Love & The Public Good (part 1)

Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. – Romans 13:8  (NET)

In the thirteenth chapter of Romans, Paul extends his discourse from chapter twelve, which delineated the love that will be exercised within the Christian community, writing “Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law” (13:8).  This statement takes into consideration the pervasive structure of the debtor society of the Greco-Roman world, while it also seems to address the attendant and entrenched system of patronage and benefaction. 

Those that are instructed to “Owe no one anything” are encouraged to take the necessary steps to free themselves from the encumbrances of debt, and therefore free themselves from having to acquire a benefactor, as slipping into or maintaining such cultural norms will diminish the impact of the Christian community as a force for societal transformation, while it also, possibly, has a deleterious effect on the Christian meal table. 

The Christian, Paul would surely insist, is to be the patron of only one benefactor, that being Jesus, thus allowing the Christian to take the position of being a loving and altruistic benefactor to his community, his country, and to the world, as an enthusiastic representative of the kingdom of the Creator God.  When one considers the context in which Paul delivers the statement of verse eight, it should be noticed that he begins with “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.  For there is no authority except by God’s appointment, and the authorities that exist have been instituted by God” (13:1).  This is the paradoxical situation of the Christian. 

Yes, the confessed member of the body of Christ owes his allegiance to the kingdom of the covenant God, and yes, the Christian message is quite subversive in that it recognizes Jesus as the King of kings.  However, the Christian lives with a tension, recognizing “God’s appointment” of authorities.  That paradoxical tension of respectful subversiveness is well explicated by the second Psalm, which provides an example to be followed by the people of the Creator God and the nature of their interaction with governing authorities. 

There the Creator God’s people, via the Psalmist, are heard saying “So now, you kings, do what is wise; you rulers of the earth, submit to correction!  Serve the Lord in fear!  Repent in terror.  Give sincere homage!  Otherwise He will be angry, and you will die because of your behavior, when His anger quickly ignites” (2:10-12a).  While this can also be taken as words of warning to those that this God intends to be His kings and rulers in this world---His divine image bearers, it is well-understood to be directed to human authority figures.

Undoubtedly, this is directed firstly to the kings of Israel, and then by extension, to the kings of the earth as the Creator’s people take up their role to be a shining light to the nations that do indeed exemplify divine blessing, with a desire to be continuous extensions of the positive end of the Abrahamic covenant (a blessing to all peoples).  Such is neatly summed up by the last part of verse twelve of the second Psalm, in which insists “How blessed are all who take shelter in him!” 

It is in this light, the light of love and the opportunity to be a legitimate and well-received voice to those rulers that are in need of submission to the imperial claims of Jesus, that Paul writes “For this reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants devoted to governing.  Pay everyone what is owed: taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due” (13:6-7). 

Timothy & Countering The Culture (part 10)

Condemnation, attempts at heavy-handed transformation, or a mission-denying withdrawal and separation are not the means by which either Paul or Jesus asked for or expected the culture to be countered.  Remember, Jesus saved his denouncements for the leaders of the people.  Rather, the culture is countered, and the  transformation into a culture that comes closer to living as the true humanity originally intended by the Creator, through the kingdom-modeling, sacrificial, love-motivated and service-oriented activities of the members of the body of Christ, as they demonstrably and tangibly live out, in imitation of Jesus their claim that Jesus is Lord, and that He is Lord even over the Caesar that bears the title of “son of god.” 

What appearance will be taken by these activities?  Naturally, one can find the answer on nearly every page of Scripture.  Believers can look to the Jesus tradition as embodied by the Gospel accounts.  They can look at Acts.  When it comes to Paul, an observer can look at the entire body of work that is attributed to him in order to formulate an answer to this question.  However, this study is focusing in on a letter to Timothy, to whom Paul refers as his genuine child in the faith, seeing there what can be understood to be, regardless of Timothy’s “position” in the church, a personally directed letter that demands a personal response of a single member of the body of Christ, who is presumably attempting to live and to serve as part of a community that is yet one small component of a global kingdom.  Thus, realizing that there is a helpful counter-cultural message in the text of the letter may show the letter to be even more useful than some have previously imagined.   

