Misguided Defense

Misguided Defense

Read: Mark 7:1-13

“You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!”

Mark 7:9

“Heaven forbid that we should go on playing religious games in one corner when the cloud and fire of God’s presence have moved to another.”

—David Watson

IN WORD What’s wrong with tradition? the Pharisees must have wondered. Jesus condemns it so easily, yet much of it was built on the law, to which Jesus was never opposed. But that’s the problem: Only most of the traditions of the Pharisees were biblical. The remainder was simply a historical fabrication. There’s nothing wrong with tradition, but when it is mistaken for divine inspiration, it becomes idolatry. According to Jesus, it causes us to “nullify the word of God” (7:13).

We treasure many of our traditions. But do we realize how temporal they are compared to the Word of God? The Word was preexistent—it has always existed and it always will. The Word became flesh and lived among us. It is a holy outpouring from the mind of God. By contrast, our longest traditions may have originated only thousands of years ago—a mere blink of the eye in the grand eternal scheme. They hold meaning for us because they have been handed down from generation to generation and they have been drilled into our psyches. But they are not sacred—most of them, anyway. Not when placed beside the incarnate or inscribed Word.

IN DEED Human nature takes divine principle and uses it rather subjectively. We apply God’s laws to benefit ourselves as much as possible—our interpretations always seem to work out to our advantage, for some reason. Like the Pharisees, we often major on the minors and minor on the majors. We stridently defend the minutiae of the kingdom and neglect its founding principles.

Jesus calls us to a kind of sharp discernment that can only come by the Spirit of God. Stake your life on His Word. Stake nothing at all on the rules of your own construction. Know the difference and live for what matters.