Mark 7:6 · Subject · Holiness and Purity
Holiness and Legalism
Mark 7, Matthew 23, Galatians, Colossians, Romans and Titus judge rules people add to God's command and the use of grace as a license to sin.
Jesus told His disciples, "unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:20).
Jesus answered them, “Isaiah prophesied correctly about you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.
- Books
- Mark, Matthew, Galatians, Romans
- Hold in memory
- Mark 7:15, Galatians 5:13
Summary
Holiness can be missed in two directions. The New Testament answers both from one ground, a heart God has cleansed and a life of love that follows. It judges a rule by who gave it, by what it is set above and by the ground on which it is offered. It never condemns obedience itself.
- The word legalism stands in no verse of the Berean Standard Bible, which has the word holiness in 35 verses.
- Martin Luther gave the name antinomian to the teaching of Johann Agricola, and in 1720 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland laid the same charge against The Marrow of Modern Divinity.
- Scholars still debate whether the Pharisees taught that a person earns standing with God, a question E. P. Sanders opened afresh in 1977.
Two Ways to Miss Holiness
The two errors are known as legalism and antinomianism.
Holiness and Legalism belongs to the value of holiness, because every believer who pursues holiness has to know which rules God has given and what freedom grace brings. The question presses on anyone who keeps rules of conduct, joins a congregation with its customs, or hears grace preached.
The question the study answers is where Jesus and the apostles draw the line on each side. It gives ten texts in a table, the history of the two words and two quarrels of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. It also gives five questions to put to a rule and two readings of the Pharisees with their holders.
Ten Texts on Both Sides
Jesus, Paul, Jude and the writer to the Hebrews each answer one of the two errors.
Five texts answer rules taken for holiness, and five answer grace taken as license.
| Text | What it guards against | The line it draws |
|---|---|---|
| Against outward rules | ||
| Mark 7:6 to 23 | Human tradition set above God's command, and washing taken for holiness | "All these evils come from within, and these are what defile a man." |
| Matthew 23:23 to 26 | Exact tithing of herbs with justice, mercy and faithfulness neglected | "You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former." |
| Colossians 2:16 to 23 | Rules on food, feasts and days kept as the way to holiness | "they are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh" |
| Galatians 2:15 to 16 and Galatians 5:1 to 6 | Keeping the law as the ground of justification | "All that matters is faith, expressed through love." |
| Romans 14:1 to 17 | Judging a brother over food and holy days | "Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind." |
| Against misused freedom | ||
| Galatians 5:13 to 14 | Freedom used as an opportunity for the flesh | "Rather, serve one another in love." |
| Romans 6:1 to 2 | Sinning so that grace may increase | "How can we who died to sin live in it any longer?" |
| Titus 2:11 to 14 | Grace received with no change of life | "It instructs us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions" |
| Jude 4 | Grace turned into a license for immorality | "they deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ" |
| Hebrews 12:14 | Holiness treated as optional | "Pursue peace with everyone, as well as holiness" |
Against misused freedom, Galatians 5:13 to 14, Romans 6:1 to 2, Titus 2:11 to 14, Jude 4, Hebrews 12:14
Tradition, Tithes and Food Laws
Jesus and Paul judge customs that had taken the place of the heart's obedience.
Defilement comes from withinMark 7
John Wesley, in his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), wrote on Mark 7 that "the pollution arises from the wickedness of the heart, and is just proportionable to it". The words of Mark 7:19 on clean foods are weighed in the study of clean and unclean.
The tithe and the weightier mattersMatthew 23
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown (1871) wrote on Matthew 23:23 that "Our Lord purposely names the most trifling products of the earth as examples of what they punctiliously exacted the tenth of". The woes of Matthew 23 and the whitewashed tombs are taught in the study of the Pharisees.
Jesus told the parable of a Pharisee who listed his fasts and tithes in prayer and a tax collector who asked for mercy, and it has a study of its own.
Human commands and teachingsColossians 2
Paul says that the rules "Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!" are "based on human commands and teachings" (Colossians 2:21 to 22). The disputes over the Sabbath in the Gospels are gathered in their own study.
Justified to Serve God
Romans 6 answers the charge that grace makes sin safe.
John Calvin wrote on Romans 6:2 that "the faithful are never reconciled to God without the gift of regeneration". He added that they are justified "that we may afterwards serve God in holiness of life".
How a believer is made holy and grows in holiness is taught in the study of sanctification.
Legalism, Antinomianism and Two Quarrels
Each word has been laid as a charge against Christians, and each charge has been disputed.
Wikipedia's article "Legalism (theology)" defines legalism as the view that "by doing good works or by obeying the law, a person earns and merits salvation", and it calls the term pejorative.
The charge can fall on plain discipline. Adam Clarke wrote in 1832 that had Paul, who disciplined his body (1 Corinthians 9:27), "lived in our days, he would by a certain class of people have been deemed a legalist".
Martin Luther and Johann Agricola, 1537 to 1540Encyclopaedia Britannica; Jesse Burns; Francis Aveling
The Encyclopaedia Britannica (eleventh edition) records that Agricola was recalled to teach at Wittenberg in 1536. Jesse Burns of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod writes that in 1537 Agricola "anonymously circulated a set of 18 theses". Luther answered in a series of six disputations, of which four were debated.
Francis Aveling, in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), says that Agricola "taught that only the unregenerate were under the obligation of the law". He adds that Luther probably charged him with "opinions which the latter never really held". In 1540 Agricola left Wittenberg for Berlin.
