What is God’s religion?
I ask the question because I saw someone say recently: “God is a Christian God.” That statement was countered with “No, God is a Jewish God.” I suppose had I waited long enough, a consensus might have formed that God was “both Jewish and Christian.”
He’s not either, actually.
“Religion” as the Bible defines the word is “thres’kia” which means “ceremonial practices done in or for veneration to a deity. There is no word “religion” in that sense in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). There is a word translated as “law” in a few places in the OT. Of course the word “law” is all over the OT, but usually that word is “Torah.” Every now and then, however, the word is translated from the Hebrew word “daht” and in that case it doesn’t really mean “law” it means “keeping laws.”
The word “religion” as we know it comes from the Latin. It’s a compound word “re” meaning “back” or “to return to” and the word “legair” meaning “to bind” or “to be bound to.” Thus, “re-legair” (which would become “religion”) means “to be bound back.”
We are a people who have been bound to God through the blood of Jesus and, in return, we worship God and serve our fellow man. We worship God because He’s the one who bound us to Him; we serve our fellow man because that’s what God commands of us. That’s why James defines “pure religion” as being “before God,” and as “helping” those in need (James 1:27).
Interestingly, the Hebrews thought of religion as “law keeping” because that was the basis of their society. Everything revolved around those stone tablets and the rest of Moses’ writings. They kept the law and by keeping it they were practicing their religion. Or, at least, that’s what they thought. The Greeks, on the other hand, thought of religion as “ceremony doing” because their gods were figments of myth who needed big and elaborate temples and productions to offer them worship. Christianity is neither the Hebrew nor the Greek style of religion. There are laws and there are ceremonies but everything that is done in Christianity is done from the heart. The inner man is bound to God and the result is obedience to His laws and observance of His ceremonies. That brings us back to the original question: What is God’s religion?
Answer: God has no religion.
God is not a Christian nor is He a Jew. God is God. God has no religion because He does not worship. He is not bound to anyone. There is nothing higher than Him to bow to, or obey. Instead, He has created religions for men to have. In the Old Testament times, that religion of God for man was Levitical. Since the ascension of Jesus, the religion from God to man is Christian. But in the end, God is not a Christian God or a Jewish God; God is the God OF the Christian and the Jew…and the pagan and the atheist and the satanist and the agnostic and every other person who ever has been or will be because He made all…whether we bind ourselves to Him and worship Him according to the religion He gave us or not.
~Matthew