THE PURE AND PERFECT RELIGION

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

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

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

As we close out chapter 1 of the letter James wrote to the first century Hebrew Christians, we find the matter of religion take center stage. He says this in verse 27:

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.

It’s important to note that there were a lot of religions in the time of James. We know the Roman empire was in control and reigning over Israel as well as other nations in the region and Europe. There was a polytheistic belief system and the Romans worshipped multiple gods and goddesses.

Gnosticism was another belief system that was thriving during the first century. Gnostics held to a firm belief that attaining special divine knowledge is what could save a person, not faith. They also feel there is a creator but don’t view them as being holy or in a place of authority over the earth, just one of several divine figures that can provide knowledge but aren’t present in space and time.

And then there was Judaism, a long existing religion that both James and his Jewish audience prescribed to before converting to Christianity. Prior to Jesus’ coming, death, and subsequent resurrection, the Israelite people were God’s chosen people. They were to be obedient to all the laws, regulations, and commandments He provided them and, in turn, He would protect and bless them.

But then things changed in a big way and Jesus ushered in the new and only true religion, Christianity, when He said these words:

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

God now offered the gift of salvation to all people, Jew or Gentile. All they had to do is simply places their belief in His Son as Savior. But even after God had established His new covenant for salvation, there were many Hebrew people who rejected Jesus and refused to set their Judaism aside to follow the new “Way” as Christianity was known early on.

The bottom line is that the Christian religion had a great deal of competition at its onset and so it’s easy to understand why the Lord would speak truth through James to set the matter straight.

Now, of interest, the Greek word that gets translated as the English word “religion” is thréskeia, derived from the Greek thréskos, which means external religious worship. In applying this to our scripture verse for today, the only religion that is acceptable to God the Father is the Christian faith that leads a believer to exhibit these two critical traits:

First, Christians are to care for the disadvantaged.

“...look after orphans and widows in their distress...”

During Biblical times in the New Testament, it wasn’t like there were well established orphanages in place where parentless children could be cared for and eventually join foster families. Rather, orphans were socially marginalized and economically disadvantaged. They couldn’t fend for themselves and had no one to lead, guide, and take care of them. Often, these children could end up enslaved by sinful adults who sought to exploit the children’s vulnerability.

Widows, in this instance primarily speaking of women, found themselves in a similar place of need, particularly if they didn’t have children who could take them in and care for them. Married women rarely worked to earn a wage because their husbands were the ones who earned the household income. The wives were relegated to caring for the household and bearing/raising up children. And so when a husband died, the wife was too often left with nothing and, like the orphans, were socially disenfranchised.  

The call for Christ followers was to take care of those who were, as Jesus said, “the least of these” (Matthew 25:31-46) for this is something God viewed as “pure and faultless” behavior.

The other trait that God favored in anyone practicing the Christian religion was their willingness to conscientiously work to “keep...from being polluted by the world”.

We know Satan is alive, well, and influencing the worldly domain in which we abide in. His number one mission is to disrupt and destroy every good thing God is trying to do and that includes every Jesus believer. He often does this insidiously by leading a Christ follower into sin when they allow him to pollute them through the world and its ways. To prevent this, God calls on all Christians to mirror Jesus and His conduct in everything that they do for that is what being a believer is supposed to be all about...to be Christ-like in every way possible.

Yes, there may have been many religions during the time of James, just as there are today, but since the death and resurrection of Jesus, only one religion is legitimate in the eyes of God and that is the pure and faultless precepts of the Christian belief system which I am blessed to be a part of.

I pray you feel likewise.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.