NOTES for Joh 2:16
It often happens this way in religious life: some tradition takes shape, no one knows when or why, becomes firmly established and enters common use, and it becomes more unshakable than traditions about which everything is known and whose spiritual soundness cannot be doubted. And often this tradition is not merely unsuccessful, but even directly contradicts the norms of the Torah or the Gospel. Such was the trade in the courtyard of the Jerusalem Temple: it contradicted the Torah directly and unambiguously, it had arisen who knows when, but no one encroached on it, because the false authority of false tradition so thoroughly supported a bad tradition.
Yet, as usually happens in such cases, convenience and profit supported the bad tradition even more than authority did. The convenience of those who came to the Temple from far away and could buy everything necessary right there in the temple courtyard. The profit of those who were ready and glad to sell it to them, as usual, at a higher price than the same things sold for in Jerusalem's city markets. And a 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 harming the sacrifices themselves. But Jesus does not treat this "small thing" as small at all. For Him everything is absolutely serious. If it is the house of God, then it is the house of God. Completely. Without compromises. Without appeals to a bad tradition that contradicts the Torah. Without looking back at convenience or profit.
And the issue here is not some special legalistic harshness in Him, not some rigorism; there is nothing of the kind in Him. The issue is that He understands: in the spiritual life, and in life generally, there are no small things. Not because God is petty, but because any compromise spiritually divides a person. And serving two masters, as the Savior says, has no future. After all, in the Kingdom there is only one King: He Himself, set over this Kingdom by His heavenly Father.
And there, in the life of the Kingdom, compromises cannot exist. Simply because it is always life in fullness. To the maximum. As much as one can contain, but without discounts and without indulgences. Otherwise one will not be able to live in the Kingdom. This means that those seeking the Kingdom would do better not to get used to compromises, at least so they do not later have to unlearn them, slowly and perhaps painfully. This is how people sometimes painfully rid themselves of bad habits and traditions that have soaked into flesh and blood and entered common use, habits and traditions that are easy to introduce but not so easy to get rid of afterward.