I’m going to say at the outset that not all traditions are bad – some traditions are enriching, valuable parts of what it is to be human and live in fellowship with other humans. As a fairly new Father, one of the things I can’t wait to do is establish family traditions that will give my family a sense of unity and history as we go through life together. So this is by no means an anti-Tradition rant for the sake of it.
However, there are other traditions that aren’t so good. For example, there’s an old story about a newly married couple and their first roast dinner.
Watching his wife prepare the joint of meat, the husband bemusedly watched her cut two inches from either end of the meat and threw it in the bin. Thinking it an awful waste, he asked her “Why have you just cut those ends off?”
“That’s just how my Mum taught me to prepare a roast. She’s done it all her life, and I never thought to ask her why,” she replied as she carried on seasoning the meat.
“Fair enough,” the husband said. “I don’t want to cut across family traditions. After all, Mum knows best!”
A year or two later, they were visiting the wife’s family for Sunday lunch and he saw his mother-in-law cutting the ends off the joint. As she threw them in the bin, his curiosity was piqued again. “I’m just wondering, why do you cut the ends off the joint? I know you’ve done it your whole life, but I can’t see why!”
“You know, I’m not sure,” the mother-in-law replied. “It’s something I picked up from my Mum, and I never thought to ask her why.”
“I don’t want to cut across family traditions, but I can’t help thinking it’s such a waste throwing the ends away like that. Do you think your Mum had a reason?”
“I’m sure she did. Now you mention it, I’m curious too. I think I’ll ring her and find out.”
So the mother-in-law picked up the phone, called up her mother and the whole room waited as the phone rang. After a while, the Grandmother picked up the phone.
“Hi Mum, how are you?” asked the mother-in-law. “Look, we’ve just been here talking about how you taught me to cook a Sunday dinner. Well, we realised that I don’t know why you always used to cut the ends off a joint of meat before sticking it in the oven. Could you tell me the reason?”
“Oh, of course dear, that’s easy! When I first got married to your father we couldn’t afford a very big oven, and the joint of meat was just too big to fit in. So I used to cut the ends off so that it would fit through the oven door. I guess I got into the habit of doing it. Even when we got a bigger oven years later, I just carried on doing it without even thinking!”
I’m pretty sure this never actually happened, but it illustrates a very important point about tradition. There are traditions that end up robbing people of what could be theirs. The tradition in the story above is a silly example, but it illustrates how a tradition cheated three generations of a family out of all the meat that was theirs to enjoy. In the same way, I believe that the 21st century church has inherited traditions invented over the centuries that have taken them away from the purity of the gospel. They are traditions that pull Old Covenant principles and practices into the lives of those who have been redeemed under the New Covenant in Christ’s blood.
One of Jesus’ criticisms of the Pharisees is that they created traditions and valued them over the word of God. The trouble is that these traditions made the word of God of no effect (Mark 7:13). Where these traditions were accepted, they literally choked the life out of God’s word so that it wasn’t able to have the full effect in people’s lives.
The traditions we have accepted in the church do the exact same thing in the lives of believers today and rob us of our full inheritance in Christ. We fail to realise that there is a profound disconnect between the covenants and that you just can’t mix law and grace and still expect the promises of God to be of full effect in our lives.
In all the years I’ve been writing on this blog there have been many things I’ve heard from preachers and read in books that have challenged these traditions, but I’ve held back from sharing them here out of fear of what people might think. In doing this, I’ve realised that I’ve been bowing down to the very traditions that nullify the word of God and make it of no effect in my life. Well, it’s been going on too long.
I believe God is leading me into a process of detox where the traditions are going to be challenged and chucked out. So, this is me serving notice that I am going to share what He shows me, paying no heed to what people may think or say. The religious traditions have been binding me for too long, and their time is up.
Let the freedom break out!
Very exciting, carrying the wrong traditions it heavy,hard work! I’m looking forward to hearing more
Thanks for a insightful and thought-provoking post. I appreciate the willingness to put ourselves in the position of the Pharisees and explore ways in which we might have adopted their attitudes. It is a constant danger.
I want to query you on your emphasis on the discontinuity between the Old and New Covenants. It is helpful to be shown so clearly by you how the New Covenant is so different from the Old, and the ways in which Jesus overturned so many of the Jews’ expectations.
My question for you is this: in what sense is the Old Testament still valuable for us as Christians to read? What do we learn from it that is still relevant and useful for us? Firstly, if all the OT does is point us to Christ, and now we have Christ, then why do we still need to bother with the OT? Can’t we just take the New Testament and learn about Christ from that? Secondly, if we are no longer under the Old Covenant, then why is it fruitful to learn about it? It could be considered as useless as learning the laws of a country that no longer exists, when the country we live in operates so differently. How do we encounter the same God in both testaments? In other words, having done such a good job of clarifying the discontinuity, how would you establish the continuity?
Hey Barney,
Thanks for the comment!
