Man’s Religion vs. God’s Religion

By Darrin R. Brooker

This week’s excerpt from the writings of Horatius Bonar is from his book entitled Man: His Religion and His World (1851). It is a little longer than most posts I will make because, if you’re anything like me, after four paragraphs your interest can quickly wane. But I implore you to get through it; it is an excellent piece from start to finish even though I have edited it somewhat. In it, Bonar delineates the differences between true Christianity, or “God’s religion,” and the man-made variants that try to displace the work of Christ alone with a combination of grace and works. Please take note that Bonar addresses many of what we would call the “modern fads” that infect Christianity; hardly any of them escape unscathed. From the seeker-sensitive movement, to the powerless Arminianism that pervades much of “evangelicalism,” and all points in between, Bonar shows that there is only one ground of acceptance in the sight of God, and that ground is not found in, or mingled with, anything in man.

Today is the 5th anniversary of the attacks of 9/11, and people the world over are still in dire need of finding “God’s religion.” People in general may be more spiritual, or have a greater desire towards religious things, but if the desires they have do not lead them to believing solely in Jesus Christ and His work on their behalf, then they are useless; and those desires will perish along with them on that day of Jesus’ most certain return. It will be on that day, all of man’s religions will be shown for what they are: inventions of those who despised the Lord Jesus.

Man’s religion makes man its centre. It is constructed so as to revolve around himself. It makes him live for himself, think of himself, magnify himself. It teaches him to lessen the distance between himself and God, for the purpose of enabling him to remove that distance by his own endeavours…Man’s religion is like the old astronomy, with the vast earth in the centre, and the puny sun revolving round it!

Man’s religion trifles with sin. Having lessened the greatness of Jehovah’s character, and obscured His glory, it is not wonderful that he treats sin lightly. If God be not the infinitely holy and exalted One, then, opposition to Him, and contempt of His law are not very serious evils. The evil of sin, as a wrong done to man’s self or to his fellows will be allowed; but its evil, as a wrong done to God, is never thought of. While man’s religion trifles with sin, God’s religion bases itself on the utterly odious and intolerable nature of sin. THE SOUL THAT SINNETH IT SHALL DIE, lies at the very foundation of God’s religion, and of all His dealings with the creature, specially of His transactions with the sinner. Grace is not grace, which does not rest on this. Grace is not grace which mutilates or modifies, or tampers with this law of laws.

Man’s religion contains no recognition of pure and unmingled grace. It does not deny grace, nay, it has a place for it among its forms; but it will not allow grace the entire credit of saving man. It mixes together grace and merit, as if afraid to trust the former alone, nay, repudiating it, except in so far as it is restricted and modified by the latter. It dilutes grace, and lowers righteousness, and mitigates the law, and thus obtains a foundation for itself. Grace alone is the foundation of God’s religion…It must be complete, unmingled, certain, and unconditional, else it cannot suit our case, nor provide a religion for the sinner.

Man’s religion deals in uncertainties—God’s religion in none. The former really requires uncertainties to make it sufficiently effective and influential. It operates by keeping man in a state of uncertainty in all things pertaining to his own connexion with God. It suspends these uncertainties over man as the most powerful and trusty stimulants by which it can work upon him. From God’s religion all such uncertainties are swept away. He deals with man by calling up every feeling of love, and gratitude, and honour, and devotedness. He comes at once with certainties in His hand—the certainties of pardon, and life, and an endless kingdom. He presents to man a gospel, which at once, when believed, puts him in possession of all these certainties.

Man’s religion keeps God at a distance—God’s brings him nigh. Homage to God, but not communion with Him, is the object of the former; nearness of fellowship and companionship, coupled with lowliest reverence is the aim of the latter.

Man’s religion is a thing separate from all his other doings, or employments, or feelings, nay, I may say, separate from himself. It throws up a wall between the religious part of life and the common part of it. It says, so much of life should be filled up with religion; but the rest of it religion must not touch nor approach. God’s religion is made to pervade every lawful thing, so that nothing in its estimation is common or unclean. It is not a sacred lamp kept for the closet, or the crypt, or the cell. To separate religion from the common things and scenes of life has always been man’s object, because he thus prevents himself being incommoded by it; he gets it cast into a corner; he can make it serve as a whet to give keener zest to his worldly joys.

Man’s religion leaves the question of relationship to God unsettled and untouched. Adoption, sonship, heirship, are not words that have place in it, save in the vaguest sense. In God’s religion, the personal and paternal relationship is everything. “I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty,” is God’s declaration of the nature of His religion. The commencement of it is the fastening of this great filial bond. Till this is done, God owns nothing as true religion which man may engage in, however labourious or costly it may be.

Man’s religion begins by enjoining worship—God’s by preparing the worshipper. And here the difference is as wide as it is striking. Man thinks that the worship makes the worshipper, and that therefore we must set diligently about worship, in order to get ourselves accepted. The main idea that man has in connexion with worship (such as prayer, and praise, and service) is, that it is the means of securing acceptance, and effecting reconciliation with God. He brings his gifts as the bribes or payments of the criminal, not as the thank-offerings of the forgiven. He worships in order to pacify God, and persuade Him to extend His favour towards him. In God’s religion, this order is reversed. The worshipper is accepted first, and then his worship. The person is first taken into favour, and then all his services are acknowledged as well-pleasing. God’s design is to provide an accepted man in order to secure accepted worship; and His whole Word proceeds upon this great truth. This is the Divine order of things; and the reversal of this order not merely injures worship—it wholly invalidates it. God’s order is absolutely essential to that which He recognises as religion. He will receive no offering save from the hand of an accepted worshipper.

