And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body. And they seized him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.
Mark 14:51-52

I love this small, seemingly insignificant verse. The reason I love it is because of the way it challenges our imagination. It is a verse that is only found in Mark, and it’s curious nature has led to much speculation about whether this was in fact John Mark that it is referencing. We have no way of knowing this for certain of course, but the reason I really like this theory is because of how it helps frames this Gospel tradition, a tradition that has long been associated with Peter. It’s striking that the Gospel (Christ’s work on the Cross) could emerge from such a moment like this, just as astonishing that a work driven by Peter’s own ministry could be willing to depict Peter and the disciples in such a light. It’s such a grand, human expression and it reminds me that in all our messiness, and in all of our questions and fears and doubts, God still works.

The Earliest Gospel, and a Persistent, Undeniable Word
Mark has long been understood to be the earliest of the Gospel writings. Although the author remains ambiguous, as I mentioned it has generally been placed within the tradition of Peter, with John Mark perhaps the same one we encounter along with Peter and Paul’s travels. One of the wonderful things about the Gospel of Mark is how all the evidence for its dating and authorship consistently pushes back on more modern attempts to try and position the writings of the New Testament neatly into a post-exilic, and often very post-exilic framework (no matter how hard one tries, the Gospel seems to want to position itself as being written in the mid to late 50’s, which has definite impact on so many working theories). The Gospel of Mark just refuses to be wrestled down in such a neat and clear fashion, which has this affect of challenging our perception and our ability to categorize these writings in a particular way. In this sense it brings us closer to Jesus and the Cross in a more faith driven way.

The purpose of Mark is simple and clear. It was written to a gentile audience in order to help them learn about Jesus’ Jewish context (within its universal reach). It occupies a distinctive and unique place among the Gospel writings n this regard, and we see in the words of Matthew and Luke the influences of Mark’s intimate concern.

The Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus- Who is Jesus and Where are We Following Him To
Mark begins in a familiar place in the Gospel tradition, establishing its opening words as
“The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God (1:1)”. Mark keeps it simple and concise, moving to connect it to Isaiah as a way of establishing Jesus straight within the Jewish tradition, before then locating this within the ministry of John the Baptist as “the messenger” who is preparing the way for the long expected Jewish Messiah. In a brief 11 verses we are brought from Israel’s prophetic ministry to the ministry of John to the ministry of Jesus, all anchored by the confirming declaration of his baptism, “You are my beloved son.” (1:10) This, as Mark says, is the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, ‘the son of God”.

Mark’s explanation of the baptism narrative is also refreshingly uncomplicated. The water is John (man), the Spirit is Jesus (God 1:8), which leads to water and Spirit becoming one in Jesus (both man and God 1:9-11). It is the Spirit then that drives this man Jesus into the wilderness (1:12-13), which contrasts with John’s imprisonment (1:14) as both the “sign” of the Kingdom’s arrival (1:15), an important theme that will push through Mark, and of God’s work being set in the context of man’s bondage to Sin. What emerges in an equally brief Temptation Narrative (1:12-13) is that this bondage is a “spiritual” reality, with Mark establishing the central conflict between the Power of the Spirit and the Power of the Devil (or the Power of Sin and Death, which is the Pauline language). As Jesus enters the temple (which he returns to over and over again in Mark), he is established as different than the “scribes” (1:22), and the kingdom then established as different than the one they expect, with a spiritual battle surfacing between the Powers (Jesus and the Demons, which are a visible mark of the healing narratives in Mark) in the midst of the earthly kingdom.

With all of this established in quick succession, we get this declaration that “The time (the Jewish expectation) is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand (1:15).” Leading to the call of the disciples as participants in this kingdom work (1:16-20). This imagery is going to become hugely important for carrying through to the of Mark. Here Mark finally slows down though and settles in with the call to “follow Jesus” to where he is going.  The idea of “following” is a motif in 1:16-20 that opens up this question that will inform the journey in Mark. Who is Jesus and where is it that we follow Jesus to? Mark has established that Jesus is the Son of God, but where He is going is something that has yet to unfold. All we know at this point is that time has both come and is at hand, and what we get in these opening words is this indication that somehow and in someway where we are following Jesus to is into some picture of the wilderness that informs the Temptation Narrative.

The Temple and the Gospel’s Jewish Roots
Jesus journey begins in the temple (1:21) and reaches out (1:29) from house to house. This reemphasizes Mark’s concern for unfolding the Gospel’s connection to these Jewish roots, with the journey beginning in this place.

Just to emphasize Mark’s concern for establishing these Jewish roots, Jesus will return time and time again to the temple, later connecting His ministry to its cleansing, and finally the Temple’s destruction (and rebuilding). When the Authority of Jesus (which contrasts with the declaration that He is God’s beloved Son) is challenged in 11:27-33, Jesus tells a parable in response (12:1-12). The parable is a powerful picture of Israel’s story, a people who rejected the prophets (John in 11:27-33), and who are now rejecting the beloved son because, in some way, they believe that Jesus is the heir to their vineyard and has arrived to take it from them rather than establishing their Kingdom, a Kingdom for their liberation. What, then, will the “owner of the vineyard” do with these people is a question that fits firmly with Mark’s desire to explain the Jewish roots of the Gospel. Will he come and destroy the tenants and give the Vineyard to others? No. This is not how God’s Kingdom is being built. As it was declared in the life of Israel, the stone rejected (Christ) has become the cornerstone. In this way, all is God’s (12:13-17). God is the God not of the dead, but of the living (12:27). Israel’s failure did not leave God devoid of His witness. Rather it opens up the world to his redemptive work. Who’s son is the Christ? He is the son of David, the son of God, which means that He is God’s witness to the world.

Therefore, it says, beware the Scribes who ignore the poor and devour widows (12:38-40), the same Scribes that Jesus describes as leaven working against this Kingdom vision. For the temple (the Kingdom, not the people) will be destroyed (13:1-12) so that this God can be established in Christ for the sake of the world.

Jesus Ministry: From the Desolate Place to the People
Mirroring this movement from the temple to the houses, what we also find in Mark’s gospel is the movement from the “desolate” place to the people (or from the people to the desolate place). In 1:35-39 we see Jesus get up early in the morning and move to this desolate place where he can pray. He then moves from the desolate place to the people where he preaches and heals. It is in going to the people where he encounters a man (a Leper) whom he heals and then instructs to “tell no one”, but rather show proof of his healing by way of the letter of the Law for the sake of the religious leaders (the Jewish roots). Only it says that the man doesn’t do this. Perhaps too hyped up and excited by what he has experienced, he disregards the Law and tells everyone he comes across.

The result of this is that the people now invaded the “desolated” place (1:40-45), and Jesus loses his place to rest and pray. Now we see Jesus praying and resting in the midst of the storms and the people (Jesus asleep in the storm (4:35-41), Jesus retreating to the desolate place to pray when in 6:46 he walks on the water to meet the disciples in their struggle against the wind, Jesus retreating to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane 14:32-42 ). Later, when Jesus extends the invitation for the disciples to come to a desolate place with him to find rest (6:31), the disciples are faced with the same influx of people looking for healing and to be fed and bombarding their place of rest. Here there is this rising tension in Mark’s narrative that exists between the work of Christ and the rest that Jesus looks for in the desolate place.  Jesus’ call to the disciples here is to feed the people rather than protect their place of rest (6:35-44). This is something that informs the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus returns to the Disciples twice and finds them sleeping as he retreated to pray. The inference that Mark holds in both hands here is the work of Christ now and the work of the disciples in his coming absence. The call is for the disciples to stay awake, for soon they won’t have a physical Jesus, but they will have the poor (in which we find a poor woman anointing Jesus 14:3-9). So  continue to proclaim the Gospel (work) in memory of her, because the Gospel is for the sake of the world. The Jewish roots are meant for the Gentile world. 

Healings, Forgiveness of Sins, and a Jewish Rooted Gospel for Sinners
The call to proclaim the Gospel in memory of the poor woman in the anointing story is anchored by the connection between the healing stories in Mark and the idea of “the forgiveness of sins”. While these healing stories bring to the surface the spiritual battle (God and Devil, Powers of Christ and the Powers of Sin and Death), in 2:1-12 these healings bear witness to the forgiveness of sins in an earthly fashion “in Christ”. As the script is flipped on the idea of the desolate place, and the people in need start crowding into Jesus home and the places of rest, this is where the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins bears witness within its Jewish context to the saving work of Christ for the world. It is this idea of the forgiveness of sins that leads to the conflict between the Jewish leaders and Jesus that emerges in 2:16-17. Jesus is with sinners, and this begins a righteous-sinner paradigm which Jesus applies in Mark’s Gospel to the contrasting imagery of the old and new wine-skins (2:18-22), the picture of the earthly Kingdom of God’s Kingdom. What Jesus is doing here is taking the Spiritual battle and giving it an earthly expression, something he does as this notion of forgiveness establishes tension between Christ and the Law (2:23-28), once again the two competing images of the Kingdom. This is why we return to the same progression of home-people, people-home immediately following in Chapter 3:1-6, where we find Jesus beginning in the synagogue, and then moving out to the people (3:7-12), a movement that is once again set back into that picture of the spiritual battle between the Powers (Jesus and the Demons 3:1-12), the calling of the disciples like we find in the first chapter (3:13-21), and then back home where we see a confusing of the Powers between Jesus and the Devil (3:22-30), which Jesus later describes as a bit of irony.

All of this movement is meant to portray the Jewish roots of Christ in a Gospel for the world. Home (mother and brothers) is now established as the world (whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother 3:35), which leads to a Parable (of the Sower) that is all about this Gospel for the world (4:1-9).

The Parable of the Sower and Christ for the world 
Parables, Mark’s Gospel indicates, are so that “they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear by not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.” (4:12) While forgiveness creates tension between the two ideas of “the kingdom”, the Jewish failure to believe throughout their history is so that Gentiles can receive this forgiveness, “for nothing is hidden except to be made manifest (4:2).” The emphasis here is that the Kingdom that they (the Jewish people) are looking for is God’s work (4:26-29; 4:30-34), and God’s work is a saving work in the world, not simply within their history. This is why when Jesus returns home again he says (that bit of irony I mentioned), “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own house (6:4).” This is ironic because of his rejection, but it is also hopeful because his audience is the Gentiles, and by seeing Christ at work within the Jewish people, they can then know that Christ is at work in them. In 7:1-13, Jesus points out the Jews long resistance to God in the prophets (7:1-13). He brings them up to reposition the tension between Jesus and Law within the promise for the Gentiles. What defiles in the eating of food (the Jewish accusation of the disciples according to the Law in 7:2) is compared to the washing of ones hands to eat. Jesus’ intent is to use this a metaphor to say, is it the food that is dirty, or what comes out the other end after we eat that makes hands dirty? This is a raw analogy that is intended to bridge the Jew-Gentile divide, allowing the Gentile faith to find a unifying presence in its Jewish history apart from the Law. The point of Israel is not for them to save themselves by following the Law (eating clean food), it was so that they can be a witness (what comes out) to the world. It is the witness of the Spirit that is their saving work, not the Law. This is the point of that metaphor. This brings positive expression to the following story of the Gentile woman’s faith (7:24-30) and the deaf man, whom coincidentally are told to tell no one of Christ’s saving work in their life (which of course means they tell everyone, because they just couldn’t help themselves 7:36).

From Called To Sent- A Growing Movement and An Unfolding Journey
To emphasize this growing movement, this idea of a journey to somewhere, Mark now goes from the call of the 12 to the “sending of the Disciples” (6:7-13). This coincides with the death of John the Baptist (6:14-29), anchoring this idea of Christ for the world. The spiritual battle is once again positioned back into their earthly reality, with John’s death echoing the Way of Jesus into the wilderness, an earthly expression that is about to find its practical unfolding in the great feeding of the crowds narrative.

The Feeding, the Sign and the Faithlessness 
There are two “feeding the crowds” narratives in Mark, the 5,000 in 6:30-44 and the 4,000 in 8:1-10. While this becomes a practical and earthly expression of the Gospel in full movement (them feeding the hungry that have invaded their personal space), Jesus uses it to make a point about their spiritual reality. In anticipation of the coming Kingdom, they have been looking for a sign, a definitive and earthly example of their liberation. To which Jesus says, “why does this generation seek a sign (8:12)?” Turning the event into a parable, Jesus explains that the loaves were actually the sign they are looking for (8:14-21). The disciples see the loaves as literal food feeding a literal crowd that has invaded their space, but Jesus defines the loaves as Himself. He is the sign, the one who feeds the spiritual and earthly hunger. This is what they were meant for. If we return to that parable mentioned earlier, while they were afraid that Jesus was taking away their Kingdom and giving it to others by feeding the Gentiles (with spiritual food), God is in fact building the Kingdom. When he then says to beware the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod, what he is doing is taking their unbelief in their work and setting it back into the framework of God’s work. As we hear the man looking for healing declare, “I believe, help my unbelief (9:24)”, this connects to the disciples being unable to cast out the demons as an expression of their own unbelief, a people (a faithless generation 9:19) still looking for a sign even though it is standing right in front them.

This unbelief is now merged into an expression of belief as God’s revealing, God’s work, with Peter confessing Jesus as Christ (8:27-30). But this confession comes with the declaration of the way in which they are being called to follow, the first of three foretellings of his death and resurrection. The question at the heart of Mark (where aer we following Jesus to) is now becoming clear. This is the Way into the wilderness (8:34).

And yet as we travel on the Way, we do so in the Power of the Spirit. Jesus, after all, controls the wind and the sea and the Demons (4:35-40; 5:1-20). And yet the Power that Jesus proclaims is a different kind of sign than they were expecting. As we find in the Transfiguration, the continued unfolding of this question (where are we following Jesus to) becomes more clear (9:1-13). As Peter proclaims Jesus, the Spirit of Heaven now joins in the chorus. So, as the son of God comes in the expression of the Prophets (the sign in Jewish history), how is it written that the sign would arrive like this, Jesus asks? But Elijah did in fact come, and he was rejected (indicating John the Baptist) just as the prophets were. And just as he was rejected, so must the Son of Man suffer (9:12-13). We then come to the second foretelling (9:30-32), with the following accompanying proclamation, “the one who is not against us is for us.” This gives a positive force to this Jewish-Gentile movement (9:40), a movement that is shaped around the idea that the first shall be last a servant to the world, establishing those who Jesus came to reach as “children of God (9:37)”. Therefore, let the children come to me (10:13-16), for “it would be better” for “whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin” to have a “great millstone” “hung around his neck” and be “thrown into the sea.”

The Apocalyptic Tradition, Children, Fire and Salt
These words are startling, especially for modern ears, but it it is important to recognize both the language and the context. This passage is framed between two passages which foretell Jesus’ death (9:30-32; 10:32-34), which reveals the way in which they are are to follow Jesus, the way into the wilderness (which coincides with the shared theme of “temptation” which we find in the Jesus’ temptation narrative). It belongs with a passage which finds the disciples arguing about who will be the greatest in the Kingdom of God. Jesus  then raises up a child to explain how it is that God’s Kingdom is going to work, suggesting that the Kingdom of God is for least and the last. They (Israel, we) are to be a servant to all. Whoever receives the Kingdom of God will be a child of God (9:37), therefore receive the Kingdom like a child (10:15), because that is the only way one can enter it. This is reemphasized in the accompanying story of the Rich Young Man, in which the point is that “many who are first will be last, and the last first”, using the money as an example of how difficult it is to enter the Kingdom like a child.

All of this is written in the context of the Jewish-Gentile relationship, and all of it is set within the developing tension of Jesus and the Law, and the Spirit of Power and the Power of the Devil (both of which inform Mark’s entire Gospel). Those who were arguing about who will be greatest are those under the Law. They are trying to argue about who has done more to earn that right in the new Kingdom. In reality, God’s Kingdom is for the world, for the Gentiles, for the oppressed, for the poor, the sick, the marginalized, and the invitation is to come into this Kingdom and receive full embrace. That is what God’s Kingdom is coming to do, to bring justice to the injustice that we find in this world. And the way it does so is by bringing the world into the Kingdom, or building the Kingdom in the world, and thus establishing the Kingdom not by works, but according to the restorative work of Jesus, the work that calls us all sons and daughters of God.

When we bring 9:42-50 in to this picture, we can see in the light of these accompanying sections concerned for these little ones, the Gentile world, the oppressed, the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the least of these. Mark now incorporates hyperbolic language. He doesn’t mean to literally cut off a hand, a foot, or to tear out an eye. He doesn’t literally mean to tie a stone around your neck and throw yourself into the sea. Some people have used this passage in an overly literal way to reinforce a picture of hell as the greatest judgement (9:48) for ignoring the least of these and causing them to sin. But doing that removes this from the force of it’s hyperbolic language and misses (completely) the restorative nature of its final two verses (9:49-50). Here it says “for everyone will be salted with fire”, and this salt is “good” (9:50), not bad. This holds in view the imagery of Jesus’ baptism that we find formulated in other Gospels, in which fire is applied to Jesus as a “refining” work. As people tried to make sense of Jesus’ words and works, especially in His absence, this idea of fire as a refining and restorative Power was part of what had been passed down by Jesus’ teachings and part of what the writers were wrestling with as these letters were composed. Here Mark recalls the tradition of Jesus’ words within the apocalyptic tradition that informed their world, one which would have brought in the language of their time, language that also echoed the Greco-Roman world that surrounded them. Here fire is understood as an image of “judgment” and “destruction”.

Jesus’ words locate fire in a different sense, using it as a metaphor to uncover the work of Jesus, the Power of the Spirit and the growing Kingdom. Everyone, it says, is being salted with fire, a fire which is making salt for the world. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? All they will be left with is the fire, a fire which they will then use to keep the Gospel from moving out into the world, a fire which will ultimately consume them as well. Therefore, it says, “have salt in yourself” (9:50). Be “at peace” with one another (9:50). Don’t let the fire become destructive. Instead, let the fire refine you for the sake of the world.

This also forms the interest for 10:1-12, in which he uses the example of a broken marriage and a healthy marriage to emphasize this peace with one another in a practical way, informing their tendency to let the fire divide rather than join together. If we incorporate the whole of the New Testament emphasis here, the Law (Divorce, or the Broken Marriage) reveals Sin (the divide, the destructive fire), and the Sin (the fire) reveals the Light (the Healed Marriage, the healthy Marriage, the salt). That is how the salt and the fire are “good” images. As Paul understood, in Israel’s rejection of the prophets and Jesus, Jesus is being revealed to the world.

Anchoring this even further, as the Rich Young Man calls Jesus “Good” teacher in 10:17-31, Jesus responds with “why do you call me good? No one is good (the question of the Law that informs their need to know who will be “the greatest in the Kingdom) except God alone (10:19).” If he is calling Jesus good, then he is calling Jesus God, which is where Jesus steers his question away from the Law to the Kingdom of Jesus, where the first shall be last and the last shall by first. This is the true riches, the same riches Jesus sets into the reality of Cross which awaits. Just as he tells James and John in their wondering about who will occupy the most respected seat in the Kingdom with Jesus, Jesus’ Cross is built on becoming a servant to all, becoming the least so that the least shall be first. All of this Law that they are trying to raise as the their earned right to the be first and the greatest in the Kingdom is now framed around the greatest commandment as “love God” and “love others” (12:28-34), for the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.” (10:45) This is what Jesus is doing on the Cross, the image of the servant entering Jerusalem (11:1-11 the image of the new Kingdom, the temple which is being cleansed 11:17), destroyed and raised up again in Jesus (for the world) in triumph, finding victory in his coming death. In this new temple, Jesus’ “house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations” 11:17 That is why the salt and the fire are refining them.

The Fig Tree, A Sign of Faith and The Present-Future Time
The fig tree is a symbol that reemerges in Mark’s Gospel and elsewhere in the Gospel. Here it fits with the question that emerges earlier in Mark about the “signs”. They are all looking for signs that the Kingdom is being established in their midst, but they were missing the fact that Jesus is the sign. As Jesus enters Jerusalem looking to establish God’s Kingdom by way of the servant, we see him retreating to this fig tree on a hill, only to find no fruit. “It was not the season for figs” he says (11:13). When Mark revisits the fig tree in 11:20-25, we discover that the lesson of the fig tree is actually about faith in God, faith in what God is doing in bringing about the Kingdom of God (12:20-25). Instead of looking for sign of God’s judgment on their oppressors, forgive so that they can be forgiven, having the same faith in which Jesus controlled the wind, the seas and the Demons, not the faithlessness which we saw earlier when they couldn’t throw out the Demons. Have the kind of faith that can move a mountain and throw it into the sea, because in Christ all things are possible. In their present circumstance, a Kingdom can be built for the sake of the world. In death there can be life.

The third mention of the fig tree (matching up with the three foretellings of the cross and the 3 denials of Peter) comes in 13:28-31, which pulls this faith into the “signs” of the “closing age”. Here once again we come to this apocalyptic language. The fig tree in the second passage had leaves but no fruit. Here the leaves are said to indicate that the season is upon us. It is coming soon. The destruction of the temple that Jesus foretells in 13:1-2 is a part of this season, with the signs that we encounter in chapter 13 carrying this present-future focus. Just as it says to “stay awake” for the time is upon us in 13:32-37, the disciples who fall asleep as Jesus goes to pray in Gethsemane (14:32-42) are called to stay awake because the time is upon us. This is the thing people often forget when encountering this kind of apocalyptic language. The imagery here for its readers would have been applied directly to their reality at the time. This is how they would have interpreted the hope of Jesus’ liberation. And later, when the destruction of the temple does come, all of this language would have been eventually regathered and applied to the present generation. Chapter 13 has a present-future focus (13:3-27), with all of the language ultimately pointing to the Cross as Jesus’ definite “word” of victory (13:31). The Kingdom will come, but the Kingdom is in fact already here. So stop looking, and get to work. Stay awake. Because the Gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations (13:10).

This is how the ministry works in our waiting, in our present reality. While we apply the language of the Kingdom come, the New Heavens and the New earth, we always apply it to the present with Jesus’ death and resurrection pointing us to the promise of the future restoration. These words of a coming restoration (what is wrong being made right) linger in the air, with the Resurrection shaping them as our hoped for reality and the Cross shaping how we respond to this hope in the present. This is why, as Peter breaks down and weeps in his own failure (denials, which expresses itself as doubt, a lack of faith in what Jesus is doing), the failure is set within the seeming loss of this Kingdom promise (14:72). This becomes the grand movement of Jesus on the Cross in Mark’s Gospel. If the reigning question in Mark is, who is Jesus and where are we following Jesus to, the questions now merge together. As Pilate asks, “are you the King of Jews”, Jesus responds with “you have said so (15:2).” This is reminiscent of the rich young man calling him “good teacher”, and is set alongside the Spirits declaration that says this is the Son of God. We then see this progression in response. They say “Hail the King of the Jews” in mockery as Jesus is marched to the Cross. The “sign” (evoking Jesus as the sign they were looking for) is put over his head saying “The King of the Jews”, and then they once again mock him saying “let the King of the Jews come down” from the Cross (15:21-32). All of this then leads to this sudden declaration that “truly this was the Son of God (15:39), a statement that comes when the Cross is revealed as Power, not weakness. Jesus is the sign they were looking for, and His Kingdom has now come, establishing the Cross as the measure of their faith, the way in which they were and are follow. The shared wilderness in this present reality.

