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.

 

Mercy “caused” us to be born again through resurrection (1:3). Born again into an inheritance (imperishable, undefiled, unfading), and “kept in heaven for you” (1:5), guarded and ready to be revealed.
1 Peter 1:1-5

This is the same powerful language of adoption that we find in so much of Paul’s own writings, and fleshed out here in the light of Peter’s own experience with the living Christ (being an eye witness of Christ’s Resurrection victory of the Powers of Darkness 2 Peter 1:16-19). I have long loved the picture that this verse in the letter of 1 Peter creates of our inheritance being “kept” in Heaven. It evokes the idea of Jesus praying for us (Hebrews 7:25; Romans 8:24) as he “guards” the truth of our identity in this already-not yet reality that we find ourself within. It’s hopeful, although in a slightly different way for me than the heavily modern “Calvinist” approaches that have held it hostage (within systematic theologies).  For me it evokes this wonderful notion that within our doubts, our questions, our wondering and our struggles, there is something to anticipate, something that is and will be revealed to us in its fullness. 

1 Peter in Context and Concern
1 Peter is addressed to dispersed Christians in Asia-Minor to places immersed in Greco-Roman culture. Further though, it is addressed to “Gentile” Christians (“elect exiles”) as a means of establishing the truth of their (our) adoption from within the grander narrative of God’s story. Christ’s saving work in their lives becomes a witness to the Spirit of Christ which was present “in the beginning” with the “prophets” (1:11), already bearing witness to God’s work in the Cross within the world of the Gentile believers. This is reminiscent of 1 John’s declarative opening statement, “in the beginning”, an understanding Peter uses to bring us back to Christ as the “living stone” (1 Peter 2:4).

These two ideas form the focus and interest of 1st and 2nd Peter, locating Christ’s saving work in the life of the world through the lives of these Gentile believers, and through their lives then building a case for adoption as a working metaphor for how salvation must work.

Adoption and God’s Forming Work 
As we move through the first chapter of 1st Peter, having established that God’s saving work is indeed alive and true in the lives of the Gentile Believers (mercy caused them to be “born again” 1:3), Peter turns his attention to then bearing this witness out over and against their current reality.

Here we find the first of a series of metaphorical depictions of a “forming” faith, that same faith that has not yet been fully revealed and which remains bound in our wonderings and our questions. Faith here is like “gold” that is being formed out of the “testing” ground that is our experiences within the not yet reality of this world. Our experiences point us to a greater hope. This idea is declarative rather than prodding. It is a hopeful precedent, that although this world throws our faith into question, this faith endures on our behalf. There is also a secondary part to this declaration, in that while we do not yet see (our redemption) clearly, our experiences in the here and now, amidst the Darkness of this world, can begin to reveal this faith (hope) to us in very real ways. This is what it means to be “faithful.”

This is why Peter can move to say “therefore” (because of this) set your hope on these small graces by conducting yourselves in the Way of your salvation. It is all about seeing this bigger picture of our faith being “kept” for a time in which this world, in all of its darkness, struggle and injustice, will once again be made right.

For Peter, the hope of this grace comes from a “Father” (anchored in this adoption language) who “judges impartially”. The point of this is both positive (reforming) and clear (practical) in how it aims to lift up God’s saving work within the life of the “gentiles”. And it has a connective and establishing feature that is moving God’s saving work further and further out into the world. “Because” the Father judges impartially (equally), they can then live out their faith with (appropriate) “fear” (freedom) (1:17), and in living this out bear the knowledge of Christ’s saving work (making what is wrong right) both in their lives and in the world.

This is similar to the argument about knowledge that we find in 1 John, where knowledge is a gift, not something that is earned. Knowledge is an outflow of our conduct, but it is knowledge of a truth that precedes our conduct. And equally so for Peter (as it is for John), this knowledge stands on the simple truth that without Christ all we have to stand on in our struggle, in the injustice and partiality of this world, is the reigning witness of Darkness and Death. This is why, as Peter comes back to in 1:21, Christ was present at the beginning in the declaration of the Prophets making us (out of mercy) “born again” (adopted) as children of God. This is the hope of a world being made new.

Adopted in and for the Spirit of Love
It is this same spirit that then establishes that the point of this attention to “conduct” is so that their “souls” can be purified for the sake of “love” (1:22), which becomes the reigning and affirmative picture that carries us through the remaining chapters. “So then”, as chapter 2 begins, “because” of this love (Peter likes these connective pictures and arguments), and for the sake of this love, put away all manners of conduct which are  not loving (malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, slander), all of which are the enemies of fellowship (which he shares with the letters of John as the thing that bears witness to to the light and life of the world, Christ).