When one thinks about countering the culture, it is almost inevitable that the first thoughts run to laws and to government.  In many ways and in many places, humans are brought up to think in such ways, believing governments to be either the source of problems or of solutions to problems, and are thereby ingrained with an almost unshakeable desire to effect changes that they would like to see through the coercive power of laws and regulations.  Government is recognized as the locus of power for the enforcement of laws.  By extension then, a government is an entity that has the power to regulate behavioral changes.  Such thinking was probably just as true in the days of Paul and Timothy as it is now. 

As the church presented a counter-imperial and counter-cultural ethic, it would be quite easy for the members of the body of Christ, who saw themselves (and should still see themselves) as representative of a kingdom to which all other kingdoms are subservient, to slip into a mindset that being counter-imperial or counter-cultural also meant that they were to be anti-government, especially if that government was actively oppressive towards Christians.  It is quite understandable why their Roman rulers were suspicious of so many Christians, considering the fact that Christians claimed to serve a Lord that was far superior to the emperor, while at the same time affirming their loyalty to a kingdom that was not Rome. 

It was one thing to maintain loyalty to tribal deities and to long-standing territorial power structures that could be taken advantage of by Rome as a means of preserving order and extending its reach, and which could stand side-by-side with Roman imperial ideology and worship, but it was quite another to take a position that ran contrary to that ideology that also served to discount the worship of Caesar, and even going so far as to place a criminal that was executed by Rome at the center of its worship and allegiance.  This was a direct affront to the power of Rome and to all community and civic sensibilities. 

Timothy & Countering The Culture (part 9)

These heralding words from the letter to the Ephesians, and more importantly for purposes of this study, the heralding words that are employed in the first letter to Timothy, are so much more than words that a client would use in honor of his patron.  They are words, as already indicated, that would be reserved for the honoring of the world’s patron (the patron of patrons), who was Caesar.  It serves as yet another indication to an alert listener or reader, that Paul, and those communities being formed around the claims of the Gospel (Jesus is Lord), stand in opposition to much of the prevailing culture of the day and are intended to be a transformative element within that culture. 

This transformation will not occur through denouncing the surrounding culture as hell-bound, perverse, or any number of adjectives that do much to polarize and little to effect change.  While there is certainly a mystical power in the pronouncement that Jesus is Lord, one can certainly agree that the power is magnified if the life of the speaker accords with the claim.  This goes well beyond the avoidance of things that are determined to be “sins” or that which is to be avoided by Christians, having much more to do with an active engagement with the culture that demonstrates the Lordship of Jesus over every area of life. 

The pronouncement of condemnation on anything and everything that does not align with one’s personal viewpoint is hardly effective, and the condoning of such activities would have to be read into the Scriptures in a way that lacks context or coherence.  This approach would probably fail to take into account the historical movement of Scripture, the over-arching meta-narrative of exile and exodus by which the Scriptures ask to be read, and the covenant and covenant-people framework on offer throughout the whole of the Bible that defines the people of the Creator God and that God’s mission in and for His world. 

Attempts to use Jesus’ harsh words against the leaders of the people, His actions in the Temple, or the sharp words of the prophets and the apostles as justification for harshness or ugliness that is merely cloaked in the veil of a pseudo-love, would be to abuse and misuse those words and actions, especially considering the fact that the harshness is so often directed to the covenant God’s covenant people.  Though one can look through the prophets and certainly find words of the Creator God’s condemnation directed towards the nations that surrounded and often mistreated Israel, not only is there a need to remember that such words were subsequent to the Creator God’s judgment of His people, but also to remember that this God’s taking up of human flesh and going to a cross in order to die for His enemies (after telling His people to pray for and love their enemies) pretty much changes everything.   

Distance from the text, both historically and culturally, especially for those in the western world, should lead away from dogmatism in engagement with respective cultures, and towards a compassionate, inquisitive, and mercy-tinged engagement that recognizes shortcomings and a lack of complete knowledge.  When one looks at the New Testament, what must be seen behind the text are communities that are struggling to come to terms with what is implied by the life of Jesus and the kingdom of the Creator God that has been inaugurated by His Resurrection, especially considering that said kingdom has been inaugurated in a way that was completely unexpected. 

