Religion Sucks

The religious instinct is rarely stomped out completely in the immature. After we start to walk with God, we can very easily revert to being religious. We cannot afford to be even a little religious, if our religiosity is produced by the fleshly nature. The fleshly nature can be very religious. Therefore, like the apostle Paul, we are concerned not with religion, but with righteousness. There is a big difference.

Because it imposes rules and regulations that seem to have a piety about them, religion may have an appearance of righteousness. But that is not genuine righteousness. The Bible is not filled with people becoming religious. It speaks about Christ bringing the way of salvation and coming to reveal all that the Father is. The religious people were behind closed doors from the beginning, plotting to kill Him ( John 5:18 ).

Religion has always rejected any revelation that God brings. The Old Testament prophets were not religious men; they were men of revelation whom the religious people persecuted. When ever there is a revelation from God, there is a change of attitude. Paul was a persecutor of revelation before God met him. He knew what the course of religion was. He once had been very religious himself; consequently he arrested all the Christians he could find.

He consented to the stoning of Stephen and watched over the garments of those who were throwing rocks ( Acts 7:58, 8:1 ). Therefore his guilt is just as great. He then obtained official papers to search out the saints in Damascus and throw them into prison. Who knows how many were martyred under Paul?

When He looked back upon the days of his religion, he called himself a blasphemer ( I Timothy 1:13 ). He actually blasphemed the holy name of the Lord Jesus Christ in persecuting the Christians- and what a persecutor he was!

It is interesting to note that in Philippians 3, which describes the folly of religion, was not written by some Gentile who was giving all the blame to the Jews, it came from a man who was a Pharisee and a Hebrew of Hebrews.

Today's persecution does not come from the Jewish people, though it still comes from religious people. In the days when the New Testament was written, the Jewish people were religious. They have become more of a tradition than a religion. It has remained for the Christian world to become religious. They have turned away from the great experiences of revelation, and now they are persecuting the people who have a real walk with God and who move in revelation.

They persecute the family of God instead of fighting against the corruption that exists everywhere. They are worried about revelation, and so they fight it. Although they will continue to fight it, you do not fight back. Walk on in revelation, and remember what Paul said: "Beware of the dogs."

After Jesus had healed a man on the Sabbath and the Pharisees sought to kill him, He said, "How can you believe, when you seek the honor that comes from man, and not the honor that comes from God only?" ( John 5:44 ). As in Jesus day, the religious world today is building up men and giving them high esteem. Brand name mega churches abound.

Paul declared, "Those things that man counts great, I count to be dogs and what they walk in. Why did Paul have such a violent attitude and count those who were religious as dogs? He recognized that there is no deception as great as the deception of religion. When people have the desire to be good and righteous, the greatest deception that can be perpetrated against them is convincing them that through the efforts of their flesh they can attain it. Believing this, they become self deceived.

Satan comes as an angel of light, and his ministers are transformed to appear as ministers of righteousness ( II Corinthians 11:14-15 ). Their great intention is to produce one lie, convincing people that they are righteous when actually they are guilty before God. That has become the greatest deception that can be given to a man.

In Philippians 3:8-9, Paul said, "I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I may gain Christ, and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith."

Here Paul was saying, "The one thing I seek is that my righteousness not be generated from within the fleshly life that I live, until I seem to be religiously righteous." THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF CHRIST IS NOT PRODUCED FROM WITHIN. We must have the righteousness that comes externally to us internally. Righteousness is imparted from without, it is not generated from within.

As we read Paul's letter to the Philippians, we realize that if we could generate righteousness, Christ died in vain. His death was absolutely and totally unnecessary, if we could become righteous with what we are able to produce. Unless we can see that we have sinned and are guilty before God, we cannot see that righteousness must come from God Himself. It must be a righteousness that is imparted to us.

At the least encouragement, the human heart reverts to fleshly religion and becomes very religious. No deception is as great as that which comes from a pastor who begins to lay an obligation upon the Lord's people to become religious. What started as a walk with God can turn toward religion very easily.

A pastor should deliberately take steps in refusing to be a preacher in a religious sense, in refusing to use the same terminology and the same Pharisaic approach. He must refuse to equate the righteousness of God with religion. He must refuse to equate reverence with deadness. He should not preach it or allow it to come forth in any way.

