"Pure Religion" and The Church

The Bible has become the modern day foundation of teaching for most Christian religions today. Just about all religions have a book that is said to be the 'word of God' that they teach from. So for this article let's take something from the Book of James in the New Testament. This is what James had to say about religion.

James 1:27

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

Now here is a great topic for a church sermon. What is James referring to? Doing good and helping the less fortunate? What does James mean by being unspotted from the world? Do you know?

The Churches Need for Revelation

Most every religion teaches from books written by people. Each one believing that they have some monopoly on the word of God. The reality is this - All of these books were written by people from words spoken by other people in other languages and then other people translated those words (as best they could). Many church pastors and Bible teachers take every word of a book in it's most literal form leaving no room for interpretation and no room for revelation.

God reveals truth... Even according to the Gospels Jesus said that He would send the Spirit that would lead you in to all truth. Anyone who examines the words of these books and sees all of the different ways the words were translated would know that there is much more to the story than meets the eye. Maybe, instead of telling people a verse means exactly this or that people should pray to God for guidance as to the meaning of the verse and how it applies to their lives.

I liked James' view... Personally, I think that he was saying go out and do good, care about people that others don't care about and try not to become as corrupt as the systems of the world have become. To me that seems like very practical advice.

The only important things is - What does it mean to you?

Author: Church of Churches 2010