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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - Matthew 15:15 - 15:20
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Jesus explains the parable:
v. 15. Then answered Peter and said unto Him, Declare unto us this parable.
v. 16. And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding?
v. 17. Do not ye yet understand that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught?
v. 18. But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth, from the heart, and they defile the man.
v. 19. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.
v. 20. These are the things which defile a man; but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.
Peter, in his impulsive way, although he might have acted as spokesman for the Twelve, wants the saying explained, which has enough of the symbolical in it to cause some difficulty. But the occasion itself furnished a clue, and Peter's plea for a clearing up of the dark saying is reproved by the Lord: Can it be that even ye are yet so dense in spiritual matters? after two years of instruction? He wants His disciples to use their enlightened intellect properly, and not make a mystery of a plain matter. It is a matter of common knowledge that the food which the body uses influences only the physical and mental life directly, and does not concern the heart and spirit. By the throwing out of the useless, the indigestible and undigested matter, the body is continually purged. This physical process does not defile a person, just as this result will not follow his eating with unwashed hands. But the opposite is true of the things, words, and deeds, which, coming out of the heart, pass from the body by way of the mouth. "The Savior implies that evil works first pass through the channel of an evil mouth, thus disclosing the evil state of the heart. " The words representing the thoughts and desires directed toward such sins, they are morally defiling, they reveal the pollution existing in the heart. The evil thoughts, the evil conversations and discussions of the heart, are made manifest in all kinds of actual sins, envyings, and murders, the breaking of the marriage tie and the unauthorized assuming of relations permissible within holy wedlock only, the acquiring of the neighbor's property by wrong means, the defaming of the neighbor's good name, the speaking evil of God and man,—those are the things which cause defilement and are stains on heart and character, not the omission of a mere ceremonial custom. "He that wishes to wash his hands, let him wash them; he that does not want to wash his hands, let him desist therefrom: those matters have nothing to do with righteousness and with sin; I do not want sin or righteousness to consist in them. Therefore you must separate righteousness and sin from such precepts of men. I do not object to any one's washing himself; but I do object to it that someone for that reason should consider himself just and holy before God."