Outside Religion

“Would to God that all party names and unscriptural phrases and forms which have divided the Christian world were forgot; that we might all agree to sit down together as humble, loving disciples at the feet of a common Master, to hear his word, to imbibe his Spirit, and to transcribe his life into our own.”— John Wesley

This page began years ago as a short introductory paragraph, meant only to explain a little of the purpose behind this website. Over time it grew into something longer — a full article about a single, simple longing: to see the New Testament’s vision of real Christianity restored to our understanding, over against the distraction of denominationalism and mere “religious” living that quietly settles over so many of us, largely because of what we’ve been handed by tradition rather than by God’s Word.

I want to spend some time here on a few familiar religious ideas — concepts most Christians grew up with — and how they differ from what Scripture actually teaches, and why that difference matters. Some of these don’t merely differ; I’ve come to believe they can genuinely distract us from the truth and hinder real spiritual growth. Some of what follows may challenge your own traditional understanding. I’m not asking anyone to take my word for it. Please be responsible with these things — study them out in the Scriptures and come to your own conclusions. My aim is not to offend, but to encourage all of us to embrace God’s Word fully and to gently let go of anything that doesn’t stand in agreement with it. That’s my own ongoing journey too.

And let me be clear from the start: while I’m not a proponent of denominationalism, I have nothing against my brothers and sisters in denominational churches. Our connection in Christ comes first, before all else. Please keep that in mind when you read my more critical remarks about organized religion. My appeal is always to the body of Christ — the people of God — never to a quarrel with people.

A note on terms: wherever I can, I try to distinguish the Bible’s idea of “Church” from today’s traditional one. When I mean the organized, institutional system — dedicated buildings, a clergy structure, and the programs, services and denominational rules that come with it — I’ll usually say “institutional church,” or use a lowercase c. When I mean the biblical reality — God’s people, the body of Christ — I’ll capitalize Church.

By “organized religion” I mean the whole traditional system of programmed, institutional Christianity — the assumption that following Jesus is fundamentally about buildings, programs, ritual Sunday meetings, conformity to rules and regulations, faithful attendance, and unquestioned submission to a leadership hierarchy. Much of that, as I’ll try to show, stems from human origin rather than biblical design, and it often carries with it a great deal of self-righteous striving and more emphasis on “religious things” than on Christ Himself and the work He is doing in each believer’s life. By “organized religion” I do not mean the historic, biblical Christianity so clearly revealed in Scripture. That distinction matters, and I’ll keep returning to it. It’s telling that the word “religion” itself comes from a Latin root meaning “to bind, to tie fast” — and my honest concern is that organized religion often does little more than bind people up, distracting them from Christ Himself by keeping them anxious about ritual performance and human accountability instead of simple relationship with God on His terms.

So when it comes to “reforming” organized religion and the institutional idea of church, I’d gently say I’m just not interested in re-forming it. Man has formed, transformed, malformed and re-formed enough. I’d rather give myself to God’s intentions for His body, the way He has envisioned it and formed it. The Church is the Lord’s, and the saved are His body. Christianity is about Christ in us — not conformity to a religious mindset. I’ll try to unfold what I mean by that as we go.

When I speak of “New Testament restoration,” what I’m really talking about is revival — an awakening to the kind of mindset that marked the first-century Church. It was a mindset wholly centered on Christ rather than on the organization and maintenance of religion; people assembling under the Lordship of Jesus, holding Him up as their Leader and embracing His Gospel alone. It wasn’t wrapped up in hierarchy and rank; it was relational — everyone recognized as family, brothers and sisters submitted to one another in love, under the same Lord. In essence, it was the mind of Jesus made visible.

Because of so much accumulated tradition, many of us have nearly lost sight of what the Christian life is actually about. Some believers struggle to tell truth from error — not because God’s Word is unclear, but because we’ve been trained to simply receive whatever is preached from a pulpit, weighing Scripture by our traditions instead of weighing our traditions by Scripture.

We’re in real need of a restoration of first-century-style Christianity in our day. I don’t mean copying the customs or cultural patterns of that era. I mean embracing the simple, pure Gospel of Jesus and the steadfast teaching of the apostles as Scripture reveals it. These things don’t need “re-forming” — but they do need restoring to our understanding and practice. If the Word truly says it is the Lord Himself who is building His Church, then hadn’t we better look deeply into what He has purposed toward that end?

Buildings, Programs, or People?

I believe, quite simply, that the Christian Church (the original Greek of the New Testament is ekklesia, Strong’s #1577) is people — not programs, not buildings, not religious organizations, not a system of ethics and rules for conduct. This is where I sometimes get into trouble, because people assume I’m saying it’s wrong for Christians to gather in a building, or that sin doesn’t matter and there’s no standard to live by. I’m saying neither. I’m not against believers meeting in a building, and I’m certainly not suggesting sin is fine, or that grace is a license to sin. What I am saying is that what the Bible calls “the Church” does not mean a system of religion or a religious edifice. It means, by its plain translation, “people assembled” — and more particularly, the global, spiritual assembly of all those God has called out of darkness into His light, who together make up His very body. So when I use “Church” with a capital C, I’m almost always speaking about God’s people, not governments, buildings, programs or rituals.

But I need to press further, because the Lord’s Church is not merely “an assembly of people” — biblically, the Church is Christ. Not that people are Christ, but that Christ lives in His people and is manifested, corporately, through them as one body. That is God’s purpose for the ekklesia. Paul put it this way:

So the Church is Christ’s body — a living organism (Ephesians 1:22–23; Colossians 1:18, 24). That is exactly why it can never be defined as a building or an organization: it is neither. It is a living body, birthed by God Himself, not made or governed by man, but only by Christ. He is the Head, the Leader, the all in all.

It still unsettles some people to hear someone say, “true Christianity is not about ethics, morals or organized religion.” If that’s your reaction — or someone you know — please understand what I am not saying. I am not saying morality and ethical behavior are bad, or that religion does no good in society. A great deal of genuine good is done in religion’s name to help people and communities, and many who do it are sincere and truly love God. What I’m saying is that good deeds, morals and ethics are simply not the issue where relationship with God is concerned. When I speak of “religion” here, I’m not talking about good works that flow from love. I’m talking about something more troubling: the idea that religion — following ritual, rules and tradition — is what gives us right standing with God, or makes us holy and spiritual. That kind of religion is deceptive, because a person can be thoroughly “religious” and never actually know God or understand what it means to have His Spirit at work in their heart. Religion doesn’t even require interaction with the Holy Spirit. It can run full speed ahead, generating its own brand of “spirituality” with no help from God at all — while its adherents assume all along that God is its source, and think themselves better for their devotion to it.

