Again and again since the close of the New Testament, the church has reasserted the essential evangelical principle of the supremacy of Scripture alone. Why so? Quite simply, because that is what Jesus taught about how we can know the truth.
Mark 7:1-13 depicts Jesus’s controversy with the Pharisees over Scripture and its authority. A dispute had arisen over handwashing. The Pharisees’ concern was a religious one, that they might be “defiled” (v.2) and they therefore insisted on a ceremonial handwashing according “to the tradition of the elders” (v.3). Their objection to Jesus was that His disciples did not walk according to this tradition (v.5). To this, Jesus replied: “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men” (v.8).
Clearly for Jesus, whereas Scripture is of God, tradition is of men and it is vain hypocrisy to equate “the commandments of men” with the “doctrines” of God (v.7). As Jesus demonstrated every time He asked “Have you not read in the Scriptures?” or “What is written in the Law?”, He believed that Scripture is the supreme, sufficient authority that overrules all our words and thoughts.
