Defiled Hands
Cleanliness was an important part of the Jewish culture in the time of the apostles. Because of the concept of ceremonial cleanliness, the idea that things could make one unclean weighed on them. It was important for them to cleanse themselves and prepare in order to worship God properly.
God had given specific lists of things which would make a person unclean and prescriptions on how a person who had become unclean could be cleansed and get back to the various celebrations and customs surrounding the temple.
However, by the time of Jesus’s birth, these expectations had blossomed into all sorts of superstitions beyond the clear commands of God. Instead of the specifics regarding uncleanness, such as touching dead things, bodily fluids, etc… one was considered in need of cleansing from even normal activities before meals or after travel.
The Pharisees were very serious about these extra rules and, therefore, were shocked to see Jesus’s disciples eating without first washing their hands.
And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”
Mark 7:5
Commandments of Men
Jesus responds to this by citing a judgement leveled against Israel through Isaiah.
And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,
Mark 7:6-8
“‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
The commandments they were so eager to enforce were not matters that they would have found in the law as given to Moses. They were not based upon further rebukes issued through prophets. Instead, they were rules that they had accumulated for themselves because they wanted to appear to be honoring God in everything more than they loved actually obeying him. Rather than taking every conversation back to what God had said, they pontificated endlessly about “what God would want”.
Honor Your Father and Mother
And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God) then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”
Mark 7:9-13
He gives a perfect examples to illustrate the problem. The situation is this: A man has parents in need, yet instead of helping them he makes a commitment to give what could have been used to aid them to the temple. God had said that anyone who doesn’t care for his parents should die! However, God also said that anything promised to the temple has been made holy.
“But no devoted thing that a man devotes to the Lord, of anything that he has, whether man or beast, or of his inherited field, shall be sold or redeemed; every devoted thing is most holy to the Lord.
Leviticus 27:28
No doubt, the argument went something along the lines of God deserving greater honor than parents. Therefore, if you’ve vowed something to God you could no longer use those things to care for your parents. The problem, of course, is that his vow to give things his parents needed to the temple already contradicted the clear command of God to honor one’s parents. You cannot disobey God in order to honor him more!
And Samuel said, “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.
1 Samuel 15:22
His vow was disobedience to God rather than something that would honor him, and yet the Pharisees would insist that he honor the vow rather than God’s commands! All of this, because they saw their standards of greater honor to God than obedience.
The Making of a Legalist
When most people think of a “legalist” they think of a person who insists upon God’s commands and takes the application of them very seriously. After all, we’re supposed to love our neighbor and the world has already provided all sorts of societal expectations about what that means. Why confuse that by adding in a bunch of outdated rules, right?
Except all these expectations are just the doctrines of men. When we translate “love your neighbor” into “do what society considers polite” we dishonor God by placing the traditions and standards of man over the standards of God. This is what makes a person a legalist! When people invent their own standards and then force them on others, they follow in the tradition of the Pharisees. Especially when they pretend following our modern cultural standards are how we can best honor God.
It is impossible to live one’s life entirely without standards. The most lawless people of our time are some of the most insistent upon their own way. It is not the insistence upon standards that makes one disrespectful to God. Rather, it is a matter of who’s standards we are insisting upon. When we invent our own concepts of right and wrong, we dishonor God.
When we trust him enough to believe that his way is always going to be better than any ideas we might have about a “better way”, we glorify him before the world even if they hate it. We demonstrate that we truly believe God to be the only one who is truly good when we submit to him as he has revealed himself, as recorded in scripture, and ignore all the musings of those who try to convince us of what God really wants instead.
