Defilement Spiritual Not Ceremonial

Matthew 15:1-20

Not often did Jesus Christ lose his patience, but when that circumstance did occur, it was marked by the utterance of very memorable words. We are sometimes warned not to provoke quiet men. Nor was this loss of patience in the case of Jesus Christ in any sense one of mere irritation or peevishness—it was rather a sense of moral indignation. The answer which he made to the Scribes and Pharisees who came from the metropolis was an instance of high, noble, moral resentment: it was not anger of a merely personal and selfish kind, it was a grave and solemn judgment. That the leading men of the day, the scholars and the clerks of the time, should be putting such trivial questions, should be mocking the spirit of progress by such frivolous inquiries, should be making such mountains out of such molehills, roused the divinest anger of an earnest soul.

Consider how this answer of the Saviour carries with it some profound suggestion of the supreme purpose of his life. He had not come down to make nice things, to arrange a ritual, to propose encroachments upon a ceremonial descended from the seniors—he came to save the world. Hence his flashing anger, his burning, scorching retort upon men who wanted to bind down his attention to the meanest frivolities that could engage the attention of the meanest intellects. From his answers to his opponents always learn something of Jesus Christ's main object in life.

The difference between the Scribes and Christ was that they lived in ceremony, and he lived in truth. Their religion was a trick in ritual—all religious observances and duties had been reduced to a mechanical standard and arrangement. With the Son of God religion was life, spirit, it was a vital principle, a divine inspiration, a continual drawing down from heaven of the energy and the grace needful for the work and the suffering of life. Observe therefore that the difference between them was not literal and measurable in words; it was vital, final, and indestructible.

This is what Jesus Christ has to say to all opposing parties. He does not come as one of many, saying, "Let us see where the exact point of rest is, as between us, controversialists as we are, each entitled to an equal hearing with the other." He holds no parley, he has no rivals, he makes no compromises—never does he approach any opponent in the spirit of reconciliation. Everything must go before the spirituality and the splendour of his kingdom. The Scribes and Pharisees proposed a quasi friendly conversation upon differences. Quoth they, "We do thus, and thy disciples do so; why should there be this striking difference in our ritualistic practices? Can we not arrange matters better than they at present stand? We have the seal and the sanction of the elders, and surely something is due to seniority in the Church and in the ages. Thy disciples are guilty of what appears to us to be a violent encroachment upon old usages—let us talk the matter over." Jesus Christ never talked matters over upon equal terms. Remember this in considering the sovereignty and the completeness of the claim which he laid to the attention and the confidence of the world. How Jesus Christ might have popularized himself by compromise, by gracious approach, by an attitude of conciliation, by suggesting that he was not infallible, nor was he above receiving a hint from those who had been in the world before him. He dominated in men, and therefore over men. No other domination is worth having. To rule over men may be a transient supremacy; the true rule, the everlasting primacy, is that of ruling in a man, in his thoughts, feelings, convictions, and in the whole range of his noblest nature.

If Jesus Christ were with us today, he would alter the religious standpoint of many men, and thunder upon their closed ears the solemn words that Christianity is not an affair of meats and drinks, of bell-ringing and magic, of church-going and hymn-singing, but of life, love, pureness, sanctity of heart and completeness of consecration. Cheap indeed is the religion of hand-washing. Who would not wash his hands all day long as the price of heaven? "A man," says Jesus Christ, "may wash his hands all day long, and in every act of ablution he may be adding new guilt to his heart." So with our solemn exercises to-day—they go for nothing except according to the inspiration which directs and ennobles them. We may go to church and yet not be there at all in spirit, sympathy, fervent and vehement desire after God. Men can sing a hymn, and in the singing of it can add a crueler wrath to their hate. Men can pay pew-rent, that they may have room to grumble in. What doth the Lord thy God require of thee, O man, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God? This is not an affair of hand-washing, hair-combing, clothes-wearing, attitude, mechanism or manual service. The religion of the kingdom of heaven is a condition of the heart. What a man's heart is, that is also the man himself. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.

