Mark 7 has nothing to do with the Levitical laws of clean and unclean meat. It has to do with RITUAL traditions of the rabbis vs God’s commandments. It is specifically dealing with eating any food (not necessarily clean vs unclean meat) when not RITUALLY washing the hands first, thereby becoming “defiled”.
Is this a salvation issue? Yes, it is. The bible makes it very clear that eating unclean meat is an abomination. It removes us as His holy priests. Isaiah says that those who do knowingly eat unclean meat will not be in heaven (I’m assuming having heard the truth and refused to comply).
I suggest you make absolutely certain of your position, as compared to the bible.
My next post to you is commentary on Mark 7 and this issue. It is directly to the point.
I suggest you pay close attention to verse 19.
Mark 7 covers both the washing of the hands and the eating of food.
1: Now when the Pharisees with some scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him,
2:they observed that some of his disciples ate their meals with unclean, that is, unwashed, hands.
3: (For the Pharisees and, in fact, all Jews, do not eat without carefully washing their hands, keeping the tradition of the elders.
4: And on coming from the marketplace they do not eat without purifying themselves. And there are many other things that they have traditionally observed, the purification of cups and jugs and kettles (and beds).)
5: So the Pharisees and scribes questioned him, "Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal with unclean hands?"
6: He responded, "Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: 'This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me;
7: In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.'
8: You disregard God's commandment but cling to human tradition."
9: He went on to say, "How well you have set aside the commandment of God in order to uphold your tradition!
10: For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and 'Whoever curses father or mother shall die.'
11: Yet you say, 'If a person says to father or mother, "Any support you might have had from me is qorban"' (meaning, dedicated to God),
12: you allow him to do nothing more for his father or mother.
13: You nullify the word of God in favor of your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many such things."
You can't get around the clearest of words, "Thus he declared all foods clean" by running to the subject of the ritual handwashing; they are clearly two different topics.
18: He said to them, "Are even you likewise without understanding? Do you not realize that everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile,
19: since it enters not the heart but the stomach and passes out into the latrine?" (Thus he declared all foods clean.)
Mark records (again, in the clearest of terms, "He declared all foods clean"). There are no asterisks here. Sacred Scripture would never have been written in such a way where someone could point to it and say, "Look, there's what it says in Scripture, and then there's what it says in Scripture. Just because you see the words, "He declared all foods clean" written as clear as day on the page of your Bible, we happen to have speshul insight that tells us these words mean something else."
(Could this really be coming down to, "It depends on what the meaning of the word, 'all' is."?)