Their way took them near the City of Fair Speech. Four of its untrustworthy citizens came out to salute them, bowing very low.
“We too are going to the Celestial City,” they said. “We shall be glad of your company.”
Hopeful was for joining them. But Christian had heard of their city - that it was a place where Money ruled, and where Religion went in silver slippers. He also recognized one of them as Mr. By-ends, who had many rich relations; his wife was Lady Feigning’s daughter, and he was a friend to Mr. Facing-both-ways, and to Mr. Money-love. So Christian whispered in Hopeful’s ear: “I like them not as our companions. For they are very knaves.”
In his classic theological book, Pilgrim’s Progress, reformer John Bunyan recorded a dream he experienced while imprisoned in England for his faith. The book follows the quest of a man named Christian to reach the Celestial City, a place of freedom and salvation from the City of Destruction. Along the way Christian meets few friends and many foes, and even loses his friend Faithful, who is martyred in Vanity Fair.
After he escapes the city with his new ally Hopeful, Christian meets four men from a nearby city who seem eager to join them in their quest. Bunyan’s description of them is cautionary, calling them “untrustworthy” and implies they are false and over-flattering by “bowing very low.” Hopeful, a recent convert and new pilgrim, is caught off guard and wishes to take these counterfeits along as fellow travelers. Christian knows better, however; he recognized them as citizens of the City of Fair Speech, “...a place where Money ruled, and where Religion went in silver slippers.” When the reader first reads this description, he might be taken aback; why is Religion implied as evil? Why is Religion’s place of honor in the city compared to Money’s rule? This is an example of the difference between works-righteous religious practice, and “religion that is pure and undefiled before God,” described in James 1:27 (ESV). In this essay, I will examine three examples of how man-made religions counterfeit true faith, and why this facade does not stand up before God’s standards.
Man has had “religion” problems since the Fall of Man, when Adam made the fatal decision to take his relationship with God into his own hands and ate the forbidden fruit. All have tried to take salvation into their own hands before Christ took His elect as His own, and the lost continue to believe they will “win” heaven by their good works on Judgment Day. In Genesis 11, all the men of the earth gathered to build a tower, named Babel, to reach heaven, so they could reach God and their descendants would remember them for their work. Genesis 11:4 says, “Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.’” God looked down on their feeble attempts to reach His throne, and confused their language to foil their plan and dispersed them to populate the earth. God doesn’t share His glory in our salvation, and any attempt to save ourselves is condemned by God as a form of idolatry.
The Pharisees of Jesus’ day are perhaps the clearest picture of self-righteous religion than any other. They had invented their own code of Judaism by extending God’s law, weighing men down with man-made laws, while making loopholes for themselves in the original law. Because of their seemingly strict moral system and haughty appearance, the rest of Israel and Judah held them in the highest esteem, until Christ unmasked their hypocrisy and showed them who they really were. In Matthew 23:4, He accuses the Pharisees, “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.” Later in the same chapter, in verses 25 and 26, our Lord says,
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.
Jesus knew their problem; they were striving to keep up good appearances before fellow men, were caring more about pleasing men than pleasing God, and were relying on their “good” works and sonship of Abraham to earn their seat in God’s kingdom. Because of these evil motives they had Jesus tried for blasphemy and crucified Him on the cross at Calvary. In His divine plan, God used Christ’s sacrifice for our own redemption.
In more recent times, the Roman Catholic Church imposes a works-based religious system that resembles true Christianity, but relies heavily on works and appearances, as did the Pharisees before them. Although they claim to believe in Christ’s atoning work on the cross as all-sufficient for our salvation, they believe that their “good works” complement His atoning work, and reduces the time they must spend in Purgatory, an imaginary place they have created to fill this gap in their theology. Basically, Purgatory is a reformatory type of hell, where all men must spend some amount time to pay their sentence for their sins. This notion, that we can pay for our sins without needing Christ’s gift of repentance and faith in Himself, blatantly contradicts Scripture. For example, Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not of your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” If we claim to have any hand in our own salvation, or even our sanctification as believers, we take credit for what God has freely given us, and the Lord considers that glory stolen. It is a serious matter to take the glory of perfect God, and ascribe it to fallible men.
In the passage I quoted above from Pilgrims Progress, it says, “He [Christian] also recognized one of them as Mr. By-ends, who had many rich relations; his wife was Lady Feigning’s daughter, and he was a friend to Mr. Facing-both-ways, and to Mr. Money-love.” Lady Feigning is a picture of this kind of false religion and piety; Mr. Facing-both-ways and Mr. Money-love illustrate the attitude of keeping one’s foot in the world, while pretending to be striving after the things of God. God knows our inward thoughts and motives, however, and He is not fooled as fallible men as to outward appearance. Acts 15:8-9 says, “And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as He did to us, and He made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith.” Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for our atonement is to His own glory, and His glory in this divine act is not to be shared with imperfect men’s pitiful acts of “religion.” John Bunyan was a great man of faith, and his insight into Man’s self-saving efforts is just a small sliver taken out of his theological masterpiece, Pilgrim’s Progress.
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