by Jacob Ninan
There is a huge difference between being religious and spiritual. But many people look at a religious person and think he is spiritual or even godly! When they see someone who takes a lot of interest in the things of God, knows the Bible a lot, and who is very particular about going to church, they say he is a godly man! The people who are following such religious practices also imagine that God must be very pleased with them. But this is how a large number of people are being deceived about this matter which has implications of life or death.
A suitable example of religious people is the Pharisees in the days of Jesus. They knew the scriptures, they were keen to keep the minute details of the Law, they followed all the festivals and rituals, and they thought that they were not like other ordinary people but specially dear to God (Lk.18:11,12). But Jesus said that they were like tombs that looked impressive on the outside but covered rotting flesh and bones in them. Their religion was only about external behaviour, what could be seen by others, and what they lacked was an inner reality of knowing God.
When we look at religious people of the Christian kind, we can see many who are fervent about external behaviour. Some of them may boast that they keep all the ten commandments. Others proclaim what is only an intellectual conviction in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They follow strict discipline when it comes to daily reading of the Bible, prayer, family prayer, attending in the different activities of the church, etc. Some of you may be wondering what else is required. Many of these people are assuming that God cannot reject them because their lives are better than those of many others, and because their good deeds will count more than the 'small mistakes' they have committed. That assumption forgets how every sin appears to be horrible in the eyes of the God of perfect holiness. The only thing that can give us a genuine relationship with God is by being born again. We who have been born in sin cannot be acceptable to God no matter what external reforms we may carry out. This is what Jesus told the Pharisee and the Jewish religious leader Nicodemus (Jn.3:3). In order to be born again, we must accept the Gospel of Jesus, repent from our sins, and receive Him as our Saviour.
Many of us, including me, were walking in the deception of religiosity before we heard the true Gospel. At one time, the apostle Paul thought that he was blameless according to the Law, till he came face to face with Jesus and saw himself as he was. If we look only at our external behaviour, we will not be sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit who will be trying to convict us about where we are going wrong, even in our thoughts, attitudes, motives, goals, etc., but we will just assume everything must be right for us with God. We will not be really seeking to be free from the power of sin in our lives, or to become like Jesus in our character. We are born in sin, disconnected from God, unable to hear the Holy Spirit, and we need to be born again and become spiritually minded.
It will be good for you if you can take an honest and humble look at what is going on inside yourself. See if yours is only a religious behaviour aimed at being good enough for God, watching over your speech and behaviour carefully, or if you have seen yourself as a sinner before God and received the free gift of salvation that God offers. See if instead of examining yourself before God, your tendency is to shout, "Judge not!"
We become spiritual when God does a supernatural work in us, beginning to change us from inside. When we are born again, He 'regenerates' us by giving us a new heart and a new spirit (Ezek.36:26,27). When our old heart of stone is taken away and we receive a new heart, the hardening that used to be there earlier towards God and His word begins to change and our conscience becomes tender, willing to humble ourselves and learn. When we receive a new spirit, the deadness or disconnection we used to have earlier towards God disappears, we begin to be able to 'hear' Him, to have our 'eyes' opened to see the truth of His word, develop a hatred towards sin as such, and to develop a great interest in the things of God such as church, reading the Bible, prayer, fellowship, and even serving God and His people. Thus we can actually see that we have been born again, and we are not the same as before. We don't become sinless or perfect, but we get a great interest in becoming pleasing to God in every way.
We will also see this new 'spirituality' affecting every area of our life, starting from the inside. Many things that we used to enjoy in the past lose their interest for us now, and new things we had not paid much attention to now keep our focus. We lose some friends and relatives we used to mix with earlier, because our interests have now changed, and they may even ridicule or get upset with us. We notice a transformation in our mind that makes us think about everything we do with respect to what God wants us to do. On one side we find ourselves mourning inwardly when we become aware of in which all ways we are unlike Jesus, and on the other side we rejoice greatly over what the Lord Jesus is doing for us (Rom.7:24,25). People cannot understand this paradox or oxymoron in our life!
As we become able more and more to discern between good and bad (Heb.5:14), we find ourselves judging ourselves more deeply about the sinful things that have been going on in our life earlier but about which we had no idea! We become more and more humble, more and more thankful to God for His grace, and more and more dependent on the help that we can get only from the Holy Spirit. Thus we become convinced about the huge difference between being religious and becoming spiritual, and we are deeply burdened that we should tell others to leave their religiosity and turn to Christ as their Saviour.