DEATH THAT LEADS TO LIFE
Israel’s history with idolatry practiced in high places is a lesson for all generations that God hates religion and will punish those who practice it. Nevertheless, people are incurably destined to follow this fleshly pattern of creating and re-creating religious idols and high places until they are spiritually born again and recreated into the image of God. God calls the re-creation process death and resurrection. Death has two components: The first death is the agony of terminating the sin of practicing religion. The second death is the persecution of religious enemies who resent attempts to destroy their religions. The resurrection part is the new life that people live in the spirit after dying to their religion.

Describing the process in terms of death and resurrection will be seen as a gross exaggeration for Old/First Covenant religionists who interpret the Bible literally. For them, death and resurrection is something that physically happened to Jesus but does not happen to them — unless they put their trust in Jesus, or unless they are baptized, or unless they faithfully practice their religion. This is a perverted theology of the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Here is how Jesus’ death and resurrection should be interpreted:

Jesus is one of several models of righteous, New Covenant Bible characters who obey God’s commands to destroy religious nations and tear down idols and high places, so that captives to religion can be set free from religion. This is one way in which he fulfills the spiritual law of God written on his heart.

Just as Jesus willingly laid down his life for his friends so they can enjoy freedom from religion (i.e. salvation), all other New Covenant disciples must also lay down their lives for their friends. Setting captives free from religion is an integral piece of being a New Covenant disciple. It is the good fruit that God expects from his people. In fact, it is impossible to be a New Covenant disciple without tearing down religious high places because people who do not tear them down are protecting them. And those who protect, preserve and advance religion are Old/First Covenant religionists — not New Covenant disciples. It is the principle of not being able to serve two masters.

Choosing to die to practicing religion is a willful act in which we change our minds about many things about religion that have been important to us:

Dying to religion is not easy. God uses the symbolism of a slow, agonizing, humiliating death on a cross to convey the pain of dying to religion. But the process does not begin and end with leaving religion. Having left religion, the challenge remains to do justice and righteousness by setting people who are still religious free from captivity to religion.

God also calls the ongoing effect of dying to religion and dying from religious persecution “dying daily” as we carry/bear our cross (i.e. symbol of death) while speaking out against religion and living a life of freedom that includes tearing down religious high places and idols.

We can stop the process at any time if we want to hold on to our religion. But those who choose to endure the pain, humiliation and conflict that accrue to New Covenant disciples show evidence that they have faith in God’s vague, but reliable promises of blessings, a great name, and being the father of many nations — not knowing what those promises — including the ones about pain, humiliation and conflict — might mean, but still having faith that they apply to us just as they applied to Abraham.

Abraham chose the narrow gate when he trusted in God’s promises and left his father’s religion for an unknown promised land filled with uncertainty and conflict with surrounding religious nations. Those who choose to go through the wide gate, however, hold on to their religious life, but do not obtain a new, spiritual life that is always  accompanied by pain and suffering that God symbolically calls death. This is what people who have that greater kind of love can expect when they lay down their New Covenant lives for friends who are still enslaved to religion just as Abraham rescued Lot and others from captivity to pagan kings.

Considering all the disconnects between religion and what God really wants from his people (i.e. faith), we might wonder why Jews and Christians practice religion instead of worshiping in spirit and truth. The big picture answer is found in the fact that the law (i.e. Old/First Covenant) is a stumbling block. It is a stumbling block because people naturally try to interpret it literally and then try to be obedient to God’s commandments by using their mental and physical abilities (i.e. their flesh). The stumbling block exists in what should be the obvious fact that  obedience to the many laws/commandments of the Old/First Covenant is impossible. Three  circumstances render obedience to the Old/First Covenant laws impossible:

Considering these circumstances, no one, not even the Jews with all of their regulations, can do it all. People will burn themselves out physically, financially and emotionally trying to do it all. They have not entered into God’s rest.

It may seem unfair of God to set people up for failure to obey all of his commandments, but that is exactly what he has done, and he has warned them by telling them that the law is a stumbling block. He sets his people up for failure through slavery to religion as his way of bringing his people into the promised land (i.e. New Covenant). This way is not easy. It involves injustice, oppression and affliction. Those who make it will encounter more or less constant warfare with the enemy.

