The world today is full of religion, professed by those who really do not know the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior. Someone has said, and we fear the remark is a true one, "Religion is the devil's instrument to blind men's eyes.”
Wherever you go, you will meet men and women belonging to this or that system of religion who know nothing either of the sinfulness of their own hearts in the presence of a holy God, or of God's way of salvation for the lost, through His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
When a great General told his Emperor that he was a lost sinner and needed a Savior, just like any other sinner, the Emperor thought him crazy, and exclaimed, "Me! Why, I am the head of the Church!”
In the hills of southwestern Pennsylvania a rector was found, who was doing simple Gospel work in a scattered farming community, seemingly with some result. In the course of conversation he said: "For many years I was the rector of a fashionable church in New Jersey. I was quite a successful preacher as they go, but I was myself unsaved. Many young people came into the church, but they were the children of those who were members, and simply followed along in the footsteps of their fathers and mothers. They were not saved. They only joined the church as the proper thing for one of their family to do. Then I suddenly woke up to the fact that I was myself unsaved. Now I am preaching a simple Gospel about Christ the Savior.”
Perhaps one who reads these lines may be a "church member," or even the rector of a fashionable congregation, and yet himself be unsaved, for there must be individual dealing of the soul with God in order to be saved. Nicodemus came to the Lord Jesus, and said, "We know Thou art a teacher come from God." Jesus answered him and said, "Verily, verily, I say unto Thee, Ye must be born again.”
Reader, are you saved? Have you ever seen yourself a lost sinner before God, on your way to eternal perdition, and fled to the shelter of the precious blood of Christ for salvation?
Nicodemus was a Pharisee; orthodox, and a teacher of religion, but he needed to be born again.
Isaiah was a prophet who denounced sinners, and pronounced woe upon those who broke God's holy law; but when he looked upon the Lord, he said, "Woe is me.”
Job was a righteous man—none like him in the earth—but when he saw himself in God's presence, he cried, "I am vile; I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
You may be nominally a Christian, but have you ever seen yourself a vile sinner in the presence of God, lost, unless a holy substitute can be found who will die for you? Or is yours a religion without Christ?
"Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." If "sinner" is your title, there is a Savior for you; a Savior whose precious blood is sufficient for the chiefest of sinners. If you are simply religious, you may be very respectable in the eyes of your fellow men, but yet going straight on the way to hell, and unless your eyes are opened before you die, you will wake up in eternal perdition. May God save you from a "religion without Christ," that you may find your only refuge and hope in Him who came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.