Audio Transcript

Happy Friday, everyone. Do we need church traditions? And what are church traditions? Questions we must answer, and they come in today from a listener named Jerome, who lives in Singapore. “Hello, Pastor John. What specifically does Paul mean by ‘traditions’ in 2 Thessalonians 2:15? Does Paul have in mind the apostolic traditions, or broader historic church traditions, or some other type of tradition?”

Well, this is good. One of the reasons that I’m glad this question is being asked is because it gives us a chance to step back and, I think, address an issue that we haven’t really addressed, at least in a focused way — namely, What is tradition? How should we think about traditions as Christians? A good place to start is, yes, in 2 Thessalonians 2:15, and in Paul and the apostles, but also in Jesus. We’ll get there.

Hold to the Traditions

Let me just start with the word itself to get a definition clear in front of us. Tradition has two halves: tra-, “across” or “along”; and -dition, the Latin word for “give.” The two halves together, then, would mean “to give across” or “to give along” from one generation to the next.

Now, that’s relevant not just for English, because in 2 Thessalonians 2:15, the text that Jerome is asking about, Paul uses a Greek word, of course, for “tradition,” which also has two parts: paradosis. Para, also like the Latin tra, meaning “across” or “along”; and dosis, meaning “gift.” So, it’s the same meaning in the Greek word as in the English word. So we’re really tracking here with Paul when we ask the question, What does tradition, what does paradosis, actually mean? And why does he use the word?

In fact, I would say that’s a great place to start with probing into the New Testament understanding of traditions — namely, in 2 Thessalonians 2:15. Why did Paul use that word here? He says, “Stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us.” Why didn’t he say, “Stand firm and hold fast to the teachings” or “to the truth” or “to the commands that you were taught by us?” Why did he use the word traditions?

Servants of Revealed Truth

The answer seems to be that Paul wants to call attention to the fact that his teaching is in harmony with the teaching that has gone before — namely, from Jesus and from the other apostles. The effect of the word traditions here is to make us realize that Paul does not want to be seen as a maverick apostle, a rogue apostle, a cult leader off on his own establishing a new religion. Rather, he wants to be seen as a faithful part of a larger body of teachers with roots firmly in the ultimate authority of Jesus and his word.

So, the first signal that we get from this text is that there is great value in tradition in the sense that it protects us from novelties that come out of individuals’ own heads with no necessary correspondence to what Jude called “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).

In other words, tradition, first and foremost, declares that there is such a thing as truth. There is such a thing that our statements ought to correspond to or agree with. Tradition requires us to be humble and to admit that we are not the originators of truth.

“Tradition, first and foremost, declares that there is such a thing as truth.”

Wisdom and right views of reality do not begin with us. We are servants of a reality outside ourselves. It originates in God. It becomes incarnate in Jesus. It is inspired in the mouth of the apostles. If anybody comes along — even an apostle, Paul says in Galatians 1:8 — who declares another truth, beside the one that coheres with Christ and his word and his apostles, “let him be accursed.”

Now, that’s the fundamental reason, I think, why Paul uses the word traditions in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 — namely, there is such a thing as truth, and it doesn’t originate with me. I am its servant, not its creator, not its lord. To believe in tradition in this sense, then, is a mark of humility and faithfulness to the way reality really is.

Received, Delivered

Now, let me give maybe just one example of what Paul calls tradition — namely, his preaching of the gospel. So in 1 Corinthians 15:1–3, he says, “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you. . . . For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,” and then he finishes it.

Now, those two words are the way Paul talked about tradition: “I received something. I delivered it — I handed it on to you.” In other words, when it comes to the gospel, no apostle is called to be creative. He’s called to be faithful. The gospel is not a reality that he is making up. It is a reality outside himself. It has an objective reality. His job is to preserve it, to preach it, to pass it along to another generation. This is the great preciousness and the great necessity of tradition.

Gospel Harmony

Now, that may remind some of our listeners, including Jerome, of a text that sounds almost like a contradiction — namely, Galatians 1:11–12, where Paul says this: “For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” Now that sounds almost like the opposite of 1 Corinthians 15, but it’s not a contradiction.

