Dear Kingfisher family
Did Jesus come to establish another religion, or did He come to reveal the Father and restore humanity to a living relationship with Him?
Religion often creates a distorted picture of God. It presents God as distant, demanding, disappointed and primarily concerned with rules, performance and punishment. People are taught to approach God through religious systems, rituals and human standards rather than discovering who He really is.
But Jesus came to reveal something radically different.
Jesus said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9). Jesus is the clearest revelation of what God is like. When we look at Jesus, we see the Father’s heart. We see grace, compassion, acceptance, forgiveness and an invitation into relationship.
And Jesus did something else: He confronted religion. Again and again, He challenged the religious systems of His day because they had placed burdens on people instead of leading them into freedom and intimacy with God. Jesus did not come to make people better religious performers. He came to make them sons and daughters who know their Father.
Following Jesus, therefore, is not a religion. It is a relationship.
This distinction is critical for discipleship. If we do not understand the freedom we have in Christ, we easily fall back into religious behaviour. We measure our ‘relationship’ with God by performance, obedience to religious expectations, attendance, traditions and outward conformity.
And when that happens, true discipleship is inhibited – and therefore disciple-making is also inhibited.
You cannot effectively make disciples who live in freedom while you are discipling people into religious bondage.
Many of our church traditions have unintentionally created and promoted more religion than relationship with Jesus. We can become so focused on church structures, programmes, meetings, buildings, doctrines and traditions that the living Christ Himself becomes secondary.
Jesus, however, calls us back to Himself.
Escaping the grip of religion requires us to take off the old clothes and put on the new. Paul describes this transformation in terms of putting off the old self and putting on the new self (Ephesians 4:22–24; Colossians 3:9–10). It is a picture of leaving behind an old way of relating to God and embracing a completely new life in Christ.
Jesus also spoke about new wine and new wineskins:
“Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the wineskins burst, the wine spills and the wineskins are ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” (Matthew 9:17)
The new life Jesus brings cannot simply be poured into old religious containers.
So the invitation of Jesus (Matthew 11:28) is not simply to reject religion. It is much more positive than that. It is an invitation to know Jesus more deeply, to discover the Father’s heart, to understand our freedom in Christ and to allow His life to shape the way we live and make disciples.
The journey away from religion is ultimately a journey toward relationship.
It is about taking our eyes off the religious system and fixing them on Jesus. It is about discovering that the Father is not waiting for us to perform well enough to earn His love. In Christ, we are invited to know Him, walk with Him, hear His voice and participate in His life.
The goal is not to become better at religion. The goal is to know the Father, follow Jesus and live from the freedom of the new life He has given us.
Grace, Love and Peace to you
Your brother
dirk
dirk j coetzee
dirk@kfmc.co.za
