A. Who are the religious?
Do you remember the content of James 1:22-25 (ESV) that I preached last time, ‘The cure for deceitful religion’? Deceitful religion is that we listen to the Word but do not do what it says. Here we are dealing with ‘the cure for worthless religion’. It’s a follow on from deceitful religion. What makes it worthless religion?
Before we answer the ‘worthless’ part, we need to understand what it means to be religious.
1. We face a problem
But it’s not insurmountable – not a brick wall. Here’s the issue:
James 1:26 (ESV) begins, ‘If anyone thinks he is religious’. It uses the adjective,
thrēskos, religious. The problem with this word is that this is the only time in the entire NT where the word is used as an adjective. We can’t compare other uses in the Bible because there are none. But when we go outside of the Bible to see its use in Greek, we find some answers.
2. There is assistance in this fact:
In the next verse, James 1:27 (ESV), it speaks about ‘religion that is pure and undefiled before God’. What is pure and undefiled? So ‘religion’ can be either worthless or worthy.
- Here in v. 27 is the noun related to the adjective from verse 26. The noun is thrēskeia. We also find the noun in
- Acts 26:5 (ESV) where Paul states that ‘according to the strictest party of our religion I lived as a Pharisee’. What factors caused the Pharisees to be proud about their religion? The Pharisees were very influential at the time of Jesus and Paul. In its Jewish Semitic form, Pharisees meant ‘the separated ones, separatists’.[1] John 9:16 (ESV) helps us to see what kind of religion they were promoting, ‘Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?” And there was a division among them’. What did they require Jesus to do on the Sabbath? ‘There were 39 prohibited groups of activities on the sabbath’ for the Pharisees and they stressed the law that ‘contained 613 commandments (248 positive, 365 negative’.[2] So what kind of religion is it from Acts 26:5 (ESV) that Paul used to practise? It was external religion and that is the negative kind that James is talking about. It’s religion by external appearances.
Thayer's Greek lexicon gives the meaning of
thrēskeia as 'religious worship, especially external, that which consists in ceremonies', while the noun,
thrēskos refers to 'fearing or worshipping God; religious (apparently from
treo to tremble; hence properly trembling, fearful)'.
[3] So it is possible to perform external religious ceremonies from a correct motive.
[1] Tenney (1967:647. S v Pharisees).
[2] Williams (1989:428. S v Pharisees).
[3] Thayer (1962:292).