As Mark’s Gospel comes to an end (excluding the added piece in 16:9-10), we find this revealed reality leaving them trembling and in astonishment, followed by the admonition, why are you standing there looking for Jesus (as if they were still looking for the sign). He (Jesus, the sign) has risen and has gone “before you” to Galilee (16:1-8). This is your sign that the Kingdom of God has been established. Therefore, don’t sleep, stay awake. Take up your own cross now and follow Jesus into the suffering of the world, for the time is near. In fact, the time has now come to build this Kingdom for the sake of all.

 

 

In one of the commentaries on The Book of Acts that I read in the past, I remember it saying that Acts is the single most “diverse” book in the New Testament canon in terms of the “act” of translating and parsing through all of the original manuscripts and turning it into the book that we have. This makes it not only a fun book to translate, but a fun book to read, especially because of all the added material and notes and qualifying statements that tend to fill most of our study Bibles.

While it is generally accepted that whoever wrote the Gospel of Luke (the author of both books remains ambiguous) also wrote the Gospel of Acts (Luke-Acts), the sheer body of work that scholars have to sift through in the Acts of the Apostles certainly does leave some interesting questions regarding the date of its composition. The most fervent question regards the ending, which leaves Paul’s story with an open ended question and as an incomplete narrative. Depending on how one wants to read this inference (does this mean the author was aware of or unaware of the latter part of Paul’s story), the idea that the author of Luke-Acts travelled with Paul and was also connected with the author of the Gospel of Mark points to one of the strongest theories regarding date, which is that the author wrote in the midst of these unfolding events and along with these other authors.

The way the Book carries us through all these different touch-points in the story of the Apostles and the unfolding witness of the Spirit of the Gospel in their midst, crossing paths with the different letters, different characters and different pivotal events that form the New Testament as a whole carries with it a sense of drama and narrative that is unique, epic and sweeping in nature. Although a fair chunk of the book is built around a series of sermons, the book reads like an action packed novel full of movement, tension, humor and tragedy. And given how the book seems to fit well with Luke, the Book of Acts functions like a sequel that uses the Gospel’s serious cliffhanger as a jumping off point, even finding a nice cliffhanger of its own too (too bad the author of Luke-Acts wasn’t up for a trilogy!!!). The book’s central concern begins in the “waiting” (1:4) for the promised Spirit (1:8), carries through to the arrival of the Spirit (Chapter 2), and hangs on this movement to the “ends of the earth” (1:8) as it follows the “acts” of the Apostles.

A Shift in Time, A Shift in Focus- Waiting for the New Kingdom To Come
The reference to “40 days” indicates a shift in the setting we find at the end of Luke (1:3), an inference to time having passed. This gives Acts a transitional point to move from the end of The Gospel of Luke into the unfolding narrative of Acts, with the call to “wait” (in Jerusalem now carrying a dual focus (1:4).  The question asked to Jesus is, “will you (Jesus) at this time restore us and bring in the promised Kingdom (1:6)? This “waiting” for the new Kingdom to come, for this promised liberation of the Jewish people, merges with the call to now wait for the Power (the Spirit that John talked about when he said the Jesus would Baptize in fire and spirit1:5) that will carry them through this period of waiting, for what is not yet is still come, and “it is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed… but (and here is the significant part, in the meantime) you “will ” receive power.”

But here is what the waiting means in the context of their (the Jewish people) liberation. The movement from the Cross continues “to the end of the earth.” (1:8) And so, as Jesus ascends and the the Galileans are left there in waiting and wondering, the angels appear asking, why do you stand there? He will return. Liberation will come. In the meantime, get out there and start doing this liberating work (1:11), because there is a whole world waiting with you.

The Movement of the Spirit, the Jew-Gentile Relation and The Unifying Work of the Spirit
What is significant about the way Acts positions us in 1:21-26 back in Jerusalem by way of Matthias and Joseph (a Righteous Jew and the first one to go looking for the kingdom and find Jesus’ body in Luke) is how this establishes not only a framework for the movement of the Spirit (from Jerusalem-Rome-ends of the earth), but also the context for understanding the Jew-Gentile relationship in the life of the early Church.

As the Spirit moves, what becomes apparent is this growing concern for both the people of Israel and the salvation of the Gentiles, and how this is (and will be) creating division in the development of the early Church. In Chapter 7, we find a shared concern for Israel set alongside this feeling that they are also the ones being judged for the rejection of their own prophetic ministry, leading to the first of two grand retelling of Israel’s story by Stephen (followed by Stephen’s judgment and death). This moment in Acts becomes a exclamation point on the idea that they (Israel) have always rejected the prophets, the preachers, the kings, and the patriarchs, even though they were always for Israel.

The second time we find this retelling of Israel’s story (13:6-46), we hear that “it was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you (Israel), since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life. Behold, we are turning to the Gentiles (13:46).” The Jews, then, were called to be a light to the Gentiles, and thus by nature of this light (the grace of God and liberation afforded to the whole of creation) come to “continue in the grace of God” themselves because of what this understanding of Grace without boundaries brings back to them in their rejection of the prophets (13:43).

This fits with the idea that we find in the writings of the New Testament letters of the Law existing to reveal the Powers (of Sin and Death), and Sin existing to reveal Jesus to the world. Later it is declared that the Baptism of John was for Israel, and the Baptism of the Spirit was for all nations (13:24; 19:1-10), all of which was for the sake of God’s liberating work (Grace) in and for the world.

3:11-26 repeats the claim that there is “death”, but also “resurrection” according to the Prophets we find mentioned in chapter 2, emphasizing that although the prophets were rejected, God was and is still working in the life of Israel in the same way He has been working in the world. God has never been without a witness to the Spirits movement (14:16). Although all those who rejected the prophets (in the past) were destroyed (died), you are sons of the prophets standing here now (as a witness to the movement of God’s spirit), through which all the families of the earth will be blessed (Chapter 3). The Prophets then merge with this new kingdom which has arrived in the life of Jesus and through the Power of the Holy Spirit (2:15-21). The Power of Sin and Death has been defeated (2:24), providing this sweeping and hopeful image that brings together David and Jesus as a connective and unified force.

This is what establishes a present-future dynamic to the ways in which we apply resurrection hope, bringing us back to the notion of waiting “in power”. The death of Jesus, which Peter wants all of Israel to know, was in fact the victory (2:36), all of which leads them to be both humbled (2:37) and amazed (2:43), shaping the idea of standing and waiting in Jesus’ seeming absence without the visible and physical liberation they still longed for and expected. This is the promise of the Power that is coming, and which is now here, that the Spirit is bringing together this present-future dynamic, enabling us to step out and participate in this liberation now as an undivided people, both Jew and Gentile.

The Spirit Arrives in Power and Unifying Purpose
The Power of the Spirit arrives in Chapter 2 in one of the book’s most memorable and dramatic sequences. More than just for the sake of drama, this Pentecostal event carries with it a point and intention that is able to awaken us to the grand God-Human-Creation story to which we, Jew and Gentile belong. As the divided tongues “as of fire” come to rest on the heads of the people, we get these competing visions of the division that exists in the world and the Spirit’s power to heal this division in its unifying work. The ensuing witness of the different languages (2:1-4), and the declaration that there were Jews and devout men from every nation under heaven (2:5) pushes towards this image of the multitude coming together. The image of the early community (those of the Way) is one in which “All those who believed were together and had all things in common” (2:44;4:32-37), emphasizing the Spirits intent to heal the division as a reigning theme that pushes through the whole of the New Testament. This same picture emerges again in 11:29, telling of the diversity of the growing group of disciples. This unifying work reaches from Israel, the ones who continually rejected the word of God through the Prophets and Jesus, to the ends of the earth. It is interesting that this same unifying focus informs Paul’s ongoing ministry to the Gentile world, finding him switching from the language of Christ (for the Jews) to a focus on creation whenever he finds himself speaking to a Greco-Roman audience for the sake of this unity. In Chapter 7, we find a humorous display where Paul is speaking and his hearers, an audience of philosophers in Athens, are hearing nothing but “babble”. Paul moves then to find a way to speak their language (17:22-33), and again similarly so in the story of Paul with the Ephesians and the whole Artemis narrative of Chapter 19. He does this as a way to unite those across cultures in the Power of the shared Spirit.

The Movement of the Spirit, the Movement of Jesus, and the Movement of the Apostles
As the Power (the Spirit) arrives, one of the interesting dynamics of the Acts narrative is how it begins to reflect the ministry of Jesus. Just as with the arrival of Jesus, we see this mix of amazement and mockery standing side by side. The passage in 3:1-10 is reminiscent of Jesus ministry, culminating in 4:17 with the call to “tell no one”, a claim we also find in the Gospel and that is equally partnered with healing stories. Later, as we get into the story of Paul, much of his ministry work follows in line with the ministry he shares in Christ, including a prophecy that he must suffer and die in Jerusalem, and the whole movement from accusation to being sent before the councils. This movement becomes the framework through which we can understand his shared suffering as part of God’s liberating work.

Paul and Peter- From Jerusalem to the Ends of the Earth
In fact, if we can section Acts into two main distinguishing parts, one would be Peter’s journey, the other Pauls. Peter emerges as the founding voice of the early Church, the very image of the Spirits movement beginning in Jerusalem, while Paul will later emerge as a symbol of it’s movement into the Gentile world (in which this movement from Jerusalem to Rome begins with his conversion story in chapter 9), with the great Jerusalem Council, which declared a Gospel for the Gentiles, standing as a centralizing force for this Jewish-Gentile reality (Chapter 15; 16:4). As these two ministries come together (with some contention), this forms a Gospel for all the earth.

As we move through these two stories, we also get these shared images of opposition to the Gospel, with the reigning image being that of the Spirit’s persistent and unrelenting movement. Just as it happened with Jesus’ death, the witness of the Spirit will move regardless of the opposition, something we see every time they try and imprison Peter (12:1-5) and Paul (that won’t stop those Angels!!12:6-19), everytime we encounter a death surrounding the Spirit’s witness, and in the declaration of those who, through the Spirits witness and the work of the Apostles, find Jesus (recalling the Ethiopian Eunuch who cries “what prevents me from being baptized… nothing!! (8:37)”, and the different healing stories that we encounter along the way).

Paul’s Conversion- The Unrelenting Movement of the Spirit

This tension between the opposition and the Spirit’s movement is perhaps no more aware than it is in the story of Paul’s conversion, a story that is retold three times in the narrative of Acts. The first time is in chapter 9 (9:1-19), a passage that positions the “evil’ that Paul has done with the declaration that Paul is a “chosen instrument of God (9:13-15). Within this tension the Church is being built up (9:31). Later, after we encounter a shift from first person (Paul) to “we” (Barnabas separates from Paul and we now find Paul with Timothy and Silas), a dramatic encounter with Paul and Silas in prison finds the Spirit moving through an earthquake that bears witness to God’s continued work in their suffering and the struggle, the declared good news of the Spirits Power to free them being that “Jesus has fixed a day upon when he will judge the world (17:31)”, a reminder that liberation is still coming as they continue to wait and walk in the present.

All I know, Paul says, is that suffering awaits me (the prophecy of Paul’s conversion), but Paul does not account his life as one worth saving for his own sake, but rather he desires to finish in the Way to which he was called for the sake of the Gospel and the Grace of God being poured out for the sake of the world (20:23-24). In 22:1-21, this is what the second account of Paul’s conversion story emphasizes, is the idea that his suffering will not stop the movement of the Spirit. God is still working.

And as we follow Paul through his story, we can see this conviction playing out in a very real way. Following his visit to James (21:17-26), Paul is arrested (21:27-36), and despite trying to use his Roman citizenship as a way to qualify his ministry as both a Roman and a Jew, and trying to show himself to be in good conscious (22:25), he ends up before council (Chapter 23) with a plot being established to kill him (23:12;15), and eventually is moved from the council to the Governor Felix (23:23-35) with the accusation that he has been starting riots among the Jews (24:5).

This eventually leads to him standing before Agrippa and Bernice (25:13-27) and following this on a journey to eventually stand before Caesar himself (25:1-12), a journey that features one of the other more dramatic stories in Acts, the grand shipwreck that ultimately sets him in Rome still awaiting Caesar in the closing words of The Book of Acts.

And yet what informs this final movement to Rome is this idea that Rome, as a more literal rendering of the “end of the earth” in this case, is actually pointing to a more final declaration, which says, “Therefore let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will listen (28:28).” As Paul sits in shackles awaiting his trial, being said by those around him to be “out of his mind” (27:24), the final word is the Spirit’s movement, a movement that Paul will ultimately continue to carry to Spain, and eventually with him to his death. The final word is a Gospel for the world, a movement that reaches from Jerusalem (the first fruits of this witness) to the more figurative (and all encompassing) ends of the earth.

It’s a powerful picture that arrives with the tension that has carried through the entire Book of Acts, both the tension of the Jew-Gentile relationship, and ultimately the tension of the Spirit’s promise to bear witness of God’s work in the world where the Darkness and oppression still seem very apparent.

As we encounter the third of Paul’s retelling of his conversion story (26:9-19), we find him requesting a chance to talk to the people so as to speak to this reigning tension as in fact good news, findint him standing there in the face of his own uncertainty witnessing to the hope of Christ’s liberating work (26:12-23). What God has done in him, God desires to do in all.

Peter, Boldness, and the Power of the Spirit to Reveal Christ

Near the start of the Acts account, following the pouring out of the Spirit in Power, we find Peter standing at the precipice of the Spirit’s arrival and eventual movement praying for boldness (4:23-31). If, as readers, we are aware of Peter’s journey with Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, this prayer for boldness intersects with the prayer of Jesus for Peter in light of his coming denial. Here Jesus’ prayer holds true, a positive declaration that in the Spirit Peter is drawing strength from his own unwanted opposition to the ministry of Christ. His failure to fully trust in the Power of the Cross to liberate the world bears witness to the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection to work above, beyond and within him for the sake of both him and the world. Later on, Chapter 11:1-18 sets up Peter’s “vision” in 10:9-33 as the “movement of the Spirit” that was first made known in his life as a follower of Christ. This is a movement that will not be stopped.

For Peter, the point of the Spirit’s movement is clear. It is not him, but rather it is to Christ that the Spirit points. The reality of the Cross and the Resurrection is what the Spirit reveals. Peter is fervently aware of asking them not to worship his ministry, but rather to worship Christ (10:26). This distinguishing of the Apostles teachings will become a problem in Paul’s letters, and here there are already followers of John the Baptist (19:1-3) that need to be reframed and refocused around the ministry of Christ as the liberating Power in this already-not yet reality.

Paul as well, as he deals with accusations of dividing the Jewish sects and the Jewish people, says that it is not Paul’s ministry or Paul that should be on trial, but rather it is his witness to the ministry of Jesus that should be wrestled with and considered. More specifically, it is the witness of the Spirit to the Resurrection that is dividing those of the Law (23:6-10), and it is through the suffering and death of Christ (the shared ministry that he embodies) that this desires to bare itself out among them. This is why the word and title “christian” in 11:26, the first use of the word we encounter in early “Christian tradition”, bears a scandalous and accusatory weight. This is the great message of the Apostles and the mystery of the Spirit that is being revealed. And the great proclamation of the Acts of the Apsotles is that this mystery is no longer just the witness of the Jews (through the Law and the Prophets) and Jesus’ ministry, but is also theirs (the whole earth’s)(10:37-43). As Paul accuses them of “making the straight path crooked” (the path that John envisions in Jesus 13:10), it is the Spirit who is making this path straight. That is the unstoppable movement of Christ’s liberating work, a movement that begins at the Cross and looks towards Christ’s return, setting this present-future reality within this ever present contest between Darkness and Light, Devil and Lord, Powers that are trying to divide what has been made straight. The great truth of the Spirits witness though, is that what is being made crooked is still being made straight. This is the Power that has been given. That is why the earlier believers in Acts were called followers of The Way. The Powers of Sin and Death have been defeated, and the Way has been made known. As God strikes Herod down in 12:23,24, a symbolic vision, the word, the liberating work of God is moving from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, unting Jew and Gentile in one Spirit and one language, the language of Christ and the Cross. And although this movement arrives with many exciting ups and downs, some humorous moments (the weird story about people trying to expel evil spirits in 19:11-20 and failing miserably; Paul talking so long that people are falling asleep in 19:7-92; Paul talking and people just hearing “babble”), the greatest movement the world has ever seen, this movement from Heaven to Earth and back again, this great bringing together of the New Creation, is just getting started. We might end with Paul in prison awaiting his meeting with Caesar, but because of Jesus’ Resurrection death does not get the final world. The best of this story is still yet to come, but for now, as we wait with creation in those shared shackles, the call of the Spirit is to get in on the movement, to taste and see this liberating goodness in the here and now. The Power has come, and the Power is ours, so why are you standing there looking. Get up and walk for the Kingdom is already here.

 

 

This small letter just might be one of the more quotable sections of scripture one will find. It is incredibly aware of Christ, and therefore despite the ways in which the letter itself remains somewhat ambiguous in context and concern, the words themselves easily translate and contextualize across these boundaries. This is a Gentile community looking to be reminded of their new found identity in Christ.

The Letter is attributed to both Timothy and Paul, but it doesn’t take long when reading through it to recognize what scholarship has been pointing out for a good while, which is that the language feels slightly different from Paul. This certainly could push one towards Timothy as a possible author, but tracking down the author of the letter nevertheless remains a bit allusive.

However, if we are talking about the letters translation and contextualization, one thing that is for sure is that its words feels especially true when placed in a larger awareness of the Pauline tradition which likely informs it. Much of the content here fits readily into theologies and ideas and confidences that surround it and that have shaped it. It carries this presence not of a letter that is necessarily influencing wide spread theological development, but of a letter that provides us with a snapshot of a given theology that has been “lived in” and “experienced” and “practiced” in a particular setting. The focus is surprisingly simple and uncomplicated, and its expression quite directive in terms of being lobbied towards this particular community and onto (and into) an idea that has obviously already been fleshed out and understood in their midst.

Of immediate concern here is the encouragement of the Colossians towards maturity in the face of some kind of opposing teaching which was pushing back against their understanding and embrace of the Gospel (2:4;2:8-9;2:18). What we don’t know as readers is whether this teaching was coming from outside of the community or from the inside. To read the letter is to get this sense that it could be either-or, both-and. Also a bit unclear, especially in an ancient world where the opponents of the Gospel were generally quite clear and defined (floating between Gnosticism and Jewish sects), is what these teachings were that were challenging their embrace of the Gospel.

Moving From Darkness To Light- A Liberating Image
This is where the language in the text emerges as something particular, representing an eclectic mix of Jewish mysticism, Pagan beliefs, and Gnostic teachings. Which one of these three things has a greater push and pull is where scholarship remains divided. What we do know with a bit more clarity is that whatever it was, it had something to do with their faith being disqualified by some rule of the Law. (2:16-18; 2:8). Thus the author desires to remind the readers of their movement from Darkness ( where they were alienated and hostile in mind 1:21) to the Kingdom (Light) of his beloved Son in whom we (they) have “redemption” and “the forgiveness of sins.” (1:14)

In this desire, Christ emerges as the letter’s central focus (1:15). In an absolutely wonderful rendering of this movement from the Darkness to Light, the author moves through a descriptive of Christ as “the image of the invisible God”,  the “firstborn of creation” who has gone before, is in, and is also holding all things together. Christ is the fullness of God, the same God who is reconciling all in earth and heaven by the blood of the Cross. What a wonderful, sweeping, and liberating image.

Moving From Darkness To LIght- Suffering As An Informing Reality 
Moving from this image of the “blood of the Cross”, which is represented as the reconciling work of God, the author then connects this to the notion of suffering. “In (their own) suffering” the author rejoices in a chance to fill up (for them) what was lacking (in them) for the sake of Christ’s witness (the Cross as the reconciling work). This fits with the tagline that comes at the end of the book in which we get this more direct reference to Paul, saying (with an almost “therefore” connotation) “Remember my chains. Grace be with you.”4:18. There is a connective tissue that is exposed here between Christ’s suffering, the author’s suffering, and how these things can inform the reader’s suffering (which in the context of Colossians appears to be holding them to the same hostility of mind they once inflicted on others). In this movement from Darkness to Light, God is choosing their current circumstance (and has chosen them) to make known Christ, whom the author calls the “mystery of God”, the one whom is being revealed to them (in the riches of full assurance of understanding- knowledge) and likewise making them (in their movement from Darkness to Light) hidden in Him. Whatever the hostile arguments were that they were hearing or facing, the author says this so that this would stay as an immovable truth for them. Christ is in them and they are in Christ. This is something they know and the author is simply looking to refill their tank.

The Mystery and the Building Up of This Mystery
It is for this mystery that we (they) then push for “maturity” (1:28), “knit together in love” (2:2), “rooted and built up” (2:7). There is a sense of togetherness to this growth that will emerge more concretely as the letter moves forward, but here the grander picture is the notion of the foundation (Christ) and the “spiritual building” (Christ’s work in us), a crucial theological idea the is present throughout the development of theology in the New Testament writings, as that which is “bringing us together” over and against the hostile voices . And what is being built up through this foundation is their Gentile heritage (2:11-12), which is the thing that is being held (hidden) in their baptism (2:12), a baptism which nails the Law that excludes them, whatever that letter happens to be for the audience of this letter, to the Cross (2:14). Whoever is making accusations (judgements) that this is not the case (2:16), they are being called to remember that Christ is the one that holds their promise and their hope hidden in Him. Christ alone is the “substance” of their faith. Christ is the “Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.” (2:19) What a wonderfully raw and blunt image of our baptism. This is one of those phrases that doesn’t sound at all like Paul, but is certainly no less caught up in the same richness of Christ’s witness that has been moving through the Gentile world according to the Pauline witness.

If With Christ, Then Live In Christ
Now the author moves in directly to target whatever semblance of these “false” teachings might have already infiltrated their community. If with Christ you died (moved from Darkness to Light), why do you submit to regulations (Law) 2:23. Presenting the contrasting picture in response, “If then” (with Christ you died), seek the things that are above (3:1). This is where the mystery lies. This is where your life is being hidden with Christ. (3:3) This echos with the authors and voices of the New Testament teachings that call us to stop living as though we are under the Powers of Sin and Death (the Darkness). Live as though you are under the Power of Christ (Light and Life).