This struggle, which can be seen in the New Testament and in the records and writings of the early church, encouragingly informs those that care to see that there has never been a monolithic “orthodoxy” at any point in time in the history of Christianity.  Therefore, any believer’s struggles, in attempting come to terms with the message of Jesus and His kingdom so that it might be possible to effectively, correctly, and faithfully engage the cultures in which the believers finds himself immersed, should inspire humility and a compassion for others, as the believers both depends upon and attempts to reflect the compassion of their covenant God as embodied by the Christ.     

Good Conduct, Good Deeds, Good Works (part 1)

…maintain good conduct among the non-Christians, so that though they now malign you as wrongdoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God when He appears. – 1 Peter 2:12  (NET)

The Gospel is inherently social.  Because it is the declaration of Jesus’ Lordship, with this Lordship being the Lordship not just of individual lives and souls, but over the whole of the cosmos, it has a social element.  This is a far cry from the Gospel being reduced to a “social gospel,” but rather, it is to say that the implications of the declaration demand to be worked out in a tangible, visible way, on display for a society to see. 

Just as the worshipers or proponents of the Caesar declared his lordship, and in doing so were not asking people to make a private confession of faith in Caesar or to cultivate a personal and private holiness that would somehow be pleasing to Caesar, neither were the proponents of Jesus insisting upon such a thing.  The Gospel (Jesus is Lord) was and is public.  The reaction to the Gospel (the fact that Jesus is Lord) demanded a community context.  The presentation of Caesar’s gospel (Caesar is lord of all) resulted in certain activities (the erecting of statues, sacrifices, festivals, submission to his earthly rule, etc…) that made it clear to all that his gospel was being accepted, so it would be expected that an alternative Gospel, especially in that day and age (and of course for all time) would demonstrate the same. 

When the Gospel (Jesus is Lord) was preached into a world that was accustomed to a regular hearing of a gospel message (Caesar is lord), it was preached into a world that was prepared to hear such a message, and it was preached into a world that would have expected public, community oriented demonstrations of what it was that was being trumpeted.  Yes, the Gospel was and is meant to be transformative.  That transformation, of course, is intensely personal, but that personal transformation was and is to be manifested in positive public behavior---not simply a negative (i.e. “I don’t do” these things and neither should you).  

That public behavior is not, as is so commonly proposed, merely that which takes place in church gatherings where singing, praying, lifting up hands, and giving are taken as the evidences of the inherent power of the Gospel and of transformed lives.  Public behavior is not that which is primarily concerned with a dramatic abstention from participation in life’s pleasures, accompanied by thinking that it is by constant refraining and restraining efforts that holiness is demonstrated. 

Those things can certainly be evidentiary, but they are only the primary evidence if one exalts the individual, rather than the body (and its Lord), and if one places private spirituality in the context of a personal quest to achieve heaven upon death higher than offering tangible service as and for a community (being lights to the world).  Such a focus seems to run counter to the movement of Scripture, in which the Creator God is constantly calling a people to Himself, beginning with Abraham, so that they might exemplify divine blessing and be a blessing to the whole of the created order.  Persons are called, and they are called to be a part of a people, for the primary purpose of being a blessing to the world so that the God that calls them into covenant might be glorified. 

Preaching & Believing (part 3 of 3)

Salvation would involve regaining a lost dominion, doing so in union with Jesus (believing in Him as Lord), sharing in His rule over all creation.  Most assuredly, for Paul, though it played a part in a greater hope, salvation had very little to do with an assurance of going to heaven when one died.  Sharing in the Resurrection of Christ and in His defeating of death, through that believing union with Him, meant that salvation and eternal life was at hand, and that the Creator God was at work, through the second Adam and those that claimed allegiance to Him, to undo and reverse that which was wrought by the first Adam.  This did not entail an escape from the world, but rather, an engagement with the world based upon the Creator God’s purposes, in hopes that the world, created as good, would one day be set completely to rights, restored, and renewed. 

Moving along with that, as one focuses on that which Paul preached and which also somehow brought belief---the Gospel, Paul begins to provide a practical definition for the term.  In explaining what he will always mean by “preaching the Gospel,” he writes “For I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received” (1 Corinthians 15:3a).  What is about to be read, Paul says, is “of first importance,” so it  should probably receive careful attention.  He writes, “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (15:3b).  He does not let this stand by itself, but continues on, attaching to this important proclamation of Christ’s death “that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve” (15:4-5). 

