GETTING religion, either experimentally or observationally, used to be one of the favorite indoor winter sports. It even had a vogue in the summer time, when the camp meeting came to town and social distractions were few.
The most unfortunate thing about "getting religion" is that it is nearly always expressive of a truth. The getters do not get Christ. In fact, nobody gets Christ. He gets us. He lays hold on us (Phil.3:12).
There are several points on which Christ and religion differ. It is doubtful if even the term Christianity is scripturally correct, any more than is the term Christian. In 1 Corinthians 1:12 the apostle includes "of Christ" along, with "of Cephas of Apollos, of Paul," as a factional heading. Those who rejoice in the fact that they are in Christ do not need to use His name as a partisan rallying point--have no need to boast of being of Christ. Let nothing be done according to faction or according to empty glory.
Christ is a person; a religion is, at best, a system, at worst, a passing feeling. The two differ as to their commencement, their course, their character, their circumference, their cause, their center, their claims, their class, and their consummation.
Religion begins with the individual striving to discover God. And the reason the individual wishes to find God is to make of Him a powerful ally, with the cooperation of Whom he can save himself by religion. Its object is the happiness of the individual. Superficially that sounds all right; but it is usually all wrong. To seek God in a worshipful sense is different. The happiness and comfort of the individual is not the motive in such case.
Christ is the Beginning from God. Whatever we ought to do, actually God seeks us, as He did the first human sinners in Eden. And the first effect of His voice is not to comfort or happify, but to convey conviction of sin. Christ starts from God, comes down from Him, catches hold on us and in due time raises us; and happiness is a by-product, but not an aim. The object of Christ is the glory of God.
Religion uses God as a means to an end. Christ uses man as a means to an end. Religion starts and stops with man, hence the discouragement following on reform. Christ starts and stops with God--for He does stop, not as a person but as the Anointed, when all the work for which He was anointed shall have been done.
Christ and religion differ as to their course. Religion is purest at its beginning, but becomes increasingly corrupt as it progresses in its course, much as the stream may spring forth in comparative cleanness at the fountain but become defiled as it is borne along in its soiled banks. Time must bring out and manifest the essential corruption from which it started. But the life in Christ becomes purer as it goes on. The spirit, the power of God will develop in the heart until sins become more glaring. Religion is the attempt of man to win back that which he is conscious of having lost. He doesn't know what he has lost, but he knows he has lost it. He hunts within the realm of his own power and must come to grief, because there is no power within that realm to meet his needs. Christ is the only way by which man can get that which is lost, and even that which has never been fully had. Man by seeking, alone, cannot find God.
The two differ as to their character. The character of religion is natural righteousness. The character of Christ is supernatural righteousness. Religion is man's best output. Christ is God's best input. Man does not attain. Perhaps it is too much even to say that he obtains. He receives. Religion is man's idea about God, Christ is the truth about God.
Again, there are marked differences as to circumference. The circumference of religion is world-wide. Some "form of godliness," some system of worship is present in every known tribe of earth. Christ, in any subjective sense, is confined to believers. Eventually the range of believers will be unspeakably vaster than now; but it will still be true that Christ is limited to believers. Religion has to do with man's interests. Christ has to do with God's interests.
The present civilization has not come as `sidegleams from the lamp of truth,' as it is said on July 4th when perspiring parsons purvey pious piffle. The present civilization came from Cain, through Ham, Cush, and Nimrod, and has been disseminated by Babylon, Egypt, Rome, and more or less unwittingly by smaller fry. In this civilization the devil is trying to establish a kingdom of the heavens without the true King, by legislation, by sanitation, by reform, by legalistic prohibition of this or that. And it must be admitted with shame that the great mass of the churches are cooperating with the devil in this respect. Nothing pleases the devil more than to have us fight sin, either in ourselves or others. There is only One to fight sin, and that is God, through His Christ. We are to ignore it, consider ourselves dead to it, dealing with the sinner but not with the sin. Religion ends in the lake of fire. The end of Christ is God.
Then there is the difference in cause. The cause of religion is man's wish for salvation. Christ is man's assurance of salvation. Religion is man seeking after God. Christ is God revealing Himself to man. Religion is man's selfishness. Christ represents man's nothingness and God's allness. Religion is man's fear of God. Christ is man's trust in God.
The center of religion is man himself, his character, his work, his worth, his merit; it is I, I, I, myself from start to finish. The center of the life in Christ is the Lord Jesus Christ, His character, His work, His worth, His value; it is all Christ. Religion can and does exist without Christ; but the life in Christ cannot exist without Him.
All religion claims for the present is mere morality, reform. The claim of Christ is a new creation.
The class of religion embraces human betterment of all kinds, political, ecclesiastical, pedagogic, economic, hygienic. Christ is unique, singular. He has but one objective, and that is the glory of God. Religion is all kinds of forms of godliness; Christ is the fact of godliness.
Now as to their consummations. Religion will culminate in loss. It is at once the invention and deception of Satan. Christ is union with God; and to be in Him is to be hid with Him in God.
The word religion occurs four times in the Greek Scriptures, and never in very good company. Always it has the sense of ritual, never of deep spiritual life or experience. There is no such expression as " Christian religion," and certainly not "religion of Christ." There is no such thing mentioned because there is no such thing recommended. The two words "Christ" and "religion" are kept distinctly apart.
The word religious, as signifying that which is occupied with ritualistic observances, is used once. There we have a total of five times, against 555 occurrences of the title - name of Christ – 111 times as frequent!
In neither of the five instances of use is the word religion even intimated as being anything proper for the believer of this dispensation. The first occurrence is in Acts 26:5, where Paul is before Agrippa and says "that after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee." Let those who admire and emulate the Pharisees defend the word. I do not care to do so.
Next, in Colossians 2:18, the word is covered up in the King James version by the word "worshipping." "Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and religion of angels." Let those who practice and approve of angelolatry, beguiling one of his reward, defend the use of the word religion as a thing connected with Christ. I cannot do so.
The remaining three uses are by James, that writer to the Circumcision--principally the apostate part of it--and these are all in the same passage, James 1:26,27. "If anyone is presuming to be ritualistic, not bridling his tongue, but seducing his heart, the ritual of this one is vain, for clean ritual and undefiled with God, even the Father, is this, to be visiting the bereaved and widows in their affliction, to be keeping oneself unspotted from the world." In other words, charity and moral uprightness.
This was a broadside against those formalistic Jewish religionists who were very particular to tithe mint and cummin but at the same time to overlook the weightier matters of the law, to keep the sabbath, while on the morrow they devoured widows' houses, to say their prayers in public places and with the same tongue to undermine a brother's good name by innuendo or worse. His ritual was empty, hollow, sepulchral. Then follow words which would be incomprehensible to the set ritualist. If such a one wants the best religion possible, let him try the ritual of humanitarian interest in, sympathy for, and help of the unfortunate. To the ritualists, that is no ritual at all. But it is the best thing a man can do without Christ. All of this can be done without Christ. There is not a word of Christ in it. Such a ritual does not win the condemnation of the world, as Christ does; often, indeed, it wins the world's plaudits.
The places in Galatians 1:13,14, where religion occurs in the Common Perversion text do not hold that word in Greek, but merely "Judaism," a fair interpretation, but not an exact translation.
Christ sets aside man's pride, man's ability, man's righteousness, man's goodness, and holds up once and for all the God of all grace. It is not even best to look through the word of God to Christ, but through Christ, a person, a living person, to the word of God; for the "Bible" can be made a religion, a ritualistic subject and object, as well as anything else.
Not I, but Christ, be honored, loved, exalted; Not I, but Christ, to gently soothe in sorrow; Not I, but Christ, in lowly, silent labor; Christ, only Christ, e'er long shall fill my vision; |
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