Matthew 15:6 (KJV)
And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.
When my oldest son began courting his future bride, he met with her and her parents for dinner. When he came home, he shared how the evening had gone. One of the questions they asked him was, "What traditions does your family have?”
The question took him by surprise, and he answered, "We don't have any traditions."
His mother and I then began to recount a list of our family traditions: We open our Christmas presents on Christmas Eve, just after returning home from the Christmas Eve service. Every Memorial Day, we visit his mother's family graves in Oregon, and so on.
It reminded me of myself in my early days of pastoring. Whenever I led a wedding rehearsal, I would say something like, "We're Baptists. We don't have any traditions. The bride gets what the bride wants!”
That was, of course, not true. I had plenty of expectations for the wedding. I simply never thought of them as traditions.
We Baptists use the phrase "like faith and practice" as the basis of our fellowship. Faith is our doctrine. Practice is the application of that doctrine—in other words, many of our traditions.
To deny that we have traditions would be absurd. Paul even speaks of traditions and commands believers to separate from those who do not follow them. (I believe that separation is for the sake of peace and the preservation of the faith—not necessarily, or at least not always, as an act of judgment.) We have traditions. Everyone does.
But here's the important point: We must recognize our traditions and take careful steps to ensure that none of them make the commandment of God of none effect.
#BibleOverTradition #FaithAndPractice #GodsWordFirst #BiblicalChristianity #CommandmentOfGod
The Tradition Trap: Don’t Allow Customs to Replace God's Word
What do you think? Have you ever discovered that something you thought was "just the way we've always done it" was actually a tradition rather than a biblical command? Leave a comment below and join the conversation. Then visit marvinmckenzie.org for more Bible studies, articles, videos, and resources designed to help you build your faith on God's Word rather than man's traditions.
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