Christian Religion - a podcast by Rev. W. Reid Hankins

Sermon preached on James 1:26-27 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 02/21/2021 in Novato, CA.















Sermon Manuscript







Many well-meaning Christians have parroted the slogan, “Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship.” The problem with that slogan is a passage like today which reminds us that these things are not at odds with each other. Yes, Christianity is about a relationship with God in Christ Jesus. But it is also a religion, and in fact the only true religion. Now to be fair, when such people say that Christianity is not a religion but a relationship, what they usually mean is along the lines that Christianity is not about merely adhering to a set of religious rituals or beliefs. Going through the motions in terms of religious rituals or knowing what the right answer is to some doctrinal question isn’t how one is saved. That is something we can agree on, yet without throwing away a proper, biblical use of the word religion. In fact, what James addresses here is not that far off from the concern raised in that problematic slogan. Here, James pushes back against a mere externalism in our worship or faith. Instead, he points us toward having a changed life in Christ Jesus. So, we can and should redeem the term “religion”, but also appreciate that there is much done today in the name of religion that is worthless. Ultimately, James wants us to know the true religion that is pure and undefiled before God and that does flow out of our saving relationship of being united to Jesus Christ through faith.







Let’s start our sermon for today by first considering James’ point that someone could think themselves religious when actually they are just deceived. This is raised in verse 26. I’ll start this point off by defining the word “religious” here. The meaning and nuance of this Greek word is pretty much identical to our word “religious” in English. It refers to the devotion and worship given to a divine being, expressed in both beliefs and rituals.







So then, James says that someone can think they are religious but be wrong. There could be a way, he says, that one could deceive their heart by thinking are religious when really their version of religion is worthless. What a wake-up call James gives here. Someone could really believe themselves to be a Christian by their faithful devotion to either a creed or a ritual and find that they’ve been living a lie that they told themselves. Of course, how true this is to reality. How many people today, if asked their religion, would immediately reply “Christian”, and yet how many of such people have truly known the Lord? This is surely a less common in our area where it is not the social norm to call yourself a Christian or to go to church. We could imagine this as a prevalent issue in the Bible Belt region of the southern United States where going to church and calling yourself a Christian is the cultural norm. But just going to church or calling yourself a Christian doesn’t mean you have truly known the Lord. And this problem of thinking yourself religious when you’re not is not unique to the Bible Belt. James wants to get us to do some self-examination of our claim to be Christian to see if our supposed devotion to God is genuine.







You see, he explains that someone’s religion might be worthless. The word for worthless in the Greek is about something that is in vain or useless or empty of what it claims to be. Notice even how he describes that in verse 26 that “this person’s religion is worthless.” It’s not saying that true religion is worthless. It is saying that whatever religion “this person” has, it is not of any value in God’s eyes. In other words, such a person that is self-deceived is because they have come to hold a religion that is not tr...

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