God’s Law and Human Tradition

Meditations of the Gospel of Mark

August 31, 2020

God’s Law and Human Tradition

Then he said, “You skillfully sidestep God’s law in order to hold on to your own tradition.

Mark 7:9

Read: Mark 7: 1-13

To grasp this truth in today’s reading, we need to remember that an essential part of being a Christian is spiritual discernment. Anyone who desires to become a fully-devoted follower of Jesus will come to appreciate that while spiritual discernment is a skill that can be learned, it is also an art. Part of the art is learning to understand scripture and then test human traditions against it. Jesus is revealing how the religious leaders had blurred the distinction between tradition and scripture. They were teaching people cultural traditions as though they carried the same weight as scripture.

In our world today, many are looking to cultural norms to inform their understanding of Christian morality and ethics. In doing so, many are following into the same trap as the one Jesus described in today’s passage. The followers of Jesus need always to be mindful of this passage from Romans: “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:2).

My Takeaway: An affirmation sometimes used when a person made a confession of faith and joined the church included a belief in the Old and New Testaments as a sufficient rule of faith and practice. I think Jesus is pointing to the truth of this affirmation in today’s passage.

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Copyright © 2020 by Alex M. Knight

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

• Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

• The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.