Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

James 1:27

Paul wrote that the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love (Galatians 5:6).  True religion is a good thing, as opposed to the thing commonly called the “religious spirit”, aka, the demonic force of blindness, deafness, and mere rules.  True religion expresses faith through an attitude of love.  The word “expresses” here means it does something.  As James wrote elsewhere, faith without works is dead (James 2:26).  Religion does something, it is both forward and reserved, but always after some goal.

When we say along with Jesus that those who believe in Christ will be saved, and those who do not will be damned (Mark 16:16), we know it is true because of the Bible.  When we talk about judgement, we do so rightly because of the Bible.  When we discuss any doctrine, we know it is true based upon the written Word of God.

We must come to realize that these are doctrines, and these are truths, but these are absolutely knowable as well.  Not everyone will see hell in this life in vision, yet some will, and we are to test them, compare them to the Word, and receive their witness.  Not everyone will be taken to heaven as Paul was, yet some will, and we are to test, compare, and receive them, if and when they line up with scripture.

One of the greatest losses of the church was the idea that we cannot interact with God.  The false lies in the church saying that God no longer speaks, and that we are simply to live out our life based only on the written Word (where anything in addition is immediately suspect) is one of the worst lies of the church.  We are actually taught unbelief.

Faith was founded by God, through a man named Abraham (we call him the father of our faith — Romans 4:16).  Abraham heard God, and believed Him, and it was credited to him as righteousness.  Abraham heard, and believed, and that is faith, his and ours.

The eyes of the heart, through the living Word, sees that which is unseen.  Faith engages and connects to that thing, possessing what you do not possess, until it is owned.  Seeing the unseen but very real, faith believes and receives.  As the Israelites died in the wilderness because of their lack of faith, every promise we inherit through the scriptures comes because we mixed them with faith.

We are told clearly that, short of salvation, we are dead in our sins and transgressions.  We know this and accept it through His Word.  Yet additionally, we could readily observe a portion of this with our natural eyes, as the choices of an unsaved man ruin him.  But then, we can look with the eyes of faith as well, and look beyond that which is the flesh and bone, and look to see that other thing.  That dead man.  There is a man that is not alive, and that is truer than the fact that he is still breathing.  In faith, this is an observable fact.

Consider sin.  We are told that it is wrong.  We see how all sin harms relationship.  Do we see relationships?  Do we understand them at all?  When God had Moses write down His laws, he was very explicit about what He wanted.  Even through a light reading of them, you can get the immediate sense that sin matters.  You cannot simply sin in the privacy and “secrecy” of your own home and have it not affect the whole.  Even as a mildew would find a breeding ground in a home, and everyone simply walking in or through that dwelling place would collect spores that would immediately spread wherever they went. Sin is like this (Which is some of why the Lord recorded some of the regulations on mildew in the Old Testament–as a picture of sin).  Without the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus, the infectious agents of sin could infect an entire community, and destroy many households.  But, do we see sin this way?  We know, and rightly so, that sin is wrong through the written Word.  This is essential, and let us never depart from it.  But, do we truly see sin as what it is?  Evil, wickedness, perversity to the core?  Do we laugh when someone tells a joke about adultery, or are we disgusted at the equivalent of talking about raw sewage at the dinner table?  Are we entertained by murder and drugs portrayed on the television?  Only the depraved and sick in the mind would think such conversation was suitable, and so with others.  To see it in its true light is to see more and more as God does.  To love what He loves and to hate what He hates is the easiest way to live (Matthew 11:30).

True Christianity, true religion, is an outgrowth of faith.  We must accept nearly everything with a simple faith, and that is always where a thing begins.  It can begin no other places, and it is always enough.  Yet, as the eyes of our hearts are enlivened, enlarged, and enlightened with the gospel light, that which we knew only as a dim reflection becomes ever more clear, through faith!  The path of the righteous is like the dawn, it gets brighter and brighter until full noon (Proverbs 4:18).  In your light, we see light (Psalm 36:9 portion).

God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34).  Where Paul walked is not off limits to us simply because he was some apostle that lived then.  While we are not looking to canonize new scripture or form new doctrine outside of Christ as Paul did, the same faith that brought to him his ecstasies, his visions, his experiences, and his raptures is the same faith that is available to us (Jude 1:3), just as the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives in us (Romans 8:11), Today!  If it is the same God that changes not, the same Faith once entrusted to all the saints, and the same Spirit that raised Christ, not to mention all the great works of old, then the same inspiration that inspired the writers of the scriptures is to inspire us to know, understand, and to live them!  Again, the point is not new doctrine, new scriptures, or new revelations.  We would well just to see the very things they saw, to attest to them that they are true, and, if we move Beyond them, that is, if there is more to God than can be contained in just the book, great!  Or, perhaps simply into some of what simply couldn’t be written down (2 Corinthians 12:4, Revelation 10:4, John 21:25).

We know by faith in the son, faith in the written Word, that these things are so.  And, that faith gives birth to vision.  You cannot have true, Biblical faith for something that is a lie.  If we walk where saints have walked before, that is only our portion, and our birthright as sons.  If we do not find ourselves nor anyone else walking, talking, and living as did the early Apostles, we must understand that we are apostate, and far from the light.  When we can see that religion, true life, is something now, that God is now, and that Jesus is now, in every part of our lives, we can live free, be free, and find our true, Biblical faith expressing itself in true, God-enabled love.