From the depths of his heart, Lloyd-Jones spoke of what he believed was the greatest hindrance to the Church’s legitimacy in the Western world. It wasn’t the corruptive influence of liberal or progressive theology. It wasn’t the secularization of Western culture. Traditionalism within the Church was the spiritual illness at the tip of his tongue. He saw how an emphasis on extra-biblical traditions imposed an unnecessary formality within the Church that sapped its vibrance and undermined its credibility. As a result, the Church was hindered from being the
healthiest, and most effective that it could be. A significant amount of time has passed since then, but the proverbial boot of this critique still fits the American Church today.

If we are not careful, we will naturally formulate beliefs about how the local church
should function based on personal opinions, preferences, or secular culture. As a result, beliefs and practices are established in the church with little to no grounding in the explicit teaching of Scripture. Yet, there is often a passion among professing Christians to uphold and maintain those extra-biblical traditions as if they are absolutely essential. The reason we become so passionate about the traditions we adopt is sentimentality. In a myriad of ways, we develop an emotional attachment to those traditions. It is those attachments that lead our minds to think that our traditions are essential to our faith, or to the life of our churches, regardless of whether or not they are things God has called for in His Word. It is our sentimentality that lures us into the trap of extra-biblical traditionalism.