Most of the things done were good enough. It is good to have the outside of the cup clean but not so important as the inside or as clean water in the cup. Jesus exposed this failing of the Pharisees with great incisiveness and power. It is easy to mistake form for reality. So men have come to count their beads as prayer, to pray with prayer wheels. A person may attend church regularly, contribute liberally, come to prayer meeting, have family prayers, be a member of the church, and yet not be religious. He may have religiosity and not religion. One may mistake performance of religious functions for the possession of the spirit of religion. In the very act of working out the religious impulse men often fall into traps. So here the man considers that he is a religious man. He is content with his religious status, and yet he does not control his tongue. “He bridleth not his tongue”; this is the earliest known use of this striking figure, though Aristophanes speaks of an unbridled mouth. The tongue is regarded as an unruly horse that needs bit and bridle held fast by the master to control it. The tongue is allowed to say whatever a spiteful heart prompts. The bitterest words are not felt to be inconsistent with personal piety. Such a man considers himself a pillar of the church in spite of his loose tongue and loose living. He performs religious duties on Sunday and is a shyster on Monday. He deceives himself, but no one else is deceived. Such a man’s religious service is empty of any value with God or man. It is vain and hollow mockery. His own complacency makes the matter worse. He is a stumbling block to those who judge religion by him, for he has divorced religion from life. Unspotted from the World (1:27) James does not give a definition of religion in this verse but an illustration of the right sort of religious exercise in contrast with the futile religiosity already noted. The absence of the article shows that he does not mean an inclusive description. “A religious exercise pure and undefiled” is here given quite the opposite meaning of the professional performances of the pharisaic pietists. There is pure religion, and the counterfeit is a tribute to it. This religion is free from pollution. There is in it no alloy of selfishness nor other sin. Moffatt renders it “unsoiled,” but it may have the notion of genuine metal. This standard of purity and piety seems impossible, but God knows how to estimate the relation between listening and doing, between doing and loving, between loving and purity of life. The life must pass muster with God. At first sight one is perhaps depressed by the reflection that God’s standard of piety is so much higher than ours. What some men consider holy worship is to God hollow mockery. But then God is our Father. He planted the word of truth in our hearts. He has watched it grow. He knows the limitations of environment in which the tree of life has grown.