Until Jews or Christians become New Covenant disciples, they will be enslaved to the belief that physical people, physical objects and physical activities are integral to the practice of religion. They will practice religion under the sincere conviction that they must create and manage all those physical elements that are found in the literal Bible. They will continue to stumble over the legalism inspired by literal interpretations of the Old/First Covenant found in the Law of Moses.

It must be said that the simple act of creation is not in itself a bad thing. People are forever creating objects and institutions to benefit of themselves and others. There is nothing inherently wrong with creating a building, a dance, a song or a piece of art. The problem arises when the creators assign religious value or meaning to the things that they create. What they create has value to those who practice that religion but they have no value to God because physical things cannot be holy or sacred. Only God and the spiritual things that cannot be seen (i.e. spirits of New Covenant disciples) are holy. Things created by man are works of the flesh — not expressions of the spirit.

In religion, spiritual value is assigned whenever creators consider that the things that they have created have spiritual qualities that are able to draw people close to God if they are used in a certain way (e.g. look at an object, use it, touch it, taste it, listen to it, wear it, drink it, etc.) Spiritual value of objects and activities varies from one religion to another. What one religion values may be considered weird or pagan to another religion, but in God’s eyes it is all religion and he hates it.

Whether it is something created from natural material and handled/manipulated in a way that has associations with religion, or whether it is some physical activity that has religious associations, God considers it all to be works of man’s hands. It all happens because religious leaders and their followers have deceived people into believing that the thing or activity has spiritual value and meaning to God. From conception in the mind to completion through physical work or manipulation, they all involve the mind and body to execute them. God calls it all “works of the flesh” and says that they mean nothing to him.

This wrong thinking presumes that God is somehow present in physical  objects. It presumes that God, who is spirit, somehow clothes himself, or surrounds himself with physical objects — including buildings. This thinking presumes also that God extends special spiritual favor, or blessings, to people who use these physical objects in some way and assign spiritual value to them. We see the application of this wrong thinking in the following kinds of religious activities:

This is only a short list of religious things that people do and manipulate/use as sacred objects in what is collectively called worship. Since they all involve things that can be seen, touched, heard and tasted, they are the substance of religion and not of faith. And, since they are all made by men, manipulated by men, and presumed to have spiritual, sacred value, they are idols in God’s eyes. This rationale stems from God’s statement that his people should be holy because he is holy. Since God is spirit, holiness is linked to spirit — not to physical objects. Even in the case of humans, it is the unseen spirit of a human that obtains to holiness — not the visible flesh of a human or the things that humans do with their bodies. In summary, it can be said that anything, human or inanimate, that is used in the practice of religion is an idol because man has a part in creating it.

Because man designs religious activity, creates religious objects that are considered to be sacred, and manages them all in ways that are predictable, it can be said that religion is man’s kingdom. It can also be said that if these things that man creates and manages are man’s kingdom, they are not God’s kingdom — even though that is what religious people like to believe. That is why God calls religion the kingdom of the world. Because they can be seen, touched and manipulated, one of these activities or objects have the qualities of spirit which are  characteristic of the Kingdom of God.

Neither man-made things nor any man are necessary for the governance of God’s kingdom because his kingdom is all spiritual. God can manage his kingdom very well himself without human assistance and without buildings, religious objects, governing boards and religious teachers/leaders. All these physical objects and activities mentioned in the Bible are only Symbols, Signs, Types, Copies, Shadows and Patterns of spiritual things and of what it means to worship in spirit and truth. All the people and the physical objects men create and manage are the stuff of religion, which can be seen — not faith which cannot be seen.

These physical things will always be necessary for religious people who walk by sight, but they are not necessary for people who worship in spirit and truth. Neither physical things nor men to make them and administer them are necessary to God’s kingdom.

Because people are physical and otherwise function in a physical world which they create and administer, it is hard for them to let go of their control of anything — including things pertaining to God and his kingdom. This irrepressible, fleshly impulse to control is a constant source of conflict between God and man, between spirit and flesh. This is why religion is God’s enemy. It is also why religion is man’s enemy.

God takes a long-term, patient view of this conflict and gives people time to come to repentance for trying to take over control of his kingdom through religion. He allows every individual a period of time that he symbolically calls six days and forty years to get his/her fill of religion and discover that religion is not what he wants for us. Here is a rough outline of how the process works:

This is a very brief outline, of course, but it is, nevertheless, a useful summary for people who might want to evaluate where they are in the transition from Old/First Covenant religionist to New Covenant disciple.