“But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do. Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
James, the Lord’s brother, doesn’t really mince words when it comes to our responsibilities as followers of Jesus.
As such, when he comes to what we should be carrying out here on earth, he says what pure religion is.
But do we contemplate this enough as we carry on our duties? Because if we start from an imperfect foundation, our building will be suspect and have no chance of being what God wants.
Let’s look at the verse in James and a few others over the next few weeks and see what he has to say that our walk, boiled down, should look like.
In a world where everything seems to be skewed, I hope that as we come out of this study, we take on the task to keep our relationship with Jesus one that He wants.
In this book James uses the statement “pure religion” and I think we all would agree we need to seek to eliminate our prejudices and even our preferences for the purity that is found in Christ.
When God made man and woman it was out of pure motivation to have fellowship with another being.
No other agenda and not holding anything back. Now that the relationship has been restored, don’t let other distractions take the place of what God has put in front of us. Pray that God would open our eyes to see what is good and what the Lord desires for us.
Pastor Brent