Continuing an Old Tradition

I thought about writing a blog about everything I'm thankful for (and believe me, there is a lot), but I just thought I'd do something a little different. For all you old-timers, you might remember that I started this blog as a commentary on 1 Corinthians , but got "sidetracked" at chapter 11, verse 1. Quite honestly, there are some verses there that I didn't know what to do with, and I was getting better at finding other things to write about (not a bad thing). Anyway, I thought I'd pick up right where I left off and try to tackle ONE of these verses that deal with obscure areas of church behavior and theology.

Since I left off at verse 1, I think I'll pick up at verse two! That makes sense. Lately I've been quite active on the Facebook boards having nice conversations with my Catholic buddies, and verses like this one just have to come up. Now, if you know anything about Catholicism, you'll know that they rely heavily on their traditions to "interpret" Scripture. Of course, I'm convinced that plenty of the time, no interpretation is needed; it just needs to be read! So let's read it:

Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things
and the traditions just as I delivered them to you.

The Roman Catholic would gladly quote this verse to support their emphasis on tradition in the church. Of course, I don't think this verse can be used to justify such a position for several reasons:
1) Paul is talking about specific traditions he delivered to the Corinthians, not tradition in general.
2) Paul doesn't directly tell us what this tradition is. For all we know the tradition could be a reference to staying faithful to the Word of God!
3) Paul isn't advocating the interpretation of Scripture via tradition! In fact, Paul warned the Colossians to "not be taken captive through...the traditions of men" but rather to base our thinking on Christ (Col 2:8).
4) The tradition could be the very next thing he addresses: the hierarchy of authority in the church and proper conduct during prayer (vv. 3-16). In that case, we have it in Scripture anyways, and still are without need of "tradition"!

And ultimately, tradition is never allowed to violate Scripture, but this is exactly what Catholic tradition does. This is the real reason I do not accept the Catholic idea of tradition, because it's gotten to the point where it goes against the Word of God so much so that I cannot even consider the Roman Catholic Church a Christian church. The works salvation wrapped up in the sacraments of Catholicism is directly forbidden in Scripture (Gal 3:10) and those who preach it (a different gospel) are declared anathema (Gal 1:8-9).

We need to be committing ourselves only to Christ's sacrifice and not trusting in our own righteousness to save us. Silly things like eating bread and drinking wine, getting dunked in water, praying repetitiously, and giving money to the church (among others) do not affect our salvation! Perhaps they are effected by our salvation, but they have no effect themselves on our standing before the just Judge.

I hope this encourages you that you can rest assured in your salvation because Christ has paid the full penalty, and requires no merit from you. I also hope this encourages you to live an all the more full and holy life (Lev. 20:7), now that you Christians are free from the control that sin used to have over you. Now these are definitely some things we can all be very thankful for!!!

Well... it's time to get to some homework. Yes... they assigned us stuff over break... >_<