Logion 14
| 14. Jesus said unto them, "If ye fast, ye will cause yourselves to sin; and if ye pray, ye will be condemned; and if ye give alms, ye will harm your spirit. When ye go into any land and walk about in its districts, if they receive you, eat that which they set before you, and heal the sick among them. For that which goeth into your mouth will not defile you, but that which issueth out of your mouth, that will defile you." |
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This logion appears to be an answer to the four questions asked by Jesus’ disciples in logion 6, i.e., 1) “Desirest thou that we fast?” 2) “How shall we pray?” 3) “Shall we give alms?” 4) “What diet shall we observe?” The answer to all four is that by concentrating on observance of the outward law we will “defile our spirit,” meaning that we will ignore the true motivation for the law — to promote spiritual development.
That this philosophy was not taken in a negative sense would seem to be indicated in the life of Jesus’ brother, James the Righteous, who led the early saints of Jerusalem in obeying the law of Moses (cf. commentary on Th 12).
In Matthew 15:11 Jesus is answering a less fundamental question — not about the disregard for the exact nature of the cuisine we eat, but about the disciples’ disregard for traditions of washing their hands at table. As in this logion, Mark, at 16:18, has the juxtaposition of the harmlessness of ingestion and the healing of the sick. The implication was that if someone gets sick from what they eat, the solution is to heal them.