Spiritual jargon

“Jesus replied, ‘And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?’” Matthew 15:3
In Matt. 15:1-9 we see the Pharisees coming to Jesus, criticising His disciples for not washing their hands according to the tradition of the elders. This was an elaborate procedure, washing the hands up to three times with the water running in various directions over the palm or back of the hand. While there is a time and place for tradition, it is never to come at the expense of keeping God’s commands. Jesus gives an example of how the Pharisees were deliberately breaking the command of God and justifying themselves using spiritual jargon. God’s command says we are to honour our father and mother. But the Pharisees had found a way around this: you were excused from helping your parents out by saying that the money was ‘Corban’, or, dedicated to God (see Mark 7:11). Jesus gave more examples of this kind of hypocrisy in Matt. 23.
But we need to ask ourselves: do we do the same thing? Do we hold onto man-made traditions, and fail to keep the word of God in the process? One example might be tithing/giving. We might have made this into a ritualistic thing, setting aside 10% (or whatever proportion) of our income to give to the ministry. It might have become a ‘ho-hum’ thing, where we just do it because it’s what we’ve always done. But God tells us to give generously and with gladness in our heart, because it is to be an offering out of our appreciation for Him. It’s not the amount that God is interested in; it’s our attitude.
Do we justify our selfishness with spiritual jargon? This could be saying things like, ‘God knows I didn’t mean what I said’, instead of humbling ourselves and asking for forgiveness if we have offended someone; or telling people ‘The Bible says, ‘Judge not’!’ when they draw your attention to some character flaw (that you know about, but refuse to deal with). None of us are perfect; we can all do better at keeping God’s Word and living it out in our lives.