Adoption in The Metaphor of Mother and Child, Christ as the Living Stone, and the Nature of God’s Love 
Here we now get the second metaphor for the working out of their adoption (God’s saving work), moving from the picture of forming gold to the picture of a child weaning on its mother’s milk (2:1-3). This metaphor takes the forming of the gold and sets it into an intimate picture of what it means to be a “child of God” in relationship to God. What a wonderful, and richly feminine, picture, one that will become important for unpacking chapter 3.

The intimacy of this metaphor opens us up to one of the most recognizable passages in 1 Peter, mother and child being set within the larger metaphor of a “spiritual house” (2:4). The mother translates through the “living stone”, which opens up this picture of God’s saving work in the light of this reigning already-not yet reality even wider. What will be revealed to us, what is being “kept”, is our lives as a “spiritual house”, one built by the “living stone” (Christ).

This is so massively important for moving into chapter 3 as good readers of scripture, those notorious verses that have been used to underscore the paradigm through which we arrive at this all to prevalent male-female divide (with the male as the head of the house and the wife in submission). In the analogy of the living stone, Christ is established in His work on the Cross, the means through which he is building this “house” that is our salvation (His saving work). With this as the central paradigm through which we are to see both God’s “adoption” and God’s adoption of the “Gentiles”, this then reaches out into the picture of the Christian life as a witness to God’s saving work as one that is anchored in faith, hope and love. This is what the language of the “living stone” as a stumbling block is meant to evoke, is the upside down nature of the Cross as one that calls us in its mercy towards a life of servanthood rather than distinction. This is the impartiality language at play and in context.

The reason the living stone is a stumbling block is because of the way it extends Christ’s salvation out into the world, without distinction and without regard for one’s conduct as the source of our saving work. Set within this Jewish-Gentile context, the election of the Gentile Believers and the declaration of them as a ‘chosen race” (distinct Jewish language) is paired with the declaration that God’s light is bearing witness in them for the sake of the world. This carries a sweeping force that works to dismantle their (and our) expectations, thus setting them apart, according to the virtues of the Cross (faith, hope, and love) in ways that stand antithetical to the world (in its Greco-Roman context and within the honor-shame systems that they are being pulled out of in their adoption).

Adoption and Servanthood
It is from this perspective that we can then understand the motivation behind the following verses and chapters, beginning with the call to be “subject to every human institution”, so that “by doing good you should put to silence” ignorance (2:15). Live as “free” people (in Christ), not using their adoption as a cover up for evil (matters with are antithetical to fellowship), but rather be “servants” (2:16-17).

The word servant feels like an affront to our senses of course, and yet this is the work of Christ on the Cross. It feels backwards, its challenging, it is even offensive. It’s “foolishness” when set in the ways of the world. This is even the case when seeing it through our modern lens (maybe even more so). The way to liberate oppression, be it racism, feminism, or any number of social issues, is not found in the Way of the servant, but rather in the raising of our rights as a means of counteracting discrimination (which follows in line with the indiscriminate judge that we find in Peter). And yet, the point Peter continues to make here is that if we see freedom exclusively in this light, a light that holds a shared dependence on the idea of the indiscriminate judge (equality), we will inevitably find ourselves bound to the same kind of honor-shame systems that governed the Greco-Roman world, one based on the aquisition of our rights as the way to liberation and one raises up new discriminatory lines in its place. Rather, the Way of Christ is one in which we are called to give up our rights for the sake of the world. We lower ourselves so that others might be raised up. We give of ourselves so that others can have. This is different than the raising up of our (equal) rights for sake of liberation. It is the only way we can truly arrive at a place that is indiscriminate in nature..

For the Gentiles to be considered equal to the Jews, this was not about declaring themselves to hold equal rights and deserving of God’s saving work. If it depended on this they would already be declared condemned by the nature of the Jewish inheritance under the “law”. Not only would they be condemned by it, but they would be left with a salvation that must, by nature, raise them above the world in which they exist as well, limiting the sweeping force of God’s saving work. What Christ does is pull us out of this narrative and set us into the light of the Cross as our foundational image, our building force.

