Relationship or Religion?

When I was 28, I ran across a paperback book titled “How to be a Christian without being religious”. It was a very simple illustrated version of John’s Gospel. By that time I had already been building a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ for 17 years. I must have read that book at least a dozen times. About 15 years later, I was a service manager and one of my workers turned in his resignation. He told me he and his wife were entering full time Christian ministry. I reached in my desk and gave him that well worn paperback as a present. He looked at the cover and asked, “You think I need this?” I smiled and said, “My brother, we all need it.”  Jesus reveals the difference between relationship and religion in the familiar sermon on the mount recorded in Matthew’s Gospel. He describes two groups standing before Him at judgment. The first group had a personal relationship with Him and did kind, loving things without thought simply because of Jesus’ love and mercy to them. Jesus welcomed them to heaven. The second group had put their faith in religious practices. They were not pagans or evil. They knew of Jesus and even claimed to be Christians doing wonderful works in His name, Jesus will say to them the scariest words in the Bible, “Depart from me. I never knew you.”  The Greek word translated as knew is not describing factual knowledge. It is used to describe a much more intimate knowledge.  So, what is the bottom line of all of this? Nothing I do, even in God’s name, could save me. But what He has done in me when I invited Him into my life has changed me into a new creature as an obedient child of God.