Mark 7:8, commentary and pictures

Spoken when scribes and Pharisees accused Jesus because His disciples ate with unwashen hands and did not keep the elders' washings, the verse condemns refusing God's plain requirement in order to keep ceremonial washings of hands and of cups and pots and brazen vessels and tables.

The commandment laid aside is the law given from Sinai, the Ten Commandments, and the tradition held in its place is rabbinical precepts and oral sayings handed down from rabbi to rabbi, professedly to guard the law but treated as more sacred than the law itself.

Christ illustrated this by the setting aside of the fifth commandment to honor father and mother, when teaching that help declared a gift freed a man from further duty to parents made the word of God of none effect.

To lay aside God's commandment for men's tradition is to displace divine authority, make His law void, and render worship vain, honoring Him with the lips while the heart is far from Him.

Jesus with authority rebuked this hypocrisy, came to tear away error from God's commandments and exalt the law rather than lessen it, and this same issue stands in keeping Sunday by human authority without precept or example in Scripture instead of keeping God's seventh-day Sabbath holy.

Setting and Original Meaning

The confrontation arose when scribes and Pharisees came watching Jesus to find accusation against Him because His disciples ate bread with unwashen hands and did not keep the elders' washings. Christ and His disciples refused to observe those ceremonial washings, and that refusal became the ground of accusation against them. The commandment laid aside was the law given from Sinai, the Ten Commandments, while what was held in its place was rabbinical precepts, oral sayings and maxims handed down from rabbi to rabbi and from generation to generation and century to century. Those human traditions were professedly meant to guard observance of the law, mingled with heaven's precepts and presented as divine truth, but they were treated as more sacred than the law itself, dwelt upon as of more value than the words of the living God and given even more force than the Ten Commandments, so that when the two collided preference was given to tradition.

The verse applies especially to numberless rules of ceremonial purification, including washings before eating and washings of cups and pots and brazen vessels and tables and many other such like things. Those washings about eating and vessels had no command from God, yet neglect of them was counted a heinous sin. People were judged over minute particulars and just what ceremonies were to be observed, while keeping that endless round of washings and purifications occupied them with trifling distinctions God had not required and turned attention away from the great principles of His law. By keeping them they displaced the authority and reverence due to God's law, confusing human requirements with divine ones and elevating lifeless formalism above His commandments.

The point was illustrated by what was repeatedly being done with the fifth commandment to honor father and mother, which was set aside as of no consequence. Exactness was shown in carrying out sayings of supposed great men, teaching that a man who says his help to father or mother is a gift is free and need do nothing more for them. That nullified God's plain requirements and made the word of God of none effect. When Christ came in the fullness of time the Jews did not keep the commandments of God but laid them aside to hold the traditions of men, counting their own traditions more important, so their worship was vain and they rejected the commandment of God. In His day Jewish religious belief was controlled by Sadducees, Pharisees, and Essenes who exalted human tradition above the commandments of God and taught tradition as more essential than the precepts of Jehovah, supplementing His commandments with a mass of wholly human oral traditions conceived by narrow minds. They were unconverted and not sanctified through the truth, with self interwoven in all they did and without oneness with Christ, and were jealous against all whom they supposed did not keep the letter of the law, even killing the world's Redeemer over difference of opinion about senseless, unreasonable forms. This revealed a world darkened and marred by apostasy and spiritual wickedness, with the Jews wrapped about with the dark mantle of unbelief.

Tradition Against God's Law

To lay aside God's commandment and hold men's tradition is to displace divine authority and reverence due to God's law, confusing human requirements with divine ones and putting human customs above God's commandments. It is to count one's own traditions more important than God's commandments, to reject His commandment, to make His law void, and to render worship vain and empty when human rules are treated as divine teaching. It exalts what is common above what is sacred and heavenly, transferring the benediction given to the seventh day as God's memorial of creation and rest to the first day, a common working day with multitudinous ceremonies connected with a false sabbath exalted above the seventh-day Sabbath. It is honoring God with the lips while the heart is far from Him, revealing a world darkened and marred by apostasy and spiritual wickedness and wrapped in unbelief, and those who use their own transgression to shield sinners promote apostasy whose weak excuses bring destruction to themselves and others.