Does Jesus Christ then do away with all outward observances, with church-going and with hymn-singing, with religious engagements and duties of various kinds? Most certainly not. He approves them every one, if kept in their right place. "You must understand," says the Saviour, "that religion is not an affair of mechanism but of spirit, and that it is possible to do everything that is written upon the register with puristic punctuality and completeness, and yet not to have a heart filled with the spirit of sacrifice. Where the heart is not so filled and ruled, all your bead-counting, your Paternosters and Ave Marias go for nothing—they beat themselves against the ceiling under which they are breathed: they never touch God's distant sky." We must have our Church framework. We are exhorted not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. We have the distinct promise that where two or three are gathered together, Christ is there to bless them. We have Christ's own example for holy rest and honest searching of the Scriptures, to give mutual fellowship in all godly concerns, but unless the whole of these come out of the heart and with the heart's meaning upon them, however good relatively, they are worthless intrinsically.

Well for the Church, even a day of triumph and coronation, when nothing more can be said against it than the metropolitan Scribes and Pharisees said against the disciples. Is this their noble impeachment? does their charge sharpen itself into this piercing question? What a mighty assault—what a tremendous burst of feebleness. Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders, for they wash not their hands when they eat bread? Have the Scribes and the Pharisees, metropolitan and provincial, of our own day, anything graver to bring against us. Some charges answer themselves by their own absurdity, and require no greater confusion than is brought upon them by their palpable feebleness. How is it with the Church just now?

Mark the strength of the Saviour's reply. This man brings his answers from afar: in his arm is an infinite leverage—when he strikes, all things fall before the fist of his almightiness. Hear the piping voice of the metropolitan critics—"Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders?" Hear the solemn accusatory retort—"Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God?" Now the issue is sharply joined. That is exactly how the Church ought to stand in all ages. The world may be able to bring against the Church the charge of not attending to ancient usages and peculiar ceremonies, but the Church ought always to have it in its power justly to hurl back the accusation in the tremendous inquiry—"Whilst we may not have washed our hands, ye have steeped and soaked your hearts in the devil's pollution." We must not use the words in the absence of solemn proof. We are only now indicating the ideal state of things and the real state of relations, if we speak of Jesus Christ rather than of Jesus Christ's nominal Church. Whosoever says to Jesus, "I think I find an omission in thy teaching and practice," will have for his answer all this thunder and lightning of personal accusation of the gravest guilt. That we might be able to return such a tu quoque, such a "Thou also" should be the burden of incessant prayer.

Consider the condition of the metropolitan Scribes and Pharisees, when they heard Jesus Christ's answer. People who find fault must expect to have fault found with them. That is the one thing which the critic always forgets; the critic always forgets that he exposes himself to criticism. How is it that the critic always forgets this? He sits at his desk, he reclines in his pew, he rests on his pillow, he walks his garden paths, he sits under the shadow of his broad trees, and shakes his head in sober judgment upon all other men, forgetting that all other men, did they think it worth their while, might find a thousand faults where he could supply a thousand actions. It never occurred to the Scribes and Pharisees from the metropolis that there could be any answer to them. Everybody had always yielded to their criticism and judgment, and had gone, probably with secret fee, to find out what they ought to do, from the great interpreters of the law. Here is a Man who confronts them and challenges their purity. They thought they had found a weak place in the armour of the disciples, and having pointed to the open crevice, and looked as only such critics could look, Jesus also put forth his hand and said, "Is this your breast-plate?" "Yes." "Why, 'tis a rag of tinder; if I touch it, it crumbles into black dust." They ought to have very strong and complete armour, who point out the weak places in the panoply of other people.

