Thursday, July 18, 2013

Repudiating Its Power (part 1 of 2)

They will maintain the outward appearance of religion but will have repudiated its power.  So avoid people like these. – 2 Timothy 3:5  (NET)

Consider Paul’s use of the term “power.”  This terms makes frequent appearances in his writings.  To take just a couple of examples that set out Paul’s opinion concerning power, one can look to the first chapter of Romans.  There, Paul refers to Jesus as the Son-of-God-in-power (1:4).  He then goes on to declare that the Gospel “is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes” (1:16b).  Here, Paul equates the Gospel of Jesus, which is the message that Jesus is the crucified and resurrected Lord of all, with power.  That is what produces salvation---bringing a person into the ranks of the covenant people. 

For Paul, it seems that the very declaration of the fact of the Gospel of Jesus the Christ, which for him is somehow brought about through the prompting of the Holy Spirit (for Paul insists that one only calls Jesus Lord---confesses a trusting allegiance in the Gospel---by the movement of the Holy Spirit – 1 Corinthians 12:3), is what releases the inherent transformative power of the Resurrection into the world. 

Returning then to the second letter of Timothy, one finds Paul writing that it is through “our Savior Christ Jesus,” that the Creator God has “broken the power of death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel” (1:10).  The fact that Jesus is Lord, and ones belief in such, is paramount.  It is what brings heaven to earth and ushers in the new age.  Paul here informs his audience that the power of the Gospel (Jesus is Lord) is such that it breaks the power of death.  Since the Gospel includes the message of One that was raised from the dead, such an insistence is a necessary corollary.  It goes beyond the breaking of death’s power, as the Gospel brings life and immortality. 

To see this life and immortality, Paul has only to reflect on what he takes to be the fact that the risen Jesus is alive and ruling the kingdom of God that has been inaugurated, in a world that is now subject to two forces (death and Resurrection), and in which one of those forces (death) has already been defeated, while all creation, together with the people of God, await the consummation of that kingdom and the installation of the force of Resurrection as the animating principle of the Creator God’s kingdom in a restored and renewed creation.  In this way of thinking, Paul, in hope, awaits the life and immortality to be shared by the Creator God’s people, through their believing union with the Christ, in the Resurrection of the righteous that is to come. 


Having spoken in this way, Paul goes on to insist, “For this Gospel I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher” (1:11), with a clear echo (along with his talk of power) of the opening of Romans, as he refers to himself as “a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God” (Romans 1:1).  To Timothy he continues on to write: “Because of this, in fact, I suffer as I do.  But I am not ashamed, because I know the One in Whom my faith is set” (1:12a).  Paul’s use of “not ashamed” is not only significant in that it reminds the reader of the fact that he lives in an honor and shame culture in which casting one’s lot with a crucified man was a shameful thing, immediately evokes thoughts of Romans 1:16 again, where he announces the power of the message of the crucified yet risen Lord, prefacing it with the words “I am not ashamed.” 

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