“There is nothing ‘good’ about religion. Religion relativizes the goodness that is derived from God alone. Religion engages in the relativistic goodness of the ‘good and evil’ game that has been played by natural man ever since man fell by partaking of ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ (Gen. 3).”— James A. Fowler

The “religion” I keep pointing to is what’s usually called organized or institutionalized religion. It carries the weight of more than seventeen centuries of tradition — a clergy-dominated system that most often requires a specially dedicated building, with pews or chairs lined up facing a platform, where a ministry class presides over the services, prayers and affairs of the organization while the laity mostly sit and observe. It typically runs on a fixed liturgy that changes little from week to week (and it long ago settled on one day, Sunday, as the day nearly all of it must happen). Its familiar trademarks include pulpits, hymnals, Sunday-school rooms, choirs and worship teams, expected participation in programs, recitation of creeds, required agreement with the church’s doctrinal positions (often including tithing — in some places a prerequisite for membership or advancement), and submission to the directives of the leadership hierarchy and the denomination or “mother church.” Ministry tends to flow through positional offices a person must be formally ordained into. And the organization tends to take up a kind of mediating position between the believer and God, so that much of a person’s spiritual life gets filtered through what the church or pastor deems appropriate. Some organizations are gentler than others, but the underlying shape is much the same — and those inside it usually regard it as the most central part of their Christian life. “Church” ends up being treated as every bit as essential as Jesus Himself.

Pure Religion

There is nothing inherently evil about sitting in a pew, attending a weekly service, listening to a sermon, or joining in various programs. The problem is when the whole system is treated as one of the most integral parts of the Christian life — when it’s believed essential to being a “real” Christian, so that church attendance gets bound up with the Gospel itself, as though you’re not truly saved unless you belong to a local church organization. Nearly everyone in the world has absorbed the implication that “good people go to church, bad people go to hell.” The trouble is that so much of this system — and nearly everything attached to it — is the product of man, and can’t really be established from Scripture. That’s a hard thing for many to consider. And when Christianity ends up being defined by the practices of religion rather than by the Bible alone, religion can quietly become an obstruction to the very thing it means to serve.

If we honestly examine the New Testament story, we have to reckon with something striking: not once did Jesus or one of His disciples tell a new believer to go find a good local church to attend. Remember when Jesus rescued the woman caught in adultery and forgave her? His simple word was, “Go and sin no more… I am the light of the world” (John 8:11–12). Or Acts 8, where Philip shared the Gospel with an Ethiopian and baptized him —

Or the jailer, saved when God shook the prison where Paul and Silas were held. He even asked what he must do to be saved — the perfect moment, you’d think, to add “and get plugged into a fellowship as soon as possible.” Instead:

How could Jesus and His apostles be so “careless” with new converts — neglecting to sign them up somewhere and assign them a spiritual father? Could it be that they actually trusted that, if the conversion was real, God Himself would lead them by His Holy Spirit? That is, in fact, what Scripture teaches.

Of course the apostles also taught believers about Christ — how to walk with Him and how to live together in the community of faith. We’re blessed to have the letters of Paul, John, Peter, James and Jude to encourage us in the truth; they’re a vital resource God ordained for every believer. But they were never written to structure a religious institution in which an elite few could rule the rest, professionalize ministry and mediate every facet of the people’s lives. They were written to build up and to set free — to keep the believer focused on the Master, Jesus, and to keep us from getting distracted with the wrong kind of religion. Again and again, Jesus and the apostles warned the Church about false teachers who would prey on their liberty and draw disciples after themselves, pulling their focus off of Jesus. I’m grieved that too many leaders have used the Word to prop up kingdoms of religion, to gain control, recognition, security and income — and, worse, have led others into the same error. That’s not what the Scriptures are for. They were given to liberate us in Christ, to help us fall deeply in love with Him and grow into mature men and women of God — secure in the Lord, led by His Spirit, serving one another from a sincere heart. I long to see more leaders who trust God enough to simply present Christ and then get out of the way, so believers can experience their God and grow in Him. Under the New Covenant there is no longer any need for human priests to mediate our relationship with God, because all of us who know Christ have been made priests unto Him. That is a birthright worth reclaiming — coming boldly before God ourselves, under the shadow of His grace. Only then do we begin to practice pure religion instead of the manmade substitute — with its foul reek of dead works (Hebrews 6:1; 9:14) dressed up as devotion. I know that’s said strongly, but I feel it deeply, and I say it to wake us from our slumber, not to wound anyone.

I should make the distinction, at least briefly, between what the Bible calls “pure religion” and what man calls religion — because some will point out, rightly, that the Bible uses the word “religion” positively. It does, exactly once, and context is everything:

Set aside, for the moment, the irony that many institutions barely manage this most basic charge — to care for the fatherless and the widow — while still asking for tithes, time and service regardless of the burden it places on struggling people. The word for “religion” here is threskeia (Strong’s #2356), and James is contrasting what people regard as religion with what God calls pure religion. Religion performed to appear pious before men (or God) is not what God is after. He wants our actions to flow from love. If we claim to love God and show no love to others, our “religion” is empty, and Scripture calls it a lie (1 John 4:20–21). Pure religion imitates God the way a child imitates a loving father — and God is described again and again as Father to the fatherless and defender of the widow and the poor (Psalm 68:5; Deuteronomy 10:18; Isaiah 1:17).

“The phrase ‘pure religion’ means that which is genuine and sincere, or which is free from any improper mixture.”— Albert Barnes

Well said. So the “pure religion” James commends is not religious deeds done to impress God or men, nor deeds meant to justify us before Him. It’s action that flows from a life in love with Jesus, responding with sincere love and obedience — including a personal discipline that keeps oneself “unspotted” from the world (Romans 12:2; James 4:4; 1 John 2:15–17). And James speaks in individual terms. There’s no hint here of a large religious organization set up to govern conduct and program acts of service. This is a person’s own worship and ministry, flowing straight out of their relationship with God. Looked at plainly, James’s “pure religion” bears little resemblance to what usually passes for religion today. He’s deliberately helping believers raised in the religion of Judaism see that Christianity is not about “being religious” the way a Pharisee is, but about a life that bears the fruit of the love Christ has put within it. That kind of “pure religion” is not what I’m critiquing in this article. I’m critiquing a religion devised in the wisdom of man, born of tradition rather than Scripture, that distracts us from true spirituality — the very thing James was distinguishing pure religion from.

