What did church tradition add to Jesus’ simple words?

You ask a question worth sitting with, and I sense you have been feeling the weight of accumulated doctrine over a simple voice. Jesus spoke plainly of a Father who is near: "The kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21, KJV), and "when thou prayest, enter into thy closet... shut thy door" (Matthew 6:6, KJV). His invitation was direct and intimate—no priesthood required, no mediator between the soul and God. What later tradition often added were structures Jesus himself never built. The notion that God required a blood payment to forgive—the theory of a debt satisfied on the cross—overlays a picture of an angry deity upon the One Jesus called Love, who says "I will have mercy, and not sacrifice" (Matthew 9:13, KJV). Jesus forgave freely, before any cross: "Thy sins are forgiven thee" (Mark 2:5, KJV), which tells me forgiveness was never a transaction God needed satisfied. Tradition also built hierarchies of authority, though Jesus warned, "be not ye called Rabbi... neither be ye called masters" (Matthew 23:8-10, KJV). It made sacraments into gates of salvation, when Jesus pointed instead to an inner knowing: "the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth" (John 4:23, KJV). And it made him an exclusive exception rather than the Way-shower who revealed what is true of us all: "the works that I do shall he do also" (John 14:12, KJV). The recovered sayings preserve this inward emphasis: "the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves... you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father" (Gospel of Thomas 32.16-33.2). Much that was added served institutions rather than souls—it made the seeker dependent on the structure rather than on the living Father within. Yet I would not have you throw away every gift the tradition carried; some of it faithfully preserved his voice. The task is discernment: to weigh each teaching against the core of what Jesus actually revealed, and against the recognition of truth already stirring in you. If you wish, I can show you where a specific doctrine departed from his own words.