M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

God’s law and human tradition

7 The Pharisees gathered round Jesus, together with some legal experts from Jerusalem. ² They saw that some of his disciples were eating their food with unclean (that is, unwashed) hands.

³ (The Pharisees, you see—and indeed all the Jews—don’t eat unless they first carefully wash their hands. This is to maintain the tradition of the elders. ⁴ When they come in from the market, they never eat without washing. There are many other traditions which they observe: washings of cups, pots and bronze dishes.)

⁵ Anyway, the Pharisees and legal experts asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples follow the tradition of the elders? Why do they eat their food with unwashed hands?”

⁶ “Isaiah summed you up just right,” Jesus replied. “What hypocrites you are! What he said was this:

⁸ “You abandon God’s commands, and keep human tradition!

⁹ “So,” he went on, “you have a fine way of setting aside God’s command so as to maintain your tradition. ¹⁰ Here’s an example: Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who slanders father or mother should die.’ ¹¹ But you say, ‘If someone says to their father or mother, “What you might get from me—it’s Korban!” ’ (which means, ‘given-to-God’), ¹² you don’t let them do anything else for their father or mother! ¹³ The net result is that you invalidate God’s word through this tradition which you hand on. And there are lots more things like that which you do.”

Clean and unclean

¹⁴ Jesus summoned the crowd again.

“Listen to me, all of you,” he said, “and get this straight. ¹⁵ What goes into you from outside can’t make you unclean. What makes you unclean is what comes out from inside.”

¹⁷ When they got back into the house, away from the crowd, his disciples asked him about the parable.

¹⁸ “You didn’t get it either?” he asked. “Don’t you see that whatever goes into someone from outside can’t make them unclean? ¹⁹ It doesn’t go into the heart; it only goes into the stomach, and then carries on, out down the drain.” (Result: all foods are clean.)

²⁰ “What makes someone unclean,” he went on, “is what comes out of them. ²¹ Evil intentions come from inside, out of people’s hearts—sexual immorality, theft, murder, ²² adultery, greed, wickedness, treachery, debauchery, envy, slander, pride, stupidity. ²³ These evil things all come from inside. They are what make someone unclean.”

The Syrophoenician woman

²⁴ Jesus got up, left that place, and went to the region of Tyre. When he went into a house, he didn’t want anyone to know, but it wasn’t possible for him to remain hidden. ²⁵ On the contrary: news of him at once reached a woman who had a young daughter with an unclean spirit. She came and threw herself down at his feet. ²⁶ She was Greek, a Syrophoenician by race; and she asked him to cast the demon out of her daughter.

²⁷ “First let the children eat what they want,” Jesus replied. “It’s not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

²⁸ “Well, Master,” she said, “even the dogs under the table eat the crumbs that the children drop.”

²⁹ “Well said!” replied Jesus. “Off you go; the demon has left your daughter.”

³⁰ So she went home, and found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

A deaf and mute man is healed

³¹ Jesus went away from the region of Tyre, through Sidon, round towards the sea of Galilee, and into the region of the Ten Towns. ³² They brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and asked that he would lay his hand on him.

³³ Jesus took the man off in private, away from the crowd. He put his fingers into his ears, spat, and touched his tongue. ³⁴ Then he looked up to heaven, groaned, and said to him, “Ephphatha” (that is, “Be opened”). ³⁵ Immediately the man’s ears were opened, and his tongue was untied, and he spoke clearly.

³⁶ Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone. But the more he ordered them, the more they spread the news. ³⁷ They were totally astonished.

“Everything he does is marvelous!” they said. “He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak!”

Dying to the law

7 Surely you know, my dear family—I am, after all, talking to people who know the law!—that the law rules a person as long as that person is alive? ² The law binds a married woman to her husband during his lifetime; but if he dies, she is free from the law as regards her husband. ³ So, then, she will be called an adulteress if she goes with another man while her husband is alive; but if the husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress if she goes with another man.

⁴ In the same way, my dear family, you too died to the law through the body of the Messiah, so that you could belong to someone else—to the one who was raised from the dead, in fact—so that we could bear fruit for God. ⁵ For when we were living a mortal human life, the passions of sins which were through the law were at work in our limbs and organs, causing us to bear fruit for death. ⁶ But now we have been cut loose from the law; we have died to the thing in which we were held tightly. The aim is that we should now be enslaved in the new life of the spirit, not in the old life of the letter.

When the law arrived: Sinai looks back to the fall

⁷ What then shall we say? That the law is sin? Certainly not! But I would not have known sin except through the law. I would not have known covetousness if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” ⁸ But sin grabbed its opportunity through the commandment, and produced all kinds of covetousness within me.

Apart from the law, sin is dead. ⁹ I was once alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life ¹⁰ and I died. The commandment which pointed to life turned out, in my case, to bring death. ¹¹ For sin grabbed its opportunity through the commandment. It deceived me, and, through it, killed me.

¹² So, then, the law is holy; and the commandment is holy, upright and good.

Looking back on life under the law

¹³ Was it that good thing, then, that brought death to me? Certainly not! On the contrary; it was sin, in order that it might appear as sin, working through the good thing and producing death in me. This was in order that sin might become very sinful indeed, through the commandment.

¹⁴ We know, you see, that the law is spiritual. I, however, am made of flesh, sold as a slave under sin’s authority. ¹⁵ I don’t understand what I do. I don’t do what I want, you see, but I do what I hate. ¹⁶ So if I do what I don’t want to do, I am agreeing that the law is good.

¹⁷ But now it is no longer I that do it; it’s sin, living within me. ¹⁸ I know, you see, that no good thing lives in me, that is, in my human flesh. For I can will the good, but I can’t perform it. ¹⁹ For I don’t do the good thing I want to do, but I end up doing the evil thing I don’t want to do. ²⁰ So if I do what I don’t want to do, it’s no longer “I” doing it; it’s sin, living inside me.

The double “law” and the miserable “I”

²¹ This, then, is what I find about the law: when I want to do what is right, evil lies close at hand! ²² I delight in God’s law, you see, according to my inmost self; ²³ but I see another “law” in my limbs and organs, fighting a battle against the law of my mind, and taking me off into captivity in the law of sin which is in my limbs and organs.

²⁴ What a miserable person I am! Who is going to rescue me from the body of this death? ²⁵ Thank God—through Jesus our Messiah and Lord! So then, left to my own self I am enslaved to God’s law with my mind, but to sin’s law with my human flesh.