| Devotional Hours with the Bible |
Chapter 11 |
Page 4 |
The Master’s words are aimed against all empty professions and meaningless forms. When there is cause for mourning, let there be mourning. But when all things are joyous, let there be gladness. Our religion should be natural and sincere, never affected or hypocritical. Over-expressions of religious emotion or feeling are condemned. Christ wants His disciples true through and through, their forms of worship filled with sincerity of heart and life.
The religion of the Pharisees was chiefly one of forms and ceremonies. The religion Jesus had come to establish was one of the heart. He had not come merely to make some little changes in the Jewish forms and ceremonies; He had come to give the world something altogether new — the gospel of God’s love and grace. The Jewish forms and ceremonies in their day had a meaning. They were symbolical and typical of great spiritual truths, a sort of kindergarten teaching of God’s will. But all these truths and emblems were fulfilled by Christ Himself, and now the old forms are done away, as the blossom is done away when the fruit comes. Christianity needs no other system of types and forms — it is a religion of the heart; it seeks expression in forms of its own. The danger of forms is that they shall come to be depended on instead of vital religion. Jesus did not merely attach certain new lessons and practices to the old wine skins of Judaism; rather, He put life and love and grace, the new things of the gospel, into the new and simple forms of Christian faith.
Page 4
<< Prior Page 1 2 3 4 Next Page >>