Religion vs., Christianity

One day I tried to reach out to a disillusioned young man who was working on my house. He had broken up with his girlfriend, quit his job, started drinking and smoking cigarettes (of all things), and had moved to the Keys which is about as far south as someone who is trying to escape their problems can go and still stay in the United States.

He was clean cut and seemed out of place with the other workers and looked as if he should be working on Wall Street or somewhere instead of performing manual labor on a construction site.

I tried to fix him up with a very nice young lady that I knew at our church who heads up the singles ministry. She came over to our house and I introduced them and it looked very promising. The next day he told me that he had called her the previous night and it looked like the relationship would go no further. Although this gal was very pretty and had a great personality, he had decided she was not for him. He told me that he was not a religious man and obviously she is a very “religious” person and he did not feel it would be honest to hide the fact from her.

Apparently he had a bad experience with religion and it had affected him throughout his entire young life right up through this day. What he does not realize is that there is a big difference between being religious and being a Christian. It can be described with a “do” or a “done”, depending upon whether one is religious or a Christian.

Huh?

Religious people, in their philosophy must always “do” something in order to receive favor from God. There are many rules that must be followed to the letter and it is ad nauseam to many non-Christians that struggle with trying to follow the rules, but invariably fail. Religious, “holier than thou” hypocrites point fingers at others while engaging in their own sin and it has resulted in turning many people away from God.

Christians must rely upon their faith in what Christ has “done” for us on the cross, realizing that their best efforts are but filthy rags in a holy and perfect God’s sight. There is a big difference in that Christians realize that they cannot please God through their own works because of sin. God demanded a holy and perfect sacrifice for sin and it was through the blood of His perfect Son Jesus Christ that we were cleansed of sin.

Once someone accepts Christ as their personal Savior, from that point forward our sins are forgotten and God views us as being like lambs, white as snow without a trace of sin remaining upon us, washed clean as a whistle through the blood of Christ. It is called grace.

I am going to keep working on this guy, but it does not look very promising. Whatever his bad experience with religion was, it adversely affected him, possibly for eternity.

Christians should be cautious about displaying “holier than thou” attitudes, touting the rules and placing “impossible demands” upon unbelievers. Jesus had some of His strongest words against the Pharisees whose impossible religious demands drove people away from God rather than towards God.

Unfortunately God gets the blame because of men who twist the message of grace while professing to represent God. Our faith in God’s grace saves humanity, (not following the rules). It is not what you “do”, but faith in what Jesus Christ has “done” that accomplishes the mission.

With that said, anyone who has faith in Jesus Christ will abandon their former ways and will undoubtedly live a life that exhibits good works.
This brings me to an important question, can you point to anything in your life today that you do that would let anyone other than yourself know that you are a Christian? If not, would it be fair to question whether or not you are truly a Christian? Once we are saved our light should shine like a welcome lighthouse leading others to Christ. If our light is out or faintly dim, perhaps we should turn it on and/or generate some new power to make it shine brightly…


Ephesians 2:8
For by grace you have been
saved through faith, and that not of
yourselves; it is the gift of God,
not of works, lest anyone should
boast.
For we are His workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus for good
works, which God prepared beforehand
that we should walk in them.

How well do you know the Bible?
What is the purpose of the commandments?
1 Timothy 1:5-10