I can’t take credit for the genesis of this blog. It was actually my father who asked me the question: “Do you know where the change in dietary law first occured?” My first thought was Peter and the sheet in Acts. But there’s one before that and since I just read it last night, it’s fresh on my mind again.
And [Jesus] said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.)” (Mark 7:18, ESV).
Since there are still some groups of Christians and psuedo-Christians who hold to the dietary laws of the Old Testament, this verse is rather interesting. Anyone who believes the teachings of Jesus must accept, as Mark points out, that all foods have been declared clean by Christ. After all, the unclean foods were merely a type and shadow of the unclean hearts that a person had. In other words, unclean food was only unclean because it represented uncleanliness, not because it actually was unclean in and of itself. But now that Christ has come, the old things have passed away and there is no longer any use for those old types and shadows. We have the real thing now.