Human Institutions, Wives and Submissiom: The Real Work of Redemption

Peter’s call to serve “human institutions” then flows out into the call of wives to serve their husbands, and the call of husbands to honor their wives. The flow of this verse is personal rather than descriptive. We see it pulling in the direction of 3:7, framed by the idea that wives are “heirs with you” (equal), and pushed by the narrative interest that precedes it, the case that Peter has been building (out of the grace and freedom found in the indiscriminate judge). The motivation for this personal admonition is at once particular (this is their reality and the reality of the world they lived in, entrenched in Patriarchal society and Greco-Roman ideals), and similtaneously forming (that this world is being made right). It is both judging (what is wrong) and saving (what is being made right), with the concern for the particular being the unity of Christ (fellowship) wrapped up in love as its guiding nature. It gives emphasis to the idea that we do not “repay evil with evil”, rather we work to demonstrate the Way of Christ as the greater way (that of the humble servant). It is by living into this “conduct” that Christ then becomes revealed as a light for the world, the thing that can defeat the Powers of Sin and Death (all the manners of injustice and partiality) and restore life to our particular contexts.

To be clear, this admonition does not come as an endorsement of the abuses these verses have led to in many Christian circles. In context, I believe these verses are concerned with drawing out the dangers of inequality. It carries a concern for the resistance of these worldly “institutions.” To be set apart from it. But if is a resistance that sees outwardly regardless of our position, one shaped by the power of witness over restitution, and one that desires to bring freedom and change from within. One that moves forward in the grace of God as the indiscriminate judge. It is a kind of resistance that takes a formative position with an outward focus, one that sees our adoption (the claim that we are free and that our situation is being made right) as a freedom “for the world:. Its meant to give hope in hopeless and oppressive situations, not to leave us stuck in it or willingly submitted to it. This is what it is for our kept salvation to breathe into our particulars, whatever that might be.

This all becomes even more poignant in Peters setting of Christ’s work on the Cross into the wider picture that lays claim to the salvation of the Gentiles. Peterson says that on the Cross Christ preached to the “spirits in prison”, those who were judged in the flesh in the days of Noah, so that they might find life in the Spirit. It sees the flood narrative in the light of “baptism”, which is the lens through which the metaphors of the gold, the mothers milk are then placed as an appeal, not of “the removal of dirt” but as a declaration of who we already are in Christ, a declaration which comes in the same spirit that formed the prophetic ministry of old. This is Christ’s work of righteousness (one who is not under the Power of Sin and Death) for the unrighteous (the created world which is under the Power of Sin and Death). (3:18)

Good Conduct and A Witness to the Light, and the Knowlege that Forms Us

Therefore, Peter exhorts using the same connective language at the start of chapter 4, “because” of this we are to think in a ‘similar way” as a servant, for what is not right does not determine our movement from death to life. What is yet to be revealed does. This is what our conduct bears witness to, otherwise why suffer the humiliation of a servant for the sake of the world if we are simply going to align ourselves with all manners of conduct that is antithetical to this fellowship? When we do so (live opposed to the proclamation that we have been made new) we are simply demonstrating that the world is still under the power of Sin and Death (the adversary being the Devil 5:8). The point of the (impartial) judgment of the household of God is so that the world may find righteousness (what is wrong being made right) 4:17,18, see that the Powers of Sin and Death have been defeated and that this world has been placed under the light and in life. Therefore “entrust your souls to a faithful creator while doing good” (conduct), trusting that God is restoring, confirming, strengthening and establishing us as “spiritual houses” in order to bear witness to the light (Christ).

This is the nature of the knowledge that Peter understands in his second letter. What we know in Christ is the work that God is doing through the “living stone”, brick by brick, the promise being that “we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” (2 Peter 3:13) Therefore, patience is required. Patience, as Peter’s first letter has established, is necessary (2 Peter 3:9). Indeed, patience is counted “as” salvation as we entrust the process to God. But we do so with God’s sweeping view in mind. What is happening to the whole of creation is what is happening to the gold that describes our own sanctifying work (3:10). And the Cross gives us a way into the world according to the impartial judge, not by way of our rights but by way of the servant. This is how the light shines in the face of Evil.

In the meantime, this knowledge affords us Power over Sin and Death, over the Darkness. The great supplementation phrase here essentially declares this- faith leads to virtue, leads to knowledge, leads to self control, leads to steadfastness, leads to godliness, leads to fellowship, leads to love, with love ultimately depending on the presence of faith for its expression in “fellowship” with one another.

