Confusing the Imitation for the Real Thing – Part 1
When the U.S. Treasury Department trains their agents, instead of studying counterfeit bills, they intensely study our U.S. currency. Then, when they see a counterfeit, they know it. When you know and have experienced the real thing, you recognize a counterfeit for what it is: a cheap imitation.
In our modern world people have mistaken religion, an imitation, for spirituality, the real thing. This has caused mental, emotional, and physical harm to individuals and society as a whole.
Religion is humanity’s attempt to do something for God (deity) and control people (society) through man-made religious organizations, institutions, hierarchies of professionals and non-professionals, “approved” belief systems, traditions, “sacred” writings, rules, ordinances, and sacraments. It’s a system of control that promises much and delivers little.
Yet, people go back, week after week hoping today will be the moment that their marriage is healed, their health restored, or they’re delivered from a besetting “sin.” But it rarely happens. That is the dirty little secret of institutional religion: What they’re doing doesn’t work because it’s outward self-effort and not inner spirit.
Jesus and Religion
Jesus came to establish a new covenant that is in Him, and set aside the old covenant of laws and rules. To put it another way, he came to kill outward religion, of every kind, and replace it with an inward spiritual focus.
Jesus attacked the religious system of laws, rules, and dead works unmercifully. In Matthew 23:27 Jesus said to the religious leaders, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness (NKJV).
For Jesus, the inner spiritual life was the issue, not outward religious works. In John 5:39, 40 Jesus said to the religious leaders, You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life (NKJV).
Life is not in scriptures, or outward religious works. Life is in Christ, the Messiah.
As you can imagine, this did not set well with the Jewish religious leaders. They had much invested in Judaism and the Temple worship cult. It made them a lot of money, gave them leadership of the nation and a seat at the table with the Roman occupiers.
Ultimately, religion would kill Jesus, the one who lived from within, from Spirit, from love. Religion can’t abide with something that won’t allow it to control beliefs about God, the actions of people, positions of power and money. It must have something to do, to succeed in, and influence over things of this world.
Spiritual people need only go inward to Spirit, to know themselves and rest in a finished work in Christ Jesus. The apostle Paul wrote in I Corinthians 2:14, 15 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one (NKJV).
In part two of this same topic, we’ll dive deeper into how our outward focus on the counterfeit offers us little where our inward focus on the real thing offers us life.