. In the Old Testament Torah, the law of God handed down to Moses and the nation of Israel, God commanded the priests—who were the mediators between God and man—to wash their hands before engaging in ritual ceremonies. Throughout the Old Testament, sin is symbolized by dirt and death, as the penalty of sin is death. Washing off dirt was symbolic of being cleansed in the presence of a holy God. If a priest touched a dead body or an unclean animal, he had to be cleansed before approaching God, because God is holy and not like anyone or anything else.

That command was given specifically to the priests. But by the time we reach the first century, centuries of oral tradition had passed, and hundreds of man-made commands had sprung up around the law. Mark tells us this washing was just one example of many man-made rules created around the Word of God.

Understand, we are not talking about God’s law here; we are talking about human rules. Six times in this passage, Jesus rebukes the traditions of men. In verse three, it is the tradition of the elders. In verse five, the tradition of the elders. In verse seven, the precepts of men. In verse eight, the tradition of men. In verse nine, your tradition. In verse thirteen, your tradition. Six times Jesus rebukes this mindset. The term for this is legalism.

Legalism takes a biblical principle that pointed us toward a higher purpose, shelves it aside to create man-made rules with a lesser focus, and makes those rules binding on all people in a way God never commanded. That is legalism at its finest.

How Legalism Takes Root

Before we blast the Pharisees—because Jesus is about to do so—we have to ask ourselves: How did they get there? How does a functional legalist end up in a place where God commands one thing for one group of people, and suddenly there are hundreds of man-made rules telling everyone they cannot be accepted by God unless they abide by them?

We need to ask this because this tendency belongs to every single one of us. We all do it; we just may not be aware of it. Most functional legalists do not wake up in the morning thinking, “How can I really tick God off today? How can I twist his explicit commands, add a hundred extra burdens, and make everyone miserable so God is offended?” Nobody thinks like that.

Most legalism begins with a sincere motivation to honor God, which gradually drifts into a dangerous place. In this situation, the Pharisees probably thought, “God commanded the priests to wash their hands so they would be clean before him. Well, I want to be clean before him too, so I should wash my hands. And honestly, my feet are dirtier than my hands, so I better wash those too. In fact, maybe I should take a bath every ten minutes all day just to be safe. And I was in the kitchen touching pots and pans, so I better wash those too.” Then it shifts: “If that is what I need to do to be accepted by God, then you need to do it too. And if you don’t, God won’t accept you.”

Suddenly, fear sets in. Fear is a powerful motivator, but it is an unhealthy one. People get on a performance treadmill, and legalism takes over.

We do the exact same thing in church today. People come in on Sunday and say, “We are in the house of God right now to worship him, so we must approach him with reverence and awe.” That is a good biblical principle, but we start filtering it through our own preferences. We think, “I should dress up. I should put on a nice pair of slacks, and maybe if they are pleated, I will get extra credit with God. In my parents’ church, we never wore hats because that was disrespectful.” We appeal to tradition.

Then we say, “This is God’s house, so we better not bring any drinks in here because we might spill on his carpet, and that would offend God. How could they allow Starbucks in the sanctuary?” We become obsessive with rules and begin imposing them on everyone else.

Scripture identifies two massive problems with that mindset. First, you lay the foundation for dualism—parsing life into the secular and the sacred. You decide the church building is the sacred space where you must perform your best, never mind that you mistreat your spouse at home, cheat in your business, or neglect biblical morality during the week. In this building, you perform.

Second, trace the origin of that thought: where did we get the idea that a physical building is God’s house? When Jesus died on the cross, the veil tore in half. God is not contained in a box. He dwells through his Holy Spirit inside his people. What started as a sincere desire to honor God ends up drifting into territory God never intended.

Over time, man-made rules grow like weeds, choking out the Scriptures and eventually contradicting them. God did not give the Ten Commandments so we would look at them and say, “I can do that! In fact, I’ll double down and make it twenty or fifty rules to enhance what God wrote.” That was never the point of the law.

The Poison of Bibliology and Self-Righteousness

I grew up in the great state of Texas. After the Lord saved me in high school, I struggled to find a church where I was truly discipled. When I went to college, I finally landed at an incredible Bible-teaching church. It was the first time I had ever heard the Scriptures exposited verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book. The Word of God came alive to me. I could not get enough of it. The lights were turning on, and it was a transformative season of my life that I am deeply thankful for.

Yet something unhealthy began stirring in my heart. I was falling more in love with the Word of God than with the God of the Word. I entered into what I call bibliology—idolizing the text itself, cherry-picking verses focused solely on external behavior rather than reading the Bible as the grand narrative of God’s grace and redemption.