Jesus faced this same issue with the woman at the well. She had a particular idea of “religion” — that true worship happened through the right performance in the right dedicated place. You might say she was sure organized religion was God’s plan for worship. Jesus gently corrected her, removing the focus from religion altogether:

The woman still wasn’t quite sure — but she knew that when the Messiah came, everything would come into focus. And Jesus told her there was no reason to wait:

Yet still we look further — and still we miss Him. We seek revival and forget that the Reviver already lives in us and has flung open every window of heaven. Christ stands plainly in view, and many of us still chase His shadow, unwilling to believe things could be this simple. But it truly is this simple. As Jesus Himself made clear, God is not measuring our worship by our rituals or our buildings. Worship is not a song service or weekly attendance; it is how we live before God — Christ in us, working through us, as we yield to His Spirit in sincerity and truth, all of it moving through love. If we miss this, I’m afraid we miss nearly everything. It’s sobering that one day, Scripture says, many will say to Him, “Lord, Lord,” recounting all the great spiritual things they did in His name — and He will answer, “Depart from Me, you who practice evil; I never knew you” (Matthew 7:23). Am I saying everyone who attends a church practices evil? Absolutely not. But I am saying some of us have the wrong idea entirely about what worship is, what pleases God, and what He asks of us. We ought to take that seriously. The only “religion” He’s after is the kind that flows from a sincere heart, yielded to His Lordship, walking in spirit and truth — whose deeds spring from faith and love. Anything less — and I’ll say it as bluntly as Paul did, who counted his own religious credentials but dung (Philippians 3:8, KJV) — is exactly that: dung.

“Would you say that a person who watches only twenty minutes of television a week ‘worships’ the TV? No? Then why would you say that someone who worships God twenty minutes a week is a worshipper of God?”— Author unknown

Why Organized Religion Falls Short

Organized religion is man’s structured attempt to please God on man’s terms — and for that reason it will always fall short where true spirituality is concerned. Everything in it is arranged according to what man believes will please God or make him righteous by his own effort. It also, honestly, gratifies man: it makes him feel “spiritual” or “godly.” So religion is aimed as much (maybe more) at satisfying man as at pleasing God. But true godliness isn’t measured by religion, and religion can’t produce it — only its illusion. It has a great tendency to swell the head with pride and to harden the heart against the leading of the Holy Spirit. At its core, the impulse behind religion runs against the Gospel, because it teaches that man has a part in earning his own salvation — that his works determine his standing with God. The Bible, by contrast, teaches that the only thing that pleases God is faith, not religion, and the only way to be made truly righteous is through Christ. More amazing still, even that faith is not something we generate; it comes from God (Romans 12:3). Man’s entire hope of salvation rests on God, not on any ability of his own.

Nothing in man enables him to “achieve” redemption. God’s acceptance of us rests solely on His grace, not on anything we do or say. From the cross, Jesus cried, “Father, forgive them,” even as they mocked and rejected Him. Our place in His family is based on His righteousness, His goodness and His work — not ours (Romans 3:10–12; 3:24–28; 2:4). So good morals, ethics, organized meetings, rituals and grand buildings cannot impress Him, contain Him, or change His view of us. He chose us out of a great love that existed long before we ever loved Him, and He saved us by His amazing grace. When we receive that gift of salvation — grounded entirely in His goodness — we are grafted into the Vine, and the “religion” we then engage in (if we even want to use that word) becomes an after-effect: actions offered in response to His love. They don’t make Him accept us more, for He has already accepted us completely; nor do they set us on pedestals of apparent spirituality.

Organized religion can become a real obstacle to intimacy with Jesus, because it has such potential to deceive — convincing us, to whatever degree, that the observance of rituals, and the building and maintenance of programs, and submission to a governing hierarchy, somehow have something to do with keeping us in right standing with God. It quietly takes up a position of mediation between the believer and his Maker — something Scripture never grants it. Instead of trusting his Lord and pursuing the Father directly, a believer can end up pouring his energy into meeting the expectations of a human organization and pleasing human beings. Christ slips from the center — and yet people are led to believe all these other things somehow are keeping Him at the center. That is a vile deception indeed.

“Religion is clearly seen to be a human attempt to anticipate what God in His revelation wills to do and does do. It is the attempted replacement of the divine work by a human manufacture.”— Karl Barth

I believe most of those who impose organized religion on others do so in sincere ignorance, themselves deceived. Some are so caught up in it that they unknowingly (and, sadly, sometimes knowingly) harm the very people they’re trying to help. A kind of spiritual abuse can happen when religion is wielded like a sword — the tragedy being that the one wielding it usually believes he’s doing God a service, much as Saul the Pharisee believed he served God while dragging Christians to prison. I can speak to this with some confidence, because I lived under religion’s influence myself for the first thirty years of my life inside the institutional church. That’s exactly why I share these conclusions without any malice toward those in traditional churches. My words aren’t meant to offend pastors or ministries. I know how many are well-intentioned, and how much of what they do is genuinely wrought of love. That’s the whole point: the issue of organized religion is largely one of honest ignorance among God’s people — and the good news is that ignorance can be corrected. We really can move from the practice of religion into simply serving the Lord in love.

God has been so gracious to revive the joy of His salvation in my own life, and that excites me more than anything. I know He is not limited — He can and does intervene in the lives of His people wherever they are, even in the middle of religious tradition. That’s why I don’t look down on my brothers and sisters who are still part of institutional fellowships. I truly mean that: I do not consider myself more spiritual than them, and I certainly don’t think they’re foolish, or lost, or anything of the kind. I know how faithful and good God has been to me, how thoroughly His Spirit involved Himself in my life and led me along — and still leads me, despite all my failures. It’s that very grace that makes me want to encourage people not to get distracted with merely religious living, but to become consumed with the pursuit of Christ.

If It Isn’t Broken, Don’t Fix It

I’ll be honest: I’ve grown deeply weary of organized religion. Short of a clear leading from the Lord to “plug back in” for some purpose of His own, I have no personal intention of ever again giving myself to mere church-attendance or formal religious practice. As I read Scripture and church history, I’ve become convinced that much of the institutional church is a product of tradition, shaped over the centuries by influences that owe more to human invention than to the New Testament.

