I started reading the Book/Letter of Hebrews, today and enjoyed the preface comments by Eugene Petersen. He writes:
It seems odd to have to say so, but too much religion is a bad thing.
We can’t get too much of God, can’t get too much faith and obedience, can’t get too much love and worship.
But religion—the well-intentioned efforts we make to “get it all together” for God—can very well get in the way of what God is doing for us.
The main and central action is everywhere and always what God has done, is doing, and will do for us.
Jesus is the revelation of that action. Our main and central task is to live in responsive obedience to God’s action revealed in Jesus. Our part in the action is the act of faith.
But more often than not we become impatiently self-important along the way and decide to improve matters with our two cents’ worth. We add on, we supplement, we embellish. But instead of improving on the purity and simplicity of Jesus, we dilute the purity, clutter the simplicity. We become fussily religious, or anxiously religious. We get in the way.
That’s when it’s time to read and pray our way through the letter to the Hebrews again, written for “too religious” Christians, for “Jesus-and” Christians. In the letter, it is Jesus-and-angels, or Jesus-and-Moses, or Jesus-and-priesthood. In our time it is more likely to be Jesus-and-politics, or Jesus-and-education, or even Jesus-and-Buddha. This letter deletes the hyphens, the add-ons.
The focus becomes clear and sharp again: God’s action in Jesus. And we are free once more for the act of faith, the one human action in which we don’t get in the way but on the Way.”
You can read the Book of Hebrews in the Message Bible here Book of Hebrews.
Your comment below is very welcome or email John Parker privately.
Giv’m heaven!
John Parker
“…can’t get too much faith and obedience…”
I’ve been working on more obedience to Jesus because Jesus said that is how we “love” him. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” John 14:15
I’ve also come to notice how those with Bible degrees, wear titles, and claim a call to lecturing the Bible practice many disobediences to Jesus yet claim it’s all godly. Here are a few.
1. Clergy wear titles rejecting Jesus. Matthew 23:8-12
2. Clergy claim authority to rule, twisting 1 Tim. 5:17 and rejecting Jesus in Matthew 20: 25-26
3. Clergy teach in perpetual dependency rejecting Jesus “fully training.” Luke 6:40
4. Clergy demand pay for what they received for free rejecting Jesus. Matthew 10:8b
5. Clergy dominate the expression of truth rejecting “meeting together” from the “new and living way” “opened up for us” by Jesus. Heb. 10:19-25
I try to help those who practice this or who consider this godly leadership by showing them what Jesus wants. Most of them get angry, refuse to open their Bibles, and make up ambiguous accusations about me and want me to leave. I’m ok with this because Jesus got this treatment also among the “leaders” of His day.
There is ETERNAL reward for obeying Jesus and his apostles. I will not be a sucker for pleasing men no matter their degrees or titles, or how many people follow them.
Along those lines, I like the second paragraph in this blog:
“But religion—the well-intentioned efforts we make to “get it all together” for God—can very well get in the way of what God is doing for us.”
Paul warns about religion’s dangers:
“Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.
“I am emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ’s hard-won gift of freedom is squandered. I repeat my warning: The person who accepts the ways of circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law.
“I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace.
“Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.”
(Galatians 5:1–6, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language)