NOTES for Joh 2:16
It often happens this way in religious life: a certain tradition arose no one knows when and no one knows why, became firmly established, entered common use, and becomes more unshakable than those traditions about which everything is known and whose spiritual soundness cannot be doubted. And the tradition is often not simply not very successful, but even directly contradicts the norms of the Torah or the Gospel. Such was trade in the court of the Jerusalem Temple: it contradicted the Torah directly and unambiguously, arose God knows when, but no one encroached on it. So thoroughly did the false authority of a false tradition support a bad tradition.
However, as usually happens in such cases, convenience and profit supported the bad tradition more than authority did. The convenience of those who came to the Temple from far away and could buy everything necessary right here in the temple court. The profit of those who were ready and glad to sell it to them, as usual, for more than the same things were sold for in the city markets of Jerusalem. And the violation of the Torah became customary.
It would seem a small thing: in the Temple of the Gospel era there were so many courts that several small markets could have fit there without harm to the sacrifices themselves. But Jesus treats this "small thing" not at all as a small thing. For Him everything is absolutely serious. If it is the house of God, then it is the house of God, to the end, without compromises, without references to a bad tradition that contradicts the Torah, without looking back at convenience and profit.
And the point here is not some special legalistic harshness in Him, not some rigorism. There is nothing of the kind in Him. The point is that He understands: in spiritual life, and in life in general, there are no trifles. Not because God is petty, but because any compromise spiritually divides a person. And serving two masters, as the Savior says, is a hopeless matter. For in the Kingdom there is only one King, He Himself, appointed over this Kingdom by His heavenly Father.
And there, in the life of the Kingdom, there can be no compromises. Simply because it is always life in fullness, to the maximum, as much as one can receive, but without discounts and without indulgences. Otherwise one will not be able to live in the Kingdom. This means that those who seek the Kingdom had better not get used to compromises, if only so that later they do not have to unlearn them, slowly and perhaps painfully. This is how people sometimes painfully rid themselves of bad habits and traditions that have entered flesh and blood and common use, which are easy to introduce but not so easy to get rid of afterward.