RELIGION is fashionable and respectable, and most persons profess to practice it more or less.
They can tell you how they have been baptized, or made members of one denomination or another—attended church or chapel regularly—taken the sacrament—heard mass—said prayers—told their experience, and a number of other things, all of which are supposed by them to be so many steps towards heaven.
But when you talk to them of the Lord Jesus, you find that they have not yet accepted Him as their Saviour, but are in reality trusting to their religion, good desires, and good works, to obtain salvation for them. In fact they are like Nicodemus, of whom we read in John 3, fall of religion, but utterly ignorant of Christ.
With all their religion, however, they cannot compare with Nicodemus, for the religion which he pressed was formerly authorized by God. While the religions they practice, when tested by God’s word, are all found to be more or less opposed to God.
In all ages men have practiced religion with the object of gaining heaven, and the common notion is that without religion it is impossible to get there. But when Nicodemus presented himself to the One who says, “I am the door” (John 10:9), he found his key of religion of no use whatever, and heard those solemn words, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” (John 3:5.)
The very thing he had expected to obtain by his religion was exactly the thing which the Messiah Himself declared could not be had except on the ground of a new birth, of which truth Nicodemus, with all his religion, was so completely ignorant that Jesus said to him, “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” (verse 7.)
Dear soul, the Lord Jesus says to you, as He said to Nicodemus, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (verse 3.) Not, mark you, except he be religious—not except he has been baptized—not except he be a teetotaler—not except he take the sacrament—not except he go to class—not except he be a member, a priest, or a minister—but “except a man be born again, or anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
One of these “religion” men was trying one day to show an old believer in Christ Jesus that baptism was absolutely essential to salvation, and advising her that unless she submitted to this ceremony according to the forms of “his church,” as he called it, she would certainly be lost.
“Ah!” said she, as in the light of God’s truth she discerned the character of her adviser, “ye don’t born em—ye mak’ em—ye don’t e’en give God fair play.”
Dear soul, Are you a man-made Christian—or one born of God?
By nature you are a child of wrath (Ephesians 2:3), born in sin and shapen in iniquity (Psalms 51:5), and it is absolutely essential, if you are to enter heaven, that you must be born anew! (John 3).
Not made—but born—born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:13.)
Unless you have received the Lord Jesus as your Saviour—unless you have accepted Him as the purger of your sins (Hebrews 1:3)— unless you have looked away from religion and self to Him as lifted up and bearing God’s wrath in your stead (Romans 5:6-8; Galatians 3:13; Hebrews 9:28)— unless you are believing in Him only for your salvation—you have not been born again!
But if you have believed God’s testimony about His Son, that He suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, to bring you to God (1 Peter 3:18); that He has met and fully satisfied all God’s claims against you as a sinner, so that you are at peace with God through Him (Romans 5:1; Ephesians 2:14-17; Colossians 1:20), if you can say from your heart that on account of what Jesus has done God in the riches of His grace has given you eternal life (Romans 6:23), and that you shall never perish (John 10:28), and shall not come into judgment (John 5:24)— you have received the Lord Jesus—and “as many as received Him to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name; which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:12, 13.)
Dear reader, which are you? Made religious by man, or born of God!