LOOK FOR THE RIGHTEOUS ALTERNATIVE TO RELIGION
When studying, we should always look for scriptures that instruct us about God’s righteous alternative to religion: Being a New Covenant disciple. When Jesus said “go and make disciples,” these are the kinds of disciples he was referring to.

COMMENTARY ON MAKING DISCIPLES: Christians use Matthew 28:19 to justify their evangelistic efforts. Their definition of a disciple is not, however, the same as God’s definition. God’s ideal disciple is one who learns how to hear his voice and then speaks what he/she hears to others.

New covenant disciples always and only worship God in spirit and truth. This kind of worship is pure religion. Old/First Covenant religionists always and only worship in ways that God considers to be defiled religion. Worship in spirit and truth is righteous worship. Worship in ways that fit the pattern of defiled religion is sin.

When we study the Bible, one of our motives for study should be to ***If we are not convicted and corrected by scripture of our personal sin regarding the practice of religion and listening to religious teachers instead of listening to God’s voice, we are not studying the Bible for spiritual understanding. We are only reading for intellectual knowledge which is what religion does and teaches to us do.

We will know that we are reading the Bible for the right reasons with the right heart attitude when God opens our eyes to understand it in new ways that make much more sense to us than all the literal interpretations that human teachers ever taught us. Little by little, the meanings of parables, dark sayings, proverbs and riddles, figures, words of the wise and riddles, dreams, enigmas and difficult problems, figurative language, dreams and visions, shadows, types and patterns, and symbols, signs and allegories will become clear as the spirit of God writes his laws on our hearts. These spiritual laws embody God’s righteous alternative to religion.

STUDY TIP: See The Heart is the Place for understanding of God’s focus.

We should read the entire Bible, therefore, to understand the differences between the literal laws/commandments that lead to death (i.e. Old/First Covenant) and the spiritual law that leads to a righteous life (i.e. New Covenant). All other motives for reading are purely religious. Religious people may be impressed with regular Bible study, memorizing and quoting of scripture, but God is not impressed if we do these things with the motive of looking good to other religious people. For God, the right motive is to receive training and correction that transforms our hearts. God and others will know when this happens when our hearts change from evil and impure to good and pure.

If Religion is the Kingdom of False Prophets, then the righteous alternative to religion is God’s kingdom established in the hearts of New Covenant disciples. He wants to do this because the heart is Place Where God Will Place His Name (i.e. his character).

The process of writing his laws on the hearts of his people can be fulfilled only when people listen to God’s voice. But this cannot happen unless and until people first come out of religion and stop following religious laws. Only when they stop listening to false prophets will they able to reliably hear God’s voice, and only then will they be able to follow God’s spiritual laws which are the righteous alternative to religion.

In other words, people either follow religious laws made by men, or they follow God’s spiritual laws. Or, to put the alternatives in terms of righteousness or sin, they either eat fruit of the Tree of Life or from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. One tree leads to spiritual life and the other leads to spiritual death.

God’s preference, of course is that his people choose spiritual life. That choice is good for God and for his people.

The essence of this choice is this: What kind of heart do they want to have? Do they choose to have a clean, pure heart created by God who writes his spiritual laws on their heart? Or, do they choose to retain the evil, impure heart that they have created for themselves along with help from their religious friends who teach them to follow religious laws?

Choosing the clean, pure heart, of course, is the righteous alternative.