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having clean hands at meal times, neither does it teach that we may eat anything with
impunity. If we perceive the truth nothing can make us ceremonially unclean, but some
things may do us a deal of harm physically. The word koinos has nothing whatever to do
with uncleanness in a physical sense; it means defilement only in a ceremonial sense.
The following are its occurrences:--
Koinos.
"Defiled (that is to say unwashen) hands (Mark 7: 2).
"All things common" (Acts 2: 44; 4: 32).
"Commom or unclean" (Acts 10: 14, 28; 11: 8).
"There is nothing unclean of itself, but to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean,
to him it is unclean" (Rom. 14: 14).
"The common faith" (Titus 1: 4).
"An unholy thing" (Heb. 10: 29).
"The common salvation" (Jude 3).
Koinoġ.
"Defile a man" (Matt. 15: 11, 18, 20; Mark 7: 15, 18, 20, 23).
"Call not thou common" (Acts 10: 15; 11: 9).
"Brought Greeks also into the temple, and hath polluted this holy place" (Acts 21: 28).
"Sprinkling the unclean" (Heb. 9: 13).
"There shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth" (Rev. 21: 27).
It will be seen by the above passages that the idea defile must be considered from the
ceremonial standpoint. The apostle does not hesitate to speak of the "common faith," not
because there was anything unclean about it, but because it was not the exclusive
possession of a privileged few, it being now proclaimed to the Gentiles as well as the Jew.
The ceremonial ablutions were jealousy guarded and observed not so much out of a
desire for holiness or personal cleanliness, but out of a cramped, narrow and bigoted
pride. To the pharisaic mind there was but one class, "the elect," all others were either
"Gentiles dogs," or "the people who know not the law" who are cursed. This narrow
exclusive spirit was a fundamental cause of the great rejection, for in Matt. 23: 13 the
first woe uttered by our Lord touches this very point:--
"But woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of
heaven against men, for ye neither go in yourselves, neither do ye suffer them that are
entering to go in."
Luke 11: 52 adds another weighty word:--
"Woe unto you lawyers! for ye took away the key of knowledge, ye entered not in
yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered."
The reference to "the blind guides" in Matt. 23: 16 is a further link with Matt. 15:
So also the sentiment of verses 23-27. The charge is very severe, and must have caused,
as indeed we know it did, intense hatred. These men, who were so scrupulous about the
outside as in Matt. 15:, were within "full of all uncleanness."