Many across the centuries recognized these inherited problems and tried to separate from the error. Their desire was commendable and their intentions mostly good. The trouble was that many simply formed new denominations, with new requirements to belong — and the simple Gospel of Christ often slipped from the center, while the body of Christ grew only more fragmented as each group elevated its own distinctives. The mainline elements of organized religion generally stayed etched in concrete, unchanged and unchallenged. So denominations formed to flee error often made the deeper problem worse. And here is a point worth sitting with. Leaders inside large organizations often warn that believers who gather outside the walls are a recipe for doctrinal error and fringe belief. But consider the actual math of it. When error creeps into a small fellowship, it touches a handful of people who can search it out together and correct it. When error creeps into an institution, it can sweep through hundreds or thousands at once — and when it takes root in a whole denomination, it can carry to millions before anyone thinks to test it against the Word. “A little leaven leavens the whole lump,” Paul says (Galatians 5:9; 1 Corinthians 5:6) — and organized religion is the largest lump there is. So it seems fair to say that many of the great errors of history have spread not in spite of the institutional church but through it, precisely because its scale and its top-down authority let one mistake travel so far, so fast. The very structure meant to guard people from deception is often what carries deception the furthest.

I’ll gladly add that I’ve found some excellent teaching within many different denominations — usually strongest on the very points that were in contention when they first formed. Just as 1 Thessalonians 5:21 says, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good,” I want to stay discerning but teachable, gleaning from competent teachers of the Word whatever their affiliation. It’s the teacher — a brother or sister in Christ — that I learn from, not the organization behind them.

I see little point in trying to measure religious performance or bend myself to the requirements of organized religion. I don’t hold it in much esteem, because I don’t believe God instituted it — so it seems more worthwhile to encourage God’s people to pursue Christ than to spend our lives trying to renovate a structure He didn’t build. If God didn’t build it to begin with, why assume He’s eager to repair and maintain it? He has already established His Gospel, and He Himself is building His Church — a Church not made with human hands, the body of Christ. It simply makes more sense for us to come around to His way of thinking than to keep asking Him to climb inside our box of religion and make it work.

Some will say, “All right, Dave, be that as it may — but the institutional church is all we and the Lord have to work with, so we shouldn’t be so hard on it; let’s just make it better.” I had a dear pastor friend who kept saying almost exactly that, sincerely: “Dave, this is the best we’ve got; we just have to work with it.” And I’ll admit it stopped me cold — not because I had a snappy answer, but because of what that request actually asks of God. Turn it around and say it to His face: “Yes, Lord, I know You never invented this. I know Your Word teaches the opposite of a good deal of what we do. But You’ll just have to work with it — settle a little, compromise a little, and fit yourself into our religious box, because it’s what we’ve got.” Can you imagine saying that to Jesus? When you put it plainly, the whole premise falls apart.

Because it simply isn’t all He has to work with. The Church is people; we are people; so God has people to work with — He always has something to work with. And I keep coming back to the picture Jesus drew when He said the one born of the Spirit is like the wind, which blows wherever it pleases (John 3:8). Think about what happens when you try to shut the wind up inside four walls: it stops blowing. The air goes still, then stale, then stagnant. I don’t say this to wound anyone, but I’ve had a long time to watch it — fifteen and twenty years on from the conversations where leaders rejected these things, I’ve seen some of those very churches thin out into near-empty religious clubs, and I’ve talked with dear folks still sitting in them who carry a quiet sadness, missing what it used to be and not quite sure where the life went. It grieves me; there’s nothing to gloat about in it. But I can’t help wondering whether the wind simply moved on. So, no — this is not the best we have, and it is not all the Lord has to work with. If God has other intentions for His assembly, then we’d do well to follow Him there and stop pouring ourselves into salvaging what He never asked anyone to build.

My convictions here are strong and admittedly non-traditional — and I mean no offense in sharing them openly — but they’re not the fruit of ignorance or mere emotion. They rest on my study of God’s Word and of church history, which is exactly why I hold them the way I do. I simply believe that what is popularly called “church” today is not what the Bible calls the Church, and that the reason so many still embrace the traditional idea rather than the biblical one is honest misunderstanding. That’s my studied opinion, offered humbly. Let me say it once more so I’m not misread: my quarrel is with “organized religion,” not with the body of Christ — which is a temple not of wood and stone, but people, plainly and simply. I don’t say it’s wrong for Christians to meet, pray, sing and minister to one another; those things are good and biblical. What I’m talking about is a concept of religion foreign to real, biblical Christianity — one that clouds and distracts people from the true nature of God and of His Church, which is built only by Christ.

I love the body of Christ, and I pray for her. My testimony here is only to encourage others to see that there is so much more to Christianity than what organized religion has tried to ingrain in us since birth. I’m not trying to unsettle anyone’s faith or lead anyone away from Christ — God forbid. Christ is the whole point of everything I’m saying; He should be the continual subject of our conversation. So please hear me: for all my concern about organized religion, it has nothing whatsoever to do with my love for Jesus or for my brothers and sisters in Him. I don’t sort the saints into “in-church” and “out-of-church,” or think in terms of “us versus them.” I see them simply as the saints of God. Religion is not who they really are — so why would I regard them by that measure? They belong to Christ, just as I do, and I believe He is calling all of us out of religion and unto Himself alone.

Religion has a way of teaching people to lean on religion and to carry a distorted picture of God the Father. I think it’s one of the main reasons so many in the world want nothing to do with Him — though I suspect they only think they want nothing to do with God, because what they’ve encountered is a distortion of who He really is. Part of that distortion comes from our own sin nature, which shrinks from the light. But part of it, I’m convinced, is the fruit of the myths organized religion has spread about God across the centuries. If people truly understood who God is and how deeply He loves them, they’d run to Him and never trouble themselves with religion’s distractions again.

The very thing meant to keep people from deception has too often ushered them into it. For all the apparent good that comes of it, I still believe organized religion tends to offend the Gospel of Jesus, because it trains people to see their relationship with God as something maintained by deeds, behavior and ritual. Morality is a fine thing — so long as God is the one working the change, and the heart in question is being shaped by intimate love and union with Christ. Morality imposed by religion may look pleasant and even benefit society, but it says nothing about true spirituality and signifies nothing of real relationship with God. Morality by itself is not Christianity. Christianity is about Christ and the work He does within us — producing genuine change and goodness that flows from His goodness, not our own.