Human sayings, imaginations, and inventions were mingled with heaven's precepts and presented to the people as divine truth, as Thus saith the Lord, when they were really the fruit of human minds and of the tree of evil, sayings handed down from century to century. Religious leaders imposed traditions and ceremonies as God's commands though they were not God's commandments, displacing God's commandments and turning religion into a burden of empty ceremonies measured by strict observance of added rules. They could appear exact in outward forms and display public devotion while neglecting mercy, exploiting the poor and widows, misusing offerings, and remaining hypocritical, proud, greedy, and without spiritual life and devotion. They revered outward observances with superstitious reverence while neglecting the moral principles that produce a holy life, turning God's precepts toward the opposite of what they required, dismissing the prophets' teachings and principles of holiness as unessential, and turning people from Jesus toward meticulous practices such as tithing mint and rue to regain influence.

Human additions burdened God's law with senseless, narrow restrictions and endless unimportant demands, perverting it by misconceptions and meaningless requirements until it became a yoke of bondage and a by-word among other nations. This was especially true of the Sabbath, which was hedged with senseless restrictions that made the holy day hard to keep and almost unendurable, such as forbidding kindling a fire or lighting a candle. Views were narrowed until people became slaves to useless regulations and depended on Gentiles to do forbidden services for them, excusing themselves though equally guilty in employing others, while necessary duties were wrongly treated as sins. God's just law gives no commandment that cannot be consistently kept by all and sanctions no meaningless usages, clumsy restrictions, or impossible burdens, and salvation was not restricted to the Jews.

Teachers distorted Scripture with their own interpretations and rules, obscuring its clear meaning, making obedience seem a burdensome system of ceremonies, weakening respect for God, and obscuring heavenly wisdom and the prophecies about Christ. Christ exposed such human requirements that confused people and hindered them from seeing what God's law required, removing the burden without weakening any commandment and revealing the law's full moral force including its reach into motives of the heart. Leaders made plain Scripture seem unclear, used it to support teachings God had not given, weakened its power while denying essential truths, and piled traditions, imaginations, and sayings upon the law until it was buried beneath rubbish with the common mingled with the sacred. Their needless ceremonies and forced mystical meanings clouded faith, confused understanding of God's government and will, buried the law, hid the great principles of the law, and turned attention from what God required.

This substitution is Satan's deep and deceiving work to bury truth under rubbish of human traditions, customs, and practices, leading people away from God's commandments to veneration and obedience of the traditions of the world. Through a confederacy of evil angels and evil men he interposes his shadow between the soul and the bright beams of heavenly light that would guide to salvation. Error cannot stand alone and would soon die, so it fastens like a parasite upon the tree of truth and draws life from it, while traditions of men attach like floating germs to God's truth and are boldly taught for doctrines the commandments of men. As traditions pass from age to age they acquire power over the human mind, but age does not make error truth nor does burdensome weight make the plant of truth a parasite, for each bears its own fruit showing its diverse origin and character. By directing men to false standards Satan causes even professing Christian churches to turn from Jehovah's law, erect a false standard, misshape character, work counter to God's holy law, deny His jurisdiction, and cause humanity to acknowledge him as supreme.

The Pharisees' traditions do not cancel the law, for God's law remains in force as long as heaven and earth remain. Human customs and traditions must not be substituted for God's commandments, and teaching human commandments as doctrine does not authorize anyone to change God's law, including the Sabbath commandment. God requires complete obedience to His law; people cannot choose which parts to obey or treat any part as no longer binding, and even customs promoted in place of God's precepts leave followers as transgressors under the law's condemnation. Religious leaders who set aside God's law and reject its divine authority treat it as no longer binding, and the same disregard present in the religious world today leaves those who follow it under condemnation.

