Religion
RELIGION
In Which Religion Is Defined for Us
John 1:14; 1 John 1:1-4
Yesterday we said that religion resulted from the double movement of our aspirations and God’s inspirations. His life impinges upon ours at every point. The result? Something disturbs [us]; we aspire, we pray, we revolt against what we are.
The meeting place of this upward movement and this downward movement is Christ. He is humanity ascending and God descending—the Son of man, the Son of God. Since he is the meeting place of the two sides of religion, he becomes its definition. To the one hundred and fifty definitions we add one more: Christ. This is not a spelled-out definition, but a lived-out definition. Some things cannot be said, they have to be shown. So it has been shown us what constitutes religion: Christ’s spirit of life. His relationships with God and people, his purity, his love, his mastery over the environments of people and things, his care for the sinful and the underprivileged, his redemptive purposes for us and for society, his overleaping sympathy that wiped out all race and class and bound us into a community, his final willingness to take all our pain, all our defeat, all our sin into his own heart and die for us, and his offer to us of a new way and program of life—the kingdom of God on earth—all this, and his sheer victory of spirit amid it all, constitutes religion.
Victorious Living
(Week 2, Tuesday)
Why I Should Give My Allegiance to the Church
Acts 20:28; Ephesians 3:14-15; 5:23-32; Colossians 1:17-18
There is no such thing as solitary religion. If it is solitary, it is not religion, for Jesus expressed religion as love to God and love to people. There can be no love to people unless life is lived out in relationships. “To be is to be in relationship.” The Christian’s life can be lived only in the give-and-take of corporate relationships.
Abundant Living
(Week 45, Thursday)
Can We Be Too Christian?
Matthew 19:16-22
A prominent member of the church showed in these words that he thought the Christian way is alien to life, that you might have too much of it: “You can have too much of religion. You must live a balanced life and make religion one of the interests of life.” Of course you can have too much of religion that is off center, not centered in Christ; but if the Christian way is the Way, then it is not one of the interests of life, it is Life controlling all life.
The Way
(Week 6, Sunday)
James 3:13-18
A doctor flung himself in a chair in front of me and eagerly asked, “Is religion natural?” His acceptance or rejection of it depended upon the answer. I could answer, “If you mean by religion, Christ—for he is my definition of religion—then the answer is an unqualified yes.” Moreover it can be added, everything that doesn’t fit into his spirit is unnatural.
The Way
(Week 6, Saturday)
A Religion of the Spirit
2 Corinthians 3:15-18
The Christian faith is a religion of the Spirit. . . .
But it is a religion of the Spirit conditioned by the content that Jesus puts within it by his life and teaching. If Jesus reveals the nature of the Father, he also reveals the nature of the Spirit. For people have odd ideas of the nature of the Spirit and the Spirit’s possession. If God is a Christlike God, then the Spirit is a Christlike Spirit.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 5, Thursday)
The Word Become Flesh
John 1:14-18
There are many religions; there is but one gospel. So the gospel does not stand alongside other religions and philosophies; it confronts all religions, all philosophies, all life, with the good news.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 9, Monday)
All Places Sacred
John 4:21-24
When the Holy Spirit came upon that group in a home [at Pentecost], it lifted God’s availability out of the hands of priests, places, and the paraphernalia of organized religion. These things and persons may be useful in helping us to find God, but not one of them is necessary. God’s hands are not tied by anyone’s cords of validity and sanctions. Wherever the human heart meets the inner conditions, there God is available. This is the most freeing thing that ever happened in religion. God will use any person, any building, any rite or ceremony, that looks beyond itself and is the instrument of the divine; but God is not confined to anything, except two avenues: God comes through Christ and God comes to a person, whoever and wherever that person may be, provided that person lifts up a surrendered, trusting heart to God through Christ.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 13, Sunday)
Intellectual, Spiritual, and Moral
Romans 16:25-27
Religion, in order to be effective, must have intellectual penetration, spiritual insight, and moral power. The first two without the last are moonshine. The last without the first two is a wild-fire. The combination is light and power.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 17, Friday)
Life Is Reduced to Simplicity
Titus 3:3-6
The idea that religion is imposed and unnatural is perhaps the chief hindrance to its wholehearted acceptance. A little boy sampling a new and delicious Thanksgiving pudding said, “I know this must be bad for me, for it is so good.” But the good is good for us, and the bad is bad for us. We are made by the Spirit for the Spirit; and therefore when we receive the Spirit, we find ourselves.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 18, Friday)
Is There Any Divine Initiative?