When Christians size one another up — and even the lost — by outward deeds (smoking, drinking, swearing, attendance or non-attendance), it only reveals how much we’ve missed. God is not interested in man “making himself” presentable. He is interested in man bowing to the Lordship of Christ, who Himself makes us presentable to the Father by His own power, love and grace. For that reason the believer’s life rests in the hands of Jesus alone, who is the Head and covering of every person; no institution and no man can fill that place, and no religious deed can replace His work. The more Christians grasp what the Gospel is really about, the more they lose their appetite for religion and begin to be led by the Spirit — and the change is real, showing itself in a changed heart and the honest motivation of love. We need to stop judging one another by religious measures. Our call is to preach the Gospel and to build one another up. And “preach the Gospel” has been so tangled up with tradition that we’ve nearly lost sight of what the Gospel even is. If that revelation returned today, I believe we’d see revival such as the world has never known. So I say we must lay religion down — stop calling our union with Christ a “religion” at all. There are plenty of religions in the world, but Jesus is not the headmaster of a great religion. He is King of kings and Lord of lords. He is God. He is reality itself.

That’s a great deal to say, I know, but it burns at the core of me. I’m so thankful for the Gospel of Jesus, who saved me by His own great love and grace, who made me and chose me simply because it was in His heart to do so. What an amazing God — one we too often misunderstand and misrepresent. To my church-attending friends: I’m still “orthodox,” if you like the word, in that I hold firmly to the steadfast doctrines of Scripture handed down through the ages. Where I part ways with “traditional orthodoxy” is only where religious men have plainly altered those doctrines to fit their traditions — because true orthodoxy has nothing to do with tradition and everything to do with what Scripture alone defines. Scripture matters enormously to me. Whether it’s a pope or a pastor speaking, God’s Word is the final word. If anyone tells you to obey them simply because they said so, turn your eyes to the Word of God and hold to that alone. That strong foundation is what exposes error and keeps us on the right path.

Too many have made religion the focus of their lives and missed the point entirely: it is Christ in us who leads, guides, and convicts us of sin and righteousness. The truth is, no one can meet God’s standard in their own strength — so why do we keep insisting that being a Christian is about good deeds and standards? Being a Christian is about Christ. It is His love and mercy that move us, and obedience to His Spirit within us, not to religious rules of conduct. Any focus away from the centrality of Christ — who alone is the Head of every man — is not Christianity but religion. My whole heart is simply to encourage believers to step out of legalism and give themselves to the Lordship of Christ. We are a body because Jesus is our Head, not because some institution titles itself “the Church” and calls its hierarchy “the leadership.” The Lord’s way is not the governmental structure of this world — the very pattern that has shaped “church” government for seventeen centuries — but a fellowship of brothers and sisters submitted to one another in love, under the headship and leadership of Jesus Christ alone. Scripture says plainly that the government rests upon His shoulders. Are there ministers in the Lord’s assembly? Certainly. Are there rulers over her, and mediators between her and Him? Certainly not.

Ruling “Over,” or Leading by Example?

It would take another whole article — a book, really — to go deep into the subject of “church government” and “covering theology.” There are already some excellent resources on it, such as Frank Viola’s Who Is Your Covering? Here I’ll only touch a few of the passages most often used to support the idea of men who “rule over” the body and demand unquestioned obedience to their rank. Other worthwhile books on the subject include Straight Talk to Elders by Frank Viola, The Normal Christian Church Life by Watchman Nee, and Rethinking Elders by Gene Edwards.

Hebrews 13:7 is commonly cited as evidence of leaders holding hierarchical authority over an assembly. Here is the familiar wording (KJV):

On a surface reading, most conclude the writer must mean some human figure with authority over other Christians — usually understood as a professional pastor over a local organization. This is generally what’s called “covering” theology. Strangely enough, though, the concept of “covering” as an authority structure is simply not present in the New Testament. In fact, the only place the word “covering” appears in the New Testament is in reference to head coverings — an instruction that a man should not cover his head in public worship (1 Corinthians 11:7), and a note that a woman’s hair is given to her as a covering (1 Corinthians 11:15). Neither has anything to do with church government. How is it that so many of us, raised in Bible-teaching churches, never learned this? I don’t say that to condemn anyone — I grew up under the same assumptions most of us did. But the Bible sheds a lot of light on our traditions and exposes them for what they are, so that we can break free and follow the truth.

Nowhere is one believer ever given a position of hierarchical rule over another. That would run directly counter to Jesus’ own words in Matthew 23:8–12 and Mark 10:42–45, and to the whole principle of lowly, mutual service. Leadership and submission in the Lord’s assembly flow horizontally, not vertically. Those who lead do so by example and encouragement — not by enforcing rules and orders, not by coercion, and not because some organizational title supposedly licenses them to lord it over the saints. The very impulse to grasp that kind of rank is not spiritual authority at all; Scripture would name it earthly and demonic (James 3:15), however sincerely it may be worn. The believer is accountable to his Lord, and everything he does — whether leading or yielding — is meant to be wrought through love and humility.

So if “have the rule over” in Hebrews 13:7 doesn’t mean “ruling authority,” what is the writer talking about? The word “rule” here is the Greek hegeomai, meaning, in this context, “to lead.” Vine’s Expository Dictionary takes it as those who lead or have gone before as guides. Albert Barnes’ commentary puts it well (emphasis mine):

“The word used here means properly ‘leaders, guides, directors.’ … Here it means teachers — appointed to lead or guide them to eternal life. It does not refer to them so much as rulers or governors, as teachers, or guides… The duty here enjoined is that of remembering them; that is, remembering their counsel; their instructions; their example.”— Albert Barnes

Adam Clarke’s commentary clarifies it simply and beautifully:

“‘Remember them which have the rule over you.’ This clause should be translated, Remember your guides, who have spoken unto you the doctrine of God… This remembrance of the dead saints, with admiration of their virtues, and a desire to imitate them, is the only worship which is due to them from the living. ‘Considering the end of their conversation’ — the issue of whose course of life most carefully consider. They lived to get good and do good… God never left them… Carefully consider this; act as they did; keep the faith, and God will keep you.”— Adam Clarke

So Hebrews is not in tension with Jesus’ command not to lord authority over one another. As Michael Clark and George Davis point out in their book The Great Ecclesiastical Conspiracy, this verse is in the past tense — referring to those who have died in the faith, not to living men presiding over the body. The word “over” has nothing to represent it in the original text at all. The phrase “them which have the rule over” is a paraphrase of a single Greek verb, hegeomai, meaning to lead, to go before as a guide — the act of guiding, going on ahead, leading the way as an example, not sitting as overlords. Hebrews 11 and 12 are filled with just such examples of those who went before us in faith, from Abel all the way to Jesus Himself. The reader is being urged to remember them, reflect on their faith, and imitate it.

