DEVOTION
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK
LIVING BY ONE OR THE OTHER
Mark 7:9-15
9 And he said to them: "You have a fine
way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own
traditions! 10 For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and,
'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.' 11 But you say that if a man says to his
father or mother: 'Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is
Corban' (that is, a gift devoted to God), 12 then you no longer let him do
anything for his father or mother. 13 Thus you nullify the word of God by your
tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like
that."
14 Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15 Nothing
outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what
comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.'"
NIV
This is the continuation of the challenge that Jesus was giving to the
Pharisees regarding their paying far more attention to their own traditions
than to the commands of God. As he already made that point abundantly clear, he
makes it even clearer and takes it even to the level of personal relationships
within a family. What the whole of it is, as we observed before, is that those
traditions have nothing to do with the word of God, but now Jesus makes it far
more by saying that our traditions which we observe, thinking they are
spiritual, or at least make us appear spiritual, actually nullify the word of
God. This Greek word translated as nullify carries the meaning of make none
effect, to invalidate, to render void, to deprive of force and authority. That
is really harsh. To think that those things we have established that if we are
a Christian we would not do this or that may actually render the word of God
void in our lives. There are some absolute commands of God that we should
consider as to what we should not do, such as when we are told to rid ourselves
of all bitterness, rage anger, brawling, and slander, which is another word for
gossip. We are also told to get rid of all envy, deceit, hypocrisy, and greed.
There are other attitudes and behavior that are implied within all this, such
as not forgiving others, in fact, we are instructed, commanded to forgive
others, and to have compassion. We are commanded to find out what pleases the
Lord, instead of determining that abiding by some traditions handed down over
the years is what pleases him. As far we can tell that are two main ways to
find out what pleases the Lord. First, read His word, second read it with the
leading of the Spirit. Of course, we could simply rely on the Spirit to inform
us of what is right, but it is always about His leading us to the truth within
the word of God. Thus we should base our lives on the word of God rather than
on some tradition we think makes us holy. Here is where Jesus gets right down
to the practical application of this truth. Because he has been speaking about
traditions that nullify the word of God, which are the things that come out of a man
and those are the things that make us unclean. When we come up with
traditions, we become unclean, as Jesus says we have deprived the word of God
any force and authority in our lives. That is this lesson in its context,
although some have always seen this as food or drink that enters us does not
make us unclean, but what comes out of our mouths does. In a sense that is true
because many of the traditions handed down over the years have been
restrictions on the consumption of certain things, mostly drinking and smoking,
with no attention to the consumption in the abundance of food, which is defined in
the Bible as gluttony. In fact, within the Old Testament that were more laws
about food than many other consumables. So what are we to do? Should we avoid
all traditions and strictly live according to the word of God? Some traditions
might be good, but not if they nullify the word of God. The problem is that
some might make an effort to validate their traditions by reading into the word
of God, their own thoughts, trying to find through misinterpreting the basis for
their traditions. We have to be careful not to be judgmental as to how others
base their lives, but we also need to be aware that we cannot allow traditions
that nullify the word of God to have any place in our lives. We can have only
one authority in our lives, and that has to be the word of God. It comes down
to living by one or the other, so it cannot be both.
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