“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world — James defines authentic threskeia with stunning specificity: care for the vulnerable (orphans and widows representing the powerless) and personal moral integrity (separation from the world's corrupting values). The threefold components—care for others, holiness, and protection from worldly defilement—show that pure religion integrates vertical (toward God) and horizontal (toward neighbor) dimensions inseparably.
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