Religious Spies
Galatians 2:4-5
Mohandas Gandhi once said, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” What a statement. Unfortunately, I think there is far too much truth to it. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
Religion will do that to a person. It will cause a person to justify their behaviour, even if it conflicts with their beliefs. The Judaizers claimed to believe the message of Jesus. They considered themselves Christians. They just believed that along with receiving the gift of grace, you needed to do certain things (like follow Jewish traditions such as circumcision).
In order to discredit Paul’s message – that there was nothing one had to do other than receive the gift of grace – they snuck around, trying to be veiled in their infiltration.
Personally, any time you have to do something that is either unethical or contradicts the message of Jesus in order to get your point across, you’re probably in the wrong.
And yet all through church history we find examples of religion undermining the message of Jesus in order to push their views on people. We’ve spoken in past devotionals about the crusades, witch hunts, etc.
As a result, sometimes Christians are their own worse enemies. Any research will tell you that most people like Jesus, it’s his followers they can’t stand. That should say something profound to us.
Perhaps we’ll finally learn.
Until tomorrow.
