THE BIG DISCONNECT
We are not the first to notice or comment on the disconnect between God and religion. Even those who are not religious recognize that the public face of religion is inconsistent with their limited concept of God. When non-believing people see these inconsistencies they call it hypocrisy.  Since God calls people hypocrites who appear righteous on the outside but who are spiritually dead and unclean on the inside, we will not shrink from using that term to characterize people who practice religion.

Self-righteous religionists, of course, think they are wrongly accused of of hypocrisy because they are convinced that they are doing exactly what God wants them to do.  And it is not surprising that they should feel this way because their spiritual fathers have been doing religion the same way for generations. Furthermore, as far as they know, God finds no wrong in their religion, so they see no reason to change their religious ways. They foolishly trust in God’s mercy while failing to accept that he is also a God of judgment.

The problem with this thinking is that God has warned man about religious traditions since the days of Adam: Religion was the original sin embodied in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The problem is that people have not correctly interpreted what God has said in his word about the nature of Pure Religion (i.e. what God says) and Defiled Religion(i.e. what man does). In their failure to distinguish between Pure Religion and Defiled Religion,  they have chosen to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and they are dying.

God’s direction and his warnings have always been available for men to follow. Much of the Old Testament is devoted to prophets’ warnings about Defiled Religion,  but people have refused to allow the possibility that their particular brands of religion could be flawed in any way.  They bless themselves in their hearts thinking they will be safe, even though they walk in the stubbornness of their hearts. Stuck in narrow-minded wine-skins, they continue to practice their religious traditions. As Jesus said, they are hypocrites who have nullified the word of God for the sake of their traditions.

The way the Bible puts it, religionists have not had eyes to see nor ears to hear the truth about their religion, and they honor God with their lips but their hearts are far from him. In their self-righteous beliefs that their religion is the right religion, they have all hardened their hearts  and have gone astray from what God said.

God wants to open spiritual eyes so that people can be converted from practicing Defiled Religion to practicing Pure Religion.  This transition from Defiled Religion to Pure Religion is the kind of conversion that God wants to effect in his people. Israel was already God’s chosen people. They were not converted from paganism to believers. They were already believers in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but they had gone astray in their Defiled Religion practices. They had eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and God wanted to convert them, or return them back to eating from the Tree of Life.

That is still the story of  Israel. Israel’s need to convert from Old/First Covenant religious practices to New Covenant freedom was the reason Jesus was sent to the lost sheep of Israel. It is also the story of Christians who are similarly bound up in Old/First Covenant religion. They also need to convert from their Defiled Religion to the Pure Religion of the New Covenant because they, like Israel, are in bondage to Defiled Religion.

This is the bondage to which Jesus referred when he quoted Isaiah in the following scripture:

Luke 4:16-19:  And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the sabbath day. And he stood up to read;17 and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written, 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 19 to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

COMMENTARY: The good news is that Israel was no longer condemned to Old/First Covenant religious requirements.

Jesus came to release Israel from captivity to Defiled Religion and open their spiritual eyes to Pure Religion which is found in the New Covenant.

He declared Israel free from captivity to Old/First Covenant religion.

Modern day Jews and Christians do not understand that they are captives to Old/First Covenant, Defiled Religion just like ancient Israel was. And like the Jews, they do not understand that Jesus (i.e. the New Covenant) came to set them free from that bondage. The form of the religion is different for Jews and Christians, but it is bondage nonetheless.

It is for freedom from Defiled Religion that Jesus has set us free — not just from moral sins that we typically associate with the flesh.  Just as early Christians had the circumcision group that taught that they must be circumcised, generations of Christians since have had their own versions of circumcision teachings. Instead of physical circumcision, however, they teach other kinds of bondage that enslaves people to religious organizations and religious leaders who make policy about what religious people can and cannot do. These religious leaders are just like the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. They lord themselves over the people, with burdens too heavy for them to carry. It is all bondage. It is just bondage of another form.

Neither Jews nor Christians understand how this works, however, so they continue working as slaves to their respective religious works.