“And he said, ‘What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’” Mark 7:20–23, ESV

It is much easier to recognize evil when it belongs to someone else.

Turn on the news and you will find plenty of it. Violence. Corruption. Sexual exploitation. Greed. Dishonesty. People using power to hurt others. Spend a few minutes scrolling through social media and you can add cruelty, slander, envy, and pride to the list.

We look at what is happening around us and wonder, What is wrong with people?

Sometimes that is a fair question. There are things happening in our world that should grieve us and anger us. Christians should never become so accustomed to sin that we stop recognizing evil for what it is.

But Jesus will not allow us to look only at what is wrong with everyone else.

In Mark 7, He turns our attention in an uncomfortable direction.

Toward ourselves.

The conversation in Mark 7 begins with a dispute over ceremonial cleanliness. The Pharisees and scribes notice that some of Jesus’ disciples are eating without following the traditional ritual washing of hands. They worry that something unclean has gotten in from the outside, that it has defiled them before God.

Jesus challenges their entire way of thinking about the problem.

They are looking outside the person. Jesus looks inside.

“What comes out of a person is what defiles him.”

Then He explains why:

“For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts…”

That phrase matters.

From within.

Jesus says it again at the end of the passage:

“All these evil things come from within.”

The religious leaders were concerned about contamination coming from outside. Jesus says the deeper problem is already inside us.

That is much harder to hear.

We prefer problems that exist somewhere else. It is easier to condemn the culture, blame politicians, or point at Hollywood, social media, our schools, our neighbors, another generation, or another political party than it is to look at ourselves. And sometimes there really are serious problems in all those places.

But none of that allows us to escape what Jesus says here.

The human heart itself has a problem.

Including mine.

Including yours.

When we hear the word heart, we often think primarily about feelings. We fall in love with our hearts. We get our hearts broken. We tell someone to follow their heart.

That is not quite how Scripture uses the word.

In the Bible, the heart refers to the inner person. It includes our desires, thoughts, intentions, loyalties, and will. The heart is the place from which our lives take shape.

And Jesus gives us a disturbing inventory of what can come from it:

Evil thoughts. Sexual immorality. Theft. Murder. Adultery. Coveting. Wickedness. Deceit. Sensuality. Envy. Slander. Pride. Foolishness.

It would be easy to read that list and begin sorting people. I know someone who struggles with that. That sounds like people I see online. That describes what is happening in our culture.

But Jesus is not giving us ammunition to use against everyone else. He is diagnosing the human heart.

And some of these sins can live inside us long before anyone else sees them. Coveting does not require you to steal anything. You can sit in your own house and resent what someone else has. Adultery can begin long before two people enter a bedroom; Jesus teaches elsewhere that lust itself exposes something happening within the heart. Deceit exists before the lie is ever spoken, the moment we decide what we want someone to believe and start shaping the truth to fit it. Envy can hide behind a smile while it quietly resents someone else’s success, and slander can sound like concern while it damages someone’s reputation. Even pride can disguise itself as righteousness, so that we become proud of how much better we think we are than the people whose sins are easier to see.

It’s one of the most dangerous things about the human heart: we can become very skilled at seeing sin without seeing our own.

Jesus connects the heart with what comes out of a person. That means our outward lives tell us something about our inward condition.

Pay attention to what surfaces when you are angry, when someone else succeeds, or when someone criticizes you. Notice what you look at when nobody else knows, how you talk about people you dislike, and how you respond when honesty stands between you and something you want. Those moments can reveal things about us that are easy to hide when life is comfortable.

Pressure does not necessarily create everything it reveals. Sometimes it just exposes what was already there. An angry outburst may reveal resentment that has been growing quietly. A dishonest decision may reveal that getting what we want has become more important than telling the truth. Jealousy may reveal how much of our identity has become tied to being more successful, attractive, or respected than someone else.

The outward action matters. Jesus never minimizes behavior. But He goes deeper than behavior, all the way down to the root that produces it.

When we recognize something wrong in our lives, our first response is often to work harder at controlling it: stop losing our temper, stop looking at what we shouldn’t, quit talking about people, tell the truth.

Those may all be necessary changes. If you are doing something sinful, you should stop.

