by Harry BuererWhen Jesus was on earth in the first century, he criticized the religious leaders of Judaism. When we look closely at the New Testament accounts of this, we can see that his criticism was usually because they put their traditions in place of scripture. An example of this is in Mark 7. The Pharisees were advocating ceremonial washing (7:1-7), which had no place in scripture, but were shirking the commandment to honor their parents by how they were using their money. (7:8-13)
This is not the only passage where Jesus makes this point. In Matthew 23 he commends the Pharisees for tithing their spices according to the law (23:23), but criticizes them for neglecting the more important matters of the law. We often think that Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees was for keeping the law too rigorously. But actually his criticism was for not keeping it enough, and for elevating their traditions above God’s law.
If Jesus were physically present on earth today, I suspect that he would treat Christian leaders in the same way that he treated the Pharisees of old. Everywhere you look, Christianity has practices that are based on traditions rather than on scripture. God was pretty specific as to which day he designated as the Sabbath. But the vast majority of Christians revere Sunday as their holy day, without any hint in the New Testament that they should do so. Rare is the Christian that observes Passover or the Feast of Tabernacles. They do tend to celebrate the festival of Weeks (Pentecost), but only because of events in Acts 2 that happened on that day.
If we truly want to be followers of Jesus in our day, we need to take seriously his teaching of scripture over tradition and his criticism of the religious leaders of his day for this very reason. “Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.” (I John 2:6) May we be followers who take scripture seriously, and weigh it against all our traditions.