Christ's Rebuke and Example

With authority Jesus rebuked the scribes and Pharisees who came to watch Him to find accusation because His disciples ate bread with unwashen hands and did not keep the elders' washings of cups and pots and brazen vessels and tables. He exposed their hypocrisy and uncovered their pretended sanctity as only a cloak for iniquity, denouncing every evil work and abomination and condemning their course. He charged them with weaving human traditions and maxims of men into the laws of God, so that men were confused about God's government and led to make void God's law through human inventions. He further charged those religious teachers with putting forced, mystical meanings on the oracles of God because truth condemned them, and declared them ignorant both of the Scriptures and of the power of God.

He came to exalt the law and not to lessen its dignity, to tear away the error enveloping the commandments of God and to show the true character of the law of Jehovah. He freed truth from error and human traditions, restoring its original clarity and authority, and gave the true meaning of the law and the prophets and of every type and symbol. He lived the law Himself, drawing a clear sharp line between the righteous principles that must mark the children of God and the principles of the world. In the Sermon on the Mount He showed its far-reaching claims in its great principles as the first four and the last six commandments, in a way the people had never heard, unlike the technicalities of the scribes. God's just law gives no commandment that cannot be consistently kept by all and sanctions no meaningless usages or clumsy restrictions, and salvation was not restricted to the Jews.

Jesus rejected human ceremonies, customs, traditions and maxims when they displaced or conflicted with God's commands and led away from obedience. He required religious practice to rest on divine direction and on every word of God rather than on rabbinical invention, customs without Scriptural authority, or sayings lacking foundation in God's will. He would not adopt such rules or allow them to shape His mind, and those who treated human sayings as God's word rejected and avoided Him because He would not conform. His refusal to follow the Jews' burdensome Sabbath customs was not rejection of the Sabbath commandment, for works of mercy and necessity are lawful and consistent with keeping it.

His impressive, straightforward, direct and positive teaching was as great a contrast to rabbinical teaching as His practical obedience was to their daily transgression. He came to recover the lost gems and jewels of truth originated by Himself and given to patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, and to replace them in the framework of the gospel in their own divine brightness. His plain words, works, and life reproved pretentious godliness mixed with selfishness, hypocrisy, covetousness and unfair dealing, and because truth was plain He was rejected by His own nation. He fully knew the Jewish system taught in the Scriptures, though He had not learned from the religious teachers of the nation.

The same condition that made void the law by tradition and taught for doctrines the commandments of men exists in 1898, when the Word of God is tortured to advance apostasy to His law. Many teachers then seek to turn the people from the law of God to observe and exalt tradition and to drown the voice of God by the commandments of men.

Sabbath and Sunday Conflict

The Sabbath is God's seventh-day memorial of creation and rest, and His commands are not impossible burdens but uphold the dignity of His law. To transfer the benediction given to the seventh day to the first day, a common working day, is to exalt what is common above what is sacred and heavenly. Human practice cannot replace the command to keep the seventh day holy, and the Jews' narrow, senseless Sabbath restrictions that made the holy day hard to keep show how human traditions can set aside God's commandment and turn it into a burden.

God never commanded men to observe the first day of the week, and the Bible gives no authority for it either in precept or in the example of Christ or His followers. Keeping Sunday instead of God's commandment is following the traditions of men instead of Thus saith the Lord, the same sin as when the Jews set aside the fifth commandment while traditions were eagerly grasped. This leading away from the commandments of God to the veneration and obedience of the traditions of the world is Satan's constant work.

Enforcing Sunday observance as the so-called Christian Sabbath is laying aside God's commandments for a human requirement contrary to God's law. A common working day with multitudinous ceremonies connected with a false sabbath is exalted above the seventh-day Sabbath, clothed with a garb of sanctity though bearing no divine credentials and without scriptural evidence. Its observance is sought to be compelled by imprisonment and fines, and seeking state enforcement for it repeats the pattern of putting human tradition above divine authority. This rejection of God's authority leads to a united effort to exalt Sunday and pressure those who keep the Sabbath.

