The paper presents an example of the contrastive analysis of the cultural code of religion in German and Russian idiomatics. The cultural code is understood as a secondary symbolic system for the exploration of the mythological, symbolic, national-specific meaning of the word or the idiom. The study of basic cultural codes in the idioms is carried out within the linguocultural approach. The German and Russian idioms with the religious culture code have changed their original connotation of the key components: In these units we see a clear erasure of the sacred cultural codes. Instead of the sacred meaning came the ironic connotation or pragmatic potential. As idioms with a highly assessing potential, they are used in the written or spoken word in the European cultural circle. The cultural codes in the phraseology of related cultures can be the source of contrastive equivalence, as shown by the sample of the German and Russian phrases with the components Engel, ангел.