Getting Behind the Mask of Traditionalism

With the Old Testament and historical background in place in previous articles, it’s time to examine Mark 7:1–13 in more detail.  In other words, it’s time to start comparing our lives to Scripture.  God is holy, and he deserves a holy people.  Mark 7 makes it clear that in our quest to be holy, the trap of idolatry lies close at hand.  Indeed, the Pharisees were the conservatives.  They were also idolaters.  Are you a conservative?  Are you liable to the same rebuke?

We saw in previous articles that the Pharisees were trying to give God the honoured place he deserved as a holy God.  “They honour me with their lips” (Mark 7:6).  This much Jesus gives them.  By their externals (lips and handwashings), they were trying to honour God.  By showing God’s worth, greatness, holiness, and distinctness, they thought they were engaged in worship.  How many conservative Christians are engaged in just such a pursuit in their conservatism?  “We serve a holy God, and our lives must reflect that.”

Yet, Jesus faults the Pharisees, calling them hypocrites.  To understand his rebuke, we must examine the shape of Mark 7.  Jesus’ conversation with the Pharisees runs from vs. 1–13.  Verse 14 marks a change of audience and the end of the conversation.  The conversation is split in half by vs. 6–7.  In these verses, Jesus quotes Isaiah 29:13.  Thus, the conversation is structured in two halves that centre on a quotation from Isaiah.

The Second Half of the Conversation: Human Tradition Voided God’s Word

The final line of the Isaiah quotation distinguishes between “doctrines” (of God) and “commandments of men.”  One has substituted for the other.  Verse 8 shows Jesus faulting the Pharisees for doing exactly that.  They leave the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.  Verse 9 centres on the same idea: “rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition.”  This verse introduces an example of how they do this.  Verses 10–12 show how the elders’ tradition nullified the requirements of God’s law in the fifth commandment. 

The elders’ tradition exempted one who had devoted all he owned to God from the requirement of caring for parents with his possessions.  These possessions remained in one’s power until the day of his death, when they would be transferred to the ownership of the temple to support the worship of God.  This tradition evacuated the fifth commandment of any binding authority.  Any who devoted their estates to the temple were exempted from caring for parents in their old age.  The provisions of human tradition set aside God’s commandment to honour parents.  Human tradition made void God’s word.  Thus, verses 8–13 engage and expand on the final line of the Isaiah quotation. 

The First Half of the Conversation: Washings and Defilement

That’s the second half of the conversation.  What is the first side of the conversation about?

The first half of the conversation focuses on washings and defilement.  The elders’ tradition claims that the washing of hands, an external practice, staves off defilement.  Externalism is what the first line of the Isaiah quotation also focuses on.  Honouring God with one’s lips is an external matter.  The focus of the quotation’s first line is clearly on the external because, in contrast, the second line of the Isaiah quotation speaks about the internal matter of the heart. 

Jesus points out a disparity between the external act and the heart.  This is what was true of the Pharisees, and Jesus says the Isaiah quotation fits them perfectly (cf. “Well,” vs. 6).  The Pharisees are hypocrites, a word used to speak of an actor whose external, masked persona differed from his actual identity.  What’s under the mask does not match what the external shows itself to be.  Externally, the Pharisees worshipped God.  Under the mask, their hearts are far from him.  The internal and the external do not match.  This is what the first line of the Isaiah quotation and the first half of the conversation both focus on. 

The Essence of the Controversy

How do the two sides of this conversation fit together?  Is there any connection between the two?  What is the essence of the controversy that can explain both sides of the conversation?  Or are these two equal faults Jesus holds up before Pharisees? 

It’s clear that the conversation breaks across the Isaiah quotation, and it’s equally clear that the Isaiah quotation collocates the two halves of the conversation.  That suggests that Isaiah (and God) would have viewed the matters for which Jesus faults the Pharisees as stemming from one essential fault.  Locating that fault reveals the essential difference between Jesus and the Pharisees, allowing us to compare ourselves and assess how we measure up, in light of Isaiah’s statement.  It would allow us to determine whether the Isaiah quotation also prophesies “well” of us. 