Having opened that door, I should say a bit more about the other words often read as authoritative — “obey” and “submit” in Hebrews 13:17:

When most of us read “obey” here, we hear the English sense — to comply with the commands of a superior, to do what you’re told. But the word “obey” in this passage is the Greek peitho, and it means “to be persuaded by.” It does not mean to do whatever you’re told without question. So any leader who uses this verse to impose that kind of unquestioning obedience is simply in error — whether through ignorance of the original text or otherwise — and real damage can be done to the conscience of a believer who is taught to believe it. Ministers of the Gospel have no biblical right to set themselves up as ruling authorities and demand obedience in that sense.

Strong’s defines peitho as “to convince (by argument, true or false)… to rely (by inward certainty),” and its range includes “persuade, trust, yield.” Thayer’s lexicon: “to persuade, i.e. to induce one by words to believe… to be persuaded, to suffer one’s self to be persuaded; to be induced to believe.” Vine’s: “to persuade, to win over… The obedience suggested is not by submission to authority, but resulting from persuasion.” The Greek scholar Richard Lenski put it: “One obeys when one agrees with what he is told to do, is persuaded of its correctness and profitableness.” Does any of that sound like “obey” the way most of us were taught it? It’s worth studying the many other places peitho appears, most often translated “persuaded” or “convinced” (Matthew 28:14; Acts 13:43; 14:19; 18:4; 19:26; Romans 8:38–39).

Interestingly, the other kind of obedience — submission to authority — is exactly what Scripture reserves for God, not men. When Peter and the apostles said, “We must obey God rather than human authority” (Acts 5:29), the word is a different one, peitharcheo, “to submit to authority.” That kind of obedience, they agreed, belongs only to God — especially when a leader commands something contrary to the Word or to the Spirit’s leading in a believer’s life. Across the New Testament, nearly every reference to obedience in the sense of following commands is either about secular authorities (employers, governments, magistrates) or about God Himself. But every use of “obey” in the context of Christian leaders carries the sense we’ve just seen: being persuaded, convinced by argument — never unquestioned submission.

Returning to Hebrews 13, then: “them that have the rule over” are those who go before, who lead, whose lives are an example to follow. As Michael Clark and Greg Davis note, the English word “over” has nothing behind it in the original and should be set aside. We’re talking about being persuaded by ones who go before us, leading by example in word and deed. Once we are inwardly convinced of their character and message, that inward certainty is followed by the biblical idea of submission — which looks quite different from how it’s often presented.

Contrary to what many are taught in hierarchical settings, biblical submission does not mean unquestioning subservience to authority. Keep in mind our discussion of “obey,” and of “rulers” as simply those who go before as guides, leading by teaching and example rather than by issuing commands. Submission, then, is a willing yielding — but it happens only when the one submitting is inwardly assured of the trustworthiness of the person and the message, and convinced it is in harmony with Scripture. To yield this way is to give deference to another — perhaps because they’re wiser or more mature in some matter — and it can even mean yielding to a contrary opinion, in the context of a Christ-centered relationship. But it never means ignoring one’s own conscience or judgment. The mutual submission of believers to one another is a willing yielding, based on love and on the assurance that the one whose example is in view is trustworthy, sound in the faith, clothed with humility, and marked by the character of Christ. It means to yield because you trust the one you’re yielding to — not blind subservience to hierarchical rule. God does not call us to submit for the sake of authority in a religious organization.

Some teachers have tried to argue that passages about slaves and servants submitting to their masters picture how leadership works in the Lord’s assembly. The problem is proof-texting — lifting a passage out of its context to define another. For example, one well-known author, in a book on covering theology, added his own bracketed notes to Ephesians 6:5–8:

“Servants [employees, church members, civilians, etc.] respectfully obey your earthly masters [employers, church leaders, civil authorities, etc.]…”

Notice how “servants” is equated with church members, and “masters” with church leaders? But this passage has nothing to do with church leaders at all — it’s about slavery. The word “masters” here is the Greek kurios, “supreme in authority… controller.” We’re talking about a slavemaster — is that really the image we want to attach to a Christian guide? Beyond the fact that such authority would directly contradict Jesus’ own command, the text says “masters according to the flesh,” meaning secular authority, not spiritual. The commentaries agree emphatically. The People’s New Testament Commentary notes the “servants” are literally slaves, and “masters according to the flesh” are “earthly masters whose dominion will go no farther than this world.” Jamieson, Fausset and Brown say the same; John Gill notes these are “carnal masters… obeyed in things temporal… not in things spiritual and religious… or that belong to conscience.”

Someone will still argue that church leaders are our “earthly” authorities, so verses like this apply. But apart from being hermeneutically unsound, that reasoning assumes something the New Testament never actually establishes — namely, that Christian guides are earthly rulers, or slavemasters, over the saints. If that were the design, it would have to be instituted and defined somewhere in the New Testament. It never is. In the same way, other passages about obeying the laws of the land, or secular employers, or God, are sometimes bent into demands for submission to church leadership. Sometimes this is pressed so far that believers are told obeying church leaders is equivalent to obeying God — that even if a leader tells them to act against their conscience or the Word, they should comply, because God will count it as obedience to Him. How that misplaces the leading that belongs to Christ alone! The apostles continually urged believers to live not to please the apostles or any religious order, but to live worthy of the Gospel and stand firm in it:

It’s clear from Scripture that the apostles did not spend their lives teaching believers to become subservient to religious leaders, to unquestioningly obey their commands, or to place themselves under human covering. They taught the saints to rely on the Message — the very Word of God — to keep things simply and centrally focused on Christ, and to steer clear of would-be leaders trying to usurp the Lord’s covering and sole mediation in their lives. Submitting to secular governments and employers (Romans 13:1–7; Colossians 3:22) is not the same as submission in the Lord’s assembly. Scripture makes that clear — yet those very ideas get read into passages like Hebrews 13. The apostles knew their only role was to encourage the saints in their relationship with Christ, never to lord over, command and control them.

It’s been well said that the reason it’s so easy to follow Jesus is that He never forced us to do anything — He laid down His life for us. He came not to be served but to serve (Matthew 20:28). He washed feet. He healed our wounds. He endured the cross. How can we be anything but persuaded by such love? That is the example — the model for all “leadership” in the Lord’s assembly: not one over another, but one who goes before as an example. As good and sincere as many people are who work within authoritative structures and teach them to others, Scripture simply doesn’t teach that pattern — and so, however unintentionally, it works against Christ’s own model for His Church.