Hebrews 1:1-3
The religious urge is found in [the] life urge. It is the life urge turned qualitative. It is the cry for life turned into the cry for better life. And the moment we say better, we have standards; and the moment we have standards, we have religion. As long as people want to live fully and better, we will be religious. The forms of religion may come and go, but the spirit of religion is deathless from age to age. For it is the cry for life turned qualitative.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 2, Wednesday)
“Tenigue” (Tension and Fatigue)
2 Corinthians 11:23-28
At an altar of prayer, two men knelt beside a penitent and whispered opposite advice. One said, “Hold on,” and the other said, “Let go.” These two bits of advice depict two types of religion. One says, “Grit your teeth, fight, whip your will, hold on.” The other says: “Surrender your will, accept the Gift of God, let go and let God.” They issue in two types of persons: one strained, the other confident.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 7, Thursday)
1 Timothy 3:16
Religion, which is to help you to Christ, often stands between you and Christ; you can’t see the person for the paraphernalia.
The fact is that Jesus never used the word religion, nor did the early disciples use it. Religion means literally “binding back”—a binding back to God. It is humanity’s attempts to bind ourselves back to God by various expedients. But the gospel was not a series of expedients to bind us back to God; it was the good news of God’s coming to us in incarnation, in redemption. Jesus didn’t come to set a religion against other religions—a little better, a little bit more moral. He came to set the good news over against human need, whether that need be found in this religion, that religion, or no religion. Religion is our search upward; the gospel is God’s reach downward. There are many religions; there is but one gospel.
What terms did Jesus use if he didn’t use the term religion? He used the “kingdom of God,” the “Way,” and both were embodied in himself: “I am the way.” All these terms are inward pushes toward the person Jesus and through him to God.
Mastery
(Week 5, Wednesday)
The Mastery of Sacred Places
1 Peter 2:9-10
The Holy Spirit came upon them when they were in the most common place—a place where we all live—a home. Under that apparently insignificant fact lays a deep significance. It was an amazing emancipation for religion. For up to this time religion had been associated with sacred places, sacred vestments, and sacred persons. Now the center of gravity in religion shifted from places to persons, from vestments to vitality, from services to service. It was a most important shift. It saved religion from sterility and saved humanity to vitality. Religion was put where it belongs—in the human heart.
Mastery
(Week 9, Sunday)
The Way, Which They Call a Sect
Matthew 5:17-20
Many Christians, and practically all non-Christians, make the Way into a sect by making it a religion. . . . But Jesus never used the word religion, nor did he conceive of himself setting one religion alongside other religions. He came to set the gospel over against all human need, whether in this religion, that religion, or no religion. He came to set the Way over against ways.
Mastery
(Week 29, Wednesday)
Romans 8:1-12
Secondhand religion is always overpowered by firsthand evil. The comparative impotence of the church is caused by the secondhand nature of its religion. Its religion is in creeds, in rituals, in books, in services, in prayers; but it is not a fountain of firsthand living experience of Jesus.
Mastery
(Week 34, Thursday)
Religion: Humanity’s Search for God
Acts 17:22-28
All religions are humanity’s attempt to climb to God; Jesus is God’s descent to humanity. All religions are our’s search for God; Jesus is God’s search for us. Therefore there are many religions, but there is but one gospel. So Jesus did not bring a religion to set alongside of other religions—one a little better, more moral, more spiritual. He came to set the gospel over against human need, whether that need be in this religion, that religion, or in no religion.
Christian Maturity
(Week 1, Friday)
The Eternal God Becomes Like Us
Colossians 1:15-17
Religion? [Jesus] never mentioned the word, but if you were to ask my definition of religion, I would point to him: he is religion.
Christian Maturity
(Week 2, Sunday)
Right Is Right, Everywhere and Eternally
James 3:10-12
This linking of religion and morality is important, for both religion and morality. There can be no real religion without morality, and there can be no real morality without religion. Both are rooted in the ultimate fact of the universe—God.
Christian Maturity
(Week 9, Wednesday)
In the world of Paul, the mystery religions, particularly Gnosticism, had built up between people and God a hierarchy of angels and principal power as intermediaries. You could not get to God except through them. They were beneficent, but were blocks on the climb to God; you had to go through them. Paul sweeps away these intermediaries when he says, “There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5).
In Christ
(Week 9, Monday)
Principles Instead of a Person?
2 Corinthians 3:4-6
[Here] is the difference between philosophy and real religion: one is cold, calculating, and uncommitted; the other is warm, uncalculating, and committed with a life committal.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 2, Wednesday)