The Scribes from Jerusalem Return To Learn Some Home Truths (7:1-16).
Jesus' continued impact is now brought out by the reappearance of the Doctors of Law from Jerusalem who have come down to investigate Him again. It may well be that they had heard of the new widespread preaching activity. They recognised that this was becoming something serious. This incident brings out vital differences between Jesus' approach and the approach of ‘the Scribes'. They were concerned with ritual detail, and much of that ritual detail was with respect to non-Scriptural ritual based on men's promulgations. Jesus was more concerned with men's inner hearts. In the end it was all a question of where the emphasis should be laid.
And it was a burning issue, both for the people who lived in Galilee in the time of Jesus, who were mainly looked down on by the Pharisees but in their hearts were desirous of knowing God, and by the church of Mark's own day which was constantly under harassment by Judaisers who claimed that their way was the way of Jesus.
We must not be unfair to these Doctors of the Law. By their own light and in their own way they were desirous of serving God, and they were seeking to be obedient to the covenant made through Moses. But Jesus' point was that they were putting the emphasis in the wrong place, and thereby in danger of missing the main point of the Law. They believed indeed that God had chosen them to be His example to the world, and the best of them strove to be just that. But they had become so hidebound in their attempts to interpret it, that they had become slaves to the ritual which they themselves had set up in such a way that other more important things became overlooked. For being sure that eternal life could be received by faithfulness to the covenant as the Old Testament had said, they gave their whole lives to its fulfilment. But then in seeking to understand it they laid their emphasis on the ritual rather than the moral, something which has always been attractive because it gives a sense of security, however false, while not making huge moral demands. So they built up ritual rules to enable its fulfilment, in order to provide a clear way of doing so. But this had sadly led them away from the heart of their religion as found in true worship and compassion and mercy, and it had resulted in the building up of a religious system which, although they had convinced themselves it would help to ensure their fulfilment of the covenant, sadly prevented their true fulfilment of it, because it made them concentrate on inessentials. And one of those inessentials was to do with ritual washing. Ritual had become overwhelmingly important. They could look with equanimity on a man's greed and pride, but not on his failure to ‘wash his hands'.
Thus this incident was centrally important because it was a challenge to how the Kingly Rule of God was to be seen, what lines it was to follow and what should be considered as central to its message. Having begun the establishment of the Kingly Rule of God a crisis point had been reached. The question was, on what basis were the rules of the new kingdom to be determined? (The writer knew that this was a challenge for the church as well. They too needed to be certain about the basis of their behaviour). Was it to be based on Pharisaic rules, or was it to be based on Old Testament principles and Jesus' reinterpretation of them in, for example, the sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7)?
We must not misinterpret this confrontation. There were many points of agreement between them. Jesus was not arguing about the maintenance of rules of cleanness and uncleanness as found in the books of Moses. He was not trying to establish that the laws of uncleanness no longer applied. Indeed He scrupulously observed these requirements Himself. What He was seeking to look at was the fundamental question of what really made men defiled in the light of the particular demands made by these Legalisers, and to establish the fact that men's ways under the Kingly Rule of God could not be determined by the rules that the Pharisaic teachers had made. It was the whole basis of living under the Kingly Rule of God that was at stake, and on what men should set their hearts. The old was passing away and the new had come.
But because Mark was writing to Gentiles he had first of all to try to demonstrate to them what the problem was, for many of them had little knowledge of the regulations that covered Jews.
The placing of this passage here after the success described in the previous passages can be compared with the placing of Mark 6:1-6 after the successes of chapter 5. It was a coming down to earth. It was always necessary to remind those who read or heard these words that the way was not totally smooth, for after all it led to the cross. It is also an important passage in that it explains in some depth precisely why Jesus disagreed with the Scribes and Pharisees.
But this passage is also preparatory for what is to come, for from this time onwards Jesus' ministry will reach out into Gentile territory. Many a Jew would have frowned at the thought of a Jewish prophet wandering among the Gentiles (in spite of the example of Jonah) and would have been concerned about the fact that He would become ‘unclean'. Thus Mark makes clear from the start that far from that being so, it really marks a new beginning in understanding. He is indicating here that for Jesus what really mattered was not outward conformity to religious requirements, but the transformation of the inner hearts of men. And that was why He could move freely among the Gentiles, and was His purpose for them. He was not going among them in order to turn them into Jews, but in order to transform their inner lives.
The passage slits into two sections, the first dealing with the question of tradition (Mark 7:1-8), the second with the way in which the Scribes sometimes misused the Law (Mark 7:9-13).