This exalting of human institution over God's law is the spirit of the papacy, which is conformity to worldly customs and veneration for human traditions above the commandments of God. Rome forsook the Bible's paths for human teachings, abandoned God's word for human councils and tradition, and turned people from God toward fallible human authority, bringing corruption, fraud, deception, and iniquity. Sunday observance is a custom which originated with Rome and which she claims as the sign of her authority. The Roman clergy fed the people with worthless husks of superstitious rites and human traditions that could not supply the wants of their souls, as in away with books and up with candles, away with Bibles and up with beads, away with the light of the gospel and up with wax tapers even at noonday, down with Christ's cross and up with the purgatory pick-purse, away with clothing the naked, the poor and impotent and up with decking images and garnishing stones and stocks.

That same spirit is permeating the Protestant churches and leading them to do the same work of Sunday exaltation which the papacy has done before them. The movement in the United States to secure state support for church institutions and usages, whose principal object is the enforcement of Sunday observance, follows in the steps of papists and opens the door for popery to regain in Protestant America the supremacy lost in the Old World. Connecting that error with a work that is in itself good, like temperance reform, does not favor the error, for poison mingled with wholesome food does not change its nature but is rendered more dangerous because it is more likely to be taken unawares. Combining with falsehood just enough truth to give it plausibility is one of Satan's devices, and though leaders of the Sunday movement may advocate reforms the people need and principles in harmony with the Bible, God's servants cannot unite with them while there is with these a requirement contrary to God's law.

The religious world follows in the track of the Jews by upholding Sunday as a false sabbath, with zeal growing under the enemy's training until persecuting those who keep His commandments is thought to be service to God. Setting aside God's command in favor of human teachings makes people reject God's authority, and as disregard for God's law led the Jewish people to reject the Son of God, so exalting a false Sabbath turns others from obedience to God. Human commands are given sacred status while those who keep God's Sabbath may face persecution for turning others from obedience. Papal authorities exalted customs over God's law by requiring Sunday observance and opposing the Bible Sabbath, and some who kept the Sabbath also rested on Sunday yet this did not satisfy those authorities who demanded that the Sabbath be profaned, so that obeying God's law in peace required escaping Rome's power.

Restoration means choosing God's word over men's traditions, as in Wycliffe's work restoring the Bible's authority against Rome's abandonment of God's word for human tradition. The same preference for human tradition over God's word appears in those who opposed Luther and in people of the present time. The new gospel teaching supplied what souls needed so the people turned away from those who had so long fed them only tradition, leaving superstitious rites and traditions that failed to meet spiritual need. Trask's wife chose God's word over traditions of men by resting on Saturday in obedience to the fourth commandment.

The same battle over human tradition set against God's commandment is to be fought again, and the claims of the spurious sabbath are to be enforced upon the world. With the Bible open before them, ministers and people reject light in regard to the Sabbath, trample upon God's holy day, show contempt for God's holy precepts, and exalt a spurious sabbath which has no other foundation than the authority of the Roman church. Protestant churches have received doctrines which the Word of God condemns and will bring them to the front and force them upon consciences of men, just as papal authorities urged their dogmas upon advocates of truth in Luther's time. Every soul will be called to decide on which side of the controversy he will be found, laying aside plain commandments to hold sayings and customs of men brings accountability from God, and those who follow present disregard that treats His law as no longer binding stand under condemnation.

Wider Church Applications

Human customs and traditions hinder spiritual growth and preparation for service when they are treated as more important than God's commandments and His living Word. In Christ's time the inherited maxims and customs of the scribes and Pharisees, handed down through the rabbis from generation to generation, were made all-essential and given even more force than the Ten Commandments, with the precepts and teachings of men dwelt upon as of more value than a Thus saith the Lord. Even His few followers and disciples were constantly kept back from the advancement they might have made, from meeting their great want of knowledge, and from becoming efficient in usefulness and effective workers. Schools repeat that hindrance by misconception of the most essential work for students unless they study the Word of God critically as the great lesson book and receive and do that Word instead of patterning after any already established school.