Re: Pharisee’s, I’ve always been worried about quite how often I have found myself sharing the Pharisee’s reaction to Jesus’ stories and actions – obviously not to the point of plotting His death, but definitely able to see where they’re coming from!
Re: the OT. There’s whole volumes that could be written about that! I think I would say that there are some ways in which the OT is incredibly valuable to us, and there are other ways in which reading the OT could actually do serious spiritual harm. To get the negative out of the way, the major way you can read the OT is to uncritically take everything written there as though it was written to us. This is especially likely to happen when people aren’t fully aware of the fact that the Mosaic Law is no longer applicable to believers in Christ. For all the reasons Paul explains, someone doing this will experience the effects of failing to fulfill the whole Law; namely curses, death and spiritual depression. This is very much my experience when coming to portions of the OT that I would attempt to apply directly
More positively, while not everything in the OT is written to us, it is all written for us. I’m 100% convinced that reading the OT is for New Covenant believers. On this point, it must be said that the NT directly says as much in 2 Timothy 3, and 1 Cor 10. As such, there is definitely value in studying the OT even when we stand in the benefits of that New Covenant. So what are the benefits?
Firstly, I would say that the principal function the OT should have in our lives is, as you mentioned, showing us Christ. I’m tempted to say that even if this were the sole purpose of the OT in the life of a believer, then it would be tough to think of a nobler, higher or more practical purpose! While you could just take the NT and learn about Jesus there (which, arguably, the modern church does very well
), the reality is that there are all kinds of things about Christ that you can only appreciate when you have a robust understanding of the Old Covenant. For example, we can only begin to understand the Cross of Christ when we are aware of the Passover story and the Levitical sacrificial system. Likewise, the various authors of the New Testament make reference to many OT stories without actually telling the story, so we would be more than lost if we just relied on the NT to understand Jesus. In many ways, to do this would both cheat us of the full riches of knowing Christ as He is portrayed in the OT and also put us in danger of missing the point entirely!
Secondly, while I see that you could make studying the OT under the New Covenant analogous to studying the laws of a country that no longer exists, I would say that a much better analogy would be the way modern-day Germans might study Hitler and the Holocaust, or members of former-Soviet states study the history of life under the Communist USSR regime. We are all born into a law/merit-based world, whether we’re talking the Mosaic Law or the various religious systems that have evolved over millenia in Man’s search for God. We are then delivered from these systems when we come to Christ and New Covenant grace, but without the OT we wouldn’t be able to see every area of our minds that need to be renewed from these systems.
Through the broad sweep of Israel’s history, the OT spells out exactly what it is like living under a law-based system – if you like, what it is like to live from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil. It also highlights the impotence of the Law to actually change the human heart or spirit and so the OT itself demonstrates the necessity of and proclaims coming of the New Covenant. In these ways, we’re now better equipped to recognise when we’re slipping back into legalistic mindsets and attitudes. The OT then functions as a “Never Again” re: Law and religious meritocracy to those living in New Covenant communities just as Yad Vashem does re: anti-semitism and Fascism to the World. We are then equipped to live only from our position in Christ – or, if you will, live eating only from the Tree of Life.
Thirdly, the OT shows us what moves God’s heart. I guess I’m thinking principally of the wisdom books and the prophets here, but you see much of God’s heart revealed in the narrative portions of the OT too. If it weren’t for the OT, we wouldn’t have such a clear idea that social justice moves God’s heart. Likewise, we would lose out on very rich expositions of God’s lovingkindness toward us, not to mention a vision of how our spiritual adultery wrenches His heart in the same way Hosea’s heart broke with Gomer’s betrayal. There is so much revelation of what moves God’s heart throughout the OT that, even recognising the primacy of God’s revelation in Christ, we would absolutely be the poorer for not having it.
Fourthly, it would be remiss to not talk of the way the Law in the OT can function evangelistically. Paul writes to Timothy about how the Mosaic Law can be used lawfully, explaining that it isn’t written for the righteous (i.e. believers), but for lawless and unrighteous people. Paul seems to be suggesting that the Law has an ongoing purpose, used of the Holy Spirit, to bring conviction of sin and continue to act as a tutor leading us to Christ.
Finally, I would argue that by filling ourselves up with the history of God’s dealings with mankind generally and Israel particularly, we give the Holy Spirit much more material with which to teach us wisdom and prudence in our day-to-day lives. Interpreting the OT from within a Christ-centred hermeneutic, with the recognition that many things in the OT simply aren’t meant to be directly emulated or obeyed by us, studying the Old Testament gives the Holy Spirit a rich tapestry of stories which He can bring to mind as we grow in Christ, wielding the sword of the Spirit that Paul talks about in Ephesians 6.
In all these ways, the OT has value in the lives of New Covenant believers in Christ. I’m absolutely certain that there is more to say about the appropriate use of the OT for New Covenant believers. It would be more than arrogant to suggest that I’ve wrapped it up in this brief(!) comment. This is just an initial attempt to answer your very valid questions.
Hope it’s helped explain a bit further!