<p>1:27- see on Acts 6:3.</p><p><i>Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: To visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unstained by the world</i>- Visiting (in the Hebrew sense of coming near to) the fatherless and widow in the ecclesia is associated with being unspotted from the world; our closeness to the world of the ecclesia in itself will keep us separate from the pull of the kingdoms of this world (James 1:27). Visiting the fatherless and widows will result in the believer keeping himself unspotted from the world (James 1:27 Gk.).</p><p>&quot;Pure ('clean') religion&quot; may refer to the system of religion that comes as a result of &quot;the washing of water by the word&quot; (Eph. 5:26). This religion is also &quot;undefiled&quot;- possibly implying that to not let the word totally affect our lives is to allow ourselves to be defiled by our fleshly mind and desires. The sexual connotations of the word for &quot;Undefiled&quot; would suggest that passive laziness to apply the word is equivalent to active unfaithfulness against Christ. This pure and undefiled religion &quot;Before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction&quot; (v.27). The reference to God as the Father is in the context of v.17- &quot;the Father of (the) light&quot; of the word which came down to us. We may well ask 'Why is God so especially concerned for &quot;the fatherless and widows&quot;'? Maybe because He had witnessed the emotional agony of His humanly fatherless Son, Jesus, and the broken heart of Mary on the Lord's death? There is a possible connection between this verse and John 14:18 where Jesus promises that he &quot;Will not leave you orphans (fatherless- A.V. 'comfortless'): I will come to you&quot; through the Holy Spirit Comforter.</p><p>The ideas of God 'coming down' and 'visiting' people are common Old Testament idioms for God manifestation. Thus it may be that James is implying that in the same way as Jesus has visited us through the Spirit-word, so we should share the spiritual Comfort of the word with the fatherless and widows. We have noted the association between 'coming down' and the gift of the Spirit-word already in v.17, which provides the background for this v.27. This pure religion is also to keep ourselves &quot;Unspotted from the world&quot;. The words &quot;pure&quot;, &quot;undefiled... unspotted&quot; are all the language of marriage. Because the notion of us being the bride of Christ, engaged to Him, seems so far above our feeble spirituality, it is tempting to think that the relationship between a man and his bride is just being used as a vague likeness of our relationship with Christ. But the glorious fact is that we are in absolute reality the typical bride of Christ Intercourse with the world and fleshly mind is as bad as being unfaithful to our bridegroom- and almost on the night of our marriage, too. The comment is sometimes made that Christians are too dreary and weighed down by our sins. But bearing in mind the nature of our relationship to Jesus and His faithfulness unto death for us, it is not surprising that we are seriously worried about the continual failures which we have to admit to; these are equivalent to being unfaithful to Him. To balance this, there is the joy of receiving &quot;every good and perfect gift&quot; from our loving, truly merciful Father, the knowledge that He is delighted by our strivings to truly develop spiritually; and the happiness (&quot;blessedness&quot;) of the man who does try to keep the word in his heart. Whilst we need to be careful that we are not giving way to spiritual pride, there can be a sense of deep joy and peace at the little victories we slowly win against the flesh.</p>