Masquerade

Reposting something from a couple years ago.  Taken from my notes on 1 Samuel.

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            Human religion is God’s greatest enemy and satan’s greatest instrument in his assault on God & God’s people.  Human religion is not just non-Christian faiths or certain denominations.  It is found in varying degrees in every church just as Christ is.  The sons of the evil one are sown amongst the sons of the kingdom (Matt. 13:37-39).  It is also within each of us: “For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature.  They are in conflict with each other….” (Gal. 5:17).  We think of the desires of the sinful nature being addictions, greed, lust, and the like.  Certainly these things do arise from the sinful nature, and Paul lists them in the same passage.  But the greater context of the passage is about the Galatians mixing law with grace.  Paul is warning them that their religion not only empowers sinful desires but is itself contrary to God.  One aspect of the sinful nature, then, is its attempt to establish its own righteousness.  Christ must be the end of this or we will travel land and sea to win converts whom we will turn into twice the children of hell we are (Rom. 10:3, 4; Matt. 23:15).

Since human religion puts itself in God’s place, it cannot tolerate when God or His true representatives show themselves.  The exposure of its charade, its counterfeiting, and its hypocrisy cannot be countenanced or it will lose all the control, self-worship, and parasitic preservation secured by its ruse.  So called “clergy” are certainly to blame as perpetrators of the power structure of human religion, the façade which keeps people from entering the kingdom because it poses as the gate (Matt. 23:13).  But human religion can’t exist without a laity which can be appealed to by leaders who justify the rule of self, the religion of the stomach, and their enmity with the cross of Christ (Php. 3:18, 19).  To these and to all Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it” (Luke 9:23, 24). 

            We cannot serve Christ and human religion.  We must choose.  While Christ and human religion coexist (not only in churches but in ourselves) they will be drawn inexorably into conflict, and we will be on one side or the other—laying our lives down in Christ’s image or thinking we offer service to God even as we attack those who are His flesh and blood (1 John 3:11-16; John 16:2). 

“[F]or Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.  It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness” (2 Cor. 11:14, 15). 

            The first murder was religiously motivated.  Cain offered God the best fruit his talents and effort could produce.  God rejected his offering but accepted Abel’s—an animal from his flock.  John tells us Cain murdered Abel because “his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous” (1 John 3:12).  The counterfeiter couldn’t tolerate the existence of the real.  Cain and Abel demonstrate one of the basic differences between human religion and Christ.  Cain’s “gospel” is that of human religion: work hard for God and give Him your best.  Abel had nothing of himself to offer.  Instead, he offered another life from his flock, which God accepted.  Cain says it’s about being good enough.  Abel says someone else must die for us.  Human religion heaps burdens on men which it won’t lift a finger to carry itself (Matt. 23:4).  Christ, who lays down His life for us, says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).