rejecting God’s commands

“You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”

And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!”

Mark 7:8-9

Human beings have been masterful at supplanting the command of God with our own replacements ever since the first sin in Eden. We fell for the devil’s lie that replaced God’s command with “something more” and ever since then we have been doing this ourselves when confronted with the necessity of obeying the Word of God. We have done this using both religion and irreligion. We have done it claiming lip service commitment to God, but truly valuing our legalistic works over His generous grace. We have done it setting our own selves up as the divine authority through humanistic attempts at redefining righteousness. We have done it by trying to convince ourselves that sin really isn’t something that bad.

Jesus confronts this “replacement soteriology” head on with the Pharisees and scribes. He condemned their concentration on legalistic human traditions as a rejection of the commands that God had given to them. He told them they emptied God’s commands of their true power by exalting their traditions above the Word of God, making themselves the final authority on what was right, and not God.

Lord,

Save me from my attempts at self salvation. I really reject the gospel with any thought that I will make myself better. I need the work of Jesus and the word of Jesus to save and change me from this tendency I have to replace God’s Word with my tradition. My only hope is Jesus. Human thinking cannot save me!

Amen