it cannot properly be compared with the “world religions.”
All attempts to do so have preemptively reduced
Christianity into its bastardized counterfeit of “Christian
religion.”
Scripture interpretation and “religion”The new covenant implemented in the Person and work
of Jesus Christ was designed to supplant and supersede all
of the old forms of religion that had existed since the fall of
man. Careful study of the new covenant literature, which
we know as the New Testament, evidences the constant
exposure of the radical difference between religion and the
dynamic life of Jesus Christ in the kingdom of grace.
Beginning in the accounts of the life and ministry of
Jesus in the Gospels, it is apparent that Jesus was
constantly confronting religion 24 as He proclaimed the
kingdom of grace that He came to reveal in Himself. The
Pharisees and scribes of Judaism were the religionists who
placed themselves in antagonism to all that Jesus did and
said. They did not have the spiritual understanding to
comprehend what Jesus was proclaiming. Approximately
one-third of Jesus’ teaching was in parables, which only
served to befuddle the religious teachers for they seldom