THE verse before us concludes this part of the Epistle. As the preceding one denied the weight or value of practical outward service, where an unbridled tongue betrayed a heart outside God's presence, here we have a sample set forth positively. It is in danger of being overlooked; yet this cannot be because the sight is infrequent in this world of sin and sorrow, of want and bereavement, where gracious sympathy does much to bind up and together wounded hearts. “Who is my neighbor?” said a lawyer who had no care to see one.
“A religious service pure and undefiled before him that is God and Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, to keep himself unspotted from the world” (ver. 27).
Wiclif has it thus— “There is a clene religion and unwemmyd anentis God and the fadir, for to visite pupilles, that is fadirles or modirles, or bothe, and widewes in her tribulation., and for to kepe him silf undefoulid fro this world.” The Wiclifite gives, “A clene relegioun and an vnwemmed anentis god and the fadir, is this, to visite fadirles and modirles children, and widewis in her tribulacioun, and to kepe hym silf vndefoulid fro this world.” “Pure devotion and vndefiled (says Tyndale) before God the father, is this: to vysit the frendlesse and widdowes in their advei site, and to kepe him silfe vnspotted of the worlde.” Cranmer and the Genevese V. follow Tyndale save the latter in the word “religion” for “devotion.” That of Rheims has, “Religion cleane and vnspotted with God and the Father, is this, to visite pupilles and vvidovves in their tribulation; and to keepe him self vnspotted from this world.”
There is often an exaggeration lent to these wholesome words, as if such duties as are here enjoined, or even the first part without the second, constituted the substance of “religion.” The absence of the article here too is not without meaning, especially as it was prefixed to the same word only in the verse before. “The religion,” or the religious service, of the man there described is vain. Here its absence indicates that it is but a part of it, however weighty and becoming. For we have to do with God, not only as the patriarchs knew Him (an Almighty protector in their weakness), nor yet again as the Lord Jehovah of Israel (the moral governor of a people called to do His commandments), but as the Lord Jesus revealed Him, and as He alone perfectly enjoyed the relationship of Father. It is here that we find the richest display of love in the nearest way possible for the creature to know God. And this is quite in keeping with what the Epistle had already explained, the communication of a life to the believer capable of entering into His thoughts and affections, and of obeying His will as being begotten thereby.
It is a service then pure and undefiled before Him who is God. and Father, to look after the fatherless and widows. Compassionate love is thus drawn out. It is indeed in its measure the reflection of God's own character.
So the Lord called him, who would give a dinner or supper, to ask not relatives nor the rich but the poor and wretched, assured of blessing all the more because they could not recompense him; but this too will come in the resurrection of the righteous. Our Epistle pursues its given line of blessing now in the doing or practice.
But the latter clause benevolence cannot imitate; and one finds it generally dropt. Yet is it an exhortation eminently Christian, and essential to spiritual well-being, “to keep himself unspotted from the world.” Never do we hear any word quite as full in the O.T. though at all times God has in His own sought love, and piety, and holiness; and His children have walked in them all, because they walked in faith. It is the Lord Jesus Who has fully brought out what the world is. Its thankless departure from God, its ready forgetfulness of Him and His manifold and persevering goodness, its setting up of grand material objects, like the sun, moon, and stars, its adoption of departed heroes to adore, its degradation in worship by the invention of imaginary beings as bad as themselves, its bowing down to the most ordinary creatures of earth, air, or the waters, even to reptiles, did not constitute its worst guilt. Plato yearned after some superhuman being to come and enlighten and raise up the fallen race. But when the Father sent the Son, and (wondrous condescension!) in the reality of man while most truly God, hatred of good came out as it never did nor could before; and they rejected Him alike in His words and His works. It mattered not that these all were light and love, as He was. But they brought God in Christ's person, the Holy and the True; and man would have none of Him: neither religious man, nor philosophical, nor political; Jew, Greek, Roman, despised and abhorred Him. As it was written beforehand, they hated Him without a cause, even those that had His law; they hated both the Son and the Father.
This is the world; and the great standing-proof is the cross of Christ. Hence our Lord, looking on to it, declared His own not to be of the world, as He is not: not merely that they ought not to be, but that they are not. And the Epistles follow this up, when the Holy Spirit was given, with the utmost care for corresponding ways. Nor is there anything in which Christendom is more false and guilty than in seeking and courting it, and congratulating itself on possessing its countenance and its good things if it has them, or in coveting them when it has not. Popery is flagrant but not alone in this.
Yet there is the plain and holy call of God to every child of His, “to keep himself unspotted from the world.” This cuts very closely indeed; and we do well to suffer the word of exhortation if any can help us to steer clear; for its spirit may enter in subtle ways. But let us look to Him, Who loves us and discerns perfectly, to work in us by His all-searching word, that we may be strengthened to judge it unsparingly, and thus to keep ourselves unspotted from the world.