By entering into this flow, the flow of God’s movement from Heaven to Earth that has been apparent not only from the time of the Prophets to Christ but through all of history, we bear witness to the light of Christ, and we are also reminded of this great proclamation ourselves. What we see in the stories of the angels, noah, sodom, and all of the ancient narrative that upholds the Jewish narrative through which God has been seen making Himself known to the world, is being made right. This is the truth that the Gentiles hold, and it is the truth that we can still lay claim to today as adopted sons and daughters of God.

One thing we know about the letters of John with a fair degree of certainty is that someone named John wrote them. Yes, this sounds obvious and even a bit contrived. It is called 1st, 2nd and 3rd John after all.

But bear with me for a moment, because this is not necessarily the case when it comes to a number of the New Testament writings. Names can be ambiguous, at times applied post-script, and often arrive with varying degrees of attachment and detachment from the proposed author in question (could be a product of one’s followers, for example).

The absence of certainty in authorship can make it somewhat harder to place the writing in its proper context. Thus, there is some significance to saying that good evidence seems to suggest that the letter of John was written by a person named John, and that what we have are the straightforward, uncomplicated words of a single individual. The authorship makes it easier to find and unearth that context.

This confidence in authorship can also help us see these letters as the product of a Church leader (“elder statesman”) who was part of a movement away from Jerusalem (before it’s destruction) towards ministry somewhere around Ephesus, which can easily (then) connect us with the teachings of Paul and the book of Revelation that connect to this area.

Finally, understanding the context for the letters of John can help us in unpacking its central themes- schism (division within the Church), fellowship (with fellow believers), love (as the great forming and liberating force), and knowledge (which connects us to encroaching “gnosticism” as the source of the schism). For John, these four things come together as a way of speaking to the “confidence” we can have in Christs’ work on the cross to move us from darkness to light, death to life.

Knowledge, Gnosticism, and John’s Connection to Paul
One of the things you will notice about the letter of 1 John (and the subsequent 2 letters) is the prominence of this word, knowledge. The Greek word for knowledge is “gnosis”, out of which we get the word “gnosticism”, and is the mostly likely word John would have had in mind when writing his letters. Before diving into the letter itself, I thought what might be helpful is touching briefly on Fleming Rutledge’s (since I just finished reading her book, The Crucifixion: Making Sense of the Death of Jesus) description of gnosticism, and gnostic teaching, as the great division that touched the New Testament world as it fleshed out its understanding of Christ and the Cross. This can help us as readers to make sense of the division John is speaking to in more specific ways as he admonishes us towards greater “fellowship” within the Church.

Fleming writes, “Gnosticism in its numerous and various forms has always been far and away the most pervasive and popular rival to Christianity- particularly in connection to the theologia crucis (theology of the Cross). This was so in the New Testament times, and remains so today.” (Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding Jesus’ Death, p45)

She goes on to say, “All the various forms of gnosticism are grounded in the belief that privileged spiritual knowledge is the way of salvation.” They are “mystery-mongers”. They “claim to know things that other people don’t know.”

Now here is what it interesting for the purposes of engaging the Letters of 1st, 2nd and 3rd John. Rutledge, who spends a good deal of time with Paul in her book (the Pauline writings reflects our earliest access to the ministry of Jesus) quotes from his letter to the Corinthians in underscoring the problem of gnosticism in the New Testament world. Paul “hopes to win them (the fellowship of believers) back to his message of God’s subversive plan to make foolish the wisdom of the world“, writing that “Knowledge (gnosis) puffs up, but love builds up.” and “If one loves God, one is known by him” (1 Cor. 8:1-13), which she recognizes “flips our focus from our knowledge of God to God’s knowledge of us.”

If one keeps this in mind when reading the letters of John, it would be impossible then not to see a deep and unifying connection between the teachings of Paul, who was equally concerned with knowledge (gnosticism) and the admonitions of John. Knowledge, fellowship, and love take precedence here in John’s first letter, with a deep desire to reframe “knowledge” as a given confidence rather than an earned confidence.

Light and Dark, Death and Life
As John opens his letter we encounter very early on some of the dominant language that will encompass his focus on knowledge, love, fellowship and schism- these competing forces of light and dark, death and life (1:5). If you notice the letter’s opening (That which was from the beginning…), you will begin to understand why scholarship has tended to associate these letters with the assumed Gospel writer of the same name. The language of light and dark and death and life as competing forces is a shared distinctive, with the Gospel of John leading us back to the beginning of “creation” and the letter of John leading us back to “Christ” as the beginning (a word that connects 1John 1:1 with 3:11, a powerful exposition of the Cain and Able story that then connects light and dark to death and life (3:11-15), allowing him to locate Sin within this narrative idea as the competing Powers that lead us towards schism or fellowship).

