Why the Religious Spirit is Deadly

Narrator: Welcome to Self Talk with Dr. Ray Self, the place where you can get real answers to tough questions. Jesus promised you abundant life but poor choices and dark forces stand in your way. It is time to learn how to overcome the obstacles that keep you out of your promised land. Knowledge of God will pave the path for you to walk in his blessing.

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Dr. Ray: Hello and welcome to Self Talk. I'm your host, Dr. Ray Self. Glad you're with me. This show is brought to you by the International College of Ministry, an online, accredited, Holy Spirit-filled seminary, now enrolling at www.icmcollege.org. Icmcollege.org, check it out; it's my heart, it's my baby.

So I want to talk to you today about the religious spirit. It's a term that gets tossed around quite a bit but let's try to explore it. What is the religious spirit? I mean, the name itself to me is kind of confusing because the word religious is not really a bad word because Christianity is religion and I'm a Christian and I love the Christian religion, I love the Lord Jesus Christ. But there's a religious spirit, there's a term that actually talks about a spirit or also a lot of flesh, a lot of activities that take place in some churches which cause a lot of harm and damage to people. So when we refer to the term religious spirit, what exactly are we talking about? What is that spirit? Well to me, everything centers on a scripture in Ephesians when the Apostle Paul said very clearly that we are saved by grace through faith, not by works so no one should boast. It's the grace of God; our salvation is a free gift and this free gift comes to us by our faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ, our faith that Jesus is Lord, our faith that Jesus has forgiven us for our sins, our faith that Jesus died and rose again on the third day and I am with him, identified with him and I have his Holy Spirit residing in me and I believe that and that's my salvation, that's my justification, that's my redemption and everything centers on that.

Now because of that, I should do good works. James said faith without works is dead but what happens is so many people and religious leaders, they get it confused. It's like well yeah, we're saved but you have to work if you're really saved or you have to work to really earn your salvation. Even though you have it, you're not really complete with your salvation unless you do these certain rules and follow these certain guidelines. It's a very old spirit; and Jesus confronted this spirit in the book of Matthew and we can look at that just briefly but in Matthew 23, the whole chapter is Jesus talking to the scribes and the Pharisees and, and confronting them on their hypocrisy and their rules and their regulations and their pride and all the stuff. I mean, he was constantly in conflict with the religious leaders but I want to be careful with this because I see a lot of posts out there on social media where the church is ridiculed and the church is condemned. No, you can't do that, I mean, Christ gave his life for the church. It says very clearly in Ephesians 5 he gave himself up for the church.

So yeah, the church is flawed, the church has, makes mistakes but the church still is the body of christ and deserves to be loved and respected. But a religious spirit is a spirit that sets upon people heavy-duty rules and regulations and guidelines that are very difficult to maintain. Some of it call it, call it the holiness doctrine. Now, the holiness, you know, living holy is not a bad thing but you cannot live holy and earn your right to heaven. You cannot live holy and earn your righteousness, you cannot live holy enough to earn your favor with God. You see, holiness comes out of a relationship with God, a work of the Holy Spirit working through us. So I live holy because of my salvation. I cannot live holy to get my salvation and for some reason we back, we reverse that so many times.

We've been raised our entire life that everything in life has a cost. Everything has a price, you know. If, whatever you want you have to earn it, you have to achieve it but salvation is the opposite. You cannot achieve salvation, you can't earn it, you can't buy it, you don't deserve it no matter what you do. It's too it's priceless and your works and your goodness and all your greatness will never earn your salvation. It cannot. Jesus did that for us, that's why we had to have a savior. He died and earned our salvation for us. By grace we're saved through faith, the only requirement is faith to believe he's done that for you. It's, it's, it's the grace of God. But because of our human nature, because of our flesh, we start putting regulations on people, things that you have to do in order to prove or actually be completely justified. I remember years ago, I was talking to a pastor of a fairly large church and he said you know Dr. Ray, this is one thing I got to do, I just got to make sure that I get to heaven, and it kind of bothered me a little bit, kind of thinking I have to be sure that I get to heaven. So I'm thinking what is it you're going to do to get to heaven? Because you see, your doing will not get you to heaven, it's your faith in Jesus Christ that gets you to heaven.

