Rules from the elders

15 Then Pharisees and legal experts came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, ² “Why are your disciples breaking the elders’ rules handed down to us? They don’t ritually purify their hands by washing before they eat.”

³ Jesus replied, “Why do you break the command of God by keeping the rules handed down to you? ⁴ For God said, Honor your father and your mother,^[a] and The person who speaks against father or mother will certainly be put to death.^{[b] 5} But you say, ‘If you tell your father or mother, “Everything I’m expected to contribute to you I’m giving to God as a gift,”then you don’t have to honor your father.’ ⁶ So you do away with God’s Law for the sake of the rules that have been handed down to you. ⁷ Hypocrites! Isaiah really knew what he was talking about when he prophesied about you, ⁸ This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far away from me. ⁹ Their worship of me is empty since they teach instructions that are human rules.”^[c]

¹⁰ Jesus called the crowd near and said to them, “Listen and understand. ¹¹ It’s not what goes into the mouth that contaminates a person in God’s sight. It’s what comes out of the mouth that contaminates the person.”

¹² Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended by what you just said?”

¹³ Jesus replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father didn’t plant will be pulled up. ¹⁴ Leave the Pharisees alone. They are blind people who are guides to blind people. But if a blind person leads another blind person, they will both fall into a ditch.”

¹⁵ Then Peter spoke up, “Explain this riddle to us.”

¹⁶ Jesus said, “Don’t you understand yet? ¹⁷ Don’t you know that everything that goes into the mouth enters the stomach and goes out into the sewer? ¹⁸ But what goes out of the mouth comes from the heart. And that’s what contaminates a person in God’s sight. ¹⁹ Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adultery, sexual sins, thefts, false testimonies, and insults. ²⁰ These contaminate a person in God’s sight. But eating without washing hands doesn’t contaminate in God’s sight.”

Welcoming and doing the word

¹⁹ Know this, my dear brothers and sisters: everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to grow angry. ²⁰ This is because an angry person doesn’t produce God’s righteousness. ²¹ Therefore, with humility, set aside all moral filth and the growth of wickedness, and welcome the word planted deep inside you—the very word that is able to save you.

²² You must be doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves. ²³ Those who hear but don’t do the word are like those who look at their faces in a mirror. ²⁴ They look at themselves, walk away, and immediately forget what they were like. ²⁵ But there are those who study the perfect law, the law of freedom, and continue to do it. They don’t listen and then forget, but they put it into practice in their lives. They will be blessed in whatever they do.

²⁶ If those who claim devotion to God don’t control what they say, they mislead themselves. Their devotion is worthless. ²⁷ True devotion, the kind that is pure and faultless before God the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their difficulties and to keep the world from contaminating us.