What was at stake in Galatians 1 and 2 was the validity of Paul’s apostleship. Was he, in fact, commissioned by the risen Christ, and was he a direct recipient of divine revelation, or was he a pretender to that authority and, just like any other Christian teacher, totally dependent on human tradition? Like me, I’m dependent on tradition — namely, the New Testament, a divinely inspired tradition. Paul’s answer is this: “I’m not dependent on Peter and James and John, but I am in harmony with them on the gospel.”

Now, both of those are crucial: Paul’s non-dependence and Paul’s harmony with them. “I went to visit Peter, yes,” he says, “not because I had no revelation from Jesus, but to make clear to Peter and to everybody that Peter and I are on the same page. We preach the same gospel. There is one apostolic word, and we are in harmony on it” (see Galatians 1:11–2:10).

Dangers of Tradition

Let me make one other crucial observation about tradition. Just as there is good tradition that reflects reality and preserves truth, there’s bad tradition that distorts reality and preserves mere human opinion as though it were an authority — an opinion that often nullifies the very true tradition, the word of God.

“We measure merely human tradition by the tradition that we call the New Testament.”

We know that because Jesus said in Matthew 15:3 to the Pharisees, “Why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” And then he gives them an example of what he’s talking about. He says, “Many such things you do” (Mark 7:13).

And Paul himself, before his conversion, was totally committed to those very word-of-God-nullifying traditions. He said in Galatians 1:14, “I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.” And with that zeal for tradition, he was imprisoning and killing Christians. So clearly, tradition in and of itself can be very destructive.

Here’s one more example of false tradition. Paul says in Colossians 2:8, “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, . . . and not according to Christ.” So, all tradition is to be measured by whether it accords with Christ.

The sum of the matter is that we measure merely human tradition by the tradition that we call the New Testament, which is rooted in Jesus and his word and his apostles and their teaching. So the answer to Jerome’s question, then, is that 2 Thessalonians 2:15 is Paul’s referring to the truth that Jesus and the apostles had taught, and that he himself, under divine inspiration, was confirming by his own letter.

If you were to ask me to name my favorite hymn, I’d probably hem and haw, then list a bunch of favorites, and end up saying, “It depends.” I mean, how do you choose a single favorite hymn? But if you were to ask me what hymn I sing most often when I’m alone with God, that would be easy: “Be Thou My Vision.” If that makes it my favorite, so be it.

For me, it’s become a love song, kind of like the familiar phrases I default to when telling my wife how much I love her, which over time have become infused with great depths of emotional meaning. The verses of this hymn give voice to my intimate delight in and longing for the Lover of my soul. When I sing it in private, just me and my piano, it’s rare when I can sing it without tears.

Typically, when a song touches me deeply, I’m curious to know more about who wrote it and why. I guess it’s easier to take hymns somewhat for granted. I’ve loved “Be Thou My Vision” for decades, but I never thought to look up its backstory until recently.

I discovered that this hymn’s origin is veiled in the misty past of ancient Ireland. We do know that the hymn’s progenitor is a poem that’s more than a millennium old, composed in Old Gaelic and consisting of sixteen couplets. Irish tradition claims its author was a beloved sixth-century Celtic poet named St. Dallán Forgaill, but scholars have linguistic reasons to doubt this claim. All we know is that the writer certainly was a poet and sure seems to have been a saint.

Thank God for Scholars and Editors

My search wasn’t in vain, because it revealed people God used to turn that ancient poem into the precious song we have today. Thank God for Mary Byrne (1880–1931), who dragged the poem out of academic obscurity by translating the ancient Gaelic into English. And thank God for Eleanor Hull (1860–1935), who chose twelve of the sixteen couplets from Byrne’s literal translation, and then skillfully crafted them into rhymes.

And thank God for the editors of the Irish Church Hymnal, who selected ten of Hull’s couplets, combined them into five four-line verses, and then, with a stroke of inspired genius, paired those deeply moving verses with an achingly beautiful Irish folk tune they named “Slane” (in honor of St. Patrick’s famous Easter festival fire on Slane Hill, which he burned in defiance of a pagan Irish king).

The hymn was first published in the 1919 edition of that Irish hymnal, and the rest, as they say, is history. “Be Thou My Vision” soon appeared in hymnals around the world, many of which trimmed it down to the four verses most of us know and love today.

