The Crisis at Capernaum

153:3.1Many were the ques­tions asked Je­sus dur­ing this af­ter meet­ing. Some were asked by his per­plexed dis­ci­ples, but more were asked by cav­il­ing un­be­liev­ers who sought only to em­bar­rass and en­trap him.

153:3.2One of the vis­it­ing Phar­isees, mount­ing a lamp­stand, shouted out this ques­tion: “You tell us that you are the bread of life. How can you give us your flesh to eat or your blood to drink? What avail is your teach­ing if it can­not be car­ried out?” And Je­sus an­swered this ques­tion, say­ing: “I did not teach you that my flesh is the bread of life nor that my blood is the wa­ter thereof. But I did say that my life in the flesh is a be­stowal of the bread of heaven. The fact of the Word of God be­stowed in the flesh and the phe­nom­e­non of the Son of Man sub­ject to the will of God, con­sti­tute a re­al­ity of ex­pe­ri­ence which is equiv­a­lent to the di­vine sus­te­nance. You can­not eat my flesh nor can you drink my blood, but you can be­come one in spirit with me even as I am one in spirit with the Fa­ther. You can be nour­ished by the eter­nal word of God, which is in­deed the bread of life, and which has been be­stowed in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh; and you can be wa­tered in soul by the di­vine spirit, which is truly the wa­ter of life. The Fa­ther has sent me into the world to show how he de­sires to in­dwell and di­rect all men; and I have so lived this life in the flesh as to in­spire all men like­wise ever to seek to know and do the will of the in­dwelling heav­enly Fa­ther.”

153:3.3Then one of the Je­ru­sa­lem spies who had been ob­serv­ing Je­sus and his apos­tles, said: “We no­tice that nei­ther you nor your apos­tles wash your hands prop­erly be­fore you eat bread. You must well know that such a prac­tice as eat­ing with de­filed and un­washed hands is a trans­gres­sion of the law of the el­ders. Nei­ther do you prop­erly wash your drink­ing cups and eat­ing ves­sels. Why is it that you show such dis­re­spect for the tra­di­tions of the fa­thers and the laws of our el­ders?” And when Je­sus heard him speak, he an­swered: “Why is it that you transgress the com­mand­ments of God by the laws of your tra­di­tion? The com­mand­ment says, ‘Honor your fa­ther and your mother,’ and di­rects that you share with them your sub­stance if nec­es­sary; but you en­act a law of tra­di­tion which per­mits un­du­ti­ful chil­dren to say that the money where­with the par­ents might have been as­sisted has been ‘given to God.’ The law of the el­ders thus re­lieves such crafty chil­dren of their re­spon­si­bil­ity, not­with­stand­ing that the chil­dren sub­se­quently use all such monies for their own com­fort. Why is it that you in this way make void the com­mand­ment by your own tra­di­tion? Well did Isa­iah proph­esy of you hyp­ocrites, say­ing: ‘This peo­ple hon­ors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they wor­ship me, teach­ing as their doc­trines the pre­cepts of men.’

153:3.4“You can see how it is that you desert the com­mand­ment while you hold fast to the tra­di­tion of men. Al­to­gether will­ing are you to re­ject the word of God while you main­tain your own tra­di­tions. And in many other ways do you dare to set up your own teach­ings above the law and the proph­ets.”

153:3.5Je­sus then di­rected his re­marks to all pres­ent. He said: “But hear­ken to me, all of you. It is not that which en­ters into the mouth that spir­i­tu­ally de­files the man, but rather that which pro­ceeds out of the mouth and from the heart.” But even the apos­tles failed fully to grasp the mean­ing of his words, for Si­mon Pe­ter also asked him: “Lest some of your hear­ers be un­nec­es­sar­ily of­fended, would you ex­plain to us the mean­ing of these words?” And then said Je­sus to Pe­ter: “Are you also hard of un­der­stand­ing? Know you not that ev­ery plant which my heav­enly Fa­ther has not planted shall be rooted up? Turn now your at­ten­tion to those who would know the truth. You can­not com­pel men to love the truth. Many of these teach­ers are blind guides. And you know that, if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the pit. But hear­ken while I tell you the truth con­cern­ing those things which morally de­file and spir­i­tu­ally con­tam­i­nate men. I de­clare it is not that which en­ters the body by the mouth or gains ac­cess to the mind through the eyes and ears, that de­files the man. Man is only de­filed by that evil which may orig­i­nate within the heart, and which finds ex­pres­sion in the words and deeds of such un­holy per­sons. Do you not know it is from the heart that there come forth evil thoughts, wicked projects of mur­der, theft, and adul­ter­ies, to­gether with jeal­ousy, pride, anger, re­venge, rail­ings, and false wit­ness? And it is just such things that de­file men, and not that they eat bread with cer­e­mo­ni­ally un­clean hands.”

153:3.6The Phar­i­saic com­mis­sion­ers of the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin were now al­most con­vinced that Je­sus must be ap­pre­hended on a charge of blas­phemy or on one of flout­ing the sa­cred law of the Jews; where­fore their ef­forts to in­volve him in the dis­cus­sion of, and pos­si­ble at­tack upon, some of the tra­di­tions of the el­ders, or so-called oral laws of the na­tion. No mat­ter how scarce wa­ter might be, these tra­di­tion­ally en­slaved Jews would never fail to go through with the re­quired cer­e­mo­nial wash­ing of the hands be­fore ev­ery meal. It was their be­lief that “it is bet­ter to die than to transgress the com­mand­ments of the el­ders.” The spies asked this ques­tion be­cause it had been re­ported that Je­sus had said, “Sal­va­tion is a mat­ter of clean hearts rather than of clean hands.” But such be­liefs, when they once be­come a part of one’s re­li­gion, are hard to get away from. Even many years af­ter this day the Apos­tle Pe­ter was still held in the bond­age of fear to many of these tra­di­tions about things clean and un­clean, only be­ing fi­nally de­liv­ered by ex­pe­ri­enc­ing an ex­traor­di­nary and vivid dream. All of this can the bet­ter be un­der­stood when it is re­called that these Jews looked upon eat­ing with un­washed hands in the same light as com­merce with a har­lot, and both were equally pun­ish­able by ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

153:3.7Thus did the Mas­ter elect to dis­cuss and ex­pose the folly of the whole rab­binic sys­tem of rules and reg­u­la­tions which was rep­re­sented by the oral law—the tra­di­tions of the el­ders, all of which were re­garded as more sa­cred and more bind­ing upon the Jews than even the teach­ings of the Scrip­tures. And Je­sus spoke out with less re­serve be­cause he knew the hour had come when he could do noth­ing more to pre­vent an open rup­ture of re­la­tions with these re­li­gious lead­ers.