The whole of this statement is important.  Without an inclusion of all of this information, in verses three, four, and five, the Gospel, as defined by Paul, is not preached.  By definition, the preaching of the Gospel message that Jesus is Lord includes the preaching of death, burial, Resurrection, and appearances.  Most would find this strange, as one would not generally refer to one’s Lord and King as one that was crucified; and certainly, nobody would be inclined to speak of such a thing as a resurrection from the dead, as such simply did not happen. 

Gospel then is effectively summed up by saying that Jesus of Nazareth is the crucified, buried, and resurrected Lord of all.  That is the message of the Gospel.  That message is an announcement about Jesus, which would fit into the well-defined mold of the use of the term “gospel” in that day, which was that of announcements about the Caesar.  With that understood, Paul continues on, writing “Then He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.  Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles.  Last of all, as though to one born at the wrong time, He appeared to me also.  For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (15:6-9). 

Paul makes this appendage to the primary Gospel proclamation, bolstering the factual basis of the Resurrection, while apparently allowing himself to provide a bit of biography that points to what he believed to be evidence of the immeasurable grace of the Creator God---allowing him to preach the Gospel.  He adds, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace to me has not been in vain.  In fact, I worked harder than all of them---yet not I, but the grace of God with me” (15:10).  That grace of the covenant God that was at work in Paul was, at the least, the Resurrection power of the Gospel. 

By all means, it is possible to teach the sayings of Jesus, but if it is not presented with the firm foundation of the Gospel proclamation, then it is not really preaching the Gospel.  One can make presentations about Bible stories and characters, but if they are not tied together with the proclamation of Jesus as Lord, then there is not actually preaching the Gospel.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  Not every teaching demands to have a Gospel component, but it is quite helpful to have a definition of terms.  Having pointed to the grace of God as that which even allowed him to come to belief and to preach the Gospel message, Paul comes to the point about the power to produce the faith for belief and transformation that is inherent in what it is that he has preached, saying that, “this is the way we preach and this is the way we believed” (15:11b). 

If one truly desire to have an impact for the Lord God of creation in this world, then it is incumbent upon believers to speak the very message that sends His transforming, renewing, re-shaping, re-creating, restoring, and saving power into the world.  That message is the message of the Gospel.  The proclamation of Jesus as Lord is what carries the power, and it never fails.  If the Gospel is preached, belief will follow.      

Preaching & Believing (part 1)

…this is the way we preach and this is the way you believed. – 1 Corinthians 15:11b  (NET)

In order for a person to be counted amongst the number of the covenant people, and therefore participating in the life of the age to come in the here and now (eternal life) and the new creation to come, belief in the message of the Gospel (Jesus is Lord) is fundamental.  According to the New Testament reflections on the Christ-event and that which it has wrought in the world, belief in the Gospel is what brings change.  Belief in the Gospel is what brings transformation. 

Belief in the Gospel, and a trust that the Gospel contains power for change and transformation, which will be reflected in word and deed, is what conforms a man or woman into the glory-reflecting image of Himself that the Creator God desires for those that were created as His image.  This is something that is partially accomplished by preaching, as the hearing of the Gospel message is fundamentally associated with the coming of faith, which manifests itself as belief, which unleashes the transformative power of the Resurrection and the life of the age to come in the believer.

So this begs the question as to what it is that should be preached.  What message---whether one is a writer, or a teacher, or a preacher, or simply a person seeking to daily be a light and vessel for the Creator God’s use---should we preach?  This, of course, is a question with which the preacher should wrestle regularly.  A pastor, most especially, should desire to see changed lives amongst those to whom he has been called to serve and to teach.  Because of this desire, a pastor should always want to preach a message that ultimately produces belief in his hearers.  This makes a great deal of sense, since belief, rooted in the operative faith that the Apostle Paul insists somehow comes through hearing, is the vehicle for transformation.  It is wonderful to know that there is a message that has never failed, and which will never fail, to do this.  What is it? 

The Apostle Paul provides a useful guide in this area, doing so here in the fifteenth chapter of the first letter to the church at Corinth.  In it, he writes “this is the way we preach and this is the way you believed,” so what comes before that must be of some particular importance.  The chapter begins with Paul writing, “Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the Gospel that I preached to you, that you received and on which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message I preached to you---unless you believed in vain” (15:1).  Right away, one learns that Paul is referring to the Gospel. 

