| “Religion” is not salvation, but refers rather to outward ceremonies and observances. Thus one may be “religious” without being saved. Paul testified that, before he ever knew the Lord Jesus as Savior, “after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee,” and “in time past in the Jews’ religion … that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it: and profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals in mine own nation.” Nevertheless, after we are saved, the Lord wants our outward lives to be right, and “pure religion and undefiled” is “to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.” God has special concern for the “fatherless and widows,” those who are bereft of the fathers and husbands who would ordinarily care for them. “A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in His holy habitation.” We therefore have a responsibility to look out for and to relieve such “in their affliction.” What our Lord will say in a future day to those Gentile believers of the tribulation period who have befriended His Jewish brethren is applicable to us: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these … ye have done it unto Me.” |
