These verses in 2 Corinthians 3 should not merely be a doctrine to us. The real deliverance from traditional religion is not something merely outward, but it is something in the spirit. When you are really walking, working, acting, and behaving yourself in the spirit, you are out of religion and traditions. I doubt that many of us who have given up the way of denominations have been walking and living in the spirit since that time. If you have not been walking, living, acting, and behaving yourself in the spirit, you may have given up some traditions, but you are still living in your own traditions. You may have given up one religion only to form another one. Apart from the spirit, even you yourself become a religion.

To be delivered out of religion and out of tradition is to live, walk, act, and behave in the spirit. This is a matter that is very strict. If you are in the spirit, you are out of the denominations, out of the traditions, and out of any kind of religion. If you are not in the spirit, you may apparently be outside of religion, but you are actually still in your own religion. That religion is a veil covering you, so the Bible is not an open book to you. Your religion is a veil covering your eyes from seeing the light, the revelation, the visions in the New Testament. We have to turn ourselves from any kind of religion, even from the self-made religion. We have to turn ourselves to the Spirit.

Many dear saints have a self-made religion. A brother once came to tell us that he felt pray-reading the Word was not so right. He felt that we needed to worship the Lord in the way of everyone being quiet and praying slowly. This is a self-made religion. Another brother may feel that he must go out to the foreign field to be a missionary. This also may be a self-made religion. In the Far East, a British brother once asked me why the men sit together among themselves and the women sit together among themselves in our church meetings. He said that this was not the right way to meet. This is also a self-made religion. This religion immediately becomes a veil, veiling him from seeing Christ, veiling him from the real life in the Holy of Holies. Many of us may be unaware of the fact that we have our own self-made religion.

We all have to be delivered from the veil of religion. “The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17). The Spirit frees us from any kind of religion. Worshipping the Lord is not a matter of separating the men from the women nor of mixing them together. John 4:24 tells us that we must worship God in spirit. We have to live in the spirit and meet the Lord in the spirit. I do not care how the saints sit in the meeting. I only care for one thing-whether or not I am in the spirit. The Lord is the Spirit in our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22; Rom. 8:16). If we keep ourselves in the spirit, the veil is gone immediately. We will have an unveiled face, not the outward physical face, but the inward spiritual face. We will be able to see the Lord, and others will see Him in us through our reflection of Him. We will become a beholding and reflecting mirror of Christ.

A man living in the spirit must be a captive of Christ, a letter of Christ, and a mirror turned to the Lord with an unveiled face. Then this man will behold and reflect the glory of the Lord, and he will be transformed dispositionally in his very being into the image of Christ from one degree of glory to another degree. This transformation proceeds from the Lord Spirit and has nothing to do with any religion, with any forms, with any regulations, with any different teachings, or with any dead knowledge. We have to turn ourselves to the spirit to contact the Lord Spirit with an unveiled face. To behold the Lord with an unveiled face is to be freed from all religion. As we solely take care of the Spirit living within us, day by day and hour after hour, we will be transformed into the same image of Christ.
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