Tradition!
“Jesus replied, ‘And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, “Honor your father and mother” and “Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.” But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is “devoted to God,” they are not to “honor their father or mother” with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.”
Today’s Text: Matthew 15:1-20 (Living Life Daily Devotional)
The “tradition” that Jesus is talking about is a written system of commentaries and rules supporting and surrounding the Scriptures. Those commentaries and rules were developed by people who had devoted their lives to studying God’s word and teaching it to the people. Eventually, they became the Talmud, the holy book of Judaism.
But as with all things, any good thing put into the hands of sinful humanity becomes corrupted by power and pride. The content of the Talmud is not what is corrupted by power and pride, although the Talmud is certainly not inspired by the Holy Spirit, apart from the Scriptures themselves. But the traditions of the elders were considered more relevant, and therefore more practical and important, than the Scriptures themselves. That is what Jesus is speaking to.
There are so many Christian traditions. And generally speaking, those traditions are differentiated and labelled as denominations. Is it not possible to have one faith tradition that somehow encompasses and unites all of Christianity?
I feel like the answer to that question is “no,” but the reason that the answer is “no” is not because of God’s sovereign desire to segment His people across thousands and thousands of faith traditions but because of human sin.
The threat to the universal church and the division of Christianity into various traditions has been a reality almost from the start. The first church council that created division is found in Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council, which addressed the unity of Jewish and Gentile Christians. In the Scriptures, we hear the story of how that threat was resolved—how that threat was supposed to be resolved through the power of the Holy Spirit. But we can be almost 100 percent certain that the issue did not simply die based on the ruling of the council.
Because humans are sinful—filled with pride and an irrational need and desire to be in control.
Letting go and giving all control to God is not something we do well at all. God has given us His divine plan and His divine will through His divine word, and that should be more than enough for us to build up one, universal, divine church across the world.
But our hearing and seeing and understanding and learning get filtered through an internal system that is corroded and corrupted by sin. And voila! Before you know it, a million and one denominations.
That’s actually why I appreciate the freedom to practice the ancient traditions: Ash Wednesday, Lent, liturgical readings, the Apostle’s Creed, preaching schedules, etc. We can humble ourselves and admit that our spiritual forefathers were not as different from us as we might imagine. And so we don’t always have to be making new stuff up just to suit our unique “context.” Our unique context is that we are all human. We can embrace traditions that have been practiced by faithful believers for almost two millennia.
Those traditions are not necessarily bad, as long as we can refresh our filtering systems to keep the main thing the main thing: Christ, and Him crucified, resurrected, and returning, and God’s great plan to fill the earth with His glory in Jesus’s name through God-fearing, God-honoring, God-worshiping, God-loving communities and families, the church.
The main thing that should unite us all as one church comes from the word of God.
Father, You are sovereign over all of our dysfunction and pride and misunderstandings. You have been from the start. Forgive us for losing sight of the main thing, which You have delivered to us so clearly in Your word. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear so that we would not stumble into pride and arrogance, but rather so that we would walk in faith and in unity to build up Your church in love to the ends of the earth to shine the light of Christ. In Jesus’s name.
