Matthew 15
1 Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” 3 He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 5 But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” 6 he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. 7 You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: 8 “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; 9 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”
We can define legalisms as extra-biblical rules that, over time, can take on the air of divine commandments, though they are not. R. Kent Hughes has written of a fascinating example of legalism:
Dr. Howard Hendricks has remarked that he grew up in a legalistic home where the use of fingernail polish was enough to condemn one to Hell. He said, “I repudiated legalism intellectually and theologically in 1946, but in 1982 I am still wrestling with it emotionally.” Extra-biblical restrictions take their toll.[1]
This is a great example. Somewhere along the line somebody read the biblical calls for modesty. Fingernail polish, it was determined, must be vanity and therefore a violation of biblical modesty. Thus, fingernail polish becomes a sin. Over time, this legalism, based on a very shaky premise (not, I hasten to add, biblical modesty but rather the premise that fingernail polish must be a violation of it) takes on the added weight of tradition. When this happens, there is not even the alleged biblical argument anymore, but rather simply the appeal to, “It just is!” or “Christians have known this for a long time, why don’t you?!”
To dismantle a faulty tradition, one must push against the canonizing power of time as well as the flawed premise behind the original argument. In the case of fingernail polish, that would look like this:
- The fact that our tradition has said that fingernail polish is a sin for a long time does not make it a sin.
- Why should we think that fingernail polish violates the call for modesty anyway? Why should we conclude that it always does?
Matthew 15 begins with Jesus being confronted with one such faulty tradition. I say “faulty” tradition because not all traditions are faulty. Some are good. Some are healthy. In fact, it may be more precise to say that tradition, in and of itself, seen simply as a shared memory, is healthy but traditionalism, meaning the weighty enforcement of “the way we do things” is unhealthy. Jaroslav Pelikan once defined tradition as “the living faith of the death” and traditionalism as “the dead faith of the living.” Seen in this light, what Jesus is pushing against in Matthew 15 is traditionalism, defined as tradition-off-the-rails!
In keeping with the language of our text, let us critique faulty tradition, flawed tradition, Pelikan’s traditionalism. We will do so in terms of “tradition maintenance” or “keeping up faulty and dangerous traditions.”
Tradition maintenance can cause us to miss the bigger picture.
The first and most obvious point in our text is the way in which tradition maintenance can cause us to miss the bigger picture. This can take the form of a tragicomedy, as it does in verses 1 and 2.
1 Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.”
I say these verses are a tragicomedy because of the startling and absurd way that the Pharisees and scribes, here the traditional maintainers, focus on a minor point and miss the major point. Think of it: they are worked up over the fact that the disciples are not washing their hands when they eat. This is more than hygiene to them. This is ritual purification. But it is indeed a tradition. The tragicomedy comes in the fact that they are allowing such a silly thing to eclipse the amazing things that Jesus has been doing! Nevermind the miraculous feeding of thousands and the healing of multitudes…no! We want to know why your disciples are not washing their hands!
The church father Origen marveled at this when he wrote.
Pharisees and scribes came to him from Jerusalem. They did not come because they were amazed at the power in Jesus that healed people even if they “only touched the edge of his cloak.” Instead they came with a faultfinding attitude and brought an accusation before the teacher.
That is a good way of putting it: tradition maintainers are more about fault finding than amazement at the great works of God! Origen goes on to make a great point about something that this petty complaint reveals about the disciples:
Probably the charge of the faultfinders itself displays the piety of the disciples of Jesus, because they offered no grounds at all for criticism by the Pharisees and scribes in regard to transgressing the commandments of God. The Pharisees and scribes would not have brought the charge of transgressing the commandment of the elders against the disciples of Jesus if, indeed, they were able to get a firm hold on the ones who were being accused and were able to show that they were transgressing a commandment of God.[2]
That too is well said! The Pharisees and scribes had to scrape the bottom of the barrel because the disciples’ lives were so exemplary they offered no other grounds for complaint! I love that!
Another church father, John Chrysostom, likewise marveled at the audacity of these Pharisees and scribes. He pointed to the word “Then” at the beginning of verse 1 and observed that Matthew said “Then” in order to highlight the fact that these guys came “[w]hen he had worked thousands of signs, when he had healed the sick with the touch of his tassel.” He concludes that Matthew highlighted the time in order to “show that their unspeakable wickedness is second to none.”[3]
When tradition maintenance itself goes unchecked it leads to selective blindness in the house of God: we begin to be irked at small things that violate the traditions and we miss the big things that God is doing!
I use to have a bumper sticker with one of my favorite quotes from G.K. Chesterton. It said, “Break the Conventions, Keep the Commandments!” I love that! The “conventions” are the traditions. They can be critiqued and should be. Many should be ignored or broken. The commandments, on the other hand, are from God and should be kept. Conventions grow on commandments like barnacles on the underside of a ship! Beware the traditionalism of man! Beware the legalisms that come dressed in the cloak of time! They can blind you if you’re not careful!
Tradition maintenance can cause us to miss clear commandments.
