John 16:3 Commentary and Bible Study

They have no real hold on God. They have no vital, living religion. There is dead religion, and there is living religion. There are counterfeit religions and dead religions where the adherents have no real hold on the living God, no communion with him, none of his power in their lives or over them, religions of formality, whose adherents have a dead faith. Well, the Jewish faith had become that, extraordinarily. Its clergy – not every one of them but most of its clergy – had no true religion: ‘because they have not known the Father, nor me.’