Now, some might say that “preaching the Gospel” is an obvious answer to the question as to what message never fails to produce belief and subsequent transformation.  Along with that, it would probably be said that, as long as a pastor is preaching from the Bible, or preaching about God, or preaching about God in Christ, that he is preaching the Gospel.  However, that may not necessarily be the case.  Preaching the “Gospel” is not simply preaching from the Bible, or about God, or even about Jesus. 

“Gospel,” as was well understood in the day in which Jesus lived and Paul wrote, had a specific meaning related to proclamations about the Caesar.  Therefore, the use of “Gospel” by Jesus, Paul, or any of the other New Testament writers or New Testament or era believers, would be construed as having a direct reference to proclamations about a King, that being Jesus the Messiah.  It is with this context, of Jesus as King, with claims on men and the world and power superior to that of Caesar, that Paul goes on to provide a basic definition of what it is that he means when he writes about his preaching of the Gospel.  

Renewed (part 2)

In the renewal, what the believer receives from the covenant God will be enduring, rather than temporary.  As Paul insists, it will be like a building or a house, as opposed to a tent (Temple imagery at play here?).  It is a house not built by human hands, in that it is not something that is or can be produced through the course of nature.  It requires the action of the Creator God.  It requires a great transformation.  It requires the application of God’s power in the same way that the body of the Lord Jesus Christ was transformed from a tent that could be dismantled, to a building that would endure.  His body was transformed into a form that would be eternal, and more than that, would be suited for the kingdom of heaven, which has been inaugurated here in this world, and which will ultimately be consummated here in this world when the Christ finally ushers in the completion of God’s kingdom. 

This is what the believer is to be expecting because of union with Christ.  The believer has a taste of it day by day when he or she experiences God’s power flows through them to deal with the effects of sin that is to be found all around them.  As the body of the Christ was transformed by the delivery of Resurrection power, so too are believers transformed (present and future) into the image that the Creator God would have them to bear day by day.  Indeed, those that live in an allegiance to Jesus will be transformed by that same Resurrection power, so as to be provided with a body, a building from God, that will be suited for His glorious and eternal new creation.      

As Paul moves on to the second verse of the chapter, he causes his hearers to encounter a powerful and interesting word that he uses to great effect elsewhere in his writings.  It is said, “For in this earthly house we groan, because we desire to put on our heavenly dwelling” (2 Corinthians 5:2).  Upon reading the word “groan,” one cannot help but be forced to contemplate the eighth chapter of Romans, where Paul writes, “For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now.  Not only this, but we ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we eagerly await our adoption, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:22-23). 

In both letters, the groaning is linked, while also calling to mind the groaning of Israel in Egypt and the response of their God to that groaning, which was to intervene to provide deliverance.  Just as the creation groans in anticipation of being “set free from the bondage of decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children” (Romans 8:21), so, as Paul says in speaking for the body of believers, we too groan with the same desire.  That desire, which comes as “the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groaning” (8:26b), is to move past the age in which physical bodies that wear away--- in this age of fallen man and a cursed earth in which “the creation was subjected to futility” (8:20a)---so as to put on a heavenly dwelling.  That heavenly dwelling is the physical body that will be suited to exist in God’s new creation.  That heavenly dwelling is that same body that Christ put on through Resurrection power, in which He walked this earth for a brief period in the God of Israel’s newly inaugurated new creation. 

Just as Jesus was raised up with that new body from out of the grave, so too shall those who have believed upon Christ and His Gospel (He is Lord of the entirety of the creation), be raised up with that new body when the final resurrection comes to pass and all things are restored.  Speaking to that entity over which Jesus is Lord and which also experiences the impact of the Resurrection, the creation itself does not groan after a disembodied spiritual existence as its final hope.  How could this be the case?  The creation groans for a renewal, and a time when all thorns and thistles will disappear and the lion will lay down with the lamb.  The creation does not have heaven as its final hope, and neither do those in union with Christ.  Since the believer groans in the same way as the creation (and vice versa), the believer then also groans for a renewal which extends beyond heaven, to the other side of heaven, as the ultimate hope.