Matthew 15 explained: What Really Makes a Person Unclean

Washing hands and tradition (vv. 1-9)

The handwashing here was a religious purity ritual handed down by earlier teachers, not hygiene, and the critics treat skipping it as a sin. Jesus answers that their own rules let a person dedicate money to the temple so it could no longer support aging parents, which in practice cancelled God's command to honor father and mother.

What truly defiles (vv. 10-14)

To be defiled meant to be ritually unclean, unfit to take part in worship, and Jesus says this comes from what people say and do, not from what they eat. He compares the offended teachers to plants God never planted, which will be pulled up, and to blind people leading the blind into a pit.

Explained to the disciples (vv. 15-20)

Food simply passes through the body, but harmful words and acts start in the heart, meaning the inner self where choices are made. Jesus names murder, adultery, theft, lying and slander as what really makes a person unclean, not eating with unwashed hands.

The Canaanite mother (vv. 21-28)

In non-Jewish territory near Tyre and Sidon, a local woman begs Jesus to heal her daughter, and his reply about not throwing the children's food to dogs sounds harsh; interpreters are unsure whether he was testing her or stating the usual divide between Jews and outsiders. She turns his own image around by saying even dogs get the crumbs, and he praises her faith and heals the girl.

Healing the crowds (vv. 29-31)

People bring the sick and disabled to Jesus on a hillside by the Sea of Galilee, and he heals them. The crowd gives praise to Israel's God, which leads some scholars to think many of them were not Jewish, though this is uncertain.

Feeding four thousand (vv. 32-39)

After three days with the crowd, Jesus makes seven loaves and a few fish feed everyone, with seven baskets left over. Coming right after the woman's plea for crumbs, many readers take this meal as a sign that his care reaches outsiders too; where Magadan was is not known.

Key verse: Matthew 15:11

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on whether Jesus's teaching about defilement here sets aside the food laws of Moses altogether, as most churches have taught, or only rejects the extra handwashing tradition while leaving those laws in place.

Something to think about

Have you seen a rule or custom kept carefully while the very person it was meant to protect was left without help?