Worse than that, they can cause you to miss the clear commandments that really do come from God! Jesus illustrates this fact beautifully!
3 He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 5 But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” 6 he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God.
What is Jesus talking about here, that the Pharisees and scribes “break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition”? What He is talking about is the fact that the religious leaders of that day had developed a subtle way of circumventing the commandment to “Honor your father and mother.” Whereas a straight-forward reading of that commandment would obviously suggest that, at a minimum, children care for their parents in their old age, these religious leaders had devised a singular exception. The only exception to giving what you have to the care of your parents was to give it to the Temple or the religious leaders for sacred worship since giving to God is a greater act than giving to man. Cyril of Alexandria explained that the Pharisees were instructing people to say “to the father or the mother that this gift, which you received from me—or rather, which you took from me—was depriving the votive offering meant for the temple and thus violating holy possessions. For I have dedicated and promised myself as a gift to God.”[4] In this way, they said, it was not really neglecting your parents if you were giving the money to God (read, “to God’s ministers”!).
Amazing, no? In the name of God the ministers of God were telling the people of God that they could violate the clear commandments of God.
This is how traditionalism, tradition-run-amuck, can become dangerous! It can blind us to the reality of the clear commandments!
Also, these legalisms that morph into traditions create confusion by getting mixed in with actual commandments. After a while, it is hard to tell what is from God and what is from man. Philip Yancey has written about how this happened in John Calvin’s Geneva.
William Manchester records some of the diversions forbidden by Calvin:
feasting, dancing, singing, pictures, statues, relics, church bells, organs, altar candles; “indecent or irreligious” songs, staging or attending theatrical plays; wearing rouge, jewelry, lace, or “immodest” dress; speaking disrespectfully of your betters; extravagant entertainment, swearing, gambling, playing cards, hunting, drunkenness, naming children after anyone but figures in the Old Testament; reading “immoral or irreligious books.
A father who christened his son Claude, a name not found in the Old Testament, spent four days in jail, as did a woman whose hairdo reached an “immoral” height. The Consistory beheaded a Child who struck his parents. They drowned any single woman found pregnant. In separate incidents, Calvin’s stepson and daughter-in-law were executed when found in bed with their lovers.[5]
Do you see? In this list you find things that are clearly sinful (i.e, swearing, drunkenness, adultery), with things that are not (i.e., not naming your children after Old Testament characters!). The upshot of all of this is clear enough: confusion concerning the commandments of God.
Jesus condemns the Pharisees and scribes for this: your traditions actually allow people to sin with impunity and, in some case, with a sense that they are actually being righteous! What a tragedy!
Legalism, in the end, always ends up creating the sin it claims to hate.
Tradition maintenance can cause us to miss the heart of God in the name of God.
More than anything, tradition maintenance can cause us to miss the heart of God in the name of God.
7 You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: 8 “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; 9 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”
Put another way, “You talk a lot about me, but, while doing so, you miss me completely!” Why? Because you are not teaching the truths of God but rather “the commandments of men.” Even so, you dare to teach these “commandments of men” as “doctrines,” that is, as things from God!
How much damage has been done in the history of the church because people mistook the voice of man as the voice of God!
Hear the words of Jesus and remember: you can keep all the rules and still miss the heart of God…especially if the rules themselves never came from God!
What is more offensive to God: that you never step foot in a theater but you have a haughty spirit about your own righteousness or that you are simply careful about what movies you do and do not watch in a theater and are humble?
What is more offensive to God: that you never wear fingernail polish but you are a gossip or that you paint your fingernails bright red every day and then use your hands to serve the poor?
What is more offensive to God: that you only listen to Christian music but you are ill-tempered and make others miserable or that you listen to Creedence Clearwater Revival while mowing the lawn of your invalid neighbor?
What is more offensive?
Who is closer to God? The Christian who has never smoked but ogles members of the opposite sex or the new believer who cannot quite kick his nicotine habit but views others as created in the image of God and treats them accordingly?
Who is closer to God? The woman who has never been in jail and uses her wealth to shame the poor or the woman who just got out of the halfway house where she gave her life to Jesus and gives her few dollars to the poor woman on the corner because she wants to try to live like Jesus?
I ask you: who is closer to God? The Christian who is working himself to the bone and only has Sunday to mow his tall grass or the church leader who sees him doing so and sneers contemptuously at the man’s violation of the Sabbath?
Beware! Beware straining at gnats while you swallow camels! Beware your adherence to traditions that are from men while you violate commandments that from God!
Beware the dead faith of the living! Beware soulless traditionalism!
Love the commandments of God! Beware the extra rules of man!
Keep the commandments. Feel free to break the conventions.
[1] R. Kent Hughes, Acts (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1996), p.197.
[2] Manlio Simonetti, ed. Matthew 14-28. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Gen. Ed. Thomas C. Oden. New Testament, vol. Ib (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), p.17.
[3] Manlio Simonetti, ed., p.17.
[4] D.H. Williams, ed. Matthew. The Church’s Bible. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2018), p.301.
[5] Philip Yancey. What’s So Amazing About Grace. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997), p.234.