Mark Tabata’s Weekday Devotionals:
Tuesday April 7 2026
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James 1:27-Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
I hear it more and more in our world:
“We need relationship with God, not religion.”
“Jesus did not come to start a religion.”
“Religion is bad! Focus on your relationship with God, not on your religion!”
Well, how about it?
Let’s study.
The primary root word translated “religion” in the New Testament is eusebeia. Barclay provides a great overview of this word:
“EUSEBEIA THE WORD OF TRUE RELIGION There is a very great group of Greek words which is characteristic of the language of the Pastoral Epistles. As we shall see, they are not easy to translate, but they all have in them one essential idea. There is eusebeia, the noun, which is usually translated godliness in the AV. The RSV usually retains this translation. Moffatt translates it either piety, or religion, in the sense of true religion. There is eusebēs, the adjective, which the AV translates devout or godly, a translation which the RSV retains; Moffatt translates it religious, religiously-minded, or pious. There is eusebein, the verb, which means to worship, to carry out the duties of true religion. There is eusebōs, the adverb, which the AV translates godly. There is the closely related word theosebeia, which the AV translates godliness, and the adjective theosebēs, which means worshipping God. It can be seen that all these words come from the same root; and the root meaning of them all is awe in the presence of that which is more than human, reverence in the presence of that which is majestic and divine; not only do they express that feeling of awe and reverence, but they also imply a worship which befits that awe, and a life of active obedience which befits that reverence. The fact is that in so far as Greek has a word for religion that word is eusebeia….The Platonic Definitions define eusebeia as right conduct in regard to the gods. The Stoics defined it as knowledge of how God should be worshipped. Lucian (De Calum.) said that the man who is eusebēs, pious, religious, is a lover of the gods (philotheos). Xenophon (Memorabilia 4.3.2) said that such a man was wise concerning the gods….That is to say, eusebeia is the right attitude to God and to things divine, the attitude which does not eliminate God altogether, and which does not degenerate into futile superstition, the attitude which gives God the place he ought to occupy in life and in thought and in devotion. Josephus sets eusebeia over against eidōlolatreia, which is idolatry. Eusebeia gives God the right place, and worships God in the right way…(i) Sometimes it can mean that respect for the gods which issues in a careful carrying out of all the ritual which the worship of the gods demands. That is to say, sometimes it can be a word of correct ritual rather than of moral quality…(ii) Sometimes the word can mean loyalty, but that loyalty is always to a royal figure…(iii) But the word goes higher than that. To Sophocles eusebeia was the greatest of all the virtues….From the Greek point of view, we may note one final fact. The Greeks used eusebeia to translate the equally noble Latin word pietas. Pietas was the spirit of devotion to goodness, to honour, to honesty and to duty….All the nobility of pagan ethics at their best was in this word eusebeia before the Christian faith annexed it and made it even greater. Now we must turn to the biblical use of eusebeia. In the Septuagint eusebeia is not common; but there are two occurrences of it which are very illuminating. In Isa. 11.2 eusebeia is used for the fear of the Lord, which is one of the gifts of the Spirit; and in Prov. 1.7 it is used for that fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom. Here again we see that basically eusebeia is the right attitude to God, the attitude of awe, of reverence, of worship and of obedience….Still again we have this basic conception that eusebeia essentially means to give God the place he ought to possess in our minds, in our hearts and in our lives. Now we turn to the NT itself. Eusebeia occurs once in Acts….Eusebeia occurs ten times in the Pastorals….But we can already see that eusebeia means true godliness, true piety….(vi) Eusebeia must never be confounded with material prosperity. The man who sees in his religion, or who uses his religion as, the way to material success has a debased view of what religion is (I Tim. 6.5). But true religion is the way to the real profit and the real joy in this world and in the world to come (I Tim. 4.8). The essence of this matter lies in the basic truth that true happiness never results from the possession of things. It is not in things to give either satisfaction or peace. True happiness lies entirely in personal relationships. If a man has love he has everything. And the greatest of all personal relationships is the relationship with God. If that relationship is right, then life is true happiness. (vii) Eusebeia is the product of the life which is lived in the light of eternity.…(viii) For all that, true eusebeia does not separate a man from his fellow men. To his eusebeia, as an essential part of it, he must add brotherly love (II Peter 1.6, 7). True religion looks both to God and to man.…(ix) Eusebeia, true religion, is not confined to the precincts of the church, and is not limited to the worship and the liturgy and the ritual of the church. True religion begins at home. Those who would be real servants of Christ and of his Church must remember that the first duty of religion is to their own household (I Tim. 5.4)….When the Christian thinkers took over the word eusebeia it was already a great word, but they filled it with a content which made it far greater than ever it could be on the lips of any pagan thinker.” (William Barclay, New Testament Words (The William Barclay Library), 106-116 (Kindle Edition): Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press)
If you try to get rid of religion, you are attempting to remove: the love of God, the worship of God, the reverence of God, the fear of God, the proper relationship with God, and the proper relationship with your fellow man. True religion is good, as it encompasses and embraces all of these needed precious elements. By the same reasoning, false religion negates all of these good things.
Therefore,we may safely conclude that true religion is good, and is not the problem. False religion is what we must be on guard against.
Father, thank You for Your Word that reveals true, pure, and undefiled religion. Teach us, guide us, and help us. In Jesus’ name we pray together, Amen.