Outward Religion

The Nature of True Religion in Care for the Helpless, vv.26-27, "26 If anyone seems to be religious, not holding in check his tongue - but deceiving his heart, the religion of this man is empty. 27 This is pure and undefiled religion from God: to care for orphans and widows in their tribulation, to keep himself spotless from the world.

James sets up a theoretical case in order argue impersonally and without confrontation. He does not name names, but instead lets individuals apply the truth on their own. Nonetheless, this is a principle of truth.
The particle ei forms the first part of the theory in the form of a condition: “if.” The indefinite pronoun tis is the second part, making the verse universally applicable, “anyone.” The verb of the sentence is dokei, which describes presumptive or suppositional thinking. In fact we often say something along these lines with the English verbs think and seem: I think he’s full of hogwash;I thought I saw a puttytat; It seems the gig is up; He seems to be a good guy. A focus on outward appearance is the thrust of this verb. The seeming nature a man that is gleaned from observation. Threskos einai completes the idea of dokei – “to be religious” Threskos is a key word here, denoting the outward form of religion; attendance, visible participation in festivals and worship, and the like.

Ways in which you may have the appearance of religion:
(i) You may appear religious by your church attendance, but that’s not the fullness of what God wants;
(ii) You may appear religious by the clothes you wear;
(iii) You may appear religious by your vocabulary;
(iv) You may appear religious because you’re in church leadership;
(v) You may appear religious because of a personality affectation for the times you appear in a church;
(vi) And many other things, but the true religion is the religion of the heart, and it’s marked by Christian virtue love, 1 Corinthians 13:1-3: "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but I do not have virtue love, I have become an echoing gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophecy and I know all the mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all the faith to move mountains, but I do not have virtue love, I am nothing. And if I give away all my possessions and if I surrender my body so that I am burned up, but I do not have virtue love, I gain nothing.

Then comes a participle which describes a sinful and simultaneous action to the claim of religion. The first is that he does not bridle or hold in check his tongue: me chalinagogon glossan. So now at the same time he appears religious, with all of the outward trappings of a good Christian, as we would say, he does not bridle his tongue. There are two major ways in which the tongue may be unbridled: The tongue may be unbridled in some form of falsehood; The tongue may be unbridled in gossip, in verbalizing something which is rightfully private.

The conjunction alla interrupts the sentence, breaking it in two. It works as a punctuation mark of sorts. The idea of interruption breaks this verse into two parts, the one about the difference between an outwardly religious person who does not bridle his tongue, and the man who deceiving his heart has an empty religion. This makes the verse into a chiasm, a literary arrangement of structure and an offshoot of parallelism. It is very prevalent in the Psalms. The chiasm goes in structure as a…b…b…a, so that the main theme forms a sandwich around the alternative. The net effect of a chiasm is rhetorical. It is a way to emphasize a principle.

Our chiasm goes like this:
(A) If anyone seems religious
1. and at the same time does not bridle his tongue
2. He deceives his heart
(B) His religion is empty.

So A and B emphasize the outward religious aspect of the man’s life, while 1 and 2 emphasize the inward sinful aspect.

Apaton kardia autou is what a person who does not bridle his tongue does. He deceives his heart. The kardia represents the inward person: 1 Samuel 16:7, "7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” Galatians 6:3, "3 For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

This is self-deception, whose root is arrogance. Obadiah 3, "3 “The arrogance of your heart has deceived you, You who live in the clefts of the rock, In the loftiness of your dwelling place, Who say in your heart, ‘Who will bring me down to earth?’ The fruit of deceit: Titus 3:3, “3 For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.”

Toutou mataios he threskeia is translated, "The religion of this man is empty." It is a match for the emptiness of the way of the world: 1 Peter 1:18, "18 knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers; Ephesians 4:17-19, "17 So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, 18 being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; 19 and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness; Romans 1:21-23, "21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures; Matthew 15:7-9, "7 “You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you: 8 ‘This people honors Me with their lips, But their heart is far away from Me. 9 ‘But in vain do they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’”

Man’s religion can be empty, and that is what occurs when the heart is deceived and the tongue becomes unbridled.