Cleansing Through Christ (Mark 7:24-30)

What must be true about a person in order for them to enter into a relationship with God? While we would hopefully quickly say something to the effect that all that is needed is repentance and faith, often we act as if there is more. We act as though a person needs to get their life cleaned up in order for God to accept them. We act as though there are certain people that are too far gone so that God cannot accept them. We measure these people by our own standards and find them coming up short.

As we saw last week, the Pharisees fell into this category. They measured people not by the commands of Scripture, but by their own traditions. They stated that people needed to follow a set of rules in order to be acceptable to God. If the rules were not followed, then the individual was defiled. Jesus quickly and harshly confronted them about this heresy and demonstrated that the Word provides the way to cleansing. In today’s text, Mark uses the next incident in Christ’s life to demonstrate that this cleansing found in God’s Word comes only through Christ and that it is available to all who come in faith.