Why do so many, like me, love this hymn so much? Because it gives poetic voice to our deep love and longing for the triune God, who is the Light of our lives (John 8:12), our ever-present, indwelling Word of life (1 John 1:1), the great Treasure of our hearts (Luke 12:34), and soon the Heaven of heaven for us forever (Psalm 73:25–26).

Thy Presence My Light

If the ancient author ever titled the poem, that too has been lost to the mists of time. For centuries it was known simply as “A Prayer.” But it’s hard to imagine a better title than the poem’s first four words, “Be thou my vision,” which in Old Gaelic read, “Rop tú mo bhoile.”

Verse 1, in my view, begins just where it should: a prayer for God to enlighten the eyes of our hearts that we may be filled with his hope (Ephesians 1:18). Listen to how beautifully the lyrics convey the biblical metaphor of light as understanding:

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art;Thou my best thought, by day or by night;Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Implicitly woven into this verse are the New Testament references of Jesus as “the light of the world” and “the light of life” (John 8:12). But the words also carry an echo of one of my favorite verses from the Psalms:

With you is the fountain of life;     in your light do we see light. (Psalm 36:9)

Everyone who has known deep darkness of any kind — the darkness of sin or grief or pain or depression or loneliness or spiritual oppression — and has seen, however dimly, the Light of life shining in their darkness, understands how meaningful this verse can be. It resonates with the hope that this light will not ultimately be overcome by our darkness.

Be thou my vision, O Lord, for you are the light of my life.

Thou My True Word

The prayer of verse 2 builds on the prayer of verse 1, asking that God would fill us with the riches of his wisdom and knowledge (Romans 11:33):

Be Thou my wisdom, and Thou my true Word;I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;Thou my great Father; I Thy true son;Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Notice how simply this verse expresses the profound and mysterious New Testament teaching that requires pages to unpack in prose: that Christian wisdom comes from the Father and Son (our true Word) dwelling inside us through the Holy Spirit (John 14:23, 26), a gift we receive through our adoption as sons (Ephesians 1:5). The wisdom we’re praying for here is clearly not “a wisdom of this age,” but a wisdom that can only be “spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:6, 14).

Be thou my wisdom, O Lord, for you are the ultimate Truth.

My Treasure Thou Art

Now we come to my favorite verse of this great hymn, the one most likely to prompt tears:

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise;Thou mine inheritance, now and always;Thou and Thou only first in my heart;High King of heaven, my treasure Thou art.

Verse 3 is my favorite — not because the other verses are less true or less hope-giving or less precious, but because Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Luke 12:34). Our treasure is whatever we love and long for most — what most satisfies, enthralls, and therefore captivates our hearts. And in this fallen age, where even our best love for our great Treasure is defective and lacking, our love is almost always accompanied by a desire to love him more perfectly, more completely. Hence, my tears, a sweet, melancholic mixture of love and longing.

So, I love this verse, the heart of the hymn, the Love Song within the love song. Because God, as the next verse will say, is the Heart of our hearts — the Treasure that makes his light beautiful, his wisdom desirable, and his heaven so heavenly.

Be thou my Treasure, O Lord, first in my heart now and always.

O Bright Heaven’s Sun

Verse 4 ends the hymn just where it should: with the great “blessed hope” of the Christian life (Titus 2:13), when “we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).

High King of heaven, my victory won,May I reach heaven’s joys, O bright heaven’s Sun;Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,Still be my vision, O Ruler of all.

If our heart is always with our treasure, and if God is our Treasure, then the Heaven of heaven will be the Heart of our heart. And the Sun of heaven will enable us to see more light than we’ve ever seen, “for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Revelation 21:23). And so it will be, always and forever. To which we say, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20).

What a priceless gift, this hymn. Thank you, Lord, for that ancient Celtic poet whose God-entranced heart overflowed so eloquently through his quill. And thank you for those throughout history whose collective labors have made this great song of love and longing available to us. And thank you for the gifted Celtic folk musicians whose sweet, haunting melody makes it so wonderful to sing.

But most of all, thank you, Lord, for being the Light of our lives, our ever-present, indwelling Word of life, the great Treasure of our hearts, and someday the Heaven of heaven.

Yes, O Lord, be thou our vision, now in this darkened age, and soon — may it be soon! — in unveiled, eternal glory with unclouded eyes.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15115600/how-paul-motivates-impossible-love-in-marriage