God’s Justice And Our Identity: A Unifying and Liberating Force
God’s justice (wrath, judgment, justice, all words with shared concern) is coming (a phrase which calls back to whatever judgments are being lobbied on them in 3:6), so put the earthly ways (that which is not from above, the Law that judges them) under Darkness (3:5, also interpreted as Death) where it belongs. I love this phrase. It’s equally declarative as it is responsive. And it is so wonderfully directive as well. Whatever it is that is telling you that you don’t belong to Christ, take it and put it under “Darkness”. And then step back into the Light. This is the idea of dying to ourselves, or to die is to gain, and living in Christ. For the new knowledge that you (and we) received in this mystery (that is our identity in Christ) has neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free… it has only Christ.

What is especially powerful about this picture is how it arrives with this sense of nakedness and vulnerability. Whatever it is that we are setting under Darkness, we are actively taking off and disrobing from. And as we step into the light, we are putting on this new set of clothes (Christ Himself), the clothing of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, fellowship, forgiveness, and above all love (3:12-14). And then, it says, therefore, “as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.” 2:6

How many people, how many of us, need to hear this message? I know I do. Daily. Whatever it is that tells us we don’t belong to Christ, put it under Darkness, and then put on the new clothes. And we do so that we can have the freedom and confidence to tell others that they are under Christ.

A NOTE ON SIN, SCRIPTURE AND INTERPRETATION
A note here, because if you are reading through Colossians (and reading my thoughts on it), you might (at this point) be tempted to want to clutter the simplicity of this message with the rest of the text. There are particular distinctives that come along with this placing “under Darkness” for the readers of Colossians in Chapter 3. They aren’t simply putting the hostile words under Darkness, they are putting particular ways of living this hostility under Darkness. The list includes “sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness (3:5).” These are things that come with the clothes that they are being asked to take off, all things that belong in the Darkness because of the ways in which they, if you continue on in the verse, foster “anger, wrath (judgment), malice, slander and obscene talk (3:7-8).” These descriptors give us something of an image of the world in which fhe Colossians co-exist, and the world that they were pulled out of when they moved from darkness to light.

One of the dangers that often emerges in our reading of scripture is that we tend to fixate on these kinds of passages as simply some kind of generalized form of an ambiguous “moral code” meant to be applied in arbitrary ways that connect to our salvation. Seeing it in this way though removes us from the larger concern and the larger picture. What we would miss here is the larger context for the Colossian readers that we have been following to this point, which is this truth that they are being told they don’t belong (the hostile words), and are being encouraged (filled up) with the truth that they do belong. Whatever this “judgment” (as it calls it) is telling them, this is part of what they are taking off, and they do so “because” of the truth that God’s justice is coming (with the interpretation here being that judgment, wrath, and justice are all words that connote this vision of what is wrong being made right).

That is the main concern for the author. If we lose sight of this, we will inevitably find ourselves doing precisely the same thing that the others are doing to the Colossians, using a measure of the Law to set them in or outside of Christ according to a measure of “hostility”.

The other important thing about this is a tendency to fixate on particular “sins” as that which moves us in and outside of Christ. As you read through the New Testament, there is a noticeable distinction and tension that arises between Christ as the one that frees us from the Law and moves us to the Light, and on the flip side of this the Darkness as a place where “lawlessness” reigns. The consistent call in scripture, as it appears here in Colossians, is to carry this tension with us as we step into the light, not as that which determines our reality (as a child of God), but as an opportunity for this lawlessness (out of which we arrive at notions of sin) to make us aware of our reality in Christ. This is why the Law exists, scripture says, to expose the Darkness. And the Darkness exists to expose the Light. These interchanging ideas is what allows us to function within this tension with a degree of confidence in who Christ has declared us to be. It removes us from the distinctives of the Law (where we are “externally” defined by and judged according to some ambiguous collection of sins), and gives us the distinctive of Christ.

Here is another important and necessary thing to understand. So much of the sin that we tend to fixate on tends to function within the ideologies that hold them in place as a matter of “identity”. It says, we are this therefore we are not in Christ. They tend to take sin and twist it into some measure of a “person” (in highly individualistic terms built by our theological constructs of due “punishment” for sin) which God simply cannot stand and cannot tolerate simply because God hates this particular sin (and therefore must punish us with death) for seemingly arbitrary reasons. This is not how the notion of sin works in scripture though. Sin in scripture always begins with its grander context as The Powers (of Sin and Death), or the Darkness, which is where Sin functions in these identity shaping ways, and the Power of Christ which moves us from Death to Life. Sin, as the Powers, always tells us something untrue about our identity in Christ. It leaves us with Darkness and Death. That is how it deceives. That is how it functions. That is how it holds us in bondage. Sin says to us and the world in all its various ways, you are not standing in the Light and Life. You are not In Christ. God is not saying this to us, Sin is.

This then can whittle down to that measure of the activity of (small letter) sin. These are all the ways in which an individual, a society, a community, a city, a Nation (this individual-collective sweep is important and necessary to uphold, as we always tend to want to make it highly individualized) is acting in a manner that says (outwardly and inwardly) that they are standing under the Darkness (of the Powers of Sin and Death). BUT (and this is a big but), here is what we encounter over and over and over again in scripture. Small letter “sin” always emerges with two central concerns. The first is the physical distinction that these sins make within a community that has been actively “set apart” for the purpose of declaring and bearing witness to a world that is no longer standing under the Powers of Sin and Death. The concern here is for distinguishing between those who live like they are under the Power of Sin and Death (capital letter Sin), and those who live like they are under the Power of Christ (Light and Life). And hint: this is the tension that every one of us, and every community, and every Nation carries every single day. This is the wrestling that comes with these two Powers standing in contention over us. The great truth presented by the Gospel though is that we are no longer under the Power of Sin and Death, with the call always being “so then, live like it.” This is the freedom the Gospel offers. This is what it means to put Sin (and sin) behind us.

This then arrives with another “but” (an even BIGGER but). There is an internal and external function that exists within the idea of sin we find in scripture that is interconnected. The concern for those who live as though they are under Darkness (The Powers of Sin and Death) is personal (internally concerned with the individual who does not know, cannot believe, is stuck wondering whether they are in fact under the Power of Christ), but this internal focus arrives with a concern for the external (the ways in which our witness can tell others that they are in fact under the Power of Christ and not the Powers of Sin and Death). And this mixture of internal and external focus and concern is never relegated to simply “individualistic” terms. In fact, more often than not the “sin” that scripture speaks to carries a communal and collective context. In this way it is not driven by a question of identity, but rather a question of a broken witness (where our actions tell others that they are not defined by The Power of Christ and instead are defined by the Power of Darkness). And sin always arrives in the context of that larger narrative (the Powers of Sin and Death), which is where we locate this notion of God’s judgment, wrath, justice, righteousness, all words that share in this idea that what is wrong God is making right. The force of Sin then becomes about the oppressed and the oppressor, the in-just and the just actions, the same force that carries through the New Testament in this distinction between the ignorance of the Righteous and the liberation of the lowly. If Sin as a name, it is found in those “hostile words” that tell someone they are not “In Christ”.

It is in this context that we then discover a consistent concern for sin (and Sin) as a matter of exclusion, dissension, disunity, division, and a lack of fellowship, which then raises up Christ as the great unifier and our witness as one that is given to fellowship, inclusion, love and unity as Christ’s unifying work. This is the context for the whole of scripture, any time you find sin referenced, you fill find this attached.

It is with this in mind then that we can understand Colossians in the way I describe above. What you find is a Church that is being called to understand its move from Darkness to Light. They are being set apart so that they can know the truth that they are not under the Powers of Sin and Death. Set apart from what? The community which surrounds them (or that exists within them in the form of division) that lives as though this is not true. And how do they live as though it is not true? Their actions are ‘hostile words’. Here the inference, as is often the case, is that when one lives as though this is not true (that we are under the Power of Christ, not Darkness), the only thing they are left with is Death, which in communities set apart for the Light becomes shaped against the letter of the Law in desperate attempts to know that we are in fact in the Light (the Law which connotes two things- either an understanding of the Jewish context of the Law in which Gentiles (outsiders) are seen as not a part of the covenant heritage, or a confusion of the Gospel set against this movement from Darkness to Light which arrives with those natural questions of “how do I know that I am in the light” and thus that need to measure salvation, God’s saving work, according to some letter of the Law and works that we can define and control).

We find indications of both of these things in Colossians, with the clarity of focus coming in the idea that this confusion, whether it is coming from inside or from outside of their community, is setting them under the judgment of this way of thinking as opposed to the judgment (justice) of God which liberates them. Thus we get this emerging reality- this is (or will be) leading them to a divided witness and a broken fellowship, which is making them feel like they are left under the Darkness.

The ambiguousness of this descriptive of the community they once belonged to (defined according to: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness), and which might or might not still be present in their community, are those things that are being put under the Darkness as they take off the clothes of that identity defining judgment that is being lobbied their way (the judgements that are saying that they aren’t in Christ). And the reason they are being taken off is “because” of their association with “anger, wrath, malice, slander and obscene (destructive) talk. This is where the emphasis lies, and this is the mark of sin that speaks to what the Powers of Sin and Death do in us and in our community. It is this secondary list which leads to the hopeful picture here of doing away with these external, identity shaping distinctives that we so like to spin into matters of sin and salvation, and putting on clothing that stands in direct contrast to the anger, wrath, malice and slander that divides them. This clothing is: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, all things which are unifying prospects, prospects that build a fellowship according to love, which is where this passage ultimately leads as the summation of this concern and this movement (from Darkness to Light). Love binds EVERYTHING together, and we are KNIT together in LOVE in Christ.

I hope this is clear. Far too often we come to a passage like this as readers (myself included), and in our own need to know that we are in fact in the light and not the darkness, instead of finding this hope in Christ, we turn our focus to our constructs of sin and salvation. We make them and turn them into a law, giving them a face, a voice, a label, a recognizable distinctive so that we can label the sinners as this and saved as that. And what inevitably flows from this is an emphasis on “small” letter sin that we use to judge ourselves (as in our out), and even more so to judge others. What makes matters worse is that we take ambiguous terms like “sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness”, isolate them, put them on a pedestal, and turn them into these particular and specific directives which say “do this or be this” and God will love you, and “don’t do this and don’t be this and God won’t love you.” And then when we attach these things to whatever matter of shape, form and identity that we can find (from types of individuals to cultures and nations and ideas and movements), we can then know what to exclude and include. Which couldn’t be further from this passage’s intent. In fact, once you have walked down this line of thinking far enough, you will inevitably always find yourself as the one who is being condemned by this very same thing (according to the Law or the letter of the Law that you have raised above Christ).

The point of freedom here is Christ. The point of bondage here (the slavery that we find in seeing ourselves as under the Powers of Sin and Death) are the actions that exclude us or others from the Love of Christ by being, by their very nature, anti-love, disunifying and divisive (the hostility they faced in Colossians). Sin always arrives as a social concept, a social concern, not as an individual, identity shaping notion. And it is always concerned with how these social realities limit the reach of the Gospel message. That is how distinguish between the deception and the truth. Wherever it is that we attach these notions of sin to in our own context must be defined by this and this alone. If sin is judged in scripture (which it is), it is ultimately for these reasons.

In the Spirit and Light of this note, where we arrive in this movement from Darkness to Light is in Love. Love unifies. In unity, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, with Christ being the “word” (3:16) of this Love embodied. This becomes the force and the point of the end of Chapter 3 with its emphasis on the “household” code and the call towards unity and fellowship with and In Christ (and one another), which works to erase the distinctions that hold us bondage. It is with this knowledge then that they are called to “walk in wisdom towards outsiders.” (4:5) Because it is in the wisdom of this kind of knowledge (the mystery that is Christ) that we can then bear witness to the reality of a world that no longer sits under the Power of Darkness, but rather, in God’s justice, has been placed under the Power of Light and Life.

Reading through Luke, I was immediately struck by the presence of this massive cliff hanger that comes at the very end (spoiler alert). After brilliantly establishing the tension for the story (of what is hidden being revealed amidst the Israel and Gentile conflict, the Heavenly and Earthly Powers in contest, the precarious work of forgiveness in the midst of rejection, the tearing down of the old Kingdom for the sake of building the new, the liberation of the oppressed set against the humbling of the oppressors), and bringing it to a climax in the Passion Narrative, we ultimately come to this grand proclamation of the Powers of God having defeated the Powers of Darkness. Christ is revealed “while they still disbelieved” 24:11, and breaks through their hopelessness with this grand statement of hope, the invading “Kingdom” that comes precisely when they aren’t looking for it, indicating that what has been torn down is being built in our midst. So go and wait in the same way that we found them “waiting” in 2:38 for the coming Kingdom (for the redemption of Jerusalem), because the Promise of this Kingdom is coming. Stay in the city until you are clothed with “Power” from on high, because this is how this Kingdom is being built in our midst.

Set in the midst of all these interconnected and interwoven narrative lines that form Luke’s concern (the tension), this cliffhanger arrives as a powerful picture of the gift of faith as a “waiting” process, a waiting process that is shaped by the same repentance and forgiveness that this Power proclaims for us today, a waiting that sees the already given and established Promise as this continued movement (which we see in the movement of this Power given to Jesus, to the Disciples, to the 72, and then to the world) from Jew to Gentile to all the nations of the world.

The Gospel of Luke as a “Waiting” Conversation
Luke addresses his writing to Theophilus (1:3), a rich, righteous Jewish man. This forms Luke’s words as a personal address, a desire to carefully weigh the movement of the Gospel in the light of it’s Jewish-Gentile-World progression firstly for the sake of the Jewish context. Luke’s Gospel is a Gospel for all, but it comes with a very particular focus on the Gospel’s (and Theophilus’) Jewish context (and more specifically the Sadducee context to which Theophilus likely belonged). A traveller with Paul, Luke himself is either a gentile, or at the very least a Hellenized Jew whose own receiving of the Gospel arrives from and is located within this Gospel movement. In this sense, the best way to read Luke is as a conversation between two individuals wrestling with the witness of the Gospel Power as a world building exercise.

Hopelessness and Hopefulness- The Prayers of the People and the Power of God 
As Luke’s Gospel opens, we meet Zechariah and Elizabeth, both whom are said to have been “walking blameless” (both righteous), but are also set within a tension- they have “no child”. This is reminiscent of the story of Abraham, with the lack of a child carrying much symbolism and significance in Israelite belief and tradition (especially with the Sadducees who did not set their hope in the Resurrection of the dead). To have a child was the ultimate sign of God’s promise.

In the midst of this tension, we find Zechariah called by the people to enter the temple so that (as a Priest) he can burn incense and carry the prayers of the people to God. These prayers, those carried from the outside and Zechariah’s prayer on the inside, prayers that would have arrived with the hope of a coming Kingdom and hopeful liberation, are then answered in two unexpected ways- against the hopelessness of Zechariah and Elizabeth’s situation (being old and without a child) and against the oppression of the people in the form of the prophetic hope (in the call to then use the hope offered to Zechariah to “prepare the people”). These two lines, the general liberation of the oppressed (collective) and the interest of the Gospel in the particular stories of the oppressed (individual), form the special interest of Luke’s very personal Gospel, which he will now set within the Power of the Spirit, which is able to turn the hopelessness (the doubts, the resistance, the struggle, the oppression) into hopefulness.

Two Births and One Spirit- A Gospel for All
The way Luke structures the opening chapters of his Gospel is according to two birth stories, that of Zechariah and that of Mary, the two persons to whom the Spirit proclaims this message of hope to. It arrives with the promise of accomplishing something seemingly impossible (Elizabeth and Zechariah in old age, Mary as a virgin both to be pregnant). Present in both of these stories is a proclamation of the Spirit’s work set against a failure to believe what this proclamation is announcing. In Zechariah’s story, his failure to believe leads to the removal of his voice as the “judgment” for his unbelief. In Mary’s story (1:26-38), a curiously similar response (of unbelief) leads not to a judgment, but the Spirit of the Lord speaking into Mary’s doubts and declaring “blessed is she who believed (1:45).” The Spirit here turns their doubt into faith, and Zechariah’s silence into an opportunity for the Spirit to speak into our midst (through the faith afforded to Mary).

It is in this Spirit that Luke then works these two birth narratives as the beginning of a grander movement of God’s saving and Kingdom building work. We hear that Zechariah and Elizabeth name their child John rather than according to their family name, and Mary names her child Jesus (which means to rescue or deliver) according to the declaration of her faith (the work of the Spirit), indicating a Gospel for all (1:57), a “light to those who sit in darkness (1:79), good news for all the people (2:10).

It is to this declaration of faith then that we encounter the Baptism of repentance in the ministry of the grown up John as “a turning away from” and a “looking towards”. This redirects both the form and direction of our waiting (the wilderness motif), and unites it with an emphasis on “looking” (making the paths straight), a theme that recurs in Luke’s Gospel a few times over as it connects the work of the Spirit with the “building” of this new Kingdom (of light and good news). In this waiting and looking, Luke insists, the work of the Spirit will be revealed (“all shall see”).

The foundation for this is that the Kingdom is God’s project. This is the point of John’s metaphor of the tree in 3:7-9. The axe laid to the root is God’s work. So what is our work then? John applies this to the “crowd” who is asking this question, calling them to share, to give to those who don’t have, and to consider others. This is the nature of God’s Kingdom and our participation in it, and the purpose for which it is being built. The good news? Is that the one who is coming, the one in which we are waiting for and looking for (Jesus) is coming to do the work of tearing down, laying down, building up and gathering his people (the Baptism of Fire and Spirit… the refining work 3:16-17). It is in this that Luke connects the declaration of John and Jesus as a new Kingdom “for the world” and “in the world” with the Father’s (God) declaration that this is my “beloved son”. The Baptism which declares this to us flows to us in a lineage that finds Jesus coming after Adam, thus placing all of us in a new family lineage (3:38). This is the power of those names placing these two children outside of their birth lineage. This is a Gospel for all.

The Righteous and the Lowly: A Working Tension 
I found it really striking that before this Baptism, the Spirit first reveals Christ in the character of Simeon (2:25-32), a Righteous Jew, which acts as a sort of bookend with the fact that it is a Righteous Jew (Joseph) who is the one who first goes looking for the kingdom and who takes down Christ’s body in the end of Luke’s Gospel (23:51). When seen in the light of this conversation between Jew and Gentile (Luke and Theophilus), this building up and tearing down which appears to set Jew and Gentile in tension becomes a part of God’s grand movement of a Gospel for all. The rise and fall of Israel, which Luke locates within their story of their continued rejection of the Prophets is so that the “thoughts from many hearts” may be revealed as the work of the Spirit (2:3-35). This is a hopeful proclamation, one that works its way into this duality of waiting and looking that we find again in 2:38, with Jesus parents finding Jesus in “his Father’s house”. Did you not know that this is where I must be? This informs our own waiting and looking as we long for the liberation of this world from the bondage that we find it in.

The Temptation and the Grand Story of the Powers (of Light and Dark): The Form of Our Bondage and the Message of Our LIberation
The “temptation” provides the setting for this bondage that has delineated between the righteous and the lowly, the oppressor and the oppressed, which is the Powers that hold contest over this world. This is where we get this emphasis on the two “Kingdoms” opposed, establishing that both are at work in the world, but that the Power of God (in Christ) is a more Powerful force. In this immensely rich and wonderful narrative, we see Christ (in the Power of the Spirit) and Devil (the Power of Sin and Death) set alongside one another, representing both Kingdom and Life against Kingdom and Death. Here we are given hints that although the Devil tempts Jesus to raise up the Kingdom according to the life and bread he can command, the Way of Jesus is towards sacrifice and death, a bread broken for the sake of the world. Jesus is actually setting Himself under the Devil (the Powers) in order to defeat it according to the kingdom way (the Power of the Spirit). In its most dramatic section, we encounter this lingering line in which it says the Devil disappears until a more opportune time. This informs the beginning of Christ’s ministry, but Luke sets this up in a grand moment of tension as we wait curiously and anxiously for the Devil to remerge. The question that hangs in the balance is will Jesus liberate? Is Jesus the one they (and we) have been looking and waiting for? In Luke’s grand narrative, the answer has already been declared, and yet we wait as the contest between the Powers unfolds before us.

All of this happens in the Power of the (shared) Spirit 4:1-13, a spirit of “liberty” (reaching back into Isaiah). It is this shared Spirit that is then set in the light of the rejection of the prophets. The result of this rejection? The blind, the oppressed, the captives did not find healing (participation in the spirit) 4:20-29. This leads to a story about the Powers as that which is holding the people oppressed, which is where we begin to see the Spirit’s healing work taking shape in their midst as a cosmic battle with earthly form.

The Power of the Spirit and the Forgiveness of Sins- Building a New Kingdom
The calling of the Disciples from the “lowly” places at the start of Jesus’ ministry establishes The Power of God to forgive sins, a key dynamic and feature of God’s Kingdom and the Spirits work. As we see the healing of the Spirit defeat the Powers of Darkness in these stories (the cosmic, earthly reality), we begin to see that at the heart of God’s work is the forgiveness of sins (who can forgive sins but God alone). As Jesus declares, “I have not come to call the righteous”, but the sick, the sinners, to repentance (5:32). Something new is happening here, something astonishing (5:3-39). New wine is being poured into new wineskins, and those on the outside are being given positions on the inside.

And yet, it is here that we see the shape of the resistance, the same resistance that Luke sees in the story of Israel and the rejection of the prophets. It is difficult for some to give up the old, which leads to a tendency to set God’s liberating (saving) work into the letter of the law rather than in the freedom of Christ (6:1-11). This is where the Devil (the Darkness) gains its foothold, leading Jesus to make a grand distinction between the Kingdom of this earth and the Kingdom of God. As Jesus moves up the mountain to pray and comes back down to a level field, he gives these contrasting words of Beatitudes and Woes, creating this picture of an upside down Kingdom where the oppressed become liberated (through the Gospel of forgiveness) and the liberated are oppressed (through the Letter of the Law), which leads to a call not to judge, but rather to live in mercy (in this rather shocking assertion to love and forgive one’s enemies). The call to not judge is how we infact discover mercy, in others and for ourselves. This is how Christ is revealed to the world as light and life, as that which lays judgments to the division that The Powers of Sin and Death has implemented in this world. This mercy is a Light for the world.