Clinging with tenacity and firmness to old habits and to books and studies and nonessential studies God has not appointed, as if salvation depended on them, travels over the same ground as the Jews. Such clinging turns away from the special light God has given in His Word and gives a deficient education by directing students from God's clear word to human theories and customs and inventions put ahead of God's word. Eternal truth cannot be rightly unfolded through human interpretation alone, but the Holy Spirit's power is needed to reveal spiritual things.

Religious disputes centered on matters of little consequence, while neglecting the precious truths of God's Word that concern salvation, leave the great questions of salvation unheeded. Setting aside God's commandment and law in favor of human traditions, inventions, and rules and practices rejects God's authority and truth and makes human authority supreme and a rival authority in worship. This addition of customs and ceremonies Scripture does not command is rebellion against God and the beginning of apostasy, for people are not free to add such rules to God's regulations for worship or to treat human authority as a supplement to God's authority. Those who discard God's law and trample on His Word value human inventions over eternal realities, are led into deception and blindness with human will and passion producing oppression and suffering, and hasten toward the first and second death.

Human enactments that oppose God's commands, and the effort to lead others into sin through them, exalt human law above divine law by setting aside divine authority. The warning applies to medical theories and maxims treated as valuable despite being unnecessary or harmful, for the Bible is the better source of knowledge and spiritual health and the better counselor. Confidently exalting Regular medical practice as the best of all methods and depreciating and denouncing every other system such as homeopathy as satanic is the same invention and tradition of men as the talk of the Pharisees, springing from narrowness of mind and from acting out impressions received from educators and showing departure from the way of the Lord. The same comparison holds for confidence in a learned medical system with condemnation of other systems as Dr. Maxson did, for such claims are human invention and tradition, not proof that a practice is the Lord's way, and theories taught in medical training that are unnecessary or harmful are like the traditions taught by the scribes and Pharisees.

Those who teach must not mingle human spirit, ideas, traditions, suppositions, and personal devisings with the truth, for that lays aside the commandment of God and covers up His precepts. They must give the people the truth as it is in Jesus, pure and unmixed with self, because a presentation that tastes strongly of self will disgust the hearers. Clinging zealously to fanciful interpretations of Scripture resembles the Jews' attachment to human traditions.

Guilt is shared when religious teachers interpret the Word of God to suit preconceived opinions so it seems to harmonize with human traditions and commandments, and when people without searching the Scriptures for themselves and comparing scripture with scripture believe what priests and rulers teach. In that course people use no reason and judgment of their own, put priests and rulers where God should be, reject the truth of God to keep their own tradition, and worship without knowing what they worship. Lack of disagreement does not prove that sound doctrine is held, for without searching Scripture people may cling to tradition instead of discerning truth from error. This keeping of tradition instead of God's Word led Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum, and Jerusalem to reject Christ despite clear evidence, and the same error must not be repeated, for the duty of every person blessed with reasoning faculties is to search the Scriptures to understand the will of God and know for himself the conditions upon which salvation is provided.

Those waiting for Jesus must give up errors and traditions received from men and turn wholly to God and His word. This forsaking of human tradition is part of being purified, made white, and tried through greater bitter trials for His sake that must be endured because Jesus cannot yet come to earth, and those who endure obtain an eternal victory. The Jews in Christ's day did the opposite, holding their own ideas, customs, practices, misinterpretations and human traditions as idols and as sacred doctrines taught to the people. They obstinately refused to give up those misinterpretations, formed a confederacy to stand by the old traditions, and set their human interpretations in defiance against Christ's lessons and pure truths of practical godliness rather than give them up.

God requires complete obedience to His law, so people cannot choose which parts to obey or treat any part as no longer binding. Even customs promoted in place of God's precepts leave those who follow them as transgressors under the law's condemnation. Choosing human traditions over God's commandments disregards and makes void God's law, and those who use their own transgression to shield sinners promote apostasy whose weak excuses bring destruction to themselves and others.