A Religious Sinner

The following excerpt comes from the book Perfect, Yet Pressing by Rev. John Thompson. Are you a religious sinner? From the actions of the modern church, it would appear that there are many who could be placed in this category.

I Samuel 13:8-14.

Saul was a religious sinner. He was a worshipful sinner. Now mark you! I do not say that Saul was a saved sinner, a converted sinner, a regenerate sinner, but that he was a religious sinner. There in such a thing as having a great deal of religion, but not much salvation. Saul worshiped God, but he did not do the works of God. He counted sacrifice better than obedience, rather than obedience better than sacrifice. His life was a direct contradiction of the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. He was a very forgetful, impatient, religious sinner. He could not wait for Samuel, but thought that something must be done at once, and so he takes a priest's place and functions, and himself offered a burnt offering and sacrifice. Do you know that this thing is going on all the time -- all worship and no work; all words and no work? Over and over again Saul had to be taught that he must not think that because he had worshiped God he could go on and do things that God could not approve.

Oh, that we could see that consistency in our daily lives, practical holiness, every-day holiness, obedience to God, is better than sacrifice! We may go to meeting every day in the year and be religious sinners all the same. A man cannot oppress the widow and the fatherless and then worship God and think that he is all right. That is being a worshipful sinner. The two things must exactly tally. We must be full of worship and full of work. Our spirit and our creed and our conduct must exactly tally an correspond. What is the good of talking about perfect love if in the church of God or in the family there is the short, snarly, critical, censorious, easily-offended spirit? Where is the perfect love in that?

When we are filled with the Holy Ghost, there is a keen spiritual discernment as to the will of God, the worship of God and the work of God, and as to just where one links on to the other, so that a man is one and the same thing all the way through. It should not be a hard thing to get these things together. It does not require books or papers to teach us these things. Simplicity, child likeness, watching God, having the mind of the Spirit, keeping under divine guidance, moving cautiously, being careful to be obedient to everything that God says to us -- that is the safe path. Get off of that track and there is trouble somewhere there is trouble inside and trouble outside.

Oh, that the Lord would teach us this lesson! It is a very important one. I do not want anybody to stumble over me. They will, I suppose, but I want it should be because of my blunders, caused by imperfect judgment, and not because of anything that is inconsistent with pure and perfect love in me. I want worship and work to get thoroughly mixed up together in my religious life. Step cautiously. But not under strain and stress. The testimony of a pure conscience from a pure heart to a pure life. Say that I am under strain and stress. In one sense, bounding along with the simplicity of childlike freedom, yet keeping eye and ear, the eye and ear of mind and heart, open to God, in the minutest things of life. Not having a sore conscience, but a very tender conscience. Now, let us quit being religious sinners and be well-saved saints.