The only way a person can change is through the righteousness of God that comes to him.

Face the problems in your life, the problems of the old flesh. You can either tackle them with a religious discipline, or you can attack them by believing for a spiritual transformation. To use willpower and make it a religious discipline is to put yourself in jeopardy, because the root of the problem is still there.

In some denominations, as the young people respond to an alter call, many of them lay their cigarettes on the altar. They are giving them all to Jesus, and they feel very religious about it. But the first day they become discouraged, they go back to cigarettes, because the root of the problem has never been taken out. It was a religious effort, a discipline of the flesh. Religion can well be defined as a discipline of the flesh to produce a synthetic righteousness.

Righteousness is an attribute of God. It is not an attribute of yourself. Righteousness is not natural to your nature. You have sinned and come short of the glory of God ( Romans 3:23 ). You were born and shaped in iniquity ( Psalm 51:5 ). You were born with a sin nature. What makes you think that you can produce an attribute that only God Himself has? God has to impart His righteousness to you.

The Word says that He clothes you with a robe of righteousness ( Isaiah 61:10 ). God says, "Here is My righteousness- you put it on. I will take away from you the heart of stone,that which is unnatural and wrong, and give you a heart of flesh" ( Ezekiel 36:26 ). "I will write My Word upon your heart" ( Jeremiah 31:33 ). He says, "You will do good because I will write it on your heart to do good. It will not be a religious effort. I will impart righteousness to you." Pursue after this living righteousness from God.

Paul wrote to the Galatians, "You have begun in the Spirit, Do you think that you can make yourselves perfect in the flesh" ( Galatians 3:3 )? They had become very religious, even though they started out really walking with God. A few Jews came to them from Jerusalem, teaching, "So---you want to be Christians. We know how Christians should be. We have had the Law and the Prophets. Now, this is what you must do."

Then they circumcised the men and placed the church under certain rules and regulations of the Law. Paul wrote to them, :where is the blessedness? Where is the joy that you spoke of" ( Galatians 4:15 )? It had slipped away from them.

The only real release we have from the old nature is the righteousness that comes from God. Paul wrote to the Galatians, "Having begun in the Spirit, do you think now to be made perfect in the flesh? Do you think that you can go back to some religious effort to finish up what only God's miracle grace could have started in your life?" We have to begin in the Spirit and we have to finish in the Spirit.

Whether you have just started to walk with god, or whether you have walked with god for a long time, any further advance in righteousness still comes by an impartation from God of His divine nature.

The only attributes that count are those you appropriate from the Lord. Righteousness is not something that you can produce and then say, "See Lord? I am becoming very religious these days. See what I did? Aren't You proud of me Lord?" He will look down and say, "All your righteousness is as filthy rags" ( Isaiah 64:6 ). That is God's viewpoint.

What will help you to come into his presence without filthy rags? How can you get rid of your filthy rags? The answer is found in Zechariah 3:3-5. The Lord commanded that the filthy garments be taken from Joshua, the high priest. Those around him placed upon him a beautiful robe, and then he was able to minister before the presence of the Lord.

You can come boldly to the throne of grace ( Hebrews 4:16). You need not be ashamed to come because of all you have done wrong in your lifetime. It is gone because Christ died for you. He became sin for you, that you might become the righteousness of God. That scripture means what it says. He who knew no sin was made sin for you, that you might become the righteousness of God in Him (II Corinthians 5:12). It is a complete transference, the miracle exchange that God makes with men.

He says, "I shall take away your heart of sin and give you My heart. I will give you My love and My righteousness. You are going to stand before me."

Frustration leads us to become religious in the middle of the battle. It makes us revert to being religious when the battle is only half won. God is doing a great work in our lives, and we want to see it finished. We chafe under the anxiety of it and become so frustrated that it is very easy to revert to a religious attitude.

"Well, God has done this much, but I will do the rest of it! I will finish this battle!" We cannot attain the victory that way. There is a vast difference between religious efforts and appropriating from God in the Spirit. Paul had a real zeal that was of the Law, and yet all things that had been of gain to him he counted as a loss for Christ. He was pressing toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. He was living on tiptoe, not striving to be religious, but striving to appropriate.

It was not what he was producing that mattered; it was what he was laying hold upon. He was saying, "Brethren, I have not laid hold yet, but I press on so that I can lay hold upon that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus."