Passage

3 Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?
4 For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’
5 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’
6 they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.
7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
8 “ ‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
9 They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’”
(Matthew 15:3–9, NIV)

At the beginning of our passage, Jesus lays out a point of common ground among everyone there including the religious leaders who started this whole discussion: "Honor your father and mother." No one there would disagree that God not only said this, but that everyone should obey it. However, Jesus follows up with how those same religious leaders actually avoid honoring their parents by creating loopholes with tradition.

In verses 5-6 Jesus explains that "if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it." One aspect of honoring your Father and Mother was to provide for them financially as they got older. Although God commanded this, many people saw it as a responsibility they would rather avoid. To avoid this responsibility, religious leaders at the time created a loophole where they would vow that something was dedicated to the Lord and by doing so it could not be used for anything else. Therefore it could not be used to "honor their father or mother".

Jesus closes his point with a reference to Isaiah 29:13.

“‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’”

The Narrow Way

The loophole Jesus pointed out in this passage is one of the many ways that people at that time would try and dodge the responsibility that the law placed on God's people. This attempt to dodge responsibility reveals a lack of reverence for God and His commands. If they had valued God's law then they would have felt conviction when trying to work around it.

Following God’s law is not like navigating tax laws where you can use one law to avoid the responsibility of another. God's law has eternal consequences. It brings us closer to God. Trying to work around God’s law only hurts us because it was made for our good.

This leads to verse 9, "They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’" Jesus was explaining how the religious leaders were just coming up with the best way they believed to follow God but this ultimately fell short of God's standard. However, this statement from Jesus made me think about something else.

How often do we today see the teachings and practices of Jesus as simply human rules. Something that we can hear, process, and then decide how much of it to keep in our own lives. Jesus Christ was not starting a podcast, he was defining the perfect and right way for us to live so that God would be most glorified.

Scripture is the path set before us by Christ. Everything God has told us through the scriptures is right and needs to be followed. On our own we will treat Christ's teachings as merely human rules that can be bent or ignored. However, when we commit our lives to Christ, when we give up control of our selves over to God the Holy Spirit empowers us to follow the teachings of Christ rightly.

If you want to stop living like God's law is merely a set of human rules then submit to the Holy Spirit, let him work inside of you and change you.