The Light For the World In God and In Us
There are a LOT of Parables in Luke’s Gospel, and it shows that Jesus loved (and  loves) to reveal the secrets of this Kingdom through these mysterious stories. In Chapter 8 we get a series of Parables that are all about the revealing of this light and life for the world. The reigning image is one of a lamp that is set on a stand in order to reveal this mystery to all. The secret? The light is in you, in them, in us (11:33-36). The even greater secret? With God as the builder, nothing is covered that won’t be revealed (12:2). God’s Power is able to be revealed in the storm (8:22-25), and the healings (8:26-56), despite the Darkness that appears to hold us bondage.

The even greater secret yet?? This Power is given to the disciples (Chapter 9), which is then given to the 72 (10:1-12), and ultimately to the world (the great cliffhanger), all of which is anchored by the Transfiguration story, which becomes the full revealing of this Power “in” Christ that stands over and against Herod’s perplexity about who this Jesus is (9:7-9). The cosmic-earthly reality. This then becomes the Pattern of Witness in the shared Spirit.

The Light For the World as the True Gospel Call
And yet this Power comes with a call. This is why Peter’s confession is paired with Jesus profession of his death, the way (in which we wait and look) in which we are called to follow Jesus and “take up our Cross. This is the cost of following in the Way in which we are now looking (repentance). It is a the way, for Luke, that sets the righteous and the lowly in tension (9:57-62; 12:49-53; 14:25-33), revealing God’s Kingdom as one “for the world”. This is what Luke describes as “the fear of God”. This is why the fear of a world set under the judgment of the Spirit (the making right of what is wrong) is set in the light of forgiveness, with the fear of God carrying a positive force (fear the one who can throw into Hell, which carries this forceful idea of God as the Power that overthrows the Darkness and which without we would be left in the Darkness, for not one will be forgotten).

This talk of fear gives way to a call to not be anxious (Parable of the rich fool- 12:12-21), and ultimately to this contrasting notion of earthly fear (the Fear of the Darkness) as a negative force (the Power of the Devil) paired with the call to then “fear not” (12:32). All of this has to do with the Day of the Lord and the idea of waiting and being ready, a call that comes in 12:22-34, 36-48, 49-53, 54-56, 57-58. This waiting that Luke has underscored is given a qualifying measure of “anticipation”, but one that is set against this grand vision of the weak becoming strong, the last first, the least the greatest, the grand vision of the New Building Project. This is the end towards which God’s building and Christ’s refining is looking. This lends itself to these unfolding pictures of the Kingdom where 13:22-30 becomes a picture of the religious elite sitting on the outside and all those who are last and least arriving at the table (of communion, the great wedding feast and the great banquet 13:22-30; 14:7-11; 14:12-24).

Is this kingdom coming? It is in fact already here, staring them in the face. Yet it is still rejected, just as it was in Noah and Lot and the Prophets. And just like Lot’s wife, whoever wants to preserve their life will lose it (turning to salt), and whoever loses it will keep it. This is because under the Power of Darkness all we have is death.

This is the forceful image then of the cost of following Jesus (17:29-37). And yet it all comes for the greater good of this grand building project we are asked to participate in and where we are caught up in ourselves. Here God hears and sees the injustice and brings justice and liberation to this world under bondage (18:1-8). This is a Kingdom where this distinction between righteous and sinner, Pharisee and tax collector is abolished. This is why forgiveness, then, is the foundation on which this Kingdom is built. This is why we encounter the call to continually give to those with great debts (oppression, struggle) (16:1-13), for it is “easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the law to become valid (16:17). We cannot arrive at this Gospel declaration on our own strength. It comes only by the Power of the Spirit in this great cosmic-earthly context.

This great vision that we find in the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, where the poor have a seat in Heaven and the rich are left outside with the gnashing of teeth (16:19-31) points us further in this Direction. Without God’s great Building Project this is all we would have left. And yet God is at work liberating the bondage, the oppression despite our decision to ignore it. This was the same call of the Prophets (see the Exodus story and beyond) that was continually rejected. The same rejection we find in the whole of the Torah. Set into this conversation between Luke and Theophilus, this is where “the stone that the builder rejected” (the stumbling block Paul talks about) has become the foundation for a new, just kingdom. These pictures of the destruction of the temple in 21:5-9, and the Gentiles trampling Jerusalem 21:20-24, are a tearing down in the midst of their oppression for the sake of rebuilding (towards liberation). It is in fact what they were looking for and expecting, but it arrives in an unexpected way, a refining so that the Gentile, as the fruit of the fig tree (21:29-32) can declare a Gospel (built on forgiveness and repentance, a moving from Light to Dark, Death to Life) for the world. This grand movement from Heaven to Earth, of the New Heavens and the New Earth with the Jewish witness as the firstfruits of Christs’ declarative and restorative work.

Apocalyptic Visions, Hopeful and Liberating Voices
Luke is covered in the heaviness of its apocalyptic language and tradition, which can be difficult to read through and gain a perspective on. But at its core, at its root, this vision of justice being declared for all is hopeful. This is liberating. And it is far reaching.

This is why the vision that emerges in Luke a few times over of the “fig tree” is important. In 13:6-9 they come to find this fruit (of their lives in God’s Kingdom) seemingly not growing. According to the letter of the law they ask for more time. This is followed by the demonstrative vision of the mustard seed and the leaven as the Kingdom growth that works without, and over and against, our doing (the increase of faith in 17:5-6). This is why the emphasis of the Parables of “The Rich Ruler” and the “The Good Samaritan” (18:18-30) is on the question “what must I do to inherit” this eternal life (this Kingdom). What kind of fruit must I bear to take a seat at the table. The message of these parables arrives in full force as a great reversal- not only is God’s Kingdom liberating the oppressed, including our enemies (the Samaritans in the story), it is effectively placing us in the road as the ones in need of this same liberation. The first shall become last and the last shall become first, with God as the one who is doing the building. We do not build this Kingdom on our own efforts, we enter it by way of Christ, by becoming the least.  Who is the greatest is the question the disciples later ask (22:24-30). The least, the youngest, those who serve, those who travel and hold in the way of Christ (in the sacrificial death that makes room for all at the table and the feast). That is how we all find a seat at the table. 

The Victory of the Spirit, the Devil’s Reemergence, and the Temptation To Resist It
This justice work is God’s work. This Kingdom building is the Power of the Spirit proclaimed. This taking up our Cross is the death that Jesus carries by setting himself under the Power of Sin and Death in the way that we encounter in the Temptation Story is the way we take part in the Kingdom work.

This is why this narrative of the Powers, which unites Heaven and Earth, is so necessary for Luke. Jesus must finish his course (13:31-35), and Herod’s claims to want to kill Jesus won’t hinder that anymore than the Devil’s Temptations will. Here we see the heavenly and earthly Powers coming together in the proclamation, “this is your hour and the (hour of the) Power of Darkness (22:53), with this sudden inference to the Devil finding his opportune time and re-emerging. Only the Power revealed in this is the nature of Christ’ self giving work. This is the form of the New Kingdom that the Devil tried to twist in his tempting attempts, and it is the work that we can trust God is bringing to fruition.

The irony the Luke posits in which “a prophet cannot perish away from Jerusalem” forms the lament for Jerusalem (19:41-44), Jesus’ weeping over their insistence on still standing in this Darkness, bearing witness to the Power of Sin and Death that holds this world in bondage to oppression and injustice and suffering.  The cleansing of the Temple then (19:45-48) points to the grand proclamation of God’s Kingdom that we find in the Triumphant entry to Jerusalem. Scripture must be fulfilled (22:36-38, talking about the prophets), and the Power of the Spirit must (and will) move forward for the sake of the world. It is interesting to note that when it comes to this fulfillment in Jesus’ death, two times Pilate tries to release Jesus, but the Powers persist. The Triumphal Entry then (19:20-48) acts as a response to Herod wanting to kill Jesus, and Jesus saying that His Kingdom will be built under this, through this and over and against the Powers of Sin and Death. Even the rocks it says would cry out in this witness if they could speak. This is the great revealing. 

The Faith of Children and the Promise of the Faithful Father
Here is the most hopeful undercurrent in Luke though. The revealing to little children (9:48-49; 18:15-17) means that this faith stands over and against our need to control  it, understand it, and direct it. It comes to those whose basic understanding is one of need, acceptance and one of dependence. How much more then will the Father give to those who ask (10:21; 11:13), those who need liberation in our doubts, our questions, our struggles and our bondage. Blessed are those who hear the word of  God and keep it (hold it and cherish it 11:26), because in that word comes the declaration of forgiveness and liberation, the declaration that this world no longer stands under the Power of Sin and Death. A declaration that precedes us.

How much more will God attend to the persistent widow (18:1-8) in her oppression. 15:1 And how much joy can we find in the Parables of the Lost Sheep and the The Lost Coin (15:1 where the question is, what would you do, and the declaration is, how much more will the Father do). All of this ultimately culminates in the Parable of the Prodigal Son (15:11), a picture of what the Father is doing in this great Kingdom Building Project. Speaking to the older son in a way that I imagine Luke speaking to Theophilus, “you” are always with me (the Righteous), but your brother was dead and is now alive. This is the point of this forgiveness. This is the Power of the Spirit made alive in us. The great Temptation narrative between Jesus and the Devil has to do with the witness of the Spirit “for’ the sake of the world (17:1-2). Forgiveness reigns in the Power of the Spirit and in the coming Kingdom (17:20-37) because this is the way that liberation happens.

The Way of the Cross and the Way of Forgiveness
As the narrative pushes forward in this great, tension filled contest between the Powers of Light and Darkness, we come to the Mount of Olives where Jesus once more goes to pray. Before leaving he challenges his Disciples to not be led into temptation, a call that he makes twice, once before he leaves and once after he returns and finds them sleeping. This call to not fall into temptation connects us to the great force of Christ’s liberating time in the Wilderness, because the way of Christ is setting himself under the Powers of Sin and Death for the sake of the world. The temptation for the Disciples will be to want to defeat the Powers of the Sin and Death (those coming to kill Jesus) for their sake by avoiding this Death and instead simply conquering the Powers. And yet death is the only way to defeat the Powers, because it is only way that the Kingdom can extend to all. This is the nature of the upside down Kingdom.

The 3 Foretellings of Jesus death are set alongside the 3 Denials of Peter, which becomes a glorious display of the Kingdom as “forgiveness” as Jesus prays for Peter that his faith would not fail despite his denying (22:32). This is the building work of the Spirit, which becomes equally represented in Christ’s words in saying “forgive them, for they know not what they do,” words that embody the image of Christ hanging between two criminals and extending the great hand of grace for the sake of this Kingdom building.  

Grace as a Cosmic-Earthly Movement- the Jews, the Gentiles, the World
This picture of two Righteous, upstanding, Jewish men of the law being the ones to first acknowledge Jesus and find Jesus Kingdom on the Cross remains hugely intriguing to me. In some way, with all of the judgment that we find in Luke’s Gospel of the the Jewish Religious elite and the Israelite nation (Pharisees, Sadducees), it implies that God is still working in their midst through the story of God’s persistent witness that has been bringing about this new Kingdom all along- a Kingdom for the oppressed, a Gospel for the World, a liberation for all. Repentance and forgiveness is to be proclaimed from Jerusalem, beginning in Jerusalem, to all nations (in the Power of the Spirit). So go and wait, the Promise is coming… stay in the city until you are clothed with “Power” from on high. For this Power has defeated the Power of Sin and Death and declared us to be under the Light and Life. This is the good news towards which luke invites us to turn towards. 

 

Reading and studying Paul’s letters to the Corinthians is always an interesting exercise. In some ways, with it’s grand passage on love (Chapter 13) and its incorporation into the liturgy of our Communion (Chapter 11), it might be the most often referenced book in the life of the Church (and outside of the Church for that matter). Growing up, I probably spent more time studying this book in youth group than any other, which is ironic given how entrenched it is with cultural touchpoints that I never fully understood (and still don’t) and an ancient context that exists far removed from my own.

Which is an interesting place to start from in trying to see this text anew and allow it to breathe a fresh spirit into my own life. There are many difficult aspects to these letters, including the complicated relationship that existed between Paul and those in Corinth and its fragmented nature that appears bound between this shared concern for the Corinth Community to find strength in weakness (the Gospel of Christ) and a concern for the way they perceived him and the apostolic ministry as weak. And yet the wonderful truth of God’s witness and Christ’s work breaths through these complications, bringing wisdom to our ears and fresh insight for Christian function.

The Letters in Context- A Complicated Relationship 
Paul wrote from Ephesus some time before the day of Pentecost and near the end of his 3 year ministry. The two letters were written approximately one year apart, and reflect multiple proposed visits to the community, which in the case of 2 Corinthians comes in the face of a letter he wrote to them after encountering these growing accusations against his own ministry (which included questioning his witness, his ministry, and more particularly we find questions surrounding money Paul is delivering for ministry purposes). As he writes in 2 Corinthians, “If anyone is confident that he is Christ’s, let him remind himself that just as he is Christ’s, so also are we (the apostles)” (2 Cor 10:7), “for I do no want to appear to be frightening you with my letters. For they say, ‘His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account.” 2 Cor 10:9-10. So, “if I must, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.” 2 Cor 11:30

Later he goes on to reference this weakness that they perceive more specifically, saying, “So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited” 12:7, hearing in the Gospel of Christ that “my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 

Acts 19-20 is a good place to gain context for this relationship and these letters, but in 2 Corinthians 2:3-4 and 7:8-16 we can find reference to the apparent passionate letter that Paul sends to them calling for repentance in regards to their resistance to him and the Gospel he preaches, suggesting that there were some that heard his words and reconciled (2 Cor 7:5-16) and those who did not (2 Cor 11:12-21).

Division, Suffering, and the Power of Christ to Unify and Heal 
Thus one of the most dominant themes in the two letters is that of division (and Christ’s power to heal this division) set against the idea of suffering/weakness (as a witness to the Power of Christ). Paul opens his second letter saying that “For as we share abundantly in Christ’s suffering, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too” (2 Cor 1:5), going on to express his hope that “…you will boast of us as we will boast of you” (2 Cor 1:13-14), reminding them that weakness is actually strength because of the “foolish” nature of the wisdom of Christ, an idea which he unpacks in the first letter to the Corinthians as he calls them to consider that “Already you have become rich (1 Cor 4:8).” After all, consider “the state of apostles”, who would have riches galore, but are hungry, poor, homeless (1 Cor 4:8-13).

The measure of our spiritual state is not our strength (matters of the flesh), but rather the power of the Gospel (4:19-20), which is where we find Paul pleading with them to consider both his and their “witness” in this light. After all, this is not just about me Paul insists. “Now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me… but to all of you (2 Cor 2:5).” After all, “Even if our Gospel is veiled” because of its foolish and upside down nature, “it is veiled only to those who are perishing (2 Cor 4:3).” Therefore, for this reason, let us heal our divide so that we can “let light shine out of darkness (2 Cor 4:6).”

A Diverse Community in a Diverse Land, Divided in Difference 
We do know quite a bit about the environment in which this community existed, with Paul writing to an area that was under the rule of Rome but also free to practice the rich and diverse cultural, philosophical and religious ideas and expressions that marked the area as an intersection of these different ideas and expressions. Therefore, the letter was to a Church community that was growing in the midst of this diversity, a community that Paul sees as “divided” against one another and which he seeks to unify in Christ for the sake of this diversity.

We know a little bit less about exactly what prompted Paul to write and what some of these divisive issues were. But from his words we can gather that the division was born out of some form of a competitive spirit, that it connects to their feelings that the Gospel must find its power in visible strength, success and prosperity (set over against the diverse background in which they exists), and that both of these things together were straining their relationship with Paul, one another and the Gospel (which are all interconnected relationships in this letter with a primary concern for healing the divide for the sake of their collective witness).

Learning to Read 1st and 2nd Corinthians Well
A word before diving more intimately and specifically into the two letters. It is easy, as I did often when I was young, to get lost in the many particulars that we find in this book, and to want to turn them and read them as a pile of disconnected generalities (Laws or Rules). The danger of this is getting lost in a context that is far removed from our own, and missing the larger message that can, and I believe is meant to apply as a cultural bridge (connecting our witness with the witness of Christ across history). For this reason, one of the disciplines that can help us to read these letters well, especially as persons of faith, is to try and see the spirit behind the letter, the motivating force of Paul’s concern for elevating the Gospel above the division. This is where, I think, the letter has the chance to come truly alive, even more so than simply quoting the familiar love passage divorced from its context. There is a beauty to be found lingering underneath the words, in finding and discovering the unfolding relationship between Paul, this community and the Gospel. It helps us to connect with Paul as a real, living, breathing person, and it give us a picture of an imperfect community, one that perhaps might be able to remind us of our own.

The Gospel in Waiting- The Already-Not Yet Reality
Right off the bat we find Paul addressing this notion of a community found in waiting, wrestling with this already-not yet reality (1 Cor 1:7). We find this a lot as we journey through scripture, particularly as we follow Paul’s journey from East to West. It’s not surprising then that the pressure coming against Paul is forming from the East as he continues to travel West. Early communities would have expected the return of Christ in the near future. The more time that went on the more this waiting and this expectation brought with it questions and anxieties and wondering. It also brought with it growing divisions and competing forces, especially as it tried to entertain suffering realities. As we wait however, Paul suggests, spiritual gifts can attune one to the sanctifying work of Christ (1:2;1:7), spiritual gifts that describe a picture of a “community” waiting together and learning to stay faithful to the hope of the Gospel. And as we wait, we can trust that God is faithful who has called us to his witness, the one who set us from Darkness to Light, who defeated the Powers of Sin and Death.

Division: The Great Enemy of Our Spiritual Waiting
It is for this reason, to increase both their perseverance and their hope in this already-not yet reality, that Paul targets division (1 Cor 1:10) as the great enemy of the Gospel.  He calls them to be unified in the same mind and same judgement (1 Cor 1:10), asking is Christ divided? No, and neither should they be, because Christ is the great unifier. And how does Christ unify? By nature of the Gospel. In the Gospel our “baptism” precedes us, and it is the Gospel that sets us into that reality (I did not come to baptize but to preach the Gospel 1:17), not according to our action or our reality, but according to the Gospel’s Proclamation.

The Cross As the Great Unifying Force- Folly, Foolishness and Wisdom 
Reaching deep into the prophetic ministry that forms and informs their community (Isaiah 28:14-18), Paul then begins to speak of this Gospel in light of their questioning of its strength in the face of its seeming weakness (1 Cor 1:18-25). The word of the Cross (the Gospel) is folly (1 Cor 1:18) to those who are perishing (under the Power of Sin and Death), and Christ destroys the wisdom of the wise and the discerning (God has made wisdom folly 1 Cor 1:20). This is because in our “knowledge” (which says that God’s witness must come by our own means and circumstance) we do not know God, but what saves us (the Gospel of Christ crucified, which we preach and proclaim) is in fact a “stumbling block” to the Jews and “folly” to the Gentiles. In this way,  what seems foolish (this waiting and this suffering and this weakness) turns into Power and Wisdom under Christ (1 Cor 1:18; 1:21).

God’s ways appear upside down to the wisdom of the world, and Paul reminds them that they need look no further than their own calling from the low places to know this to be true (1 Cor 1:28). The reason God called them from the low places was to show God’s saving work to the world (the power of witness), not to set them above the world (or above one another). It is to remind us that Christ saves, we don’t save ourselves. The Power of Christ’s saving work (that is the Spirit and Power of the Gospel 1 Cor 2:1) is that we do not rest in our own wisdom 1 Cor 2:5. This is the mystery imparted from the beginning (1 Cor 2:6-8) that we are living into as followers of Christ. All knowledge (of us, the world and God) comes from the spirit (1 Cor 2:10-11). This is a powerful pushback against the mantra of human exceptionalism and dependence on self, and this is what draws us into community as a growing desire to be formed according to this great mystery “together” (1 Cor 2:13).

The Mystery and Sharing in The Mind of Christ
A part of the mystery, according to Paul, is that “we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16). This is what the unifying work of Christ has given us. This is what Paul says they do not yet understand, and it is why he can’t call them “spiritual people” (but rather infants). And yet this is crucial, as it is because they don’t get this that there is division (3:1). And division is working against their being able to understand this idea (as this mystery unfolds within community). The way to heal this division then is begin to recognize our shared reality where God is the “planter” (Paul borrows the imagery of a garden) and the “waterer”, and where He is the source of our growth. But, (and here is the unfolding mystery) in Him, having the same mind (as imitators of Christ), we are one. And in being ‘one” we are God’s fellow workers. This is where our hope is born from. Where we are God’s field and God’s building,  we can trust that God (and therefore we, being of the same mind) will receive the wages for (His) labor. It is a gift God gives, and yet the mystery is that we are also participants (1 Cor 3:6).

Christ as the Foundation of our Witness- The Great Unifier
Continuing to evoke Isaiah 28:14-18, Paul moves to speak of the foundation that is Christ and the Gospel (1 Cor 3:1) against this divided reality, with the great, upside down logic (of all the foolishness) being that the work that will be tested and rewarded is in fact God’s (1 Cor 3:5). Thus, if they see Paul’s witness as fallible in its weakness, this means that God’s work is fallible and weak, and their work is equally fallible and weak. This is how they are all connected. This is why Paul continually focuses his concern on their state, their thinking of their own relationship to Christ, because for as much as they are putting this pressure on Paul, being under the same witness means the question really has to do with them. The final call in 2 Corinthian says, “so (therefore), examine yourselves… or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?” (2 Cor 13:5). Don’t you know, Paul pleads, “that you are God’s temple, and that the Spirit lives in you. Know that God won’t let anything destroy that, that you are Christ’s and Christ is God’s (the unifying work) 1 Cor 3:18-23.”

The great connective piece here, that we come to in Chapter 4 is that when people see them they should see them as servants of Christ (and therefore the supposed weakness as stewards of the mysteries of God). And that begins in our communities with one another. We don’t judge others, because our judgment will ultimately just judge ourselves (1 Cor 4:3-5), which brings them back to the interconnected nature of Paul’s plea. So practice this in your own community first. Don’t judge the works of one’s growth against another. Leave that for God and concern yourself with your life for the sake of the other. Because when they see you rather than Christ, this is the seed for division. To see Christ is to be unified.

Division as a Practical Reality- Sexual Immorality
In Chapter 5 Paul starts to get more specific about this division and unity picture, looking into the life of their community to represent this as a working example. For example, there is sexual immorality among you (1 Cor 5:1). So how do you deal with this? Set this person under the Devil (the Powers of Sin and Death) Paul says. Do this so that the spirit (which is witnessed through the life of their community as the truth of the Gospel, the Gospel which has set us under the Power of Light and Life) may reveal Christ. “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness.” 2 Cor 6:14 This is all about the ways in which they see and understand themselves in community as either under the Darkness or in the Light. 

