The Failure of Religion

To be religious is to continue in the letter or the law, which is only the type and shadow of the truth that is, hidden in it. When time has come for the harvest, it is time also to cast aside the chaff and keep the wheat. It is time to do away with the stalk and the husk and keep the corn. The truth is as the wheat and the corn that sustains life.

Religious ritual is what natural Israel was and still remains in, under the law. There shall be no flesh justified by it. God intends a people who worship Him in Spirit and in truth. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness and the end of religion for righteousness. God intends, a life lived in the power of the Spirit, in Christ. The glory of God, will no longer be seen in and over religious ritual. God’s people must come to understand that, to build again that which Christ died to destroy, is sin.

Religion is the enemies most effective form of deception that keeps God’s people from going on to perfection, or to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Religion keeps us bound up in outward worship of God never believing for a true inward transformation. It keeps God’s people in unbelief and wears them out through dead works, never allowing them to enter in to God’s rest.

It appeals to our fallen nature, deceiving man into thinking he can earn something in God, through works. Religion has had its place and purpose, just as the chaff and the husk had it’s purpose in the growth process of the corn and wheat. However, there comes a time to discard that which was a part of the process for the intended grain, or fruit.

Just as under the law we where heirs but children, shut up onto faith, but when faith came, we where no longer children but Sons. It is time to realize we are heirs of the kingdom and no longer under a system, made up of rituals whereby we touch not and taste not and celebrate days and years, bodily exercises that profit little.

These are all a form of will worship, religious efforts at disciplining ones will and as a result gaining something in God. As with Cain, even so for the religious, ”sin lies at the door and unto him will be its desire”. The door is pride, the result of the offering of the fruit of the earth, or the flesh, which has been cursed and cannot produce anything pleasing to God.

The Father did not send the Son to make Adam more religious, to simply get him to subscribe to a new set of do’s and dont's. He came, that through His death burial and resurrection, we might through faith and the believing of the truth be, new creatures in Christ, containing the life of God.

We were to grow up into Him which is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body fitted and formed together and compacted by that which every joint supplies, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, makes increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.

Religion, I say again is the worship of what is symbolic. It is no different than when the children of natural Israel were found, later on worshipping the brazen serpent, which God had used to heal them of serpent bites, in the wilderness. They unknowingly were worshipping the type or symbol of Christ, who was their healing and the fulfillment of the type. God had used the brazen serpent at one point in there processing in the wilderness and it had power to heal, all those who looked to it. However, it was a sign that pointed to the greater fulfillment. To worship the sign or symbol, later became sin.

We do the same thing today in assemblies all over the world, by continuing to worship the type, never going beyond it to the fulfillment. Anything that keeps us from growing or moving on in God, becomes sin, even the law, when used unlawfully.

How much time is spent in churches every Sunday morning preaching against the sin of smoking, swearing and sexual behavior when any and all of these are only the result of never growing beyond religion and ritual because of the clergy’s inability to see the truth. I have spent eighteen years in the south after which I was relocated once again to upstate New York. I witnessed the results of religion in each of these areas. In the bible belt, the people put on their Christian smiles and used all the Christian terms at the same time they would devour one another in secret. There was jealousy and envy and strife but it was always masked by a “Christian” sweetness that was hypocritical at best. In New York, the effect of religion is quite different. I believe God brought me back here that I might experience religion to the inth degree.

The religion of choice up here is the catholic church. Because I have catholic friends and family I have been invited to one or two of there services. I observed a spectacle of rituals being carried out like I had never seen. I saw dead religion at it’s worst. And I have seen it’s effects on the people involved. Those who belong to this organized religion, for the most part are cold and hard, with attitudes a mile wide and staunch defenders of their religion, which they refer to as the church.

It is a system, much like Israel had under the law, with ritual washings and exercises and an earthly priesthood that stands in for the people. The people love to have it this way because it allows them the freedom to live in a worldly fashion, while they pay the clergy of the church to satisfy, what they perceive to be God’s requirements.

Now I have met some up here, in the catholic church organization, who truly love God. I believe they are born from above in spite of the dead religion they are involved in but hope for any growth in that system is dim. My prayer to God is that they be delivered from the dead orthodoxy they are involved in and come to know Christ as their life.

I know our Father has used organized religion as a part of our processing, just as He used the brazen serpent in the wilderness, but just as with the brazen serpent, there comes a time to realize the truth that the type typified and experience it’s fulfillment. We must stop worshipping the system and the icons it has set up along the way, the system and it’s icons keep us from ever knowing the truth and you can only truly worship God in Spirit and in truth.

The temptation is to worship the system, ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth, consequently, never knowing God when to know Him is eternal life. They neither enter in nor do they allow anyone else to enter in, because of unbelief. They have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof. It is time to leave the type and shadow and enter in to the reality of all that God intends for His people. God, deliver us from form and ritual, to a life lived in the power of the Spirit.

Amen

Art Groesbeck