Further underscoring the picture of these competing forces, in Chapter one John sets out a working argument that is going to carry us through all three of his letters- the lie and the truth, with the idea being that if we have fellowship with one another we then have fellowship with Christ. This is why the Darkness is so interested in separating us from one another, because without Christ all we have is Death. This is also why 1:6 then declares that “God is light”, the competing Power to the darkness. And the schism begins with understanding the relationship between the lie and the truth that, by their very nature sets us under either darkness or light (life or death).

The lie is this- if we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie… (1:6).
The truth is this- if we walk in the light, as he is the light, we have FELLOWSHIP with one another and (thus) the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. (1:7)

So here we have these dueling pictures- walking in the light or walking in the dark, with fellowship (and thus schism) the means or the maker through which we can know whether we are standing in the light or in the dark.

Sounds simple and clear enough.

Except John doesn’t stop there. In 1:8-10 we find a curious flip from the lie in 1:6, with John now connecting the schism to Sin, further expounding on the notion of the Power of the lie by suggesting that “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1:9) Further yet, “if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us (the word being Christ).”

Thus begins this tension filled ride through Johns letter. If we walk in the darkness (Sin) and say we are in the light (Christ), we lie. And yet, if we also say we have no sin (Darkness), we lie and the light (Christ) is not in us. THANKS A LOT JOHN!!

I mentioned that connective piece between 1:1 and 3:11 earlier in this post (“from the beginning”). It is worthwhile revisiting the lead up to that bookmark (if you will) between passage, as it underscores this tension that John creates (intentionally so, I believe).

1 John 3:6-10 English Standard Version (ESV)
6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. ⁷ Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. ⁸ Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. ⁹ No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. ¹⁰ By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.”

Working our way backwards through this verse, we find that once again that fellowship is the means by which righteousness (which shares a root meaning and source word with “justification”, which is the idea of “making right what is wrong”) is achieved, and thus becomes that which distinguishes between the lie and the truth. The passage then (working backwards) positions us within the larger and necessary narrative to which Sin belongs- the works of the devil. This is why Christ came and died, setting up the declaration “from the beginning” as a proclamation. 

The Proclamation of Our Confidence in Christ
This phrase, “from the beginning” is what opens us up in 3:11 to John’s proclamation of what is, as he wants to show what our CONFIDENCE is. On the Cross Christ defeated the Power of Sin and Death, the defining marks of the Darkness. In this sense, John’s declaration, and the way he gives us into the tension he creates (intentionally) is not by works but through faith. Sin is more accurately understood here as a state of being rather than a moral action.

Another way to say this would be to ask, what do we have if we live without fellowship- death and darkness. That is what remains. What do we have if we live in fellowship? Light and life. Because that is what Christ has given to us in defeating the Devil (the Powers of Sin and Death). This is the confidence that we can have over and against the tension that John creates. “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” (3:16) This is similar to what John is saying in 1:9 “If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This confession comes with the confidence of God’s faithfulness to make things right both within us and in the world.

But the tension carries another notable force, because our confession also reminds us that God’s faithfulness rests on the idea that we, all of us, are under the Power of Sin and Death. This is why the Cross carries power to heal the divide that exists between Light and Dark, Life and Death. In 1 John 2:1-2, John says that God, in Christ, is for all. The whole world. This effectively erases the line between the godly and ungodly from which the above tension forms, thus affording us the confidence that comes in Christ. “By this we may know that we are in him, whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way he walked.” (2:6).

Here we come back to that idea of Sin as a state of being rather than an action. The truth that Christ has defeated the Power of Sin and Death precedes us, it is not contingent on whether we are walking in the light or the dark. The crux of John’s argument in the first three chapters (and the whole of the book) is to expose this truth as parallel to the confidence we have and the confidence we gain through “fellowship”. We have confidence through fellowship because Christ has brought light and life to the whole world. “The Darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining”, even if we can’t yet see it clearly. (2:9) This is the grand proclamation. We are no longer under the Power of Sin and Death (2:13), and for this reason we can have fellowship with one another. It is for this reason we can have confidence, and thus know (leading to a series of confidence sayings in 2:12-14 that connect around the phrase “you know”) that we have hope. Our hope comes because although the world passes away, Jesus is forever (2:15), therefore to love the world is to stand in Darkness without hope.