So when Hebrews 13:17 says to “obey them that have the rule over you, and submit,” we can see — apart from the traditional reading — the picture of a godly guide seeking to convince you of some spiritual truth, and of you willingly yielding as you are persuaded, not only by their words but by the example of their life. It fully engages the hearer; a believer relies on his conscience and knowledge of the truth to weigh whether to yield. Any claim that obedience is owed on the basis of hierarchical authority runs against the whole tenor of the New Testament.

I warmly recommend the article “Leadership or Lordship” by Benjamin Waters on this subject — it shows the striking fact that the Bible never describes a Christian overseer’s authority as “ruling over” anyone. There is no hierarchy in the Lord’s design for His assembly. There is one Lord and King, one Master, one Leader over His people: the Lord Jesus Christ, and no other (Isaiah 9:6; Matthew 20:25–28).

The Right Stuff vs. the Wrong Stuff

I believe in real, biblical revival — the kind where people are saved because they see a true manifestation of God’s love in ordinary lives, and because there is a deep conviction of the truth, power and liberty of the Gospel. I believe in spiritual renewal that only God’s Spirit can work, and that it is God’s will to reveal His loving presence to everyone who reaches out to Him in faith. The body of Christ is in desperate need of a fresh emphasis on the deep love of Jesus, the pure Word of God, the rich life of the Spirit, and true fellowship with one another — instead of getting caught up in so many fruitless tangents and just plain “religious stuff.”

Christianity is not about ethics and living up to a standard. It is about the Gospel of Jesus — the reality that He saved us because He loved us, not because we did the right things or promised to try to be good. It is not about works, good or bad. It is about relationship with the Father. That relationship sustains the Christian every day and moves us to action — action that is simply love’s response. If more of us awakened to the truth that God’s acceptance is not based on our performance, there would be far less religious striving, and we would learn to walk in the joy of knowing we are His children and His friends. Truly affected by His love, we would naturally pass that love on to others rather than merely imposing morality on each other. The Church needs to grasp that God is able to lead and care for each of His children — without the help of religion. His stuff is the right stuff.

“Christianity is not religion! Christianity is Christ!… Jesus Christ did not found a religion to remember and reiterate His teaching. Christianity is the personal, spiritual presence of the risen and living Lord Jesus Christ, manifesting His life and character in Christians — i.e. ‘Christ-ones.’ Paul explained, ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me…’ (Gal. 2:20).”— James A. Fowler

Religion — by which I mean all of man’s methods, programs, rules and regulations by which he imagines he becomes more acceptable to God or more “spiritual” — runs rampant through the body of Christ. We so often concern ourselves with everything “spiritual” except learning to walk out the normal Christian life in ordinary, daily circumstances, where true spirituality actually counts. We forget that Jesus did not say, “Behold My servants: wait and pray, and I will send you the plan of organized religion to govern your conduct, help you grow, and teach you to build grand buildings so the Gospel can spread and My people can be safe under a covering.” No. Jesus said He would send the Holy Spirit, who would convict the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment, lead us into all truth, and glorify Him.

“Go Into All the World and Build Churches”?

I find it striking that in the Great Commission there is no charge to go and build churches or establish organized religion (look at Mark 16:15–18; Matthew 28:19–20; Acts 26:16–18). Yet these directives seem to have been quietly fused into the Commission, so that many believe this is what Christianity is about — when the actual commission is to “go and make disciples of Jesus.” Today many think being a Christian mainly means getting more unsaved people to come to their church, and that faithfulness means attending an institutional church without fail (and that skipping it makes you a backslider). Yet there is not one directive anywhere in the New Testament that even suggests such a thing — though it’s commonly taught around the world.

Many also believe the role of an apostle is to go and “start” churches, yet there’s no such directive anywhere in the Bible. I’m amazed how rarely anyone notices that even Paul never “started” a church, nor was he ever commissioned to (look again at Acts 26:16–18). He led people to Jesus, fathered them in the faith, encouraged and built up believers, taught them, prayed for them. Certainly he ministered to whole communities and longed to see them come together, ministering the love of Christ to one another and to their towns. In that sense he was very much about “building up” the body of Christ wherever he went — a spiritual house of living stones on the one foundation, Jesus Christ. But you will not find one verse in the New Testament that says Paul built or started a church.

This is hard for some to accept, and passages like 1 Corinthians 3:6 and 3:10 are usually cited as proof that Paul was a “church planter.” But look closely. It’s true that 3:6 says Paul “planted” — but the Greek for “planted” means “to instill with doctrine.” In other words, he taught them. You can’t get an organized weekly meeting, a liturgy and a building program out of that. The context makes it plain:

So Paul’s “planting” refers to his teaching about Christ, not to starting a church. Remember, “church” in Scripture simply means “people assembled” — it never envisions buildings or programs, only people. The only way to read “Paul started a church” into this is to reduce it to its simplest, most organic sense: he led people to Jesus and taught them about Christ. From that you cannot import buildings, pews, pulpits, offering plates, organs, hymnals, choirs, robes, Sunday services, professional hierarchy, forty-five-minute sermons and pastoral offices. And what about 3:10, where Paul calls himself a “masterbuilder” who “laid the foundation”? Again, the context answers it. What was Paul planting? What foundation was he laying? Only Christ. He’s using metaphors for something spiritual and alive — and he gives God the credit for the whole process. He even mentions a “temple” here, but takes pains to show it’s nothing built by human hands:

“You Christians are that temple” — not this building, not that program, not some organization or denomination. Paul plainly has in mind a people who belong to Christ, not a building dedicated to a religious program. And consider this: God calls this temple — His people — holy. Set that against the “holiness” people so readily ascribe to their buildings. Scripture never calls a building holy where the Church is concerned. Why doesn’t it trouble us that we invest such lofty worth in things Scripture never does — and in doing so quietly diminish what Scripture actually calls holy? The only “building” Paul refers to here is the body of Christ. So when he calls himself a masterbuilder, he isn’t claiming to have saved anyone or “started” a program; he says himself, “I did the planting, Apollos did the watering, but God kept everything growing… you are God’s garden and God’s building” (3:6–9). He never calls the work his own, never claims ownership of the believers, and never sets himself up as a ruler over them.

