If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
—James 1:26–27
If you grew up in a typical evangelical church, you probably heard or even said something like this: “Christianity is not a religion, it is a relationship.” Christianity certainly is a relationship, but it is just as certainly a religious relationship.
The Redeemer of Israel declared from the fire, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery [here is the relationship]. You shall have no other gods before me [here is the religion]” (Deuteronomy 20:2–3). Our Redeemer tells us, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Our relationship with God is covenantal. A covenantal relationship with God means religion. It means commands. It means worshipping Him the way He has told us to.
What is religion? We rarely encounter the word in the New Testament. Outside of these three references in James 1, we find it once in Acts and once in Colossians. By “religion” we could mean those various religions which we find in the world of which one is true and all others are false. This is near the sense of the word when Paul said, “…according to the strictest party of our religion I have lived as a Pharisee” (Acts 26:5).
With this, there is a sense in which we can say that Christianity is not a religion. When we study world religions, we take up the study of man’s quest for “god”—an idolatrous god of his own making. Christianity, in contrast, is a revelation. It speaks not of man’s pursuit of God, but God’s pursuit of man. Nevertheless, the revelation given to man is, we will see, undeniably religious.
Religion more basically refers to our worship, devotion, piety, and obedience. Specifically, the word refers to the outward expression of our worship. You can see this when Paul uses the same word in reference to the “worship of angels” in Colossians 2:18. Paul was not referring to the “religion of angels” but to man’s worship of angels.
Here, James writes to us not concerning true and false religion, as in Christianity versus Hinduism, but religion, true and false, as in the religion of the Pharisees versus that of the disciples. James assumes his listeners are in the true religion. He’s asking if their religion is true. They profess Christianity, but do they posses Christ?—that is his question. Christianity is a religious relationship. Or we might better say it is a relational religion. James is essentially asking if their religion has that relationship.
What is religion? T.J. Crawford provides an excellent definition: “What is religion? So far as regards the intellect, religion is the knowledge of God; and so far as regards the heart and the life, religion is the love, and trust, and worship, and submission, and obedience which we owe to God. It is the intercourse of the creature with the Creator,—of the weak, short-sighted, fallible, and perishing creature, with the almighty, all-seeing, infallible, and eternal God, whose counsels are unsearchable, and whose ways are past finding out.”
Do you see how relational that definition of religion is? Do you see how religious your relationship to God is meant to be? I pray that when you read and reflect on a passage like this, you sense that your “relationship” is is lacking, is less that to be desired, yea, is worthless, if it is not religious. James does not tell us that religion is worthless. He speaks of a kind of religion that is worthless. And opposite of that worthless religion is not a vague spirituality or nebulous relationship. Opposite worthless religion is religion pure and undefiled.
No Other Boast 