This instance illustrates the law of declension. There is an inward collapse first,—a re-installation of the spirit of selfishness; and then there is an attempt to find in framework what only can be found in spiritual reality and completeness. Men keep up the framework of appearances to the last: the anxiety of many minds is to save appearances. Jesus Christ never attempted to save appearance at the expense of truth. Are we endeavouring to keep up appearances by church-going, by continuance in customary ways, by habits and usages for which we have really no heart, but which we must appear to respect, or other people will begin to imagine the real state of our spirit? The Lord's lightning smite all mere appearances and pretences. We are killed by our pretensions, when they are not supported by an inward reality. What are we in our heart—what is our meaning, what our purpose? These are the vital questions which men must put to themselves and answer, if they would have real depth of life and healthiness and enjoyment of being.

This answer was indeed a long thunder-storm. The clouds were, so to say, gathered from distant skies. Not content with merely accusing them of violating the commandment of God, he said, "Well did Esaias prophesy of you." There are men who are anxious to find out when prophecy terminated: they are most eager to discover the precise points upon which the prophecy took effect, and was accomplished, and became like a gate shut because the king had passed on. Jesus Christ gave terrific applications of prophecy again and again. Turning upon the leading men of his age he said, "You are meant when Esaias said, 'This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth and honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.'" When we are searching into apocalyptic visions and suggestions, and are digging deeply into prophetic mines and are wishing to know when times and seasons accomplish themselves, it may be well to remind our own hearts that probably Jesus would fix the great moral accusations of prophecy upon us. Whilst we are seeking to read some difficult hieroglyphic and to apply some marvellous suggestion or combination of dates to some pope or king or mighty warrior, Jesus might lay his hand upon us and say, "Thou fool, when the prophet thunders against wrong, all his thunders beat upon thine own head."

Surely this plan would give us a new scheme of Bible reading, and instead of making enigmas and finding Napoleon the Greats and mighty popes distant, some dead and some coming a thousand years hence, we should feel that the prophets foresaw our day, and laid up for our guilt, the judgments of God.

"Ye hypocrites." Other men called them Scribes and Pharisees, Rabbi, Lord, Master, Great One, Prince. Looking at them as he only could look, he said, "Ye hypocrites." That was plain speaking. Jesus Christ could make no progress in society unless he spoke with the utmost plainness of words, which nobody could possibly misunderstand. We make no advancement because we are the victims of euphemism—that is, a style of speaking which calls things by their wrong names—bad things by good definitions, and which covers over the evil with a handful of stolen flowers. You must get at the very core of the disease if you are to make any progress. Not that we are to call one another hypocrites, for that would lead but to mutual recrimination of the severest and most unprofitable kind, but no man can call his brother a hypocrite without possibly exposing himself to a just retort; but we are to remember that God sees us as we are: we are to be faithful with ourselves: instead of calling other people bad names, we are to attach the right label to our own actions and not to shrink from the solemn fact that our life is often based on a lie and directed to the consummation of the hypocrisy. When men talk thus, it may be roughly, but with solemn, urgent plainness, to themselves, we may have some hope that, feeling the acuteness of the disease, they may be impelled to cry to heaven for the remedy.

Jesus Christ does not change the subject when he proceeds to tell the multitude what the true law of defilement is. He found the age imagining that what a man took into him defiled him. Jesus Christ said, "That is not the law of pollution"—Jesus Christ laid down this grand law, that no man can defile another; every man defiles himself. "Away then with your trumpery excuses," he would say, "as to circumstances and conditions and contagious surroundings. That law will bear amplification into the fuller law that no man can injure another permanently; it is the man alone who injures himself. As no man can defile you, so no man can injure you in any profound, vital, and lasting sense. You may indeed have much thrown at you that is of a nature most disagreeable—you may be defiled outwardly—so you may be encountered by misrepresentations, sneers, harsh criticisms, untrue and vile aspersions of every kind—but they do not touch the man. When you are really injured, you have injured yourself. There is no case of man-slaughter, in the higher region of interpretation, but there are innumerable cases of suicide. You are not defiled by your circumstances, by the conversation you hear, by the duties you may be compelled to undertake, you are defiled when you have in you a mean thought, a bad desire, an ignoble impulse, a motive that will not bear the scrutiny of light."