Man’s religion always leaves a sinner somewhere short of God and peace with Him. It may produce earnestness and seriousness and zeal, but it does not bring a sinner close to God. Man’s religion says much, and does much; but it knows nothing of the Apostle’s conclusion, “Let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith.” Only God’s religion can speak of that. And how fully it does this! It leads us not up to the gate merely, nor simply places us on the threshold; but it calls us into the inner chamber, and brings us nigh to the living God. It sweeps away all distance, all suspicion, all estrangement. It places us in the very shrine of the sanctuary; and that not merely as strangers admitted to behold the glory, but as children brought into the paternal dwelling, and settled there, as in their natural and undisputed home.

Man’s religion does not deal honestly, either with God or with himself. He is obliged to give a much better representation of himself than the case warrants. He is obliged to profess to be what he thinks he ought to be, and what he supposes God wishes him to be. He practises deceit upon his own conscience; and he tries to practise the same deceit upon God. The whole of man’s religion may be said to be founded upon this dishonest dealing. In his transactions with God, there is a want of straightforwardness and simplicity. He is disingenuous and crooked. He is always endeavouring to make out as good a case as he can for himself before God. God’s religion lays no such snare for the conscience. It sets out with declaring the utter evil and ungodliness of man. Thus, all temptation to deceitfulness is completely swept away. There is no room for it.

Man’s religion has in it no struggles, no dangers, and but few difficulties. The path it prescribes is easy, not hard for flesh and blood. It leaves out the pangs of the new birth—the struggle with unbelief, with the flesh, with Satan. These have no place in it at all. It acknowledges no enemies, no hardships, no conflicts. It broadens the narrow way, smoothing its ruggedness, and plucking up the thorns and briers that beset it. God’s religion assumes all these things as not only certain, but necessary. It commences with a strife which seems to rend the heart in twain. The lightning of Sinai smites the sinner to the dust. The voice of the terrible law thunders against him, and shuts him up in his helplessness and guilt.

Man’s religion does not ascribe salvation wholly to God. It tries to share the credit of it with man. Admitting that man is a lost being, and therefore needing salvation, it includes salvation in its objects; it does not refuse to give to God some considerable share in planning and effecting it; but it seeks to divide the credit, so that, at least, man shall have some of it, and be in some degree, however little, his own Saviour. Salvation wholly of the Lord is too humbling to be owned. Yet this is the very centre of God’s religion. “Salvation is of the Lord.” God planned it all, and performs it all. Man gets the benefit, but God gets the honour. The first thought of it was from Him. The gift on which it rests was of Him. The propitiation was of Him. The choice is His, the giving is His, the eternal life is His. He is the great, sole Giver—we, the mere receivers. He is the beginning and the ending of it all; the planner, the provider, the accomplisher; and to Him must belong the endless praise.

Man’s religion does not trace up salvation directly to the eternal purpose of Jehovah. It passes this by; it shrinks from this; nay, sometimes it abjures this as fatalism. It substitutes man’s election of God for God’s election of man, and rejects the truth that not one soul would arise from the dead, or believe, or seek God’s favour, were it not for the Divine purpose from eternity. It says, “I can believe the truth of myself as easily as I can believe a lie; I can love God of myself as easily as I can hate Him; I can repent of myself, I can choose the good and shun the evil of myself.” It boasts of self-power to think, feel, choose, do everything that is right and holy. God’s religion takes the eternal purpose of Jehovah for its basis, as that without which there could be no gospel, no salvation, no hope for the sinner. Thus the two religions are opposed to each other. They have hardly one common principle, either in regard to God’s character or man’s. God has no right to decree who are to be saved, and man is not so far gone in sin but that he can believe of himself, and turn to God—are the two principles on which man’s religion rests. God has an entire, inalienable, and sovereign right to decree who are to be saved, and man is a totally depraved and helpless creature—are the two principles on which God’s religion bases itself. Man’s election of God is the main idea of the former; God’s election of man is the essence of the latter. God presents himself to us in the attitude of a sovereign God, doing according to His will in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth. It is His eternal purpose that is the fountainhead of all that we call salvation; and not only is the scheme of deliverance in general traceable to this, but the rescue of each one who is saved is directly ascribed to the same eternal source. All is of God, and God is all. The redeemed are as truly and specially comprised in the eternal plan as is the Redeemer. They and He have been viewed as one from all eternity. The Father selected the bride just as personally as He chose the Bridegroom.

Such are the two religions in their chief points of contrast. How worthless the one—how blessed and glorious the other! We have seen the poverty of man’s religion, and how far short it falls of man’s true wants. It leaves him still empty and craving. At every point it comes short of what it professes to give, and fails in the very things which man most deeply feels his need of. Some religions may be said to bring man further than others, but all of them leave him somewhere short of God. They bring him within sight of the temple, but they lead him not in. They keep him trembling on the outside.

God, on the other hand, has provided such a religion as leads us at once into His temple, and brings us not only across the threshold, but up to Himself. He completes the reconciliation at once, and, placing us on the footing of entire acceptance, He bids us lay aside our dread, and begin at the same moment our worship and our love. Gradual approximation to God and to His fellowship is all that man’s religion can promise us; immediate entrance upon a secure and happy friendship is what God’s religion accomplishes in every soul that receives it.

-Taken from The Life and Works of Horatius Bonar CD-Rom