Tim Barnett explains what Jesus actually taught about religion and the kingdom of God.
Transcript
Tim: You know the drill. Let’s watch the video, and I’ll share some thoughts as we go.
Original video: Jesus did not come to earth to try and start a religion.
Tim: Later, this content creator also says, “Jesus was actually against religion.” The only problem is Jesus was a religious Jew. He attended synagogue services, observed Jewish holy days, and explicitly says that he came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, not to abolish them.
Not only that, but if he was against religion, then why did Jesus say, “On this rock, I will build my church” in Matthew 16? Why did he establish church discipline in Matthew 18? Why did he institute a religious meal at the Last Supper in Matthew 26? And why did Jesus command his disciples to both baptize and teach obedience to his commandments in Matthew 28? That’s a lot of religious stuff for someone who was against religion.
Of course, Jesus was against false religion and hypocrisy. That’s why he had a beef with the Pharisees. More on that later. But if religion is defined as a set of doctrines, rituals, commands, and structure, then Jesus was definitely not against religion.
Original video: This is what he actually came for. Jesus’ followers were called “the Way,” meaning that they were following a path.
Tim: True, early believers were called followers of “the Way,” but they weren’t merely following a path. They were following the path. Jesus himself says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.”
Original video: And one of Jesus’ main messages was that the kingdom of Heaven is within you. He would repeatedly refer to “God and Heaven is within you.”
Tim: Where does Jesus repeatedly say that God and Heaven is within you? There is one disputed translation that uses this language. It’s in the KJV and the NKJV. The Pharisees ask when the kingdom of God is coming, and Jesus replies, “The kingdom of God is within you.” There it is. Well, not so fast. Most Bible translations translate this as “within your midst” or “among you.” As N.T. Wright explains, the phrase likely means the kingdom was within your grasp. In other words, God’s reign was breaking into the world through the coming of Christ, and they had to respond to it. So, yes, the kingdom impacts our personal lives, but Jesus’ point wasn’t that God lives inside everyone. It was that the King was standing right in front of them, and they could enter his kingdom through repentance and faith.
Original video: And what Jesus was doing was, he was teaching the path of God. And he was showing people how to walk with God. But what happened was that religions were formed after his death and distorted his teachings.
Tim: Jesus wasn’t merely showing people the way to God. He was claiming to be the way. While some religions have distorted his teaching, that distortion doesn’t come from the early apostles. In fact, it was the apostles who carefully preserved and proclaimed what Jesus taught, correcting distortions as they arose. Christianity wasn’t a later corruption of Jesus’ message. It was the continuation of his message.
Original video: They use them to have control over people. They taught you to worship Jesus so that you would always feel less than.
Tim: Look, I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you should feel less than God, because you are less than God. He is the Creator. You’re not. But that’s not why we worship Jesus. We worship Jesus because he’s God, and that’s the appropriate response to God. That’s not manipulation. That’s reality.
Original video: And here’s the thing. While Jesus was alive, he challenged religions that were using fear and rules, like the Pharisees, instead of love. So, Jesus was actually against religion. And then religions were created to try and distort Jesus’ message to have control over people.
Tim: Jesus challenged false religion, not religion itself. “Religion” is a neutral word. The biblical authors distinguish between bad religion and good religion. Jesus condemns empty, hypocritical religion, but he affirms true religion. That’s why it’s too simplistic to say that Jesus was against religion.
Think of it this way. Saying religion is bad is like saying drugs are bad. While it’s true that drugs can harm and destroy lives, some drugs actually heal and save lives.
By the way, Jesus gave rules too. We call them commandments. There’s nothing inherently wrong with rules when they point to truth and life.
Jesus also used fear to wake people up. Jesus talked about outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth, getting thrown into a fiery furnace, eternal punishment, eternal fire, cutting off your limbs if they cause you to sin. You get the idea. Jesus uses shocking and scary imagery to warn about a scary reality.
Original video: Jesus was here to show you the path of God and to show you that God lives within each and every single one of us. So, the more that we can move away from religious dogma and actually get to the true message, we will start to recognize that we are one. We are together, and God lives within us.
Tim: Now who’s distorting Jesus’ teaching? Jesus didn’t say God lives within each of us. What he taught was that Jesus’ spirit dwells in believers who are born of the Spirit. In fact, he tells his disciples, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.” The dwelling of the Holy Spirit is not universal or automatic. It’s relational, given to those who trust in Jesus. That’s what Jesus taught.
Ironically, Jake hasn’t moved away from religious dogma at all. He just adopted a new religious dogma—one that is at odds with Jesus and his apostles.