When it comes to the New Covenant, this new way Jesus established, I believe the central change is leaving behind an external expression of relating to God, and embracing the new internal expression. In the New Covenant, everything is internal. That’s the way faith in Christ works. It is an internal reality.

All the practices of religion are external, but, contrary to this, the reality of faith in Jesus is internal. Everything foreshadowed in the Old Testament that was outworked in external religious practices is now worked out in the internal reality we experience with God.

The Temple is no longer a place you physically visit. Christ’s revelation to us is that God’s Temple is within us, but even more than that, we are actually the Temple, when we are joined together in love, in oneness.

The word of God is not something you read. Christ’s revelation to us is that the Word is not a book, it is the Spirit of Christ abiding within you. Jesus is the Word of God.

The worship we offer God is no longer external songs sung to him, now it is the way our hearts participates in love.

Take communion for example. This has actually become a religious observation. Can you believe that? It’s actually become what in most religious circles is called a sacrament. But what is it really? Communion, in the true sense of the word, is a time of coming together and connecting over a warm meal and a few drinks.

It is meant to be a celebration of intimate friendship, yet it has become a time of absolute silence and separation from other believers. Did God ever want it to be about you and him? Is it meant to be a silent ritual? Isn’t the whole point actually about connecting joyfully with other believers around you? That’s what ‘communion’ means to me: to commune, to enjoy time together, and in the midst of this time of connecting with one another, to remember our God who has brought our hearts together.

I don’t believe communion should be recognized as a religious practice; the spiritual significance of it should only really be recognized by believers. To everyone else it would simply look like a group of friend having a meal and enjoying each other’s company. But when someone looks at the mainstream way ‘communion’ is outworked they don’t have to be Einstein to see that a very religious activity is taking place.

When you break it right down, the core problem we see when we review church history is the compulsion, generation after generation, to fit the New Covenant internal realities into the Old Covenant external framework.

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This was excerpt from my forthcoming book (out Aug 26): An Outsider’s Guide to the Gospel, a follow up to my novel SNAP (everyone has a breaking point).