The concern here is for the collective witness. How can the witness of Christ as salvation (defeating the Powers of Sin and Death) move if the community is acting like it is under Darkness. One person affects the whole, therefore the whole community is living as if there is not light and life, living according to manners which declare (1 Cor 6:9-11) a world under Sin and Death.

All Things Are Lawful, But Not all Things Are Helpful- Building A Christ Centered Community
If we are to return to the great mystery that is God the builder and Christ the foundation, all things are lawful (that is, our actions and circumstance do not determine our salvation and our hope), but not all things build (1 Cor 6:12). And the picture of the building is actually a Holy city (a community), being built together. Sexual immorality then (which Paul returns to) is an example of something that does not build, rather it divides, one against the other. It sets one above another, and is concerned with self rather than community. Paul uses this as a launching point into a description (and metaphor) of the sexual relationship as a unifying force. In it we become one, just as we are in Christ. In it we are no longer our own but of the same mind (with God). This becomes an analogy of our marriage to the great mystery, our witness to the great unifier.

Paul continues on this road, pushing further into examples in 1 Corinthians Chapter 7 that are all about setting that which divides (and sets us under Sin and Death) into that which unifies (sets us under Life and Light), thus moving us towards a picture of an undivided witness. Pushing this conversation even further, each one, Paul says, should remain in the condition in which he was called (whether Jew or Gentile, Slave or Free). This is so that Christ’s saving work doesn’t come from anything but Christ (1 Cor 7:20) and so that in this, as we build in community, we may be free from the anxiety that says otherwise (1 Cor 7:32). This is what bears out unity against division, wisdom out of the foolishness. It is what sets into relationship to one another (and therefore to God) rather than against.

Love- The Great Building Force
Before getting to 1 Cor Chapter 13, Chapter 8 tell us that the ultimate distinctive of the foolishness of God versus the wisdom of the world is actually love. Love is what ultimately builds up (in all of the virtuous ways we read in Chapter 13), and this happens in the midst of their diversity (and in the midst of their diverse backdrop where there are there are many gods, but one unifier).

And yet, returning to the idea of the Gospel as a stumbling block (1 Cor 8:9) to those who want to do things on their own strength, this is foolishness. Therefore, give of your rights for the sake of another to show power (love) in weakness (9:3-12). Here we get some more cultural examples (regarding food, temples and idols), but the message remains universally applied across our distinctions and our diversity. Our reward, the hope that what is being built will be built, is the witness that then comes back to us (to return to Paul’s interconnected concern). For this reason Paul says, “That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge so as not to make full use of my right in the Gospel.” (1 Cor 9:18), and that by being free from all (the Gospel freedom), “I make myself a servant of all (1 Cor 9:20-23)”, thus increasing in strength as we wait in this already- not yet reality (the race imagery).

Our Shared Witness Across History- Unified in Christ
For Paul’s audience, he brings it back to the foundational story of Exodus as a way of demonstrating that this same Gospel unites them with the story of God’s grand witness in the pages of history. The same spiritual food, the same building blocks, the same baptism were present with them (at the Exodus) in the same God (Christ). That is what we demonstrate as we see the witness move from Paul to them and to one another, and therefore to the world. It is in this kind of participation (in the Blood and Body of Christ’s sacrifice) where the unifying force of this work, God’s work in our lives and our world, can be revealed (1 Cor 10:16,17).

For this reasons, Paul draws back, yes, “all things are lawful, not all things are helpful and build up”. Therefore, “do all to the glory of God (the glory that comes through healing the divide).” (1 Cor 10:3) This is the point of all the particular examples he has given, and which he continues on with in chapter 11, speaking of the relationship between men and women, and tackling the huge topic of their (liturgical) practice of this communion (11:17-21) with God and and one another. The Power they have in Christ is not bearing out in their community because they are practicing Communion together with distinction, thus eating while others go hungry. This is not the communion that Christ called us towards in establishing the “new covenant” through the cup (the Cross) (1 Cor 11:25). This is antithetical to the Gospel they claim for themselves. This is precisely why the Cross presents Christ as the judge, because to judge ourselves against one another leads to this kind of division and this kind of witness. Christ is the great unifier, and it is by living in the way of the Cross that Christ and His Spirit (who work for the common good) is raised up, making us aware of the strength of the collective witness within our diversity (1 Cor 12:1-7). One body unified.

The Collective Witness In Our Diversity- Spiritual Gifts
Speaking to this diversity as “spiritual gifts”, Paul writes that “God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there be no division in the body but that the members may have the same care for one another.” (1 Cor 13:21-25). Therefore, “earnestly desire the higher gifts (Prophecy, which builds up the body rather than the self) and the way of love, the most excellent way”, because this is the way that God builds and it is the nature of our foundation, which has already been laid before us and being built for us. In this way, Paul says, “be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature (1 Cor 14:20).” “Let all things be done for building up (1 Cor 14:26)”, for this is the Gospel (Chapter 15). This is the Gospel that Paul received and gives to them (1 Cor 15:3-5).

Christ, The Firstfruits and Completion of God’s Work
The great power of this Gospel, the same Gospel that can speak resurrection life into their already- not yet midst (1 Cor 15:12) comes because of the work of Christ. He is the “firstfruits” of our witness. If we doubt the work of Paul or God or ourselves, look to Christ, as He is the one who, when the great building project has come to fruition (the New Heavens and the New Earth), will be making all alive in Christ (In Adam all die, in Christ all live, both those who have died in the waiting and those who have not fallen asleep). And we can hold to this grand hope because Death will be the last and final thing to be brought into subjection under his feet, unifying all in life and light (1 Cor 15:28). This is the hope and the joy that we have, not that we are seen as strong, but that in our weakness Christ is redeeming all of Creation. “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” (2 Cor 4:7)

It is this great hope that we trust in as participants in God’s work, and this work is realized against the reality of the Cross, the reflection of our own reality under the Powers of Sin and Death. “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.” (1 Cor 15:36). “For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” (2 Cor 4:11) For “since we have the same spirit of faith… we also believe, and so we also speak (of resurrection hope)” ( 2 Cor 4:13) and thus “we do not lose heart (2 Cor 4:16).” “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God.” 2 Cor 5:1 “For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened (so that we can be further clothed with the heavenly dwelling). 2 Cor 5:4 “He who has prepared us is God… so we are always of good courage 2 Cor 5:5-6

This is the great mystery, and what leads to the great resurrection passage of 1 Cor 15:36-39. The mystery is that “we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed (1 Cor 15:54).” The mystery is that Death is sin, the power of sin is the law… but Christ is strength and Power, the great unifier, the one who heals the divide (1 Cor 15:56). From now on then, “we regard no one according to the flesh 2 Cor 5:16.” “The old has passed away, behold, the new has come.” 2 Cor 5:17. We are ambassadors for Christ in the message of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:19-20), because “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 5:2

This is the way that God is building us as spiritual houses, into a spiritual community meant to bear witness to the New Heavens and the New Earth in its diversity. Know that “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully” 2 Cor 9:6 as God builds us up towards this end, and that we can know this because “He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way.” 2 Cor 9:10. Therefore, don’t live as though you need to show yourselves as above one another or above the ways of the world in order to have the Power and Strength of Christ. Live in weakness so that your witness may be made great in Christ. Live as a servant of all,  using your unique spiritual gifts to the benefit of all. The great unifier, the great call to unity, the healing of division, all of this is set under the foolishness of the Gospel, the mystery of the upside down nature of grace and the sanctified life, revealed through Christ on the Cross, and made visible in us, the community of God’s sons and daughters forever more, from first to last, beginning and end.

 

 

 

 

Coming to Romans, Paul’s enormous and paramount theological exposition, one can’t help but notice it’s level of sophistication and development. Especially for those who have spent time with Paul, set in the light of his body of work, Romans has the look and feel of someone looking back on their life and bringing together this grand summation of years worth of thought, study and investment. Not surprisingly, more than a few scholars consider this the crown jewel of New Testament writings, the enormity of its subject matter looming large not only over its setting, but over both ancient and modern theological development. It wouldn’t be far off to suggest that much of the diversity of theological opinion, denominational and doctrinal development owes itself to the book of Romans, especially to its focus on atonement and salvation.

It’s no small task for anyone to tackle Romans. If there is a book that demands time, patience and a commitment to each and every word and sentence structure, it would be this one. The beauty of the book though is that it is also immediately accessible. It holds an ancient context, but it’s not necessarily drowning in that ancient terminology and context. This is at least partly due, I think, to Paul’s desire to position this letter towards Jewish Christians, but by way of setting it within the greater witness to the Gentile world. He is contextualizing their faith as a universal faith in God by means of a shared pattern of witness. Mostly though, I think this is because of how well thought out and considered Paul’s argument ultimately is.

Given the sheer amount of division that does exist for modern readers within the Christian faith though, there are a couple of things that I felt were worthwhile for me to consider and to keep in mind as I engaged and wrestled with the text on a personal level:

1. Romans is speaking to those “who believe”, Jewish Christians who are in a strained relationship with Gentile (non-Jewish) Christians .

2. Romans is basically a carefully thought out and structured argument, and it is worthwhile noting how many times this argument leads to a similar question for his readers- But then what about sin? The reason this question emerges so often, and so naturally, is because Paul’s words evoke a common human response to these kinds of boundary reconstructing ideas. Whenever we think primarily in terms of insiders and outsiders, words that challenge our thoughts about who is in and who is out are going to challenge our position on the inside. The core thrust of Paul’s argument is helping his audience reconcile this concern.

3. Romans can be easily recontextualized. Because of its interest in building a recognizable “pattern of witness” (how it is that God’s grace moves into the world), we can easily (as readers) apply this same argument as believers in Christ to our own communities in relationship to the “outsiders” that come into our viewpoint.

4. It is really important to distinguish between the kind of Sin language Paul is using and “sin” as moral action. They are to a point connected and interchangeable, but to catch the force of Paul’s argument we need to see Sin in light of Paul’s understanding of Powers. Sin is the Power of Sin and Death that precedes us, which is the darkness under which all manners of sin emerges. And the force of Sin for Paul has to do primarily with division. Sin is the great divider and Christ is the great unifier. This is why sin is expressed within community, so as to set the healing of this divide within the grander narrative of Life and Death, Darkness and Light.

4. Above all, Romans is hopeful. It is life giving in its efforts to reshape these boundaries in Christ, and illuminating in the peace that this truth of a Gospel for all carries with it. It is interesting in healing a divide that exists, both in us, in our communities and in the world.

Paul’s Context and Concern 
One of the great things about Romans is the access we have to both its context and concern. There is little to no controversy surrounding authorship, and we can also know fairly decisively that it was written from Corinth during Paul’s 3rd missionary journey (moving East to West to Rome and then eventually to Spain). At some point he had to stop off in Jerusalem to deliver money to a Church, which is where he speaks of Phoebe (Romans 16:1-2), the one likely to have delivered the letter to Rome.

A noted aspect of Romans is the way in which Paul moves away from some of the marked concerns found in his previous letters (of both disputed and undisputed authorship). Gone is an emphasis on the developing Church, on particular teachings and on eschatology. Of main concern to Paul in Romans is the relationship between Jewish and Gentile Christians in Rome, which he sees as integral to the ensuing discussion of Law, the Abrahamic Tradition, Sin, Grace and Salvation. If there was a singular focus to pull out of this it would be that of division within the Gospel and within the Churcc and the problem this poses for the Gospel witness as a unifying force in the Gentile world. Unity is needed in the immediate so that this witness can continue with Paul from Rome to Spain. (15:22-24) But Paul is thinking larger than this, towards the grander vision of God’s great story of liberating creation from bondage to the Powers of Sin and Death.

The Gospel and the Power of Witness
There is little more powerful a greeting than one will find than Paul’s grand opening statement and summation of the Gospel in 1:1-7. The level of sophisticated expression and understanding here becomes immediately clear, setting the stage for Paul’s razor sharp focus on setting this Gospel straight into their context with confidence and grace.

The key concern of their witness to this Gospel (1:8), and establishing this witness as a sign of God’s saving work in their midst (salvation) then rises straight to the surface, with Paul expressing his longing to “reap the harvest” of this witness 1:13 in person. Paul then goes on to establish this witness within the context of the “Powers” (of Light and Dark, Gospel and Sin, Death and Life), an important framework through which to understand his unfolding argument about the Jewish-Gentile relations. It is in this Power that the Gospel moves from Jew to Greek to all, the basic pattern of “witness” that Paul is interesting in defining and protecting (1:14-16).

God’s Righteousness and Wrath
God’s righteousness is “revealed” (which speaks to this theme of “knowledge” that is prevalent in Paul’s writings and the whole of the New Testament) from faith to faith, which is the Power of witness in its full expression (1:17). God’s wrath moves in tandem with this witness, being “revealed” from Heaven (as) against all “ungodliness and unrighteousness” (it is important to recognize that His wrath is not against humankind here, but against the Powers of Sin and Death), which gives us an early foundation for Paul’s ensuing discussion of Jewish-Gentile relationships, with the Law existing to reveal this wrath “so that” this wrath is able to reveal Christ.

At the moment though, Paul is wanting to point out that this knowledge of (righteousness and unrighteousness) does away with excuse, because what is invisible (that which is now being revealed) is (actually) already clear, even in creation, having been made known to us from the beginning (creation). This will become important for Paul’s unfolding of this Law and Christ dynamic because of the way it helps to erase further distinctions between those under the Powers as “righteous” or “unrighteous”, the natural human tendency that flows from these kinds of recognizable boundaries.

To underscore this point (about righteousness and wrath working in tandem), Paul continues with this train of thought in 1:19-23, bringing us back to this notion of being under the Powers by suggesting that it is not what we do or don’t know that places us under these Powers, but that God “gave them up” (gives us up) to the exchanging of one truth for another (1:24; 1:26; 1:28). This is once again a theme Paul will return to later, which becomes important for recognizing how the work of Christ works to abolish the boundaries (between grace and works, in and out, righteous and unrighteous) we work so hard to establish.

But here we find a great “therefore” statement that prepares us for this frame of perspective. Therefore, because God gave them up, “you” (then) have no excuse (everyone who judges). What you see (what is revealed) is the same Power that all of us stand all under. By judging others (against this righteous and unrighteous paradigm), those who judge are effectively setting themselves under the judgment of their own wrath “being stored up” (2:5). The point for Paul is that there is in fact no partiality in God, therefore we should not be distinguishing between those who know and those who don’t know, the basis on which we draw these boundaries.

Our Hypothetical Works and The Question of God’s Partiality 
This moves into a hypothetical example of God judging according to “works” (that we are evil or good depending on what we do, and judged or saved according to God’s wrath and salvation) in 2:6-11. The point of this section is the same as above. It is to point out that there is no partiality with God, emphasizing that ultimately what this reveals is that we are all (then) condemned in the same way according to works (2:12). This is the nature of standing under the Law (which in their understanding is the knowledge that supposedly separates us as the righteous), and this stands as antithetical to the pattern of witness and the movement of the Gospel, which moves from faith to faith and arrives from outside of our perceived boundaries.

Paul now moves to reconfirm the train of thought he started with in describing this Gospel-Wrath paradigm. The point of the Law is that it reveals the Sin that we are already under (have been given to) so that Christ can be revealed in its midst as the one who saves us from it. And what makes this knowledge known is our witness, the same witness that we see in Creation, a Creation that stands equally in bondage to the Powers of Sin and Death. Again, this speaks to the idea of a whole world under bondage to the Power of Sin and Death and the injustices that flow from this. Paul takes this then and sets it directly into his concern for the witness of the Gospel in its “Jews-Gentiles-all” movement (2:17-29). As Paul says, a Jew is one inwardly, not outwardly, made by the Spirit, not the works of the Law 2:29. This is the point of their inheritance as a people of God. In the same way, this saving work (of Christ) arrives external to us, and the only advantage anyone gains is our witness to this. This witness is the true gift (3:1). The grand proclamation then becomes, “Let God (His Saving Work) be true though every one (of us) were a liar (3:4).”

But What About Sin Then?
If (3:5) it is true that the Law reveals our unrighteousness so that God’s righteousness (the Gospel of Christ) can be revealed, this exposes the question that is going to keep coming up over and over again for those (his readers) trapped within the boundaries they have tried to maintain, build and erect for themselves. If sin reveals God, why not then keep sinning? This is a just and fair question according to Paul (3:8).

To which Paul, seemingly anticipating this question, doubles down in moving this grand exposition forward. He declares, “By works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of Sin (3:20).” BUT, the “righteousness of God has come apart from the law (3:21).” This is where our freedom comes from. Although they arrive in tandem, they are not the same. God is not using this Gospel-Wrath paradigm to distinguish between who is righteous and who is not, he is using it to declare that all of us stand under the same Power (of unrighteousness), a wholly different Power from that of Sin and Death, and therefore we recognize Righteousness as a gift, not something earned. It is something “propitiated” (3:25) or given, in the sense that it places us (instead) under the power of righteousness. This is how God is revealed (through our witness of being under the Power of the Light) in the midst of the Darkness that we have been given to. We (therefore) uphold the Law in order to reveal Christ, only we don’t do so to establish our righteousness according to the Law of works, but rather we do so that the Law can reveal the unrighteousness that holds us bondage. This is the answer to the question of Sin. We must first recognize Sin as the Power of Sin and Death before we can understand the ways in which we are participants in sin (its expression in our lives), because “Righteousness is not our due (accomplishment), it is our belief (faith). (4:4)” that we are no longer under the Power of Sin and Death.

The Abrahamic Tradition, The Law and The Power pf Christ Revealed
Now moving more specifically into their own (shared) Jewish context, Paul brings up Abraham. The point of Abraham was to make him the father of “all” (no distinction). And yet, as Paul points out, this righteousness was afforded him before his circumcision (4:11).” For if it is “the adherents” of the law who are to be heirs, faith is null and the promise is void (4:14).” This doubles down on the idea that Law reveals wrath, not grace. It is wrath (God’s wrath towards the Power of Sin and Death) that reveals grace. And it is (in fact) this witness that informs Abrahams own life and ministry as hope, not defeat, strength, not weakness. He did not “weaken” in faith when he considered the failures of his own body (under this Wrath) to have a child (4:19). Rather, in hope he believed against hope that what God declared to be already true of him would come to be. It therefore is counted to us who believe (the idea of trusting in what is already declared to be, the Powers of Sin and Death already defeated) 4:24, something that Paul translates as “peace” (5:1) and hope (5:2).

It is for this reason that our awareness of being under the Power of Sin and Death (the very real suffering that we find in our world and in the world around us that awaits for this great truth, God’s Saving Work, to be carried to its fullness) carries this positive force. Suffering leads to endurance leads to character leads to hope, a hope that does not shame (through distinction) 5:3-5.” The point of the Law, which reveals God’s wrath against the Powers of Sin and Death, is to declare the grand movement of God’s saving work in our midst. That’s the Power of Christ, that is how it is revealed, in weakness not power. Blood (Death) and salvation (Life) are held in tandem in Christ’s movement to place Himself under the same Powers of Sin and Death that holds this world bondage, and he does so that we can be placed under the Power of Righteousness and thus declare that Life is greater than Death (5:10), and that we are no longer held in bondage.

One Sin, One Death, One Death, One Grace For All
For Paul, understanding Sin in its context becomes hugely important here. Sin was in the world before Law (The Powers of Sin and Death) 5:13, the Law simply revealed what was already there and obvious to a world in bondage. This distinguishes from the sin (works of the Law) that witness to the Powers which holds us bondage. The way he explains this is by reaching back to the beginning. One Sin=Many Sins (all), One Death=Much Grace (all) 5:15-17. One Sin leads to Sin and Death as the state which holds the whole world bondage in all of history, and one obedience (death) leads to life for all, a whole world no longer under bondage, thus where sin increases, grace abounds (5:19-21).” This is how we break out of this tendency towards distinction. This is how we break from the Power of the Law that we use to judge others according to their works of righteousness, even as it judges us as the unrighteous at the same time, a destructive cycle that pushes back against the witness of the Gospel.

So Then, What About Sin- The Motivating Force of God’s Witness
And yet we remain stubbornly insistent on upholding these boundaries created by the Law. In Chapter 6 we find the same question emerging, “so do we continue to sin so that grace may abound?” (6:1) To which Paul responds, if you find yourself still wondering about this grace, do you not know the truth of our baptism? This truth, which you also uphold, declares that we are no longer under the Power of Sin. Death is no more. We are dead to sin but alive to God. This is the Power of the Gospel. So then, let this be your motivation to not then go on sinning. It is all the motivation you need. Don’t stand as if you are defeated. Live as though Sin has no dominion over you (6:14). If you want to be free of your questions and your doubts, live as though the Gospel has no distinction.

Still not enough for his readers, the question persists, but what about sin then?

Paul doubles down. Your slavery to sin, he says, comes from telling yourself that you are still under Sin, when we are in fact not (6:15-16). Present yourself, then, as a slave to righteousness so that you can present others as slaves to righteousness, not sin. If you can’t get past yourselves, then think about how your insistence on avoiding this freedom in your life affects the ability of others to be able to stand in this freedom. For “when you were slaves of sin, you were free in righteousness” (6:20), but what good did it do if you don’t believe it? Sanctification, this grand idea that reflects growing in righteousness in ways that can bear witness to the truth of God’s saving work, is what unveils for us the promise of eternal life (the promise of the new heavens, new earth, that God is making right what is wrong). If you are doubting this saving work then consider the sanctified life. This can bear witness to the truth that precedes this life. After all, Paul insists, we live according to the “Spirit” not a “written code” (7:6). The gift of our witness is an external truth.

Sin and Division, Christ As the Unifying Force
Here is the matter of factness of this idea in simple terms. Sin produces Death (7:13), and it brings us under the Power of Death by way of the Law. If you have ever struggled to reconcile the way of your life and the way of this world (in its suffering and incomplete state), you will be left with this convoluted truth- “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” 7:15. This is the Power that Sin holds. It creates division. It separates mind (knowledge) and body (action) (7:25). It creates two laws divided against itself, the law of works and the law of grace. In this sense, as the One who brings Life to All, the Law divides but Christ unifies this division by declaring no “condemnation” in the law of the Spirit, the same Spirit that did away with the Law (Powers) of Sin and Death.

Therefore, set your “mind” on the things (the work) of the spirit 8:5-7 rather than your own work.  This gives life to the “body”, healing the divide “because of righteousness (Christ)”, not Law 8:10. And this unity will then spread out into the division that our boundaries (for the Gospel) have created. This is the grand statement. All “who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of god.” This is the knowledge that comes from setting our minds on the work of the Spirit, and this is the peace and hope that it uncovers for us. This is our motivation, our faith, our trust. This is what witness does (and is) as an external force in our lives and in this world. This is, as Paul moves to evoke the language of adoption in 8:14-17, the great vision of God’s Kingdom for all. For the Jewish Christians in view of Paul, this is why God’s grace moving to the Gentiles without condition is ultimately the most hopeful expression of the Gospel they can find, because it sets our faith and hope on what God is doing in the whole of Creation, not what we must do to enter God’s Kingdom. 