And so the religious spirit will put a lot of rules and regulations and strict guidelines on believers that end up causing a lot of frustration and condemnation. I remember some years ago, in my little church, and we were a growing church, and a young lady came in to me to my church and she, she walked up to me and she said something to me that was very strange although I actually understood where it was coming from. She said Dr. Self, are my earrings too big? And I said well, your earrings look fine to me and she said well, my previous church told me that my earrings could not be more than the size of a quarter. I'm going, really, I said no, there's no rules like that here, you wear whatever earrings you want. See, those type, rules- there's, there's churches that enforce rules where you cannot wear makeup, you cannot wear jewelry, cannot cut your hair, women cannot wear pants, and all these rules and regulations. Now I believe that common sense says hey, we should dress appropriately for church, I get it, we should dress, it's just, it's just a, it's common sense, it's appropriate. But when we start putting these regulations on people and declare them not holy unless they obey these rules, the result of that is a lot of condemnation and frustration and what I have seen over the years, truly, which is a very sad thing, that many people living under these very strict rule-oriented religious systems end up falling away. They end up getting frustrated, end up just throwing in the towel and going I cannot do this and they fall away. 

But when you live by the grace of God and you know you're saved by grace, not by works and you know it's the Holy Spirit and it's God enabling you to live the life that you need to live and you're living by surrender and trust and faith. You're a marathon runner, you're in for the long haul. But when you're living a life that says I have got to make sure that I'll obey this rule and that rule and I don't do this, I can't do that, and I must not do this, what happens is you're living under stress, you're living frustration, you're living under a little bit of fear and insecurity and I call that the religious spirit.

I'll give you another example. Some years, ago I was at a Spirit-filled church, in a fairly large Spirit-filled church. At this time I was early, young in my Holy Spirit-filled walk. After I was baptized with the Holy Spirit and I was in this church that had a pastor who had some pretty serious control issues and he had a lot of rules about how to pray for people. You know, you pray this way, you don't do that, you should do this, you can't do that, you make sure you say this, you don't say that, make sure you're led by this, make sure you don't do this, and you know, I was a church leader and I was called on to, to minister at the altar and to pray for people but he had put so many rules out there I felt completely bound up. I couldn't pray at all, I was like, I didn't know what to do. I was afraid I was going to do something wrong, I might lay my hand wrong, I might say a wrong word, I might do this wrong or that wrong and so there were so many guidelines and rules that I felt completely bound up. I mean, I was completely bound. I couldn't do anything. 

To me, that's kind of an example of the religious spirit. The religious spirit, you remember Jesus, how the Pharisees attacked him because he dared, how dare him heal somebody on the sabbath day? How could you possibly heal someone on the sabbath day? What kind of man are you? And see, Jesus knew God's heart and to me, grace doesn't mean we have a license to sin. Paul made that very clear multiple times, especially in Romans 6. Grace is not an excuse to sin. We're saved by grace, it doesn't give you a license to sin because we have a God who will chastise us. We'll have to answer for our sins, we'll have to answer for every idle word we speak, we'll have to answer for that. But grace is our relationship with God, grace is our salvation. We're saved by grace, it's a free gift. Salvation is so amazing, so wonderful, you cannot achieve it, you don't deserve it, you can't earn it, you can't buy it and it's not about what you wear, it's not by your jewelry, your lack of makeup, your hair, your clothes, your tithing, it’s not by anything. You're saved by the grace of God and it's, it seems simple but so many people just don't get it because it's just not in our nature. Our nature is we've got to do something to earn it and you can't earn it you cannot earn salvation, it's a free gift that comes by faith in Jesus Christ.

But it seems like after that comes then we get into the nature, human nature takes over, the flesh takes over and we start getting into the rules and regulations. You'll see another example of this in the book of Galatians where Paul was extremely frustrated with the Galatians because the Galatians have started adding some things to the gospel. They started mixing the law of Moses with the gospel of Jesus Christ and at one point he says oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? He said how did you receive the Spirit? Okay? And so the point is the religious spirit is man-made and the result of it is condemnation, frustration, um, it's, just does a lot of damage to people. It makes people want to give up, it makes people want to just throw in the towel eventually.

And you know, I'm not condemning anybody and I'm not saying we shouldn't do certain things; we should, we should live a sanctified life to the best of our ability but my, my working is not going to achieve my justification. My, my righteousness comes by my faith in Jesus Christ. He finished, he's sufficient, he's everything. When we start believing that a rule is going to make us righteous, in a way- hear me, this is very serious- we are denying the finished work of Jesus Christ. We're actually saying Jesus was not sufficient, we have to add to what Jesus did, we have to enhance what Jesus did and that's an insult to God. We have to enhance it and you know, some Christians get involved in old Jewish customs and they want, they think that well, if you really want to get the favor of God, you must observe this feast, observe this custom, and that's going to earn you God's favor. No, it will not. Now, if you want to observe a Jewish custom to bring back a memory of Christ you know, like communion obviously, if you want to observe Passover because it reminds you of Christ and it and it's uh, you know, it's a, it teaches you things and but if you think that observing Passover is going to get you brownie points with Jesus, with God, no, it doesn't.