I found myself on a performance track, believing I had to perform morally for God to truly love me. I knew Jesus died for me, but I assumed he could not be pleased with me unless I performed. I developed deep misunderstandings about the grace and mercy of God.

I became hyper-focused on behavior—not just my own, but everyone else’s. I would rail against things: “No godly person ever drinks alcohol!” I would grab issue after issue and rail against people, demanding they meet my standard of righteousness. Truth be told, I wanted their standard to be lower than mine so I could feel better about myself.

The dangerous problem was that I looked at people without compassion for their struggles. I viewed everything through a punitive lens rather than a restorative one. If you did not perform, I believed you simply needed to shape up. I failed to point people to the hope and sufficiency of the grace of Jesus Christ that transforms from the inside out.

Legalism took root, convincing me that I was earning God’s favor while others were not. There is a well-known story about how Eskimos historically hunted wolves. They would take a sharp knife, dip the blade in blood, and leave it in the snow to freeze. They would dip it again, let it freeze, and repeat the process until the blade was coated in a thick layer of frozen blood. At night, they would bury the handle in the ground with the frozen blade sticking straight up.

A wolf would smell the blood, come over, and begin licking it. As the blood melted, the wolf’s craving grew insatiable. It would lap faster and faster until the blade sliced its tongue. The wolf would continue licking, completely unaware that it was drinking its own blood until it bled to death.

That is precisely what legalism does. It is what self-righteous religious effort does to your soul. You think you are feeding your spiritual life, but you are drinking your own death. Jesus came to set us free from that trap.

Lip Service and Loopholes

This is why Jesus speaks with such severe urgency to the Pharisees. They completely missed what actually defiles a person, and in doing so, they missed the only solution that could make them clean.

Mark 7:6-8 (NASB)

And He said to them, ’Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: ’THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME. ‘BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN.’ ‘Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.’

Did you catch that? They took man-made traditions and elevated them to the level of divine doctrine. In verse eight, Jesus sums it up: you neglect the commandment of God to hold onto the tradition of men.

That is a terrifying reality. Jesus and Isaiah testify that it is possible to stand in a room, sing the songs, honor God with our lips, and yet have hearts that are far from him. Jesus had a word for that: hypocrisy. It means painting an external picture of being alive to God while carrying the stench of spiritual death inside. That is why Jesus called the religious leaders whitewashed tombs in Matthew 23—pristine on the outside, but full of dead bones within.

Matthew 23:27 (NASB)

’Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.

Jesus provides an explicit example of how their traditions undermined God’s law.

Mark 7:9-13 (NASB)

He was also saying to them, ’You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. ’For Moses said, ‘HONOR YOUR FATHER AND YOUR MOTHER’; and, ‘HE WHO SPEAKS EVIL OF FATHER OR MOTHER, IS TO BE PUT TO DEATH’; but you say, ‘If a man says to [his] father or [his] mother, whatever I have that would help you is Corban (that is to say, given [to God]),’ you no longer permit him to do anything for [his] father or [his] mother; [thus] invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that.’

Scripture teaches that there is no authority higher than God’s Word. For a follower of Jesus Christ, God’s Word stands above the opinions of parents, professors, culture, and media. The religious leaders knew the Fifth Commandment commanded them to honor their father and mother. Yet they created a loophole.

If an aging parent fell on hard times and needed financial support, a person could declare their property or wealth as “Corban”—a gift dedicated to God. By applying that human label, they claimed their resources were consecrated to the temple and could not be used to care for their parents. They said, “I would love to help you, Mom and Dad, but my resources belong to God. Sorry.” They used a man-made religious tradition to nullify the clear commandment of God.

The Source of Defilement

In verse fourteen, Jesus drops a theological bomb that dismantles human religion, secular psychology, and moralistic self-help.

Mark 7:14-16 (NASB)

After He called the crowd to Him again, He [began] saying to them, ’Listen to Me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man. [‘If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.]’

Jesus actually agrees with the Pharisees on one point: human beings are defiled. Where he fundamentally disagrees is how we became defiled and how we are made clean. You are not at odds with God because your hands are unwashed; you are at odds with God because your heart is unclean.

Jesus explains this using the example of food.

Mark 7:18-19 (NASB)

And He said to them, ‘Are you so lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?’ ([Thus He] declared all foods clean.)