A Present and Future Hope
We doubt in the present for all the reasons Paul has described, cherishing our distinction over and against God’s saving work in the world, and thus are left wondering about how it is that we move from Sin to Grace. But if we need further motivation for Paul’s argument, consider this. The present is not worth comparing to the restoration that is to come.

We wait then with Creation (8:18-22), which is under the same bondage as we are. And we wait while our witness (as the firstfruits, the first awareness) bears witness to Creation of Christ’s Redemption (8:23). It is by doing this that we can then be reminded that God is working in our midst, working to make what is wrong right. This forms in us hope. A hopeful spirit, which is the gift of our witness. We hope for what we do not see so that the Spirit can help us and this world in its weakness (working all out together for good) 8:28. And we hope knowing this- this knowledge of both Sin and Grace precedes us because the Knowledge of God precedes us.

This is the catch. God foreknew us (8:29) for the sake of the world (firstborn among many brothers 8:29). This is the Jew-Gentile-Spain-World witness paradigm that Paul is trying to establish. All these external factors that emerge from Sin- condemnation, charges, separation, division, suffering? In all these things we are more than conquerers through Him who loved us 8:37 (8:38-39), and this truth arrives “for” the sake of the world.

God’s Election as a Cyclical Problem
In Chapter 9, we find Paul in anguish as he thinks about his Jewish brothers. We hear him desperately praying that they would see how this Gospel reach is actually hopeful for them. It means that “Gods purpose of election” that is born out of this foreknowledge has continued and is continuing (9:11). But his audience keeps questioning it, seeing it as unjust that the heritage they have in the upholding of the Law is seemingly worthless if grace abounds the way Paul says it does. Is it unjust that gentiles reap the reward of God’s salvation, Paul asks? By no means.

Here Paul digs deep into their shared Jewish roots, taking them back to Moses. God said to Moses, “I will have mercy on who I have mercy, and compassion on who I have compassion.” Here is the thing about this statement. It means that our salvation is not dependent on us. This has been Paul’s argument all along. “This is why the scripture said to Pharoah… I raised you up so that I might show my power (be revealed) in you, that my name will be proclaimed in all the earth 9:17.” This is the relevance of the hardened hearts, the notion of God giving us to the bondage that we read earlier. It means that God will have mercy and harden who God wills, because Christ is the Power by which we move from Death to Life.

Which leads to the central question that Paul anticipates. How then can he still find fault, if it is not our will, if this sin (using the Law as measure) is not ours? Paul answers by coming back to the argument he has been building. Wrath and Sin reveal salvation. To see it any other way leaves you trapped in an endless cycle. It leaves them bound by the law (9:19-29). It creates division, but offers nothing to heal that division. To demonstrate this division, he goes on to say, if God has called us from outside the bounds of the law (the elect), and if the law has condemned those within it (non-elect), what shall we then say? That Gentiles have achieved salvation and Jews have not? That’s the end result of this way of thinking. Boundaries beget more boundaries, ultimately condemning ourselves in our judgement of others.  And they are trapped in this cycle because they did not (and are not) pursuing this question in accordance with “faith”. In this case, Jesus and the Gospel become a stumbling block rather than the saving grace it actually is.

The Remnant As A Hope For All 
Moving into Chapter 10, Paul continues by saying that his desire is for them to be saved, because Christ is the “end” of the law. And he puts his hope in this desire because the righteousness that is based on faith does not say “who will ascend and who will descend”, but rather “the word is near you.” This means that the confession of salvation is already ours. Mouth and heart work together in this sense (10:8-10), healing the divide that exists between mind and action. This gives way again to the power of a witness that precedes us. “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.” 10:21. And yet the truth is, Christ has defeated the Powers of Sin and Death.

To think this way though requires them to reconsider the way they are seeing their (the Jewish Christians) Covenant with God in the pages of the God-Human Story. Chapter 11 returns Paul to the argument of their history (from Creation to Abraham to Moses to Elijah). What about the Jews then (at least he is beginning to uncover the true motivation here)? Consider Elijah and the idea of the “remnant”, a big theme in Israelite history. What does the remnant say about the rest of the them? 11:7 “Did the non-elect stumble in order that they might fall” Paul asks? “Not at all” he declares. Rather, through their trespass (Sin, Law) Salvation has come to the Gentiles (Sin Revealed so that Christ can be revealed). So now, if their Sin means riches for the world, and the failure of the Jews means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean?

This is a powerful question that speaks to the grand vision of Life from Death (11:15). And it would have arrived with a particular force, because the idea of the remnant throughout Israelite history always arrives as an external truth. It comes not as a statement about who is in and who is out, but as a witness to what God is doing in making what is wrong right. It arrives as God’s work in the midst of the Sin that holds them in bondage (exile). It raises up out of the Powers of Sin and Death to say that Death holds no Power in the light of God’s vision of Life, that Darkness does not prevail against the Light. In this sense, the witness of a Gospel “for the world” is as hopeful for them as it is for all, lest they just be relegated to the confines of their own shared story.

The Dough, The Branch and God’s Saving Work
Then Paul moves to break this argument wide open with a couple analogies. The first is that of dough. If the dough offered as firstfruits (the initial witness of God’s saving work) is holy, so is the whole lump. What infects the dough infects the whole of the dough, and what saves the dough saves the whole of the dough. Likewise in the picture of a tree. If the root is holy, so are the branches. So if you think that salvation to the Gentiles undercuts the salvation that comes from the Covenant Promise with God’s people, consider how much more will the natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree as the first fruits of God’s witness for the world (11:24). This, Paul says, is the mystery of your (Israel’s) salvation. This is the freedom he has found as a Jew. A partial hardening for the fullness of the Gentiles (11:25), which also becomes the salvation of Israel. This is how Sin reveals God to the world. This is the hopeful promise (11:28-30). “For God has cosigned all to disobedience that he may have mercy on all.” 11:31-32

So if you need and are looking for motivation in not sinning, in living into this Grace, this should be all you need. Therefore, don’t hesitate, but present your bodies as a living sacrifice in the same Spirit of Jesus. A sacrifice for all, in the witness of the Grace handed to you. Regardless of how much faith one does or does not have, writes Paul, don’t think of yourself more highly, but rather think soberly for the the sake of the many members (all with a different function) 12:3-5. This is the unity that we find in Christ. This is how the dough and tree works. Let this inform your life in the everyday with love as the genuine mark (of God’s saving work). Love sums up the entire Law as its fulfillment (13:9), so if you want to outdo, outdo in love. (Love… 12:9-21), and leave wrongdoing up to God. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome with God.

This is why Paul evokes the most practical of realities, the fact that we live in this world together, defined as it is throughout Israel’s history of living under earthly authorities in a not yet world, a world that is being made right but is not yet right. The necessary push , Paul suggests, which fits comfortably with his other writings and certainly the book of Acts that demonstrates this push and shove between God’s Kingdom for the world and living under authorities that seem opposed to God’s Kingdom, is that love must carry the way forward. Chapter 13:1-7, speaking on earthly authorities, is a generalized statement that fits firmly into this declaration to be overcome with God, not evil. To approach our life in this world in any other way leads back to the kind of boundaries, distinctions and judgments that leave us all under the Power of Sin and Death. It leaves us condemned by our own judgment. This is why Paul speaks about living with these authorities (lest we deteriorate into anarchy), and participating in the life of the world with God’s Witness in mind and heart. What God intends (in Paul’s words speaking to “government” as the intention of God), is a Gospel for the world, which arrives in this already-not yet place in which the Powers of Sin and Death still appear to hold sway. This then, as he moves towards this image of putting on the “armor of light” in 13:12, is how we bear witness to the light. Let justice carry justice, knowing that God’s justice (the making right what is wrong) stands above this and is concerned for the whole of creation, bringing a light to the world. This passage is about how the light can emerge when we live together in community without distinction. So then, Let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” as that which can protect against distinction as we occupy this space together in the world. 13:12.

A FURTHER UNDERSTANDING OF FAITH AND WORKS AND SALVATION IN ROMANS 10-12
From Roman’s 10-12:
“Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that “the person who does these things will live by them.” But the righteousness that comes from faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because” if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

So the concern here is regarding salvation, but making a distinction between salvation by works of the Law and salvation by faith, understanding that these two things are different, and this difference connects to Paul’s prayer that they (the Gentiles, whom Israel is questioning because, if they can be saved apart from the Law, where does that leave Israel in their collective failure under the Law) would be saved. Paul says, what faith does is it says “all” who believe can be saved. Pushing this further, Paul then addresses the relationship between hearing and believing. How can they believe if they haven’t heard (thus positioning Israel as for the salvation of the gentiles), to which Paul points out that hearing doesn’t necessarily translate to believing, as Israel’s history can attest to.

But then Paul points out that they have heard, and their witness has been good despite Israel’s failure. And why? In order to “make you jealous of those who are not a nation.” In a twist of irony, Paul pulls up Isaiah to say, “I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.” But of Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.” Israel has heard but didn’t believe (they seeked and God didn’t find them faithful). Now Paul gets to the heart of the matter. “I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means!” How is it that He hasn’t, as the Jewish Christains are so concerned about? He brings up the 7000 who “remained” at the time of Elijah to explain that they too are a remnant. They are an example of “Gods witness”. “So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace.”

The inference here is that their (collective) failure under the Law was in fact grace, and that grave is evident in them. Their stumbling was grace. They were made to be jealous for the salvation of the gentiles. Now he switches to the Gentiles, telling them not to be prideful and assume themselves to be above the Jews just because “some branches” were cut off so that they could be grafted in. There is a double inference here, the first being that if God cut off the branches he can also graft them back in, which is in reference to what he is doing with the remnant, and if he cut off the branches for their sake, that means he can also cut off them. Turning his attention back to the fate of Israel, he now says this. I want you to understand this mystery: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in… in this way, all Israel shall be saved.”

Now here is the kicker of a line- “As regards the gospel they are enemies of God for your sake;”, meaning that they stumbled so that the gentiles may be saved. “But as regards (their) election, they are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors.” For the sake of their ancestors. If you follow Paul’s argument, he is making a parallel distinction here. In Israel’s failure salvation comes to the gentiles. But in the salvation of the gentiles Israel is being saved “for the sake of their ancestors.” In this way, all Israel will be saved. Paul goes on then to say, regarding this great difference between Law and Faith, hearing and believing, “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.”

What Paul is doing here is saying that they (Israel) were raised up to be witnesses of God to the world, but Israel failed to hear themselves, and complained that no one was listening. So what about Gods promise. Faith is Gods work, he says. And if they want proof, just look at themselves. They are a remnant of Israel standing as a witness to the Gentiles, and their witness to the Gentiles is allowing them to stand as a witness to Gods work in their ancestors. The point of Paul is ultimately Christ is the work of this faith on their behalf, with God proving faithful despite their lack of faith in Gods promise. This is what causes Paul to then make an appeal to them to live into the new life they have in Christ, not by works, but by the faith (God’s faithfulness in Christ).

If we were to back track on these chapters and take the statement where Paul says they will be grafted in “if they remain faithful”, we lose the ENTIRE thrust of Paul’s argument. Everything he says becomes meaningless, because this separation he makes between the Law and Faith no longer has meaning. Everything hinges on Israel being faithful, both the fate of their ancestors and the Gentiles. There is no hope to be found, it’s all just one big roll of the die. Maybe the Gentiles will be cut off, maybe they won’t. Maybe Israel will be faithful, mabye they won’t. It’s all entirely uncertain, and offers no real hope except to fall back on their ability to believe, and in through their belief bring about God’s promise. That is not how the chapters unfold. There has to be a better way to understand that one phrase in this whole entire section than conditionally, because otherwise none of it makes any sense and Paul might as well have not said anything at all.

Faith, Doubt, and the Light of the World as Strength for the Weak
For Paul, there is something going on in the midst of all this that speaks to the work of Christ on the Cross. In setting Himself under the Power of Sin and Death, Christ aligns himself with the state of the world. All of this happens so that “he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living” (14:9), through the Resurrection but by way of the Cross. This is why it says, as we live together (Jew and Gentile),  “don’t judge the faith of another” but instead “pursue peace” 14:19 (the purpose for Paul’s instructions in 13:1-7). What happens in this discussion of Law and Grace is that we find weaker and stronger faith. This is determined by those who trust in salvation by grace, and those who question (doubt) their salvation by faith. Blessed are the ones who have no doubts towards this end, writes Paul, because they don’t have to worry and carry that burden (14:23). And yet for those who do, for those who carry the burden of the law in their desire to see Christ, they are who the strong are for. The strong are meant to continue to declare to the world that there is no distinction in Christ.

There is nothing we have to do and accomplish to know that we, our situation, this world, is under the saving work of Christ. The declaration is that He is making what is wrong right, and we can hold on to that no matter what. The reason that was written (remembered) in the “former days” was to give us this endurance, this assurance. If you feel the burden, know that this burden is carried by Christ and bears witness from the beginning. This is why it is not the right of the strong to impose their faith onto the weak (those wrestling with this truth) in a way that discourages and distinguishes. It is simply the job of the strong to bear witness so that it can do its work in helping people come to see and stand under the saving grace of Christ that has already been accomplished. And the way we can do this is by speaking to these stories that uphold this witness in the world. That is why those stories are helpful (15:4), because they give us the foundation to live in harmony as both Jew and Gentile. “For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfullness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.” (15:8-9)

Which leads us to this powerful declaration and prayer.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the holy spirit you may abound in hope.” 15:13

For Paul, all of this is somewhat particular. In 15:14-32 he says that he is proud of his and their witness and he preaches to them now so that the Gospel can be made known to the Gentiles in Spain in the same way. But it is also general and sweeping in nature. This same argument, although applied to the Jewish-Gentile discussion, is meant to flow out into the whole of the world. It is meant to witness to God’s saving work in the whole of Creation. It is meant to unify all that has been divided under the Power of Sin and Death, us against ourselves, Jew against Gentile, a salvation for the world. His final admonition? Watch out for those who cause division (16:17), because that is where the appearance comes from that we are still under Darkness. Instead, hold onto the One that declares that we are no longer under the Power of Sin and Death, but rather under the great vision of God’s New Creation, a vision that God has for the whole of the world.

 

 

Positioned between 1st and 2nd Thessalonians and the grand letter to Hebrews in the Christian Canon are a set of 4 contested letters from Paul- 1st and 2nd Timothy, Titus and Philemon. All 4 letters bear similarities in focus, exhortation and teaching, with this connective tissue binding them together as a call to witness (of our salvation) and right living (godliness).

There are strong arguments that can be made both for Pauline authorship and against it. For the purpose of keeping the narrative flow of these four letters intact there is worth in assuming Pauline authorship, as it helps to shape the context with a bit more clarity while also underscoring the flow of the placement structure- 1 Timothy is Paul writing between the two imprisonments in Rome, 2 Timothy during the second imprisonment in Rome (right before his death), which is then flipped with Titus between the two imprisonments in Rome, and Philemon during his imprisonment in Rome.

Structurally speaking, this back and forth placement is able to offer us as readers an intimate and very practical picture of Paul’s understanding of ministry set alongside the effects of his witness to the Gospel in the life of Churches/Believers all around the area in which he ministered and his inevitable time in prison that led to his death.

False Teaching and the Call to Persevere
Beginning in 1 Timothy, what becomes clear is Paul’s concern for the Gospel in the midst of false teaching, which comes both through Gnosticism and the Jewish teachings of the Law, both of which have the power to divide us against Christ and Christ against Himself. This is the challenge Paul sees the Church facing as he creeps closer to his own death, and thus he is looking to equip the Churches to persevere in his growing absence.

False Teaching, Church Leaders and The Pattern of Witness
We also find in 1 Timothy a focus on developing a Church structure that is able to respond to and uphold the Gospel in the face of false teaching. There is a practical edge to these letters that is undeniable, but one that is anchored in “a pattern of witness” that informs the Gospel in the light of Christ. In this sense, all 4 letters are considered Pastoral Epistles (with the exception of the more specifically addressed Philemon, which is to a “master”) and are speaking to Church Leaders.

In 1 Timothy, the exhortation to these leaders is to “stay in “Ephesus”, which is the community Paul is speaking directly to. He calls them to stay so as to guide people towards teaching “good” doctrine (repeats this in 1 Timothy 4:7-10). There is a relationship between good doctrine (teaching), the Gospel and “godliness” that emerges here and that becomes important for understanding the exhortations in all four books, with the teaching of the “good” Gospel becoming the measure for godliness and the measure of our witness.

The Gospel and Godliness
This Gospel, the work of Christ on the Cross, is recognized as the driving force for our discussions of godliness, with the ensuing discussions of teaching this Gospel (by way of living it) depending on what the Gospel does as an “undivided” and a unified vision (one God, one mediator, undivided I Timothy 2:5) of God’s work in our lives. As Titus posits, “knowledge of truth” bears witness to godliness in the “hope” of eternal life 1:2, of which we have hope because it (the Gospel) was set in place before time and made ours in Christ. Paul, then, is less concerned with saying exactly what the false teachings are in these letters, and more concerned with how false teaching is expressed in ways that are antithetical to the Gospel, thus leading to “ungodliness”. This is why he is exhorting and upholding the Leaders in these letters amidst the presence of these antithetical teachings, most of which revolve around dissension, division and arguing, thus revealing the ways in which people are standing in the hope of the Gospel or outside of it.

False Teachings, The Law and The Gospel
What we do know about the false teachings in these letters is that they seem to connect to teachings of the (Jewish) Law that are creeping back into the Gospel (which freed us from the Law). In Titus, this is referred to as the circumcision party, Jewish myths, ritual purity, and Cretans (Titus 1:10-15). This is why the exhortation in 1 Timothy 1:3 is set over and against the “endless myths and genealogies” which leads to vain discussion (disputes) in 1:4-6. These genealogies are the very thing we find in the Gospel writings that people use to define themselves  as within (or outside of) the Kingdom of God (according to their heritage), constantly creating distinctions between who the Gospel is for and who it is not for. What this does is divide the Gospel (which is informing these communities in Ephesus), promoting “speculation” about who is in and who is out (according to Law) rather than dependence on the “stewardship from God”, which comes through faith (1:3-4), faith that bears the hope of our shared heritage (in adoption) that Titus expresses.

Love as the Aim of the Gospel
The aim of this exhortation is ultimately “love” (1:5) as that which unifies us within the work of the Gospel, which leads Paul to remind them of what the Law was meant for and what the Law does (in its divisiveness). The Law, which Paul has claimed elsewhere as well, is meant to expose Sin, and Sin is exposed so that Jesus might be displayed 1:5-11. It is in this truth that “… the grace of our Lord overflowed with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (1:4), and for this reason that Paul can say that his witness begins and depends on the Gospel which declares that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am foremost.” He received mercy “because” he first acted “ignorantly”, a claim he repeats in Titus Chapter 3. This is what the Law upholds. The reason the Gospel must be upheld is so that we can bear witness to the way Jesus is then revealed through the law. This is why Paul received mercy, so that “Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life (our hope).” 1:12-17 This becomes the pattern of witness, a pattern that gains weight when set alongside Paul’s imprisonment, his coming death, his suffering and his trials.  

The Good Warfare, Prayer and The Unifying Work of the Gospel
The charge then, as these leaders persist in the face of Paul’s absence and wait for this hope to be fully revealed? Wage the good warfare (1 Timothy 1:18). Waging good warfare begins with prayer “for all” so that “we may lead a peaceful, godly life” (2:1), because God desires “all to be saved” 2:3, and this salvation comes by way of unity (in Christ) as the one who abolishes those dividing lines held in place by the Law. This unity is ultimately expressed in the image of the one God, one mediator standing undivided 2:5. This is why in Titus 3:9 Paul writes to “avoid foolish controversies.” For those who stir up division, warn them once, twice and then have nothing more to do with them for they are self condemned by nature of dividing themselves against the hope we have in the Gospel (that Christ has conquered the Power of Darkness that divides us). For Titus, the problem is that false teaching (which stands opposed to the Gospel) leads not to living godly lives (Titus 1:16), but rather to lives that live as if they do not know God. The grand truth is that God knows them, with the “knowledge of (this) truth” according with godliness in the “hope of eternal life” (Titus 1:2), which is where we place our hope because it was set in place before time.

Connecting Our Witness to Our Work Through Allegory
To establish this pattern further, Paul begins to locate it within a couple analogies, working towards then establishing this “working” connection between teaching (living), godliness and the Gospel. We see this first in the use of the “ransom” analogy to describe what this one God and one mediator is doing to establish godliness. This “ransom” language, as most analogies do, arrives as an incomplete picture, and we have to be careful as modern readers with trying to stuff it into these analogies too directly or literally. But Paul evokes it for a reason, with the language reaching across this mental picture of something (us) held in bondage and something needing to be payed (Christ’s death) to free this thing from bondage. The important point of this image is the one “who gave” out of a desire for “all to be saved”. Where we need to be cautious is pushing this analogy further to account for “who” is holding us bondage and “who” the payment is being made to (which some systematic theologies go to great lengths to talk about God Himself holding us ransom, because God is not subservient to the Devil of course, and of God’s payment being made to Himself because He is the one who requires it). This is stretching the allegory much further than intended, and actually causes it to break down, leading us straight back into the kind of divisions Christ came to deliver us from (and to unify). The point of the ransom language is to evoke this simple contrast of “bondage” and “freedom”.

With a continued emphasis on prayer (2:8), Paul then moves to apply this analogy to a second analogy expressed in a two-step framework, connecting the pattern that we find in Genesis to the pattern of “godliness” that we find in the conduct of men and women in prayer. (2:9-11, 12-15) What’s important to note here is that these passages are descriptive not generalized, and they are directly related to the ongoing emphasis on “division” and “unity”. The particular example (of men praying with hands raised, and on women praying in specific ways while cautions on teaching and exercising authority) is used to emphasize the greater analogy, which is the Genesis narrative (Adam and Eve). After describing the conduct of man and woman in prayer in light of the interest in “divisiveness”, Paul connects this using the word “For”. Watch out for this, (“for”) Adam was formed first and then Eve, but Adam was not deceived, Eve was. “Yet” (2:15), she will be saved through “childbearing” “if” they continue in (the kind of living that connects to godliness).

