Sinks, Sandwiches, and the State of Your Soul

And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.”

Mark 7:14–15 (ESV)

I love ham. I wasn’t supposed to even touch it, much less eat it, much, much less love it. But I did. In the home I grew up in on Junaluska Dr. in Columbus, GA, ham, bacon, or shrimp never found its way into the kitchen. The kitchen was split right down the middle. Over here was the flatware and dinnerware for meat products, and over there was the flatware and dinnerware for milk products. Milk products couldn’t touch the meat table service, and the inverse was true of the milk table service. In fact, they could not even be washed in the dishwasher together. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I was raised in a kosher [1] home being taught that any violation would defile me.

How you ask, then, did I get my hands on the contraband pork? Well, I confess that I used to sneak next door to Mrs. Sparks’ house, and in stealth mode, she would make me a ham and cheese sandwich. “Shh, don’t tell your mom and dad,” she’d say.

So, inside the four walls of our home, we strictly followed the dietary laws. However, oddly enough, at restaurants, we ate barbecue pork, bacon, shellfish, and whatever we wanted. I guess Waffle House bacon must be undefiled. LOL. I didn’t consider the hypocrisy in all this until the Lord revealed it to me in 2000-2001. All I knew was that we kept kosher because that’s what we do. It was just another box that we checked in the long list of boxes to be checked.

Jesus’ words, again, turn the entire Jewish legal apparatus upside down. Effectively, He says external cleanliness—hand washing (Mark 7:1-5), keeping the dietary laws (Mark 7:15), and rigidly observing the Sabbath traditions (Mark 2:23-3:6), does not somehow impute us with an adequate amount of righteousness to satisfy God’s justness. In simple terms, Jesus makes it clear to His disciples and all within earshot that the issue is internal, not external . . . a matter of the heart, not the stomach.

Regardless of what the legalists (Jews or Gentiles) say, it has always been a matter of the heart. It has never been about external acts, no matter how “righteous” the acts are. It’s not as if God changed the rules mid-stream, like “Before the Cross, actions save, but post-Cross, it is about faith.” Poppycock! The yardstick was never “good works.” Never the law. Always internal. Always faith. The problem is that over the 1,500 years between Moses and Jesus, the religious leaders bastardized the spirit of the law for the traditions of men.

It began to hit home for me some weeks later when I read Paul’s words in Galatians 5:22–23 (ESV)

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Did I read this right? Didn’t Paul mean to write “the WORKS of the Spirit” in Verse 22 above? Umm . . . Nah! In the first three chapters of Galatians, Paul mentions “the works of the law” six times. Whenever he uses the phrase, he emphasizes that we are not made acceptable by “the works of the law.” When a mind is renewed, and a heart is genuinely changed by the blood of Christ, there is fruit (singular), one cohesive package that beautifully flows from within the born-again believer . . . love, joy, peace, patience, etc. The things that come out of you, such as your attitudes, your intentions, and your behaviors, expose the world around you to the actual condition of your heart.

The call to focus on the internal rather than the external lines up perfectly with the message of the entirety of God’s Word. He’s looking for a repentant heart that turns away from sin and turns towards Him. Allow Him to clean and transform you from the inside out. The result will be improved relationships with those around you and a renewed relationship with your heavenly Father.

My Jesus, thank You for shedding Your precious blood on the Cross to clean me up from the inside out. To present me to the Father wrapped in Your righteousness. Thank You that my salvation is not dependent on me checking the boxes of external dos and don’ts. That it’s about You providing Your righteousness on my behalf. I love You Lord. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

[1] Kosher is the term that is used to denote Jewish dietary laws worked out by rabbinical interpretation of the food restrictions implied by the ordinances in the Torah. The Bible forbids eating any four-footed, cloven-hooved animal that does not chew the cud, fish that do not have fins and scales and all birds of prey and members of the crow family. Insects, reptiles and shellfish are also forbidden, along with any animal that has not been killed according to the Jewish rules, etc. (1)

1. Ron Geaves, “Kashrut,” in Continuum Glossary of Religious Terms (London; New York: Continuum, 2002), 194.