This past month “Jesus and Religion” has been a hot topic on the ol’ interwebs. A poem posted on YouTube by Jefferson Bethke really stirred the pot so to speak and the video now has close to 18 million views on YouTube and has been blogged about and talked about by numerous people and I guess now I am talking about it too. I’m not blogging about this because it’s super popular and I couldn’t think of anything else, I simply love the conversations this video has started and I love to hear about Jesus and be reminded of His grace and how He trumps religion.

I like to talk about Jesus and so does Jefferson Bethke.

I am heavily influenced by guys like Timothy Keller, Matt Chandler, Mark Driscoll and Tullian Tchvidjian. So is Jefferson Bethke.

I think Jesus > Religion and so does Jefferson Bethke.

With that said, I am not here to dissect his poem or to say he should change how he said it. I just want to say that I appreciate his heart and his desire to make much of Jesus and I am pumped that 17,748,124 people have been exposed to this message that points to the gospel, the good news we have in Christ Jesus.

Christianity is radically different from any other religion or worldview out there. There are people who claim that all religions are virtually the same and that you can just mix Christianity with anything and “it’s all good.” But this is just not true. I was told in a Bible study one time as a 13 or 14 year old that with religion man reaches to God, but with Christianity God reaches to man. It was as simple as that. In fact, I went down into my basement, opened a box of old books and found my “NIV Study Bible for Kids” and found the picture I drew in my Bible from that very Bible study night:

The Bible talks a lot about religion. The Old Testament passage that always comes to my mind is Isaiah 58 where God speaks through the Prophet Isaiah about “True Fasting.” In verses 6 and 7 He says this:

    “Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?”
(Isaiah 58:6-7)

In the New Testament Jesus says this:

    “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
(Matthew 5:17)

And this:

    “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
(Matthew 16:18-19)

So yes, Jesus didn’t come to rid us of the Law, He came to fulfill it. Jesus didn’t come to rid us of the church, He came to establish His Church.

Jesus’ brother James shows us another picture of what true religion looks like (and no it doesn’t involve a fat Buddha on the patch of a $300 pair of jeans):

    “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
(James 1:27)

So, what’s the deal with bashing religion and pitting it against Jesus? A lot of it deals with semantics. If you listen to guys like Keller, Chandler, Driscoll or Tchvidjian preach or read stuff they put out, it’s easy to see what a guy like Bethke means when he says “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus.”

Of course we should love the True Fasting we see in Isaiah 58 and of course we should embrace the Law when we see we can’t fulfill it but Christ does for us. Of course we should love and stand up for the church that Christ established and that the gates of Hell can’t stand against and of course we should strive to be people who portray the true, pure and undefiled religion that James speaks of.

But,

When it comes to the religion we see in this world and the religion Luther points to as the default mode of our hearts, Jesus reigns supreme and it is only through Him that we will be set free.

Tim Keller speaks to this issue and the guys at http://www.theresurgence.com made it into a lovely poster:

ReligionGospel