This is a difficult verse to unpack in its full and ancient context. But there are a few things that we as modern readers can pull from it to help frame our focus on the narrative and argument Paul is trying to paint for his readers.
1. This is not a creation mandate where 13-15 is meant to support 8-12 as a matter of law and code of conduct meant for all, as some have made it out to be. It is an interconnected analogy that is being used to set up his words in chapter 3 about the point and nature of Church leadership.
2. The point and nature of leadership, which Paul is arguing must be “above reproach”, is to witness to the Gospel and protect against the kind of division that divides the Gospel. This division (and being divided) and the right teaching of it is how we are to recognize godliness and ungodliness.
3. Therefore, the analogies are being used and pulled from in order to offer Leaders a “pattern” of living by which to understand this relationship between conduct (work) and (godliness) in a way that accords with a unified Gospel.
4. The words “for”, “yet” and “if” are important in the above passage, because they help us to connect the analogies together. The point is the witness to the Gospel that the “Ransom” analogy describes (in bondage, freed from bondage through the unifying work of Christ). The example of Adam and Even plays back into the particular kind of division it raises, an example that then connects back to the primary call to “pray” for all in chapter 2:1, becoming a way to frame this bondage/freedom paradigm over Paul’s own pattern of witness referenced in Chapter 1 and now being located in the lives of the Church leaders in Chapter 3.
5. Recognized within the larger narrative that the Adam and Eve allegory belongs to in Genesis (and the Torah), Adam represents the bondage (The Power of Sin and Death), and Eve represents the “all” who are under bondage (being deceived). It is a picture of one “Sin” (the Powers which brought Death through Adam) for all, and one “God” (made alive in Christ) for all. This is how the passage says that Eve “became a transgressor”, not because she herself evoked the need for the Ransom through her sin, but because she was already under bondage to the Sin that needed a Ransom (a freeing from). This is the force of the allegorical picture that Paul is representing in light of the Gospel of “ransom”. This also helps us to then make sense of the “yet” portion of this allegory, with Paul suggesting that her (Eve’s) continuing in faith and love and holiness and self control in the midst of her “suffering” (which in the allegorical picture is the pain of childbearing that the Genesis narrative describes as the sign of bondage) can be a sign of Christ’s saving work (making right what is wrong). This is the same witness that the Leaders good works (which bear witness to this Gospel) then protects.
6. These three allegories then- the ransom, the action of men and women in prayer, the Adam and Eve narrative, become the working image for the “mystery  of faith” (3:9) and the “mystery of godliness” (3:14-16) that we can carry forward.

The Pattern of Witness in the Life of the Leaders: Healing the Divide and The Gospel’s Unifying Work
With this pattern of witness in mind (Christ’s witness being made known in Paul, Paul’s witness making Christ known in them), and moving towards the grand proclamation of this mystery unveiled as they bear “witness” to others of our liberation, chapter 3:1-6 shifts us into a practical application of the lives of Leaders “being above approach” when it comes to “false teaching” (that which confuses or ignores the bondage-freedom Gospel), and likewise Deacons being above reproach. All of this fits with Titus and the call to be held to a higher standard as well, with Titus’ clear emphasis on this shared witness (2:11-14) as being a hope that we hold for this life and the next.

What’s worthwhile noting about this list of specifics, and the the specific exhortations (instructions) for Church conduct in chapter 5, is how they all have to do with being awake and aware both of what false teaching leads to but also of how a life lived in accord with the Gospel must stand un-divided against itself in love of the other. To be “above reproach” is not to allow someone to see in your life a reason to doubt the power of the Gospel, which is what happens when someone (which the allegories mentioned before hold in place as the “mystery of godliness”) sees you as perfectly able to save yourself in “right” action or by heritage. This pushes back against the hope we have. Godliness has value, as it says, for this life and the life to come (that which we hope for) because of the ransom payed by Christ, whom through His Death (putting Himself under Bondage to the Power of Sin), defeated it and liberated us. By living undivided (together) according to this single truth, we then bear witness to the One who is making all things right as we wait for the final hope of a redeemed Creation. “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness” (1 Timothy 3:16) in which the mystery of godliness is being made holy by the “word of God” (the Gospel) and Prayer for all (1 Timothy 4:5), not by the Law of works that the false teaching upholds.

Therefore, show faith, hope and love through a patient and persistent approach that bears witness in the face of external challenges and pressures on your behalf and on behalf of all. Because “the Spirit” expressly says that “in later times” some will depart from the faith (“according to deceitful spirits’), bringing us back to the Adam and Eve analogy, and “in the last days there will come times of difficulty” (2 Timothy 3:1). But, in our understanding of this deep connection that exists between the Gospel, godliness and right living, we can understand that “God made everything good” and is making all things right, once again (bringing us back to that Adam and Even analogy) 1 Timothy 4:1-15. Therefore “fulfill your ministry” in this light. (2 Timothy 4:5), and share in the suffering of Paul and Christ for the greater good of all (2 Timothy 2:1-11).

This then flows out into a picture of patience and perseverance (training and the race in 1 Timothy 4:7-8), seeing this godliness as a process of waiting and enduring that looks towards a “crown of righteousness” (2 Timothy 4:8), which is found through our hope in Christ. Therefore continue, devoting yourself to “public readings of Scripture, exhortation and teaching” shaped by the Gospel and set within the sacred story of this narrative (2 Timothy 3:15), for “all scripture (the narrative that bears witness to the Gospel) is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” (2 Timothy 3:16). This is how we become equipped to persevere, is being shaped together and unified by the unifying work of Christ.

It is for this reason that the Leaders here are called through the prophecy of those who laid hands on them to their calling in Christ (1 Timothy 4:14), a call that positions the witness of this mystery as a “gift”. This reminds them that the mystery is not something they lay claim to by their own knowledge, but it is imparted to them and through them by way of their witness to the Gospel. The call is to let others see their progress in training not for the sake of their works, but to lay claim to the work of Christ in moving us from bondage to freedom (4:15). The call is not to have the “appearance of godliness while denying its Power” to do so (2 Timothy 3:5), but to bear witness to that which the work of Christ lays claim to. “The Lord knows who are his” (2 Timothy 2:19) and His foundation stands. This is the good fight Paul references in (2 Timothy 4:7), the faith that he upholds.  Jesus defeated Death (Powers) (2 Timothy 2:1-11), and because of this the Lord knows those who are His, so avoid division that blinds us to this truth and do good work (2 Timothy 2:24-25). Words divide, but work unifies (2 Timothy 2:14-16)

The Freedom of The Gospel and the Freedom From Slavery
In 1 Timothy 6:1-2, as Paul brings his letter to a close, we come to this powerful illustration regarding slaves and masters which Paul pulls into the pattern of witness and allegorical pictures he has been painting. Paul uses slavery, a yoke similar to that which Paul describes for women in the pain of childbirth out of the Genesis story, to empowers those enslaved by affording them the same witness in Christ. In the spirit of unity this becomes a picture of a world being made right set against the reality of a world that is not yet right. The agency afforded slaves here points us straight to the simple, one page letter that we find in Philemon, which is a letter written to a slave master on behalf of a runaway slave for whom Paul has brought the Gospel.

Empowered with the freedom of this Gospel truth, Paul is urging the master to consider the slave a “brother” (an equal) rather than someone who is lesser. This is the spirit of these brief couple verses that grants agency to the slave and sets him within the “mystery” and grace of “godliness”, therefore giving us a clear demonstration that Jesus Christ and the “teaching” this Gospel is the only measure for godliness. (6:3). In Titus, the Gospel (2:11-16; 3:3-7) is the source of “godliness.” Therefore, in a passage that moves to evoke the imagery of money, distinguish between the gain “of” godliness and the gain “from” godliness (6:5-6), counting godliness itself as a true gift of riches (freedom from bondage), a gift that brings us not a “spirit of fear but of power, love, and self control” (2 Timothy 1:4-7).
Titus and the Grand Narrative of Hope
Set in the scope of Titus’ declarative message, this message rings loud in clear in the ultimate call to live into this broader narrative that the Gospel unveils. “The grace of God appeared bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ… (Christ) who gave himself to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” Titus 2: 11-14

Therefore, be “ready” for good works, not divided but unified, showing courtesy to everyone.” Let us be reminded, as Paul was, that we are all the same (once foolish) and that Christ came to save all. In this great mystery, give yourself to the good works that Christ saved us for, not “quarrels and division” (avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions about the law), for these things are profitable for people.

 

Paul and Silas in Thessalonica
Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women. But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd. And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.” And the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things. And when they had taken money as security from Jason and the rest, they let them go.
Acts 17:1-9

Of all of Paul’s undisputed letters, Thessalonians might be the most difficult one to engage as modern readers. This is at least in part because of its apocalyptic language, but it’s also because this is understood to be the earliest of Paul’s writings, and thus reflective of a thought process that Paul would go on to flesh out over the course of his travels and ministry with more focus and clarity. It represents itself as raw, emotionally driven, and in many ways a very particular fashion. The praise and admonishments and call that we find in its words don’t easily translate across cultural experiences and eras. Add into this mix the tension that exists between the 1st and 2nd letter, with a good deal of certainty surrounding the first letter and a good deal of uncertainty plaguing the second, and these two books represent a challenging effort for exposition, translation and engagement.

Ancient, But Still Relevant
In this though, the letter (and letters) are certainly still relevant and important for us as engaged readers of scripture, particularly in its early expression of Apocalyptic thought and the developing Pauline context. For one who is reading Acts, it operates as a bit of a balloon bubble, narrowing us in on Paul’s travels to the city (and his ministering to the pagan Gentiles in Thessalonica 1:9-10), being pushed out of that city (Acts 17:5-8), and later sending Timothy (1 Thes 3:11-12) in his stead to see how they were doing in his absence (1 Thes 3:6). The context for the first letter (and possibly the second) is a letter written in response to Timothy’s accompanying word that, despite the few issues they were facing as a community of believers, they were doing well.

Positive, Affirming, and Admonishing Words
A good deal of the book is positive and affirming towards this end, with the latter chapters narrowing in on a call to keep going the way they are, but in this toalso push themselves to do just a little bit more in response to some of the struggles that Timothy has made Paul aware of.

Of special interest to Paul is restoring their hope in the risen Christ as one who liberates both those who are alive and those who are dead (3:10; 4:13). This focus is significant because it sheds light on the early communities and their understanding of Jesus within what scholars call an “apocalyptic” understanding. Most, if not all, the books in the New Testament are heavily influenced by this apocalyptic movement born from the late Old Testament period and the Inter-testament period, where we see the Jewish understanding of Resurrection (at the end of time) being shaped against Greco-Roman ideas of the afterlife (especially in their idea of hell) and the reality of the growing oppression that saw the Messiah as one who was coming to liberate the Jews in the here and now.

In a pagan Gentile environment (Thessalonica, the Capital of a Roman Province, was a key place for trade and Greco-Roman philosophical development), there would have been confusion over reconciling the Resurrection hope (the return of Jesus) as something meant for them (who were still alive) in their current struggles, persecution and oppression. This was a similar expectation they had of Jesus being raised up as the liberator of the Jews before His death. Thus, making sense of Jesus’ death as liberation for the Thessalonians was a hope they had for the here and now as they waited patiently for the promised return. Only their oppression continued, people started dying, and their patience was being tested. They started to wonder where is Jesus, leading to questions about exactly what their expectations were when it came to their liberation and how it would happen, with a key question being, did those who died miss out? And if so, how do we grieve for them? (1 Thes 3:10; 4:13) This left them in a state of depression, a feeling of unpredictability and carrying a heavy emotional response.

The Power of Witness- Faith Hope and Love
This is why Paul begins with immediate words of encouragement, with Paul exhorting the virtues of faith, hope and love. (1 Thes 1:3) as affirming qualities, moving to establish their own witness as proof that God (and their life in Christ) was still working in their midst through these virtues (1:5-7). By establishing this basic train of logic, Paul underscores that his witness (through the Spirit of Christ) empowered them to be imitators of Christ, and thus their witness was empowering others in Thessalonica to be imitators of Christ, going forth “everywhere” on their behalf. Paul leads them towards a sense of independence, trusting that their faith is theirs, not Pauls, giving to them at the beginning of time. The Spirit of Jesus is working in their midst, and all they have to do is look around them to know this is true. This is the reason that Paul is able to confidently speak of them as the “chosen” people, an important declaration for them to hold on to as Gentiles in the midst of their ongoing suffering (2:4) and waiting (1:10). Paul is able to remind them that their waiting and their suffering is not counter to his own witness, pointing out that he told them they would face oppression (3:4). This is not a reason to doubt their witness to others.

Formative Faith and Faith For the Future
Paul intentionally contrasts the nature of their faith in their (shared) liberation with the reality of their experience as they (the living and the dead) wait for Christ’s liberation. The character of their (shared) faith is given a gentle trait, described as a nursing mother, using the language of humility and of serving others giving of themselves, and later like a father’s relationship to his child (2:11). This is all formative language that speaks to the ongoing nature of faith’s expression.

This is also why Paul is interested in connecting the Spirits work with their work, emphasizing that the witness of the spirit and their willingness to live in the Spirit in the everyday go hand in hand. Hard work is important when it comes to holding or losing hope (2:9), and Paul eventually instructs them to “live quietly”, “mind their own affairs” and to “work with their hands” (a fulfillment of Jeremiah’s covenant), which is one of the places where he provides both a gentle admonition and a slight correction to their current behavior. In their waiting, and in their suffering, the inclination is that they had apparently slipped into modes of depression and anxiety, causing them to depend on the money and work of others rather than bearing out the witness of the Spirit through their involvement in society in honest and contributive ways. This same admonition is found later in 2nd Thes 3:6-10.

Of concern for Paul is that love of others is ultimately shaped by the Spirit’s witness, which is self giving not taking, and arrives and is expressed through their love for others (4:9). This same love is then filtered out into a particular example from their experience, which is the struggle with and engagement in sexual immorality as part of the Greco-Roman world they are a part of (4:3). The will of God, Paul says, their sanctification, is to abstain from sexual immorality. “God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness” (4:7). The point Paul continues to make here is that the Spirits witness and their witness goes hand in hand as it expresses love outwardly, and sexual immorality (however this is interpreted from their particular situation) is antithetical to this love as it is the oppression of others in exchange for their own desires (idolatry).

From the Particular to the Apocalyptic
Here Paul starts to evoke more obvious and aware apocalyptic language. “But you are not in Darkness… you are children of the Light” (5:4) Paul declares. He pulls from this language, speaking of day and night, dark and light as metaphorical images that can help place their “waiting” and “enduring” as a spiritual practice into a greater spiritual reality. This is the hope they have, that Christ will liberated those who are dead and alive, so Paul challenges them not to grieve as “those without hope” (4:13), but rather as those with a greater vision of what God is doing through Jesus (making what is wrong right). He then cleverly spins this back, using the same imagery of the spiritual armor we find in Ephesians, to their fear and question surrounding those who had died. He takes that fear (grieving as those without hope) and places it in a more hopeful context by calling them to “stay awake” in the here and now, once again connecting their current practice with the bigger picture as a way of holding onto hope. The challenge here is both an affirmation and an admonition, with the call to stay awake then leading into the call to rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all (5:18), all language that requires one to “stay awake” so that as they wait they can help all who are struggling, a definitive expression and response of love that stands over the sexual immorality and their taking from others (5:14). 

The Controversy of Thessalonians
There are two key controversial elements of these letters, the first being that infamous phrase in 2:15 that declares that the “Jews killed Jesus”, and the difficult apocalyptic language that we find in 2 Thessalonians that uses hard and fast language to reference God’s judgement at the desruction of the wicked. Before speaking to those two elements, a brief word on the second letter.

2 Thessalonians In Context
The two letters are set together because of some obvious shared characteristics in the first few verses along with the tradition of early readers, but there are key differences that have caused scholars to long since question that they belong together as part of the Pauline tradition. This is of particular concern with the apocalyptic language that emerges.

On an immediate level, giving thanks in hearing that they are “doing well”, which is cited as evidence of their witness (1:5) and as something they can trust in, reminds us of the first letter and establishes a similar concern. It is in 2 Thes 1:9 that the language and concern turns towards an emphasis on the the final liberation using apocalyptic language. It is from this that we get this exposition of thought surrounding how understanding the final liberation can give them (if the audience is the same as those in Thessalonica) further hope. It shifts the focus from the present focus of the first letter to the future expectation, establishing this against the second coming of Christ, the coming of the “man of lawlessness”, and eventually (finally) the justice of God that they long for prevailing in their midst through the eternal destruction of their oppressors (those who do not obey the Gospel and know God 2 Thes 1:9), which leads to their liberation (those who know God).

In the flow of this narrative picture, the rebellion and man of lawlessness (2:3) comes before Christ, and arrives in the form of Christ (powers and signs and wonders). The parallels to Jesus’ own descriptive ministry are intentional, speaking of the “mystery of lawlessness” as already at work (2 Thes 2:7) in the same way that so much of Paul’s teaching understands salvation to already be at work in the already-not yet reality that informs our waiting. Only in the case of the man of lawlessness, they are sent by the Devil rather than God, and comes not in revealing truth but rather “deception”.

The Controversy: What Do We Do With This Apocalyptic Language?
This sort of language is admittedly difficult for modern ears to wrap our minds around. It stands a good distance from some of the more familiar and practical pictures of faith we find in letters like Philippians, Corinthians and Galatians. Depictions of eternal punishment, hell and condemnation also come rife with all of the baggage of modern interpretations and expressions which sets this apocalyptic language in grand images of the end of the age, the antichrist, destruction, and judgement.

This is far out of my league, and there are plenty of wonderful scholars who have wrestled with this language and its ideas on a far greater level and with more insight than I could ever have myself. But for what it’s worth, here are a couple of key approaches and ideas that I have found and borrowed along the way (of my own spiritual journey) that have been helpful in coming to, encountering and reading passages like this.

Apocalyptic Language as Present and Future Focus
As I mentioned earlier, apocalyptic language comes from a tradition that informs the whole of the New Testament writings. You see it all over the Gospels, and in books like 2nd Thessalonians, Jude, 1st and 2nd Peter and the mother of them all, Revelation. This is a tradition that emerges from this crossroads between Jesus’ ministry and the later age of Jewish tradition (the Prophets, and books like Daniel). It is also very apparent in the extra-Biblical material, playing into that long process of deciding which books belonged in the canon of Jesus’ witness (the key concern for the NT) and which books veered into more Gnostic expressions (of which apocalyptic language can be a part of in its grand emphasis on spiritual imagery and its shared emphasis on “revealed knowledge”, which we find at the root of the word “apocalyptic”, literally rendered “revelation” or “unveiling of the knowledge”, and gnostic, literally rendered “knowledge revealed”). Even Revelation was a book that was a very late entry into the canon and tradition for this reason (it’s not even a big part of Eastern Orthodox tradition still)

What informs the development of this language is the Jewish Tradition of the Resurrection, which becomes fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus as “revelation”. In ancient Jewish belief, the emphasis was far more on the here and now, a life lived in witness to God’s work in their midst, with long life in service to the Lord as the gift often sought. Thoughts on the afterlife were present, but they were represented through a quiet confidence in a final Resurrection, not the fleshing out of the final age as a key focus of their concern. What this confidence (in the Resurrection) did was free them up to be concerned with today, which is what we see in much of the Old Testament scripture.

It would be later developments of Jewish understandings of heaven and hell that flowed naturally from their questions concerning the Revelation of God and provided the framework for Apocalyptic language. What is important for understanding this development is that it formed within the belief systems of the surrounding nations, which all held a greater and more defined sense of the afterlife as part of their focus. Apocalyptic language in the Judeo-Christian tradition then reflects the need to locate this shared awareness of the spiritual realm within the unique Revelation of God and ultimately the unique expression of Jesus. It is through this that we find these far more expressive and fleshed out depictions of a future vision in later Old Testament writings being set against the idea of a God who took on flesh and became human (which sets the Judeo-Christian vision apart from every other religious expression that surrounded it in important ways).

What’s important about this is not to do away with these apocalyptic visions of the future as created rather than given realities. It is simply to highlight the fact that apocalyptic language in scripture carries a unique focus on both its future concern and its concern with the here and now. This is its Judeo-Christian concern. For the people of God in scripture, the story has always been one of God’s working in the midst of present struggle. From the get go, the Abrahamic Covenant arrives with a future promise but a present application. In the history of the Israelite Nation, the focus was always on the present oppression and exile and God’s liberation of their present circumstance, which was then set within the future leaning promises of God’s Covenant through the prophetic word of the Prophets. This present-future focus is important, because it allows us to locate passages like this (Thessalonians) both in its history (the Israelite Nation), in its context (the Roman Empire), and its contextualization (our world). And this happens as it did for the ancient Jewish belief in the Resurrection, which is that our hope is found in the promise of what God will do, and our faith comes through the belief that (and our participation with) God is already doing this in our midst.

The Hope For Justice in the Face of Injustice
What flows out of this then is an emphasis on justice. Far too often modern readers tend to take this language and apply it arbitrarily to pictures of a God who judges the wicked simply according to their lack of belief (or for any number of nameless personal transgressions). This spins out into all sorts of theological treaties that places the emphasis of God’s activity on the destruction, the punishment, and the payback, and often with ambiguous definitions of godliness and ungodliness attached. It is from this that we arrive then at (equally) all manners of end times rhetoric that is steeped in fear, an angry God doing what God will do, and the decisive distinguishing of the moral and the immoral (again, ambiguously rendered) within the countless different distinguishing lines that we draw to define the final judgement in identifiable terms (of who is in and who is out).

In its present future focus, the focus of apocalyptic literature is more accurately placed onto matters of “justice”, not judgment, even if both are intertwined. I think for modern ears trying to enter into the ancient language of these scriptures, justice is the shared concern and the way into the narrative. The root of justice means that “what is wrong is being made right”, and when paired with “apocalyptic” as the unveiling and revealing of what is not known, what this language speaks to is precisely the kind of scenario the Thessalonians found themselves in- facing current oppression, and oppression with an uncertain end.

In this way, the emphasis of this revelation (that God will enact justice) is always hopeful, and always contextual. It is framed against the idea that oppression exists, and somehow and in someway justice (making right) will come. This is something that we can all, I think, understand to some degree. In this same way, the wrath of God is placed (always in scripture) on a response to injustice, the same way we might look with anger on the problem of racism, and it arrives in the language of liberation, even if that language might look and sound different than our own. And the more this is set into the whole of scripture and the whole of the Christian narrative, the more expressive and realized this language of liberation becomes as an all encompassing idea.

