Tevye, in “Fiddler on the Roof,” asks, “How do we keep our balance?” The answer is: Tradition! It tells you how to eat, to sleep, to work, and what clothes to wear. You may smile, but traditions are important for you, also. And that’s not altogether bad. In Mark 7:1–23, Jesus contrasts mere human traditions with obedience to God.
Your traditions can nullify God’s Word. Traditions can be good or bad. Traditions are helpful. Like a habit, they can make life go more smoothly and pleasant. Traditions in a family can be very important in building a sense of family (everyone being home and sitting down together for dinner, Thanksgiving at Grandma’s). They can be helpful in a community, even in a church community, in drawing people together (an annual talent night, or Reformation night event). But traditions can also be dangerous. They can become a mere formality. What the Law of Moses required of the priests as they offered sacrifices (Exodus 30:17–21), the Pharisees practiced at each meal. The point was not hygiene, but ceremonial purification. The interchange in Mark 7:1–23 was triggered by the criticism by the Pharisees and other teachers of the law of Jesus for allowing his disciples to eat with unwashed hands. This incident marks an escalation of the conflict between Jesus and the leaders of Israel. The opponents are not simply local rabbis, but are teachers of Israel, come from Jerusalem. The conflict which will culminate in the death of Christ is intensifying. And Jesus is stern in his rejection of their position.
“To presume to be wiser than God and holier than the law of God is not sanctity but sanctimony, and sanctimony is a vice.” “He who today forbids what God allows will almost certainly tomorrow allow what God forbids. The reason is obvious. Because of his emphasis on the commandments of men he is in imminent peril of neglecting the law of God.”
R. B. Kuiper, The Glorious Body of Christ, p. 268
Tradition must not be followed for its own sake. God’s Word is the final standard. Tradition, in this case, in effect took on an authority equal to, or beyond God’s Word. And obedience to theses detailed regulations became the mark of those who were truly the people of God. Jesus affirms the authority of God, speaking in his Word, and contrasts that with the methodology of the Pharisees and scribes. He illustrates with a case in which the command of God to honor one’s parents (which includes respect and care for them, see Exodus 20:12; 21:17), is annulled by a grown child declaring his assets Corban, or dedicated to God, and thus unavailable for assisting his parents. At time this was apparently used in a technical way to allow the son to continue to use the asset, but still keep it out of bounds for helping the parent. The tradition of how the gift was to be used was allowed to trump the command of God. The quote from Isaiah 29 points to the heart of the problem. When the focus is on the traditions of men, worship and obedience to the Lord becomes lip service, an outward form, but leaving the heart and life untouched. External obedience, if that is all it is, is hypocrisy. Traditions which supplement the Law of God have a way of replacing it. Jesus points out that their traditions do away with the commandments of God. The sinful human heart is the same in Isaiah’s day, when our Lord walked in Galilee, and today.
“In their concern for the fulfillment of the letter of Scripture they forget that the Law was provided not for its own sake but to benefit men. It is an expression of God’s covenant faithfulness as well as of his righteousness and in no circumstance was obedience to one commandment intended to nullify another.”
William L. Lane, The Gospel According to Mark, NICNT, p. 252
Traditions of men can be superficial, but God deals with the heart of the matter. Inside out! Verse 15 is a saying of Jesus in proverbial form. It was spoken publicly to the crowds, and is the real answer to the objection raised in verse 2. He states that it is not what goes into a person which is defiling, but what comes out of him. To the disciples, verses 17–19, Jesus explains. Ceremonially unclean food does not truly defile a person. It simply enters the stomach and is processed. Jesus does not depreciate the reason for the laws of ceremonial purification. They were requirements for Old Testament Israel, and were given for important reasons. Primarily, they reflected the purity, the holiness of God, and were a constant reminder to the people that the guilt and pollution of their sin needed to be dealt with if they were to live in his presence. The real source of defilement comes from a fallen, corrupt heart. What comes out of the body, what has its source in the heart and has various forms of expression, is a long, ugly list of sins. Jesus probably does not give this list so that we can parse them in detail, determining the shades of difference between sexual immorality, adultery, and lewdness, or between deceit and slander. Rather, the point is that these are the things that come our of our hearts, that find expression in our thoughts, that corrupt our speech, that enslave our actions. To quote the classic line from the Pogo comic strip, “We have met the enemy, and it is us.” To be overly concerned about a failure of the disciples to observe the ceremonial washings required of the priests, while ignoring the sinful corruption of the heart, which God’s Word exposes, is horrible.
“[T]he concept of sin and the sense of sin is sharpened and deepened by Jesus. Precisely by moving away from human ordinances and going back to the law of God in the Old Testament, he again makes the law known to us in its spiritual character….”
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 3, p. 135
But there is good news here as well. The cleansing work of Jesus reaches out to all men. Mark points to an implication of Jesus’ words about food not making anyone unclean. He “declared all foods clean,” verse 19. Mark, writing after the death and resurrection of Christ, after Pentecost, and after the good news had begun to go to the Gentiles, understood, and made explicit for his readers, the meaning of what Jesus said. Keep in mind the barrier to the gospel created by the ceremonial laws and traditions. Before Peter could even entertain the thought of going to the house of Gentile Cornelius (even though he was a God-fearer), the Lord had to prepare him with the repetitive vision of Acts 10, and the direct command of the Lord to kill and eat. Food caused tensions in Antioch, Galatians 2. It was on the agenda in Acts 15. What the ascended Lord made explicit to the early church was simply the working out of what Jesus outlined in Mark 7. Yes, the ceremonial barriers are broken down, and Jew and Gentile alike have free access into the presence of God. But they (and we) have that access because Jesus has dealt with the heart of the matter of sinful guilt and corruption. He suffered, died, and rose to forgive our sins and declare us righteous in his sight. And he not only declares us “not guilty,” he also works in us by his Spirit, renewing our hearts, giving us the grace to recognize our sin, enabling us to turn from it to his glory. No longer are our lives characterized by that ugly list of sins (though we do fall back into some of them from time to time and need to continue to put to death the deeds of the flesh). Rather, 1 Corinthians 6:9–11 is the description of who we are in Christ.
Tradition or the Word of God? The choice should be easy. But when your life is lived, not on the basis of tradition, but out of the power of being united to the risen, ascended Lord, when your actions are being structured by the Word of God written, then you can develop habits, or traditions, of glorifying God in all that you do.