New Testament in a Year

Commandments and Traditions

15 Then the Pharisees and experts in the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, ² “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They do not wash their hands when they eat bread.”

³ He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? ⁴ For example, God said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’^[a] and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of his father or mother should be put to death.’^{[b] 5} But you say that if someone tells his father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might have received from me has been dedicated as a gift to God,’^{[c] 6} that man does not need to honor his father or his mother.^[d] And so you set aside the word of God for the sake of your tradition. ⁷ Hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:

¹⁰ Then he summoned the crowd and said to them, “Listen and understand. ¹¹ What goes into the mouth does not make a person unclean, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person.”

¹² Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard this saying?”

¹³ He answered, “Every plant which my heavenly Father did not plant will be uprooted. ¹⁴ Let them go. They are blind guides of the blind.^[f] And if the blind are guiding the blind, both will fall into a pit.”

¹⁵ Peter replied and said to him, “Explain the parable to us.”

¹⁶ Jesus said, “Do you still not understand? ¹⁷ Do you not understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated into the latrine? ¹⁸ But whatever comes out of the mouth comes from the heart. That is what defiles a person. ¹⁹ To be sure, out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual sins, thefts, false testimonies, and blasphemies. ²⁰ These are the things that defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a person.”