Religion or Life?

Religion or Life?

All religions focus on a outward change of behavior. Religion makes demands on what we should do, act and think. It also places demands on what we should not do, not think or not act. It always points to something we must do or avoid doing to be acceptable to God and be righteous.

Religion can be teachings that need to be followed, principles that need to be acted on, doctrines that need to be embraced and believed, customs and traditions that need to be observed and followed strictly. Many forms of religious efforts and disciplines are encouraged daily in order to maintain or to grow in religion.

No religion can ever give you Life or make you righteous. Even the Christian religion offers no real help to mankind. In fact the Christian religion is the worst religion possible because it has some of the facts but can not offer Life or holiness to anyone. There are thousands of people who practice the Christian religion without ever receiving the very Life of Christ.

Christ's Life is the very core and essence of true Christianity. Having Christ's Life is the only true foundation and source of acceptable spiritually.

All religion makes it your responsibility to make things happen. You must change your behavior. You must do this and do that while avoiding doing certain things.

True Christianity focus on what God through Christ has ALREADY accomplished for you. You dot not need to do anything to make it happen. God has already done everything for you. He has done all the work and has accomplished it for you. Now instead of making it happen you can relax in what has been done for you.

God gives you grace, the ability to simply respond to His love and His accomplished work. Now the Holy Spirit will take the things of Christ and make them known to you. This is a never ending process. The Spirit reveals more of what God has done, and you respond by embracing this aspect of truth and then simply enjoy it. This is true growth in Grace. It is just the never ending discovery of God's loving nature and then you walking and enjoying His accomplished work.

God did not just change your life at salvation. That belief leaves the false impression that there was something about you that simply needed an overhaul. It suggests that He cleaned up our lives, fixed what was wrong, and straightened everything out for us. We flatter ourselves if we think that's the case.

Mankind wasn't merely a group of sin-sick people who needed religious medicine before Christ came. We were dead in our sins (Ephesians 2:1). There's nothing you can do for a dead man. He's dead. You can bathe him, dress him up, and prop him up, but when all has been done, he's still dead. A dead man needs just one thing - resurrection.

The idea that God changed your life typically is interpreted to mean that it's a behavioral change that happens at salvation. We used to be sinful acting unbelievers but now we're walking the straight-and-narrow. Many refer to this experience as "getting religion" and they were right. Religion is about changing our behavior but having the Life of Christ is altogether different. While faith in Christ most certainly changes a person's behavior, the gospel is much more than that.

Isaiah 40:31 says, "Yet those who wait for the Lord shall gain new strength." The Hebrew word "gain" can be translated "renew" or "substitute." When the missionary Hudson Taylor was reading that verse and studied that single word, it transformed his life. In the days ahead he coined the phrase, "the exchanged life," because he saw the reality that our lives aren't merely changed at salvation, they are exchanged. When we hear and believe the gospel, our Father takes the person we were, puts that person to death, and gives us a brand new life in its place. It is His Life we receive!

The person you were before you were a Christian died and was exchanged for a new life in Christ. At the cross Jesus Christ absorbed into Himself everything bad about us, including our old identities in Adam. When we trusted in Him, we receive everything good about Him, including Christ Himself.

In Romans 6:6, Paul said, "Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, so that the body of sin would be destroyed." There it is: the old man died. Romans 6:3 says, "Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Jesus, were baptized into his death" (emphasis added). We died with Him. The New Testament says this over and over again.

For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. Col. 3:3-4

Do you see the importance of seeing the difference between your life being changed at salvation versus it being exchanged? The former would suggest that now you are simply an "improved you," which isn't at all the case. You are a new you! Every residue of the old sinful spiritual DNA you inherited from Adam was crucified. It is dead and buried! You have been raised to "walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:4) because Christ is your very Life-Source now.

This understanding of salvation puts the finished work of the cross in its proper perspective. Jesus didn't come to straighten up the mess Adam made. He came to undo the damage done in the garden by totally reversing its effect in our lives. In Adam we became sinners, but the finished work of Christ does much more than change us by cleaning us of our sin. His work took our old Adamic life and put it away forever. Hebrews 9:26 says that He came to "put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself."

Your sins aren't just forgiven now. They're gone! In the wonderful imagery of the Psalms, "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us" (Psalm 103:12). The apostle Paul explained how God did this: "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Look carefully at what this verse says. Our Father took our sins and gave them to the sinless Christ - the basis of our forgiveness, taking our sins away and separating them from us as far as the east is from the west. But that's not all! He also took the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and gave it to us! That's the basis of our justification, our verdict of "not guilty" before the Supreme Judge of all. There again you see that God's work in Christ is not just a "change" but a total exchange. Debunking the lie that God changed you and embracing the full truth about the matter will liberate you to rise up to your full potential as His transformed child.

You can not make any spiritual progress as the results of your will power, vows, promises, or any self efforts. Remember no religion can ever save you.

1 John 5:11-12, "And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.

Rom. 5:10, "For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His Life."

Jer. 32:39-40, "I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me always, for their own good and for the good of their children after them. And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good, and I will put the fear of me in their hearts so that they will not turn away from me."

Ezek. 36:25-27, "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean, I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from your idols. Moreover I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will be careful to observe my ordinances."

Deut. 30:6, "And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou may live."

Jer. 24:7, "And I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God: for they shall return unto me with their whole heart."

Jer. 31:31-34, "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was a husband unto them, saith the Lord: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."

Ezek. 11:19-20 "And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh: That they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God."

Heb. 8:8b, "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people."

The new birth is the new covenant, the covenant of a new heart, reborn by a supernatural miracle - the miracle of the "rebirth", which places, as a free gift, the agape love of Christ within the heart of that person. It destroys all systems of human works, all religions of "works". It is impossible for a sinner to ever ever obey or love God without being born again.

2 Cor. 5:17, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

Phip. 2:13, "For it is God which works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure."

Eph. 3:16, "That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man;"

Heb. 12:24, "And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaks better things that that of Abel."

1 Cor. 11:25, "After the same manner also Christ took the cup, when He had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament (covenant) in my blood: do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me."