It depends you know, and some people do think well, I got a blessing. There's a blessing if I do this, there's a blessing if I do that. I had somebody tell me the blessing was in the first fruit offering. Jesus was the first fruit offering. You see, when I see looking for favor and for blessing in things that we do, I am denying, I'm saying- Jesus, when he died, he finished his work on the cross, redeemed us from the curse of the law, gave us salvation, gave us healing and abundance and acceptance, took it, took away our rejection, took it all to the cross. He took what we deserved and gave us what he deserved- we're saying that's not sufficient, we still need to do this and that.

I get very frustrated when I see these chain letters, and this is an old thing and now they do it through social media, pass this on. If you pass this on to 10 people, God's going to give you a particular blessing today. Let me tell you something, again, that's an insult. That's an insult to God because that's saying Jesus was not sufficient. You see, in Christ, we have abundant life. In Christ, we've been redeemed from all curses of the law. In Christ, we've been put above and not beneath. In Christ, we're the head and not the tail. In Christ, we’re joint heirs with Jesus Christ. In Christ, we're members of the royal priesthood. In Christ, we have authority over snakes and demons and snakes and scorpions and all the works of the enemy. In Christ, in Christ, in Christ, we have abundant life in Christ. 

You see, it's all about being in Christ and the religious spirit starts adding manufactured, man-made, what man thinks or common sense rules to the gospel and many of these rules are simply traditional things that have been passed down for generations and at some point, somebody decided this was a good idea and nobody is really checking out the scripture carefully to examine some of these traditions. There are a lot of church traditions that are beautiful and wonderful but there's some church traditions that are simply some ideas somebody had several hundred years ago, could have been a thousand years ago, it's been passed down for generations and nobody questions it. But the religious spirit will make you feel ashamed and condemned and frustrated because there's so many rules and so much you have to do and so much you have to achieve, but the grace of God, the grace of God is our salvation. The grace of God. We're saved by grace not by works; through our faith, that's the gospel of Jesus Christ. Through our faith in Jesus Christ, that's our salvation, that's our, that's our blessing, that's everything, that's everything. Now, because of that, because of our salvation, we should have good works. Now, do you understand that? In other words, I'm saved by grace and how do I respond to that? How do I respond to that? I'm saved by grace so my response is I'm going to be generous in my giving, I'm going to try to live a good life as a witness of Christ, I'm going to try to be a living witness of Jesus Christ, I'm going to let my light shine and do, do good things to the best of my ability, not because it's, it's going to earn me my way to heaven, it's because my way to heaven comes by my faith in Jesus Christ and I'm responding to that. 

I hope this makes sense to you. Again, I'm not trying to criticize the church but maybe pointing out some flaws in some of the religious people of today. But be careful, remember that Christ so loved the church he gave himself up for the church. Christ loves the church, you do not want to condemn the church. Of course the church has hypocrites, there're hypocrites everywhere. I'd rather be with the hypocrites in church than the hypocrites out in the world. Yeah, they're everywhere. You know, the church is not perfect because it's full of imperfect people. I'm not perfect, neither are you, but saved by grace not by works so no one can boast and all credit goes to God. That's the answer to the religious spirit and any set of rules or regulations that says you're not measuring up because of your works. That's what the religious spirit is and it does hurt a lot of people. 

If you're listening to me and you've been doing that, you'll repent. Repent now. Remember Paul said where grace abounds in Romans 6, sin should not abound even more he said no, grace is not a license to sin but we must understand that our, what we wear, the type clothes we wear, the, what we watch, don't watch, what we do, what we don't do does not save us, it doesn't save us. Now, if you want to do certain things as a response to your salvation, that's fine but if you think you have to do certain things to be right with God, to be in, to have righteousness, that's the denial of the finished work of Jesus Christ. Now this is kind of a heavy-duty uh, podcast, hope this makes sense to you. I'm going to be interviewing a pastor about this in the next session, I hope, in the next podcast because believe it or not, this problem is pretty serious and it's caused some divisions in the church. I'm not telling anybody you should go out there and sin because you know, grace is not an excuse to sin, but grace is our salvation, it's not our works, can't achieve it, can't earn it, so watch out for rules that say if you really want to be right with God or if you really want to have God's blessing, you have to do this. That's the religious spirit and all that does is cause you a lot of frustration. I hope this has helped you some. This is Dr. Ray Self and I appreciate you very much.

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