What God Does and What God Gives us Too
Reminiscent of the hardening of hearts that we find both in ancient narratives like the Exodus story and in the language of the Gospels, we find a difficult phrase attached to the statement in 2 Thessalonians that God “sends a strong delusion so that they will believe what is false and be condemned.” This is in response to the “godlessness” that they are already engaged in. At the core of the modern struggle with apocalyptic language is the idea that this justice is God’s work. While we might be able to relate to justice as a shared hope and demand, once we place this out of our hands and into the hands of God it suddenly becomes a more difficult notion to reconcile. Most of us, I think, don’t like the idea of feeling out of control. And yet, the most important piece of understanding why apocalyptic language was hopeful and not necessarily retributive in nature (although it can lean in those ways when expressed by those facing oppression) is how it is always speaking into a particular power structure. It exists in Judeo-Christian language as a way to give voice to the oppressed. That is where it emerges from, not from the powerful looking to exert power over others, but the weak looking for God’s saving work, from those treated injustly looking for justice.

In this manner, much of this language tends to fluctuate between language that evokes what God is doing (sending a strong delusion) and what the oppressors are already doing (engaging in godlessness), often meaning both at the same time. There is a sense that God is giving the godless over to their own actions, while also upholding his Power to liberate. We find this in 2 Thes 3:1, which follows the act of delusion saying, (So then), because of this Pray that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and deliver of the evil one “Not all have faith, but the Lord is faithful and will establish (you).” This is the reverse of the delusion of the evil one, emphasizing God’s Power over the Power of Sin and Death.

Justice and Mercy Existing Side By Side
Recognizing that the key concern of the witness of Jesus on the Cross is that He delivered the world from the Darkness and the Powers of Sin and Death, one can then understand this working relationship between justice and mercy, two co-existing virtues of God’s grace and the liberation of the oppressed. Paramount to Paul’s developing thought is that when it comes to matters of justice, all of us are on the side of the oppressed and equally the oppressors. What God’s justice is ultimately pulled under is this enveloping picture of liberation for all. It erases our tendency towards arbitrary distinctions regarding God’s Justice and God’s Mercy, and places both of them within God’s concern for the oppressed (which is ultimately all of us as both the oppressed and the oppressor). The reason God’s Justice is so important is because it removes us as the judge. It allows us to lean into the promises of the apocalyptic language in a more fervent and faith filled way, either as those who need to hear we are oppressing others or as those who need to hear of liberation, because what is not yet known will be made known, and what we don’t yet see is already at work. This forms our response to justice and oppression primarily because it allows us to carry this conviction into these places, informing us of God’s grand vision for us and our world together. It is not individual, it is collective, but it arrives at the collective by way of individual concern for this liberating work.

In this way, God’s Justice and Mercy become equal parts of our participation in the promise of the Gospel. We are involved in imparting God’s Justice and Mercy in love, a central facet of the Judeo-Christian Apocalyptic vision. And love (or lack of it) is always described in terms of division and fellowship, self giving and self taking, both key markers of the Thessalonian passage.

A Grand Prophetic Tradition
One cannot read the New Testament outside of its Old Testament context, and the Apocalyptic Tradition can open us up to the language of God in a whole new way. It can help us understand the most crucial point in Israel’s history- the exile. So much of the New Testament stories are framed against the exile, both that from Egypt and the exile from Jerusalem. It is from here that we can gain that picture of waiting, persevering and being formed out of the oppression, struggle and trials of our current time, set against this idea of us as both oppressor (what leads to exile) and the oppressed (the experience of exile). Therefore, one cannot gain a full picture of the language that hits us (modern readers) like a brick in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 without seeing it through the light of Isaiah and Jeremiah, two of it primary reference points and the framework for understanding the “fleeing from God’s presence” (Isaiah 2) that forms the man of lawlessness and those with him.  Set in the time of exile, the language evokes the language of exile by contextualizing it into the experiences of the Thessalonians the same way it would today. This is how Apocalyptic language it supposed to work. With its future emphasis, and recognizing God as the one that will make things right (justice, or justification), we can then move to see God’s working in the here and now, in our midst, actively restoring justice to the injustice places even now.

A Final Word on that Controversial Word
Much has been written about that controversial word in 2:15 which states that the “Jews” were responsible for killing Jesus. Many unfortunate and harmful things have come out of this verse, not to mention it causing many to move away from the faith as they were unable to reconcile it with their picture of a just God.

Again, I am out of my league here and only speaking personally, but just a couple words on framing this passage that possibly connect with our discussion of the Apocalyptic language and its OT context.

1. First, Paul is a Jew himself. If you read the passage I quote from Acts at the head of this post, you will see that as Jew who came to believe in Jesus, this led to difficult relationships between him and his fellow Jews. Although the authorship of 2 Thessalonians is up for question and largely debatable, it is less of a question that we could associate it with Pauline influences to some degree or another.

2. This certainly doesn’t reconcile this passage, but it could give it some context. It is entirely possible that what was an early outflow of Paul’s conversion were both these deep setted feelings he had for himself as a Jew, and likewise his fervent desire for the Jewish people to see and find their own heritage in Christ as well. This places the phrasing in less hostile places, and into a personal context. It is not a phrase that is being lobbied in an external fashion on a group of people in a generalized fashion (from the outside), but rather the  inner workings of someone trying to flesh out their awareness of who they were and who they have come to be. It would have more in line with, in this sense, Paul’s later thoughts on “all” having fallen short than blaming the Jews.

3. Lastly, and importantly, one of the reasons this verse might arrive as such a challenge is because of modern addictions to overly literal ways of reading scripture. This is Paul’s earliest work, and it’s fair to say that whoever wrote the second letter came from a similar place in time. Paul’s ministry and thought process is literally something you can watch play out and develop over the course of his letters. There is a big difference from 1 Thessalonians, Galatians and Romans for example, especially as he begins to flesh out his thoughts on death, the resurrection and atonement. And this reality doesn’t need to diminish scripture. It doesn’t need to separate our feelings that “he said this” and therefore all of scripture is wrong or useless. This deep connection between author, writing, human experience and God’s witness is what actually helps make scripture that much more alive. We can see God working through the stories, the confessions, the shortcomings and the wrestling. It is a deeply human story as much as it is a measure of the Divine witness.

In this spirit, it is perfectly okay to also say that perhaps this phrasing is reflective of a thought process that was still being fleshed out, an emotional response to a particular feeling. We can see and understand this while still upholding scripture as a sacred witness to God’s working in our midst.
 

 

 

About that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the Way. For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the craftsmen. These he gathered together, with the workmen in similar trades, and said, “Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth. And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship.”

When they heard this they were enraged and were crying out, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” So the city was filled with the confusion, and they rushed together into the theater, dragging with them Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians who were Paul’s companions in travel.
– Acts 19:23-29 English Standard Version (ESV)

Reading through Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary by Harold W Hoehner had a massive influence on the way I was able to understand the grand narrative of one of Paul’s (a word on authorship below) least accessible letters. As opposed to the straightforward arguments and sharp eyed focus of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, or the easily digestible and very relatable nature of Philippians call to humility and perseverance, Ephesians arrives soaked in language that evokes the magic, mysticism and grand images of the spirit world that immersed Ephesus through its grand temples and gods. It speaks of an unfolding “mystery” which is wrapped up in this grand narrative of Light and Dark and the Powers that both hold this world captive. The point of this mystery is to “reveal”, with the mystery constantly at work in its revealing, even, as Ephesians declares, in revealing the mystery to the “rulers and authorities in the heavenly places (The Powers).” (3:10)

Add to this the difficult call at the end of the book for “wives” to submit to their husbands and slaves to submit to their masters, followed directly by a call to put on the “spiritual armor” in preparation for what is a “spiritual” battle, and you have language that feels as foreign to readers in the West as it would to one not fluent in Greek trying to read it in the Greek language.

And yet, it’s strangeness for me became part of its appeal. This call to consider a world that felt foreign to me opened up my eyes to a dynamic of the Christian faith that had admittedly been lost in my own push towards rationalism and intellectual approaches as a Western raised individual. To see the Christian faith as an unfolding mystery, and to encounter that mystery within the Grand Narrative of the Powers in the idea of “adoption” (one of Paul’s most ignored theological identities) not only helped me to make better sense of Paul’s more practical writings, but of the whole of the New Testament world and writings.

A Word on Authorship
Which leads me to the question of authorship. Of all the possible Pauline writings, the letter to the Ephesians is the most disputed, largely thanks to its inaccessible nature. If one was to follow Paul’s writings, which represent the earliest writings in the New Testament, through his development (beginning with the letter to the Thessalonians, moving through the straight-forward and ground level nature of Galatians to the crown jewel of Romans) one would be hard pressed to know exactly where to fit Ephesians into the mix.

And yet, this need not leave us leary about fitting Ephesians into the New Testament narrative. Be it John, Peter or Paul, the world of these letters within the movement and growth of the early Church are interconnected, interwoven and are found largely commenting on each other within these movements from here to there and back again throughout the Roman Empire and the area of Asia Minor. To find association here with the Pauline teachings is far less complicated than narrowing down the authorship, and one is able to see many of the markers in Ephesians expressed in John, Peter and Paul.

With that in mind, I am choosing to reference Ephesians according to “author” rather than Paul, keeping in the spirit of scholarship that places this book in a variety of ways either closer to the Pauline movement or a bit further into the grander story that envelops the New Testament world.

Set Apart for the Mystery, Our Adoption into Christ
Ephesians shares an equal concern with the letters of Paul for the idea of being set “apart before the creation of the world.” (1:4) Here, we are being “set apart” for adoption, which the author describes as “His Will”, that will being the “great mystery” that is being revealed through the act of Christ’s redemption in the effort to “unite all things” (1:10). This tells us that division in the “fellowship”, a shared interest of much of the New Testament writings, is of utmost concern.

The idea of “His will” is what then establishes the concept of our “inheritance” in Ephesians, suggesting that through adoption this “hope” (the mystery of our identity in Christ who is uniting all things) becomes ours (the idea of belief) in the revealing of this mystery. This becomes important for understanding the flow of God’s saving work as expressed by the author. Salvation is, in this sense, God’s uniting of all things in Christ, a unity that becomes revealed in our given identity as adopted sons and daughters, a truth that precedes our knowledge of it and a truth that dismantles the division that Christ unifies. This is the nature of the mystery being revealed.   

The Grand Narrative of this Mystery Revealed
To give this a more decisive and practical context, the author turns the attention to the story of the letter’s audience (recipients), saying that when “they heard” this hope, the hope became theirs through belief. This is what the author goes on to pray for in thanksgiving so fervently in the ensuing verses (1:15-23). It’s a beautiful prayer that evokes the wonder of this mystery being made visible in their midst.

This is where author moves us then from the particular of their context into the larger narrative of the Powers that holds this mystery both in play and in conflict- the Powers of Sin and Death and the Power of Christ that defeated Sin and Death (2:1-10). The mystery of our identity is intimately connected to the spiritual forces that are at war in the “heavenly realm”, with our witness revealing the mystery to the “rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” (3:10), thus giving Power to us (3:16) to reveal the mystery to the world. This is why our identity as “adopted” sons and daughters is being revealed, so that the grace that liberates us from the Powers of Sin Death (which divides us) can display God’s workmanship to do good work in the world (2:10) (unifying work). The mystery, Paul says, is a God “for the world” 3:6, and adoption is the great truth that brings the world together into a shared identity regardless of background.

Recalling the great argument of Galatians, we hear the author urge readers to “remember” when they were called “uncircumcised”. This is the very thing that the Power of Christ defeats, is this division of the Law which leads to hostility and a Christ/Body divided against itself. As in Galatians, the Abrahamic Covenant comes to the forefront here, emphasizing the making of one new identity (Christ) out of two (Hagar and Sarah), thus healing the divide. And this is done through the proclamation that Christ is the cornerstone (living stone in 1st Peter), evoking the house metaphor that 1 Peter made alive for us (2:19-21) as a house undivided. This is the spiritual language at work. We are adopted as sons and daughters of God, and what is being revealed to us is our lives as a spiritual house, a house made with living stones and with Christ (and His work) as its foundation. And yet the powerful notion that we find in Ephesians is that this happens within a larger and collective context, one in which the Powers are very real and very alive, and one which which pulls us into the world at large. 

The Reality of the Powers as Our Confidence 
The author uses all of this as the foundation upon which the letter moves to speak to the revealing of this great mystery (our adoption). The truth in Christ is that God has defeated the Powers of Sin and Death. In a world where Darkness exists, the Light shines. It is because this truth precedes the revealing of the mystery (our identity as adopted sons and daughters of God) that we should walk in a manner worthy (of the calling to adoption), this manner being humility, gentleness, patience, and bearing one another in love. All of which happens for the sake of unity in the Spirit (4:1-14). This is the sweeping movement of Christ in his descent (below for the sake of those who have already died) and ascent (above for the sake of the whole of the world in time), demonstrating the unifying work the author has declared the spiritual war to be both for and about. (4:9-10)

The Powers of Sin and Death have been defeated and the mystery of who we are In Christ revealed “So that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every whim of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (4:14), but rather freed to speak the “truth in love”. 4:17 then moves to speak to the particular-ness of what the gentiles are being pulled out of, contrasting the life in Ephesus as Gentiles with the new reality of their adoption, urging them to put away “that manner of life” so that opportunity is not given to the devil to “divide” them against “one another” (4:28). Instead, the author urges, walk in love (Chapter 5), being imitators of God in his love (5:1). There is something important and necessary that happens here, underscoring the idea that the defeating of the Powers of Sin and Death precedes us. In their status as adopted sons being “revealed” to them, what also gets revealed is the Darkness (the Powers) that once held them in bondage. There is a deep interconnectedness in the Book of Ephesian’s understanding of spiritual war and the practical outflow of its salvation (Christ defeating the Powers) in our midst and in our stories. This is the grand narrative to which we all already belong, Jew and Gentile. 

Be Imitators of God: Discovering our Identity as Adopted Sons and Daughters
Here we arrive at a puzzling inclusion to the Ephesians narrative. Bringing in the Hellenistic household code, the author uses this as a way of applying this idea of our adopted identity into the particulars of its structure (5:22). Adoption is the framework for this series of “servant” examples, from child, to parent, to husband/wife, to slaves, emphasizing that in the defeating of the Darkness there is no partiality in the Gospel’s reach (6:9). The unity that Christ is working towards is found in imitating God’s work which we find on the Cross, which is where we are to frame the idea of submission which the author pulls out of the household code in a reimagining of what was a power structure.

Three important distinctions have helped me make some sense of what the author is doing in this section. First, what the author calls us towards (unity) is generalized (for all) using a particular framework (the household code). It is reaching into the language of that world to tell us something about our identity as adopted children of God.  Secondly, there is a metaphorical aspect that we find in its use of the household structure (marriage, slave and master, parent and child) that the author is applying directly to the building of the collective (spiritual houses), which is the Church. Lastly, this must be understood in the nature of God’s work on the Cross. The Cross is the particular expression of the larger narrative in which we find the great spiritual war working to divide and to heal both Christ and Body.

It is through these three things that we can understand the word “submission”. Submission is what sets Christ under the Powers of Sin and Death that held us bondage. It is a lowering of one self for the sake of raising up another (symbolically captured in Ephesians in the descent and ascension). It is sweeping and indiscriminate in nature, interested in unity rather than distinction. Most important to Ephesians though, our unity is our shared identity. Adopted Sons and Daughters, this is what sets us in relationship to God for the sake of one another (the world). Submission gives up Power so that the Power that holds us bondage, holds us divided, can be declared defeated. The author pulls from the context of their audience (those in Ephesus and living within the household code) not to elevate the code as conduct, but to give us a framework through which to understand the nature of the mystery revealed.

This call to submission, to unity, is then set directly back into the larger narrative of the angels and the Powers and the larger spiritual reality, applying the worthy manner of which we are to walk because of our adoption as children of God (Chapter 4) to a picture of spiritual armor (the Armor of God 6:11). In ending the book with this, the author urges its readers to remember that the war that wages is a spiritual one. In the magic and spirits and mysticism of Ephesus, God is revealing the grand narrative of the Christian story, one in which we understand both what is at stake and what has already been won. This is the “mystery of the Gospel” that the author proclaims to us for the sake of the spiritual forces. This is the grand claim that we declare back to the Powers of Sin by way of this armor- that we are a child of God. This action is both proactive (laying claim to) and declarative (the war has already been won). It is resistant (resisting the division and disunity of the evil one) and accomplishing (freeing us to live into our reality as adopted sons and daughters). It is participatory (we reveal the mystery to the Powers) and receiving (the mystery of who we already are).

I think the dual nature of this armor is important and necessary for understanding the book of Ephesians in all its lofty language and confusion, because otherwise we are left, as the Ephesians were, living in bondage to the Powers. We will tend to interpret the word “belief” in transactional ways, leading us to see the battle as one we must win in order to find our “identity”. The hopeful nature of this spiritual reality, this grand narrative, is that we are no longer under the Power of Darkness, the Power of Sin and Death. It is about the truth of the unveiling, the revealing of this great mystery, with “His Will” uniting all things in Christ who defeated the Powers of Sin and Death on the Cross. It is, above all else, an invitation to see, to see who we already are- adopted sons and daughters of God. Not in fear, but in boldness. And in seeing we are able to declare to the spiritual forces that they have already been defeated, and declare to the world that the light is, in fact, already shining.

Prevalent in the whole of the New Testament writings is the presence of Gnostic teaching. Gnostic teaching simply has to do with the way in which we receive, project, and participate in spiritual “knowledge”. One of the key markers of Gnosticism, particularly in relationship to Christianity, is the idea of division. The self is divided over against itself (material and spiritual, human and divine) as is Christ (in being either man or God, material or divine).

Of concern to Paul is that a Christ divided leads to division within the fellowship of believers (and being divided against oneself leads to a Christ divided), which limits the work of God in the world. This is why we find Paul so “astonished” in the letter to the Galatians (1:1), spending much of his time in what is one of his most frustrated letters speaking to this division and calling for a unified body. For Paul, “to walk by the spirit (5:25)” is to not be “conceited” or “provoking to division” when it comes to the knowledge of Christ’s saving work and our belonging to it.

“For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.” (6:15)

Of primary concern to Paul is the relationship between God’s saving work and the salvation of the gentiles. In Galatians, this false teaching (circumcision only, or the Law over Christ) is pushing against the Gospel movement and using circumcision (the Law) to divide the Gospel and the body of believers against itself. To underscore this, Paul lays out a simple and concise argument in the early part of his letter to suggest what it means to be a slave and what it means to be free as a “new” creation.

Slave to Free, Free to Slave: A House Divided
Establishing the Gospel as a “gift” (1:12) through which he was “set apart (Paul’s witness) before he was “born” (1:15) and “called by grace” to live into this new creation, this is then proclaimed as Paul’s witness through which he moved from being a slave (under the law of circumcision) to being free (in Christ). The issue of a divided Gospel where circumcision (the Law) stands over Christ is that the pattern of Paul’s witness in this understanding is then reversed, leading him, them and us back into slavery. 

Paul reveals the hypocrisy of living in the Darkness (slavery) while also claiming the light as theirs rather than as a light for the world. This leads him towards the question of “justification” by faith in Christ, not by works of the law (2:6). If, he suggests, I try to live otherwise (by works), of which our adherence to the Law does, it only proves me to be a sinner (3:18) and leaves me enslaved in the darkness. If we could “build on (our) own” (the picture of the spiritual house that we find 1st and 2nd Peter), we would have no need for Christ. This becomes the central force of the division Paul sees between Law and Gospel. A Gospel divided has no power to move us from the darkness to the light. I think this is why that seemingly casual line in 2:10, which admonishes them to “remember the poor” in this great reversal from free to slave, is so important. It is here that we find a world in need of the same freedom we proclaim for ourselves, and it is in seeing his own poverty that Paul’s witness is able to proclaim to an impoverished world that he has moved from slavery to freedom, and thus they can stand in the light as well. This is the great proclamation.

Paul then moves to anchor this slave-free movement in a wonderful exposition of the Jewish narrative to which circumcision belongs. Paul reminds them of Abraham and of their connection to him and the larger story of God. (3:6) This, he insists, was what was preached by the “Spirit of Jesus (the “Scripture” or stories that hold Abraham in view in their tradition) all along- an “Abrahamic” covenant for the world (3:9). And the way this happens is through Christ, whom elsewhere is understood to have been there “from the beginning” (in the blessing of Abraham for all nations and for our sake 3:14). And then in a brilliant reimagining, Paul sees the work of Christ in the offspring of Hagar and Sarah, where he sees the image of two children divided and eventually emerging in Christ as one offspring united. In this sense, Law (circumcision, or that which divides us) is in service to the Abrahamic covenant (of God for the world), which prefigures Christ (3:15-18). 

Once again, “the Scripture” is the Jewish story to which they belong, in which we find the Law under which everything is imprisoned under the Powers of Sin and Death (3:22). This is what Paul wants to underscore when he describes the guardians (before Christ) as the “law” given through “intermediaries”. The reason for the Law was to hold us in bondage to the Powers of Sin and Death so that “Christ” could heal the division that the Law creates. The declaration of Paul’s witness says that we are no long under a “guardian” but rather we are “In Christ”, all sons and daughters of God, equal and not trapped in the distinctives that the law creates (slave, free, male/female, Jew/Greek) 3:28. All are under the law, all are redeemed in Christ who reveals God to us.

And yet, the source of Paul’s frustration is that they (his readers) want to turn back to the world of the law. Yet “for freedom Christ has set us free 5:1”, so why do we long for this great reversal from free to slave? The desires of the flesh that appear to long for this slavery (to the Law) reveals the sin of oppression and division, while the desires of the Spirit (Christ) stand opposed to this division “in love” 5:16-24. Which is precisely where faith, working through “love”, can lead us to righteousness (5:6). This is how God heals our division and makes us (and this world) righteous (to make right), is through one covenant, one offpsring, and one word (love) undivided against itself. (5:13). Therefore, to walk by the spirit, the same spirit that informed Abraham (5:25) is to not be conceited or provoking to division. Rather, move towards love, in which the law that revealed our need for Christ calls us towards “bear one anothers burdens.” (6:2)

Paul’s imagining of the New Creation (6:15) comes in light of a final admonishing to “Do good to everyone, but especially to those of the household of faith.” (6:10). So much of the New Testament writings speak to the importance of a house united, a house that is not divided. This is the relevance of the “spiritual building” in which Christ is the cornerstone, a truth that pulls us out of those spaces which attempt to elevate law above our witness to God’s story in Christ, which is the work that Christ is doing in the world. Although we might think that we are speaking of freedom, we are in fact taking the witness of Christ and setting it back into slavery to that which already set us in bondage to the Darkness. We create distinctions that hide the light of Christ (God) for the world, the same God that Abraham bore witness to in his obedience. This is why fellowship is such a key theme in so many of the New Testament writings. A fellowship divided cannot bear a light to the impoverished, the oppressed, the hurting, the struggling, the needy. A God who is not for the gentiles cannot reach out to all the nations of the world as His Covenant declares. And the way to unity In Christ is through love, the same love that God lavished on Paul and which brought him from slavery to freedom.