Religion or Gospel Part 2

What exactly does religion replacing the Gospel look like? Jesus gives 7 woes... I would describe them this way:

•Religious people are obsessed with recognition (vv. 5-6). They love conventions, titles, and public praise.

•Religious people focus on external conformity to tradition and not inward transformation (vv. 25-26). It's not to say that they don't also teach inward transformation, just that they are defined more by the externals than the internals. As D. A. Carson says, "Error is truth out of proportion."

•Religious people focus on the sins of other rather than on their own sins (vv 2, 28). •Religious people esteem secondary traditions over a love for God (vv 16, 23-24). If you conform to their traditions, they consider you godly. If you don't, there's no way you possibly could be. They strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.

•Religious people are generally judgmental and angry in their tone (v. 23) It’s a simple result of self righteousness. When you hold your views so tightly in a closed hand, you must demonize others for their views. There is more concern over an argument, than in love.

•Religious people think we are always talking about someone else. There is no evaluation; personal growth is taken for granted. Character and brokenness is assumed and so the sins and the evils of the world are all we concern ourselves with since we have mastered our own lives.

I can write about these things because they have described me at one point. Not just in the past, but in some ways I have these tendencies now.My whole point is this: pharisaism is alive and well and at work in the church. And it is causing the slow and painful death of the bride of Christ. We must change from the doctrine of the religious to Gospel of Jesus Christ.