What is the essential matter for which Jesus faults the Pharisees? 

The Isaiah quotation consists of four lines.  We have already discovered that the first line looks back to the first half of the conversation.  The last line looks forward to the upcoming conversation.  The quotation then does divide the conversation into two parts.  That means that the entire passage pivots over lines two and three.  These lines embody the essential fault Christ lays at the Pharisees’ door.

“In vain do they worship me”

Both halves of the conversation focus on human tradition.  In the second half, the Pharisees had replaced God’s commands with human tradition.  In the first half, the Pharisees were concerned that Jesus’ disciples did not follow human tradition when they ate with unwashed/defiled hands.  Jesus says that, for all the intention, such external honouring of God is vain worship.  It reflects hearts that are far from God.  How can Jesus make such a statement? 

No supernatural powers are necessary to see that the first line of the Isaiah quotation applies “well” to the Pharisees.  Jesus can see the washings, the concern over the disciples’ actions, the external religious worship, and the incessant comings and goings at the temple.  He can see the external honouring of God with lips and hands. 

When Christ says that their hearts are far from God, I think most Christians conclude that he makes his assessment because he can see their hearts, too.  He’s God, right?  He does have X-ray vision.  Of course, he can see their hearts.  He’s telling us what we wouldn’t have known if he hadn’t told us. 

Yet, I don’t think that’s the way we should go here. 

X-ray Vision or Scripture?

Instead, Jesus knows that their hearts are far from God because of what the Isaiah quotation says.  He is making his assessment of them based on Scripture, not his X-ray vision.  He knows their hearts are far away from God and that their worship is vain because of what Isaiah said.  He knows it because the fourth line of the Isaiah quotation applies to them just as well as does the first line.  The second half of the conversation shows this.  Because the fourth line applies to them “well,” all the rest of the lines also apply to them.  On that basis, Jesus can use the Isaiah quotation to reinterpret all the external worship and honouring of God.  How they integrate their tradition with the fifth commandment reveals something about the foundation of their tradition, which betrays something about their hearts.  The first and fourth lines reveal the symptoms that indicate the true state of things.  Their hearts are far from God, and their worship is vain. 

It’s interesting to me that the first line of verse 7, “In vain do they worship me,” does not even occur in the Old Testament text of Isaiah.  The Hebrew reads like this: “This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.  They teach as doctrine the commandments of men.”  So, why is “in vain do they worship me” included?  It’s there because the scholars who translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek inserted the phrase to help the reader understand Isaiah’s point.  In this case, Jesus picks up the inserted phrase, quotes it to the Pharisees, and says, “That’s exactly what Isaiah meant.”  The inserted explanatory note is correct.  Such worship is empty. 

Traditional (Conservative) Idolatry

How do we put this together?  Here it is in a single sentence.  When human traditions replace the Word of God in an effort to honour God, all the external motions of worship that the traditions direct become idolatry.  Who really was the centre of the Pharisees’ worship?  It was not God.  It was them, their traditions, their actions, their self-defined path to holiness, and their power to achieve it.  They could bring God’s presence down.  They could cleanse their own defilement in water. 

God-focused externals coupled with human-focused hearts equal hypocrisy.  Peering beneath the mask of the externals, we find that the essence of their acts of worship to God was idolatry. 

In the next and final article, I’ll unpack what this looks like today among Christians.  But we must note now that this passage is for people who honour God with their lips and practice the externals of religion.  They do things like gathering at churches, reading Scriptures, praying, and seeking to honour God as holy.  The Pharisees were the conservatives.  This passage, then, is for people like us.  What it says to people like us is what we will examine. 

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All Scripture quotations are from the ESV unless otherwise noted.

Photo by: Rach Teo on Unsplash