Paul is a masterbuilder in the sense that he laid the only foundation — a foundation that was already laid: Christ Jesus (3:11). He taught them Christ, and taught them well to depend on Christ, to see Him as their sustenance and Lord, doing everything possible to keep himself out of the way. When he speaks of others building on that foundation (3:10), he means those who taught the same message and did not deviate from it. Christ must always be central. And when he speaks of “gold, silver and precious stones” versus “wood, hay and stubble” being tested by fire (3:12–15), the whole context tells us this is about the message of Christ — how faithfully and consistently a person taught Him and stayed steadfast in the apostles’ doctrine. The wood, hay and stubble are the works of the flesh: things not founded on Christ, mixed with self, legalism and religiosity. Those will burn.

Paul moves straight from this into the warning that God’s people are His temple, and that if any man defiles it, God will deal with him (3:17). The Church is a spiritual house of living stones — people (1 Peter 2:5). It can never be defined by a building or a program. Paul established neither. These are ideas that men have read into the text and taught others to believe. The plain fact is that God is not in the business of “building churches” in that sense; He never identified His Church in terms of buildings made with hands. So how did we come to condemn those who don’t “attend” such buildings, even calling them backsliders? There is not one verse anywhere in the Bible that ties faithfulness to God — or right standing, or salvation — to attendance of organizational church meetings.

I can’t stress this enough, and I stress it because too many of us keep judging one another by religious performance and attendance of things God never designed or commanded. Why is it so hard to see that the business of religion doesn’t belong to the Lord’s Church at all? Christ was not interested in the Pharisees’ brand of religion; He rebuked it and told the crowds to steer clear of it. And when His disciples marveled at the beauty of the temple buildings, He gently pointed out that it would all end in rubble. I love how the Message renders these moments:

None of the apostles ran building programs or organized formal patterns for meeting — song service, choir, offering ceremony, senior pastor’s sermon, benediction, altar ministry, dismissal to the lobby. The assemblies in various towns didn’t have clever names for their buildings (“First Baptist Church of Jerusalem,” “Living Word Fellowship of Corinth”). There is a reference to “churches being established” in Acts 16:5, but it doesn’t mean physical churches were built. “Churches” again means people assembled, and “established” means they were strengthened, built up and encouraged in the faith of Jesus — the NASB even renders it “strengthened.” Nothing institutional is in view. It’s easy for those of us raised in institutional churches to read our traditional ideas into the text without noticing. I did it for years, and still catch myself doing it. It’s a hard habit to break.

When people first realize these things, they often don’t quite know what to do with them — it can be genuinely astounding, even uncomfortable. To face the fact that Paul and the other apostles never “started” a church or told believers to build a denomination, house it in a building, and set up a hierarchy to rule it, means re-examining the Scriptures to discover what the Gospel is really about, over against the traditions we’ve handed one another for centuries. And after someone says such non-traditional things, the questions (and sometimes the contentions) come flying — I know, because I asked all the same ones. What about this Scripture? What about the “five-fold ministry”? It takes time. You have to look again at the Word, sincerely, with a heart to understand — setting aside learned tradition and drawing out what is actually written, asking the Lord to help you hear what He is saying.

Take “five-fold ministry,” if you like. Can you even find that phrase in the Bible? Can you find one place that calls the ministries of Ephesians 4 “ruling offices” of authority over a church body — or does it call them gifts? In Ephesians 4:11, are there truly five ministries, or four? Are there only these, or more (1 Corinthians 12:28)? Are these gifts meant to put men under “the gifted,” or to help the saints find their whole security and submission in Christ alone? Or take the word “elder.” Would it surprise you that in Scripture it’s not really a formal office at all — that it speaks of those who are older and more mature in the faith, not of men set “over” the others with authority? Remember, “church” describes a gathering of the Lord’s called-out people, not an organization — and holding onto that one fact sheds so much light on everything else. When you begin to see the body of Christ in terms of community and family, it changes everything.

The more seriously you study, the more confusing it may get for a while, because your traditional teaching keeps distracting you. Tradition is not easy to let go of; at first the mind looks for any way to make what it always believed fit what it’s now reading. That’s why I say it’s a process — but a wonderful one, because you’ll discover the joy of your Heavenly Father feeding and teaching you Himself, by His Spirit, rather than only ever being the pew-warmer fed by a man (Proverbs 4:5–7; John 17:17; Hebrews 4:12; 2 Timothy 3:16–17).

So study the Word and trust the Holy Spirit to be your teacher. You’ll begin to find that true Christianity is not really a “religion” at all. It has nothing to do with buildings made by men or programs of tradition. God does not dwell in temples made with hands (Acts 7:48–51; Acts 17:24–30). Christ is a high priest of a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands (Hebrews 9:11).

Conclusion

Scripture is abundantly clear that the Christian life is not about religion — and still we make it about that. We teach it and we impose it on others. We spend so much of our religious effort trying to convince everyone, especially the lost, that they need to “get plugged in” to church and structure their lives by a religious standard. We do preach the Gospel — but it isn’t long before we blend it with our traditions. In doing so we’ve not only burdened the saints; we’ve handed the world a distorted picture of the Gospel and of what the Christian life is really about. Too often we’ve sold people religion instead of reality. When many of the unsaved look at Christianity, they don’t see something real, tangible, powerful or relevant to their daily struggle. They see religion at full speed — and they stay uninterested and detached.

Thankfully, I’m seeing more and more Christians grow dissatisfied with the whole religious ordeal, hungry for something more life-giving, more liberating and joyous than what they’ve grown used to. Many are waking up to the bondage they’d yielded themselves to, and the longing for real, intimate relationship with Christ is stirring like never before. Oh, that more of us would grow tired of mere programs and routines and all the “technicalities” that religion says make for spirituality, and get hungry instead for a deep, growing relationship with the Lord — a return to simple devotion to the ways of Jesus and to what it really means to be led by His Spirit.

If — and hopefully when — you make the bold choice to step away from merely “being religious,” there will surely be people, even other Christians, who don’t understand. Respond to them with grace. They may judge you, or ridicule you, or write you off as deceived. Love them. Pray for them. Forgive them. Don’t grow angry, and don’t try to impose your new liberty on them — remember where your own understanding was not so long ago, and remember God’s grace in opening the eyes of your heart. Take comfort: they did the same to Jesus. The religious society of His day rejected Him too. Christ did not come to establish a religion; He came to establish intimate communion with the Father through Himself and by His Spirit. And He calls us today to follow Him outside the religious camp and join ourselves to Him, even to bear His reproach. Those who sincerely answer that call will find not only the grandest fellowship with Jesus, but true fellowship with one another as well.

Truly, as Scripture urges, the Lord is calling everyone with ears to hear to come “outside” of religion, as it were — and move into His life.