A Different Kind of Knowledge
In 2:18, John talks about the schism that gnosticism has created (which most notably is a schism it sees in Christ Himself), bringing it back to the competing lie-truth paradigm of chapter 1. He brings to our awareness these competing forms of knowledge for the purpose of proclaiming our confidence (hope) in his (Christs) righteousness (making right again, or in 3:3, the truth that what is not yet will be). “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called Children of God.” (3:1) And so we are a child of God. We have been adopted into God’s family and made to be foreigners in this world. This is what light and life does in the grand narrative that we see expressed in 3:1-10 (of the Powers of Death and Life).

At the same time John continues to bring this distinctive of being the children of God back into the idea of fellowship as that which marks us as in the dark or in the light. Righteousness=fellowship (3:10), with righteousness being fellowship that is expressed in love (3:11-24). Our confidence in Christ’s love (his fellowship with us, and thus his giving of life and light) emerges from our love for one another. This is the picture of freedom that John desires us to embrace. This is where the great tension that John has laid out really comes to fruition. “By this we shall know that w are of the truth and reassure our hearts before him. For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved…” (19-20)

Everything hinges on this statement. To arrive at 3:21, which gives us a picture of a heart standing uncondemned (in confidence) “by” our walking in the light, “by” believing in what Christ has done (3:23), we must go through verses 19,20.

And yet what John offers is a different kind of knowledge (confidence) than that of the gnostics. His is not a knowledge gained, it is a knowledge given. It is not knowledge that uplifts us, it is knowledge that uplifts others. It is not knowledge that sets one over the other, it is a knowledge that lowers us down for the sake of the other.

The Tension and the Resolution: The Fellowship of Love
Here is one of the challenges in reading John. We like things to be defined. We like hard and fast descriptions of what we must do to see ourselves in the light and to know that we are not in the darkness. This is what it is to be human. Johns working tension doesn’t allow us to do this. In fact, by trying to do this we are essentially setting ourselves under the darkness. The reason for Christ’s propitiation  (2:2; 4:10), an important word to understand in its usage since it often gets confused with “expiation” (One means to take from, to expirate, or “take” our sins, the other means to give to, to propriate, to give “for” or “to” us), is to give us life and light. And 1 John’s final chapter (5), which states that in Christ we have overcome the world (of Darkness and Death) as “children of God” so that we “may know” the truth of light and life, this becomes the key focus of the repeated word “commandment”, a word deeply tied to our notions of law, law keeping and works. Keep his commandments “for” (the given statement of propitiation) “everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world.” (5:4). The temptation here is to dial back on using this to help us solve that original tension. How do we know we are in the light or in the dark? By following His commandments. John stops us in our tracks by saying (but) “this is the victory that has overcome the world- our faith” (5:4), the belief that “Jesus is the Son of God”, not our following of the commandment. The following of commandments acts as signpost to help us see this truth.

Love of others (fellowship)=Love of God (fellowship)=confidence (knowledge) becomes the reigning paradigm in 1 John 4 (4:7-21). Love is perfected in us (4:17) why? So that we can have confidence in love to reveal to us the light and life that holds us in its hands (no fear in love 4:18). This is the truth that the 3 witnesses of 5:6-12, Spirit, water, and blood, testify to and agree on (in fellowship). The truth is that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one (5:19), and for this reason we must find fellowship with one another in the witness of life and light through LOVE. Once again John is speaking of a repositioning rather than an action. Fellowship repositions us so that we can likewise bear witness to this knowledge, and this knowledge comes for the sake of reconciling the truth that the whole world, us included, stands in darkness.

From Tension to Tension: The Sin that Leads to Death
How fitting then that John both ends and begins his first letter by presenting us with a great source of tension. In one of the most difficult verses in the letter, following John’s exposition on love and fellowship in chapters 4 and 5, we encounter this verse. “If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask and God will give him life- to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death.”

Wait, what did you just say John? I thought we had deal with this!?
And maybe the main point here is that it is human nature to always be contention with this tension. That is what Jesus is doing in the Cross, is working out this tension in our lives.

So after all this talk about our confidence, we get this weird and seemingly convoluted statement that once again seems to suggest our “actions” as the determining factor for being either in the darkness or the light, of incurring death or life. It’s a verse that has had both scholars and laypeople, Christians and non-Christians puzzled for centuries. Everyone wants to know (surprise, surprise), what is this sin that leads to death!?

I think seeing Johns letter in context though can help make some sense out of this phrase, especially if we set it within the same tension that John raises earlier. First, the most important