But Jesus’ diagnosis tells us why behavior management by itself will never be enough. If the problem comes “from within,” then changing only what happens on the outside does not reach the deepest problem.

Imagine a tree that repeatedly produces rotten fruit. You can pick the rotten fruit off every morning, and the tree will certainly look better for a while. But if something is wrong with the tree itself, more rotten fruit will eventually appear.

We need more than improved appearances. We need changed hearts. And that is something we cannot accomplish simply by deciding to behave better.

So what do we do with Jesus’ words?

We begin with honesty. Instead of reading Mark 7 as a description of what is wrong with other people, we let Jesus’ words examine us. Where is envy living in me? What am I coveting, or bending the truth to get? Whose failure secretly makes me feel better about myself? What have I let grow in my heart that my own words are starting to reveal?

Those are uncomfortable questions. But Christianity does not require us to pretend that our hearts are better than they are. Jesus already knows what is there. That is part of the good news. The One who speaks these words in Mark 7 is also the One who came to save sinners. We do not have to hide our sin from Him.

We confess it. Almost everyone will admit, in general terms, that they’re imperfect. Confession is more specific than that: Lord, I was envious. I lied. I wanted what belonged to someone else. I used my words to tear someone down. I allowed lust to grow. I acted out of pride.

And where sin has harmed another person, repentance may require more than private confession. We may need to apologize, tell the truth, return what was taken, end a sinful relationship, or put distance between ourselves and something that repeatedly feeds temptation.

Repentance is still necessary. Grace is what makes it possible.

The gospel certainly gives us forgiveness for what we have done. But God’s work in us does not stop there.

Christ does not merely forgive the fruit while leaving the tree untouched. Through the Holy Spirit, God begins changing us from within. Pride can soften into humility, greed into generosity, deceit into truthfulness. Even sexual sin, slander, and desires we assumed were permanent can be reshaped into purity, faithfulness, and words that are both truthful and kind.

None of this happens overnight. Christians still struggle with sin. We still need confession and repentance, Scripture, prayer, worship, Christian community, accountability, and the ordinary means God uses to shape His people.

But we are no longer left simply trying to make ourselves look clean on the outside. God is at work within us, and that changes how we face our own sin. We don’t need to excuse it, hide it, make peace with it, or despair over finding it there. We bring it to Christ.

There is plenty wrong with the world. Jesus does not ask us to deny that. Christians should care deeply about injustice, dishonesty, violence, sexual immorality, exploitation, corruption, and every other form evil takes in human life.

But we should be very careful about becoming experts at diagnosing everyone else’s heart, because Jesus tells us where evil comes from.

“From within, out of the heart of man…”

Naming evil is not optional for a Christian. Scripture calls every believer to speak the truth about what is wrong in the world, regardless of what still needs to change in his or her own heart. If we waited until our own hearts were free of envy, pride, and deceit before we said anything, none of us would ever say a word.

What Mark 7 asks of us is not silence. It’s honesty alongside the speaking. Examine your own pride even as you condemn someone else’s. Examine your own desires even as you call someone else’s sexual sin what it is. Tell the truth in your own life even as you denounce dishonesty in public life. Watch how you speak to the people in your own home even as you criticize the cruelty of strangers online.

Self-examination doesn’t disqualify us from calling out evil. It just keeps us from doing it with a self-righteousness Jesus has already ruled out.

The problem is closer than we like to admit. But so is grace.

Jesus knows what comes from the human heart. He knows what comes from yours. And He did not come for people who had already made themselves clean. He came for sinners.

So bring Him what you find there. Confess it. Turn from it. Trust His forgiveness. And ask the Holy Spirit to continue doing the work that outward appearances never could: changing you from the inside out.

Lord, I bring You the parts of my heart I’d rather not look at. You already see what I try to hide, even from myself. Show me where pride, envy, and deceit have taken root, and give me the courage to confess it instead of excusing it. Do the deep work in me that no effort of my own can reach. When I see evil in the world around me, let me name it honestly, remembering I’m still being changed by grace myself. Amen.

One Passage at a Time is a devotional series from Built On Christ | Mike Sorrell Ministries that walks through Scripture one passage at a time to help you discover what it says and why it matters for your life.

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