“If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is useless.”
but deceives his own heart,
A person who has no control over his tongue cheats his own heart. He misleads himself. He cannot see the truth about himself.
“The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)
this one’s religion is useless
The word “useless” is a term of vanity. This person’s religious life is void of result and force. Her religion is useless and of no purpose. It is idle, empty, fruitless, useless, powerless, and lacking truth. She trifles in religion.
Principle:
Our Christianity is useless when we do not translate what we believe into experience.
Application:
Many people can quote the Bible by the mile but live it by the inch. They are long on talk but short on truth. They are sermon tasters, connoisseurs of spiritual things without experiencing the reality of those things.
A truly spiritual-minded person falls in love with the Word of God. When we fall in love with the Word, we also fall in love with the Son of God.
We never graduate from the Bible. We never get too big for the Bible. We must constantly and continually translate the Bible into our life. The Bible is the most severe critic of our life, the plumb line and measuring stick of how we live our life.
If we feed on the Word of God, it will become a part of us. We are what we eat physically; we are what we believe spiritually.