Under the Old Covenant, certain foods like pork or shellfish were designated as ceremonial symbols of uncleanliness to teach Israel about holiness. But the food itself was never the ultimate issue. Jesus points out the biological reality: when you eat food, it enters your mouth, travels through your digestive system, and passes out of the body. Of all the organs that food passes through, what is the one organ it never touches? Your heart.

External things do not cause your spiritual defilement. Sinful actions are symptoms of a deeper disease.

Mark 7:20-23 (NASB)

And He was saying, ’That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. ’For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting [and] wickedness, [as well] [as] deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride [and] foolishness. ‘All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.’

Actions do not dictate the heart; the heart dictates our actions. Brokenness is not just what we do; brokenness is who we are.

The Pharisees operated on the assumption that sin is strictly external, meaning you can solve the problem by simply modifying your behavior. That is the same assumption driving much of our culture today: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. It assumes people are basically good, and if we just adopt better techniques, avoid certain environments, or adjust our habits, God will be pleased and we will be happy.

Jesus shatters that premise. You cannot fix the human condition through mere behavioral modification. Our problem is not just that we mess up from time to time; our problem is that our hearts are corrupt.

We often convince ourselves that our problems are purely circumstantial. In premarital counseling, I regularly talk with couples who love Jesus but are struggling with sexual boundaries. Often their reaction is, “If we just hurry up and get married, this problem will disappear.” Marriage rightly provides the covenant context for sex, but the underlying issue was never merely physical. The root issue is an idolatrous heart that desires its own way above God’s will. If that heart issue is not surrendered to Christ, that same idolatry simply migrates into finances, parenting, or communication after marriage.

Our foundational problem is not a sex problem, a pornography problem, an alcohol problem, or a temper problem. It is a heart problem. Romans 8 tells us that we must put to death the deeds of the flesh by the Spirit, but that mortification of sin is the fruit of a transformed heart, not the means to earn one.

The Gospel Solution

In Mark 7, Jesus diagnoses our desperate condition, and then he moves forward in his ministry without laying out a four-step moral improvement plan. Why? Because the solution to a dead heart is not self-help. The solution is the cross of Jesus Christ, which Mark points us toward in chapter fifteen.

At the cross, two transformative realities take place. First, Jesus Christ serves as our substitute. He absorbed the wrath of God and the penalty of death that our sin deserved. When you turn from relying on your own self-righteousness and trust solely in the finished work of Jesus, his shed blood cleanses you completely. Your sins are washed white as snow, removed as far as the east is from the west.

Second, the moment you place your faith in Christ, God places his Holy Spirit inside you. He does not merely patch up your old nature; he regenerates your soul. He gives you a brand-new heart that loves God and desires to obey him. Through the indwelling Spirit—the same power that raised Jesus from the dead—you are given the power to walk in obedience and put to death the deeds of the flesh.

Romans 8:11-13 (NASB)

But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh– for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

You pursue holiness not to become clean, but because Jesus Christ has already made you clean. That is the distinction between the gospel and religion.

This has always been God’s desire. When King David fell into adultery with Bathsheba and orchestrated the murder of her husband, he tried to hide his guilt. God sent the prophet Nathan to confront him, exposing his sin. Broken and contrite, David penned Psalm 51. He recognized that external rituals could never wash away his guilt.

Psalms 51:16-17 (NASB)

For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

David knew God was not seeking empty ritual; he wanted a broken and contrite heart. God graciously cleansed him, leading David to declare the joy of forgiveness in Psalm 32.

Psalms 32:1-2 (NASB)

[A Psalm] of David. A Maskil. How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no deceit!

A Call to Surrender

You cannot cleanse your own heart. You cannot scrub away your guilt through religious effort, moral resolutions, or external traditions. You must bring your heart to Jesus Christ and let him make you whole.

If you have never placed your faith in Jesus, stop running on the treadmill of religion. Surrender your life to him today. Trust his sacrifice on the cross to forgive your sin and give you a new heart.

For those of us who are followers of Christ, if you are carrying hidden sin or running in shame, do not retreat into self-righteousness or condemnation. Bring your heart into the light of his grace.

As we close, let us make the prayer of Psalm 139 our own:

Psalms 139:23-24 (NASB)

Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.

Let us pray.

Father, we confess that our hearts are naturally prone to wander and that our own efforts can never make us clean. Forgive us for the times we have traded your gospel for man-made religion, relying on our own performance rather than the finished work of your Son. Search our hearts today. Expose any hidden sin, tear down our self-righteousness, and grant us the humility of broken and contrite hearts. We thank you that through the blood of Jesus, we are forgiven, cleansed, and made new. Teach us to walk in the freedom and power of your Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.