Thomas Boston and The Marrow of Modern Divinity, 1717 to 1722Dictionary of National Biography; Wikipedia
The Dictionary of National Biography (1886) records that the General Assembly condemned the Auchterarder proposition in 1717, and that in 1718 The Marrow of Modern Divinity was reprinted with a preface by James Hog.
The same article records that in 1720 an act of the Assembly condemned the book and told ministers to warn their people not to read it. Boston "with eleven others gave in a representation and petition against the act".
Wikipedia's article "Marrow Controversy" reports, without a cited source, that the representation was given in 1721 and that the twelve were rebuked in 1722. The book's defenders denied that it taught antinomianism.
Five Questions to Put to a Rule
Each question comes from a text that draws one of the two lines.
- 1Who gave the rule?Ask whether God gave the rule or people made it, since Jesus rebuked teachers who let go of what God gave.Mark 7:8
- 2Does it guard the weightier matters?Ask whether keeping the rule serves the weightier matters of the law, which Jesus set above exactness in small things.Matthew 23:23
- 3Does it despise a believer God has accepted?Ask whether the rule is used to look down on another believer whom God has received, a use Paul forbids.Romans 14:3
- 4Is it a way to stand right with God?Ask whether the rule is offered as a way to be right with God, which Paul says severs a person from Christ.Galatians 5:4
- 5Does my freedom serve God?Ask whether my freedom covers evil or serves God, since Peter tells believers to live as servants of God.1 Peter 2:16
Does it guard the weightier matters?, Does it despise a believer God has accepted?, Is it a way to stand right with God?, Does my freedom serve God?
One Word for Cleansing
Mark 7 and Matthew 23 refuse outward washing as holiness, and Titus 2 names the cleansing Christ gives.
Matthew 23:26 uses the Greek verb katharizo for cleaning the inside of the cup, and the same verb stands in Mark 7:19.
Titus 2:14 uses it for Christ, who gave Himself "to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds".
Voices on the Inner Life
Two Latin teachers of the third and fourth centuries speak to the outside and the inside of religion.
died 220 · Tertullian
Tertullian answers those who would take the freedom Christ gives as leave to sin.
“‘Liberty in Christ’ has done no injury to innocence.”
Tertullian · On Modesty · on Galatians 5:1Patristic
died 367 · Hilary of Poitiers
Hilary of Poitiers reads Matthew 23:25 to 26 as a word about the conscience.
Read the page on Hilary of Poitiers
“He therefore is reproving those who, pursuing an ostentation of useless scrupulosity, neglected the discharge of useful morality. For it is the inside of the cup that is used; if that be foul, what profit is it to cleanse the outside? And therefore what is needed is purity of the inner conscience, that those things which are of the body may be clean without.”
Hilary of Poitiers · Catena Aurea by Aquinas · on Matthew 23:25 to 26Patristic
Were the Pharisees Legalists?
The Gospels' picture of the Pharisees and the Jewish writings of the period are read in two ways.
The Gospels show a religion of outward exactnessJ. C. Ryle
J. C. Ryle, in his Expository Thoughts on Mark (1857), called Mark 7:1 to 13 "a humbling picture of what human nature is capable of doing in religion". He wrote that when Jesus was on earth "the man who paid most rigid attention to mere external observances of human invention was reckoned the holiest man!"
E. P. Sanders objects to this reading in Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977), the work behind the second reading.
First-century Judaism was a religion of grace in the covenantE. P. Sanders
Sanders argued there that first-century Judaism was not a "legalistic community" oriented to "salvation by works".
The objection comes from Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 1 (2001), edited by D. A. Carson, Peter T. O'Brien and Mark A. Seifrid. Craig Blomberg's review (2002) says that Carson's summaries aim to show that the pattern Sanders proposed "is not fully adequate to describe Second Temple Judaism".
A Clean Heart and a Changed Life
The last word goes to Paul's charge to Timothy at Ephesus.
The goal of our instruction is the love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and a sincere faith.The verse gives the measure for every rule a congregation keeps, since teaching that does not serve this aim has missed its goal.
The beatitude on the pure in heart and the command to be holy as God is holy each have a study of their own.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament, the tagged Greek text (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), on Mark 7:17.
- Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on Matthew 23:23.
- John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans, on Romans 6:2.
- Wikipedia, "Legalism (theology)", a tertiary reference article.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832), on 1 Corinthians 9:27.
- Francis Aveling, "Antinomianism", The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 1 (Robert Appleton, 1907)
- Jesse Burns, "The Antinomian Disputations", LCMS Resources, 23 October 2017.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, eleventh edition, "Agricola, Johann".
- Alexander Gordon, "Boston, Thomas (1677-1732)", Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 5 (1886)
- Wikipedia, "Marrow Controversy".
- Hilary of Poitiers on Matthew 23:25 to 26, in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea, English translation (Oxford, 1841)
- Tertullian, On Modesty (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4), on Galatians 5:1.
- J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Mark (1857), the Grace Gems edition, lightly modernized.
- Wikipedia, "New Perspective on Paul", on E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977), cited at fewer than fifty words.
- Craig L. Blomberg, review of D. A. Carson, Peter T. O'Brien and Mark A. Seifrid, eds., Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 1 (2001), Denver Journal vol. 5 (2002), quoted at fewer than fifty words.
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