25. The Birth of Religion

The Birth of “Religion” But one thing that Satan did accomplish with Eve was to separate the ideal of Godlikeness from the Person of God, who was incarnate in His word to her, and then set her to doing something to reach that ideal. His temptation, if put into a fully expressed formula, would read: Godlikeness is achieved by striving after an impersonal ideal, not received by relying on God in Person. Thus was Eve separated from God. This is how works have come so persistently to displace faith in our attitude toward God, whether it be the attitude of independent defiance, or of a simulated dependence. Those who deliberately defy God will go about to build an ideal world by trying to get rid of Him and His interference with their plans for Utopia. While those who think they are depending on God will try to work their way to heaven by striving after high ideals, in the confidence that this is the program of salvation from sin. But it is all effort, with personal faith in God in a saving way wholly impossible. So millions imagine they are depending on God for their salvation, while all the time they are depending on themselves in complete independence of God. For they are following a program of moral self-improvement (as though improvement were possible), without any real surrender to the will of God. They interpret God’s will in terms of things to do to insure heaven and happiness, then trying to do these things they imagine they are thereby depending on God, when they are doing the very opposite. They are depending on Him simply to reward their efforts at character building by letting them into heaven. But that is not faith but presumption, for it is wholly foreign to Scripture. When man departed from dependence on God, it was because he had left off faith in His Word. Faith as such did not quit, for man cannot escape believing something in the moral realm; it was faith simply transferred from the Creator to the creature. Man believes as intensely as ever, but the object of his faith is wrong; for it is himself. Whatever dependence on the power of God man may feel the need of, does not hinder his faith in the word of man, which is simply transference of faith in God to dependence on his own wisdom and efforts. This makes necessary a standard, to which his efforts must conform if he is to make sure of heaven. And so one has been formulated to fit such a faith, and it reads: “I believe that if one lives up to his light and does the best he knows how, his happiness for eternity is secure.” Such a standard is simply an ideal to strive after, and it is works, not faith at all.

All this is the tragic product of sin, for it is the substance of the first transgression. Man was wrecked by striving after an ideal, and “The just shall live by faith,” not by striving after ideals. This is the Scripture meaning of religion, for religion is any one of the great variety of programs on which man depends, by his own efforts, to bind himself back to God. The things James says constitute pure religion (James 1:27) are things to do, the word “undefiled” indicating a contrast between the things named and the unspeakable defilement of the things to do which the heathen on every side were including in their idol worship. The classic meaning of the word for religion, as James used it, is such that Philo, Josephus, Xenophon, Aristotle, Justyn Martyr and others used it as meaning “outward forms and ceremonies,” and as expressing a direct contrast with true heart faith. And the “Jews’ religion” of which Paul speaks (Galatians 1:14) was certainly a program of works, which set forth ideals to strive for; but salvation from sin is “Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:9). Along with faithful Abraham, they were all saved by faith.