Cheer ye then. Fear not any assault and battery, any fierce assault by which others would seek to drag you down: it is as the beat of a bird's wing against the eternal granite. A man may be wrong in opinion yet right in heart. When this doctrine is accepted, the Church will enter upon a new era of influence. I am not, of course, speaking of moral opinion, but of opinion of a speculative kind, even speculative opinion upon speculative subjects. The Church too eagerly embarks in speculative controversy, and cannot support her conduct by our quotation from her Lord. Even speculative opinion is not to be undervalued. So long as it is held as opinion and not forced upon men as final dogma or infallible proposition, it may be held with advantage.

As to moral questions, there must be no light assumption of opinion. There must not indeed be two opinions upon moral questions—there our understanding must with one another be unanimous, complete, without halt or reservation of any kind whatever; but upon those questions which are speculative, doubtful, let us have charity one with another. Let us take care that no wrong uses are made of speculative opinion: it may be made a standard of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and men may be ostracised and condemned and undervalued and suspected, and may be open to all kinds of social disaster because of their speculative opinions upon purely speculative questions. I would wish my own course to be this: to have a heart thoroughly at one with itself as to God's moral requirements, the hideousness of sin, the abominableness of iniquity, the beauty of righteousness, the necessity of sanctity of heart. Upon all such questions there must be no dispute, no compromise, no trifling or tampering. When I enter into other regions of the Holy Book, I desire to be quiet where I cannot speak wisely, to accept with modesty where I cannot explain with a luminousness equal to the mystery I undertake to elucidate. God allows me to ask questions, to make propositions, and to change my mind oftentimes in the course of one day respecting opinions and matters which are either speculative or are too high for me. He judges me by the condition of my heart: where it is broken, contrite, penitential, he will not rebuke me because of the poverty or the erroneousness of my speculative opinions. Were Jesus Christ amongst us now, he would surely set a fire upon all those controversies which divide and sunder men, about things as relatively unimportant to his central purpose as was the washing of hands to the commandment of God.

Now comes the solemn question, vital, final, all-inclusive. Seeing that Jesus Christ attached such value to the condition of the heart, how is the heart to become such as he will accept? He himself must do the whole work herein. The cleansing of the heart is from on high, and is by the mysterious process of blood. Do not think of blood in any low, common, or merely physical sense of the term. The blood of Christ means more than the mere blood of the body: that was its needful symbol; without that shedding of blood we could have got no hint of the higher meaning of the great and tragical type of its quality and reality. We are saved by blood, we are redeemed by blood; without the shedding of blood there is no remission. We have erred in the life, and only by life can we be saved. Life for life, blood for blood. We made the tragedy necessary: had we sinned skin deep, some skin deep remedy would have been found for us, but having sinned in the soul, having collapsed in the inner sanctuary of the nature, having done wrong with the innermost thought of our heart, nothing can meet the infinite collapse but God's sacrifice of himself in his Son. You are not saved because you can explain this, but because you believe it. I am not asked how I account for my salvation, I am saved because of my faith in the Son of God. If it has pleased God to make this revelation of the method of acceptance as between himself and me, it is not for me to find critical fault with the terms, or to make a metaphysical puzzle of a grand moral proposal, but to fall into his hands, and to await the explanation as the ages of eternity unfold themselves, and give opportunity for profounder study of divine things.

The disciples were not as the master. They came to him and said—so like them it was, for even his disciples formed part of his disfigurement and humiliation: he was betrayed by the very men whom he elected to the discipleship—they were to drag him down, they were to form the elements and materials of some of the bitterest mockery that was heaped upon him. They came and said, "Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying?" Just what is said to faithful ministers today. Who does not hear that offence was given, that this man or yonder woman was never coming to church again because of this saying or of that? What does the poor minister do? I would that we might follow the Lord, who said, when he heard about the offended Pharisees, "Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind, and if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." He had given offence, and when told about it, calmly stood upon the rock of the divine election, and found peace in the sanctuary of the divine defence.