Why Religious Tradition Won't Get You Into Heaven

“We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. (Galatians 2:15-16, NIV)

“Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” (Colossians 2:18-23, ESV)

Up until this point, we’ve gone through a lot of false gospels that run rampant in the charismatic or modern-day church, but we haven’t talked about the ways that traditional, old-school church can lead people astray from true, God-glorifying faith. Because the  traditional church was so popular 50-60 years ago, chances are, you’ve been to at least one service and know what I’m talking about. 

Now, keep an open mind: I’m not saying that all traditional or reserved churches are false. There are some that are completely submitted to the will of God and know how to ensure that God is on His throne every time they gather. I’ve been in some, and for someone who was brought up in the Pentecostal church, where the services tend to encourage boisterous spiritual freedom and loud expressions of worship, it was hard at first to see where those more stripped down, old-school services had their merits. I’ve been to churches where the worship team was one lady and her hymnal, leading the congregation in a few songs before praying together and handing the pulpit to the pastor, and we attended that church weekly secure in the fact that that congregation knew their Bible without a doubt.

But where the traditional churches tend to get it wrong, is when they cling to certain traditions, relics, and decorum that is added to the church by requirement of man, not based in scriptural significance by God. What I mean is, churches that insist on things like robes, paraments, and religious traditions emphasize the importance of man and materials over God and inevitably lead their people into thinking that their righteousness is dependent on temporal, worldly items and works that cheapens the grace of God’s work on the cross.

And because people are human, when we add all this– and let’s call it what it is– stuff and make it a mandatory necessity to worship God, we tend to get puffed up in self-importance over what we like, what we prefer, and what we can do. And ultimately, that hurts us, because we start to talk ourselves into thinking we NEED something in order to come before the Father in worship, or that we somehow need to qualify ourselves as holier in order to be made worthy. 

And that does two things: First, it alienates people who need the Gospel because it either makes them feel like they’ll never be good enough to stand before God. Second, it gives others a false sense of security that works, traditions, and material items can get them into heaven or win them more favor with God.

The two verses I left for you today show us why this line of thinking is wrong. Majority of the book of Galatians talks about how our works could never save us, only the saving grace of God, given through Jesus’ shed blood on the cross can. The truth is if our works were the way into heaven, none of us would ever make it because there is not one thing we could do or orchestrate that would outweigh the burden of our sin or regenerate us in our depravity.

Our work can’t save us. Only God can. And at the end of our lives, we won’t stand before God and be asked how well we sang in our church’s choir, how much money we raised for the poor, how many baptisms we held, or if we had the right color paraments out on the altar at any given time. No, when all is said and done, we will stand before God and He will tell us how well we knew Him or not. We’ll either be told well done, or to be gone because we dedicated our lives to religious items and traditions that glorified man over God.

And in Colossians, we’re told to not let anyone who wants to add to the perfect Gospel of Christ make us feel disqualified from growing in our faith, pressing on towards God’s glory. People that hold tight to traditions and unscriptural religion like to seem wise in the promotion of their false gospels and self-made, self-glorifying religion, but it all leads to spiritual bankruptcy. 

And what I’ve found is that among these people that cling to old religious, unscriptural religion end up in one of two camps: either they hold to these things in the name of religious comfort, unable to point to any point of scripture to validate their traditions beyond the fact that they’ve always done it, or they are noticeably crushed when younger generations ultimately want to come in and sweep out meaningless tradition to make room for honest Gospel that will draw a whole new age to Christ.

If your whole basis on maintaining tradition revolves around mourning over the erasure of the perceived legacy of man that in no way acknowledges Christ, then those traditions are no more than idol worship. Yes, tradition can be a good thing that promotes unity amongst the generations, but if it is at the cost of Godliness and the Gospel, then it amounts to nothing. And if religious tradition lulls us into false security to the point where we don’t feel the need to read our Bibles and know God through scripture, then it is just another scheme of the devil to keep us from being an equipped Christian.

The facts are that traditions, relics, and religion will never earn our way into heaven. Works, positions of leadership, and the way we set up the altar will not qualify us as holier in the eyes of God. And if we choose to emphasize those things over knowing the Word, hiding ourselves in it, and following it, it is no better than the Israelites melting down their gold to worship a golden calf. Only the blood of Jesus saves, and to add or subtract anything from that is to remove God from His throne in Heaven and counterfeit His Gospel.

We have to make sure that nothing takes precedence above the glorifying of God in our lives. That means you shouldn’t need anything in addition to His Word and His grace.