In the last post, I took issue with the common statement among certain Christians today that they "hate religion, but love Jesus." I pointed out that what they hate is not religion, but legalism. In this post, I'd like to go positive, that is, explain what Jesus really did come to do. Jesus did not come to abolish religion, I assert, but to redeem it. Jesus abolishes legalism through himself and brings religion back through redemption.
A word first about the Greek term for religion, threskeia. Threskeia means "religious worship, especially external, that which consists of ceremonies; religious discipline." Its focus is on outward rituals and actions. Thus, when I am discussing religion in this post, I am not meaning internal spirit, but outward manifestations. I would like to advance the idea that Jesus came to redeem religion, that is, redeem the outward manifestations of godly faith.
Jesus' denunciation of the pharisees in the gospels is that they parade the law of God around in the externals, but internally they have no love for God (Luke 11:37-52). That is, their religion (i.e. threskeia), was correct on the outside, but it lacked inward change. Anyone looking at a pharisee would have admitted his religion looked good--he accomplished the externals. But Jesus points out that the externals are not all that God cares about. Externals must come from the heart. Religion comes from the heart.
Interestingly, when Jesus brings woes on the pharisees, he also says this: "You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you" (Luke 11:41). Jesus does not counsel the pharisees to throw out the externals, the threskeia, the religion, but tells them to line up both the outside and the inside. In essence, he is saying, make your religion one of heart and actions.
But how is this accomplished? How can we be the same on the inside as on the outside? For this answer, we turn to John 15. Jesus tells his disciples, "Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me" (v.4). Jesus did not expect his disciples to throw off all religious action and concentrate only on the internals. He tells them that they must produce fruit, but this fruit can only come from being connected to him. And how would they be connected to him? "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love...Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends" (v.9, 12). They would remain in Christ by remaining in his love and this love would be expressed to them in his death. It was Christ's death, his removal of sin, that would make true love possible.
And this is where religion is redeemed. The pharisees' empty threskeia was motivated by selfish pride. Christ's death would take away our pride through forgiveness and make way for love. And then, religion would be what God intended: externals motivated through hearts of love. Thus, when James describes Christianity as "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world" (James 1:27), he can rightfully call Christians to express threskeia, religion. Because if you read James, you see that he is exhorting Christians to bring both their hearts and their external religion into agreement: "As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead" (James 2:26).
Jesus did not come to abolish religion, he came to redeem it. His death and resurrection was the way of redemption. It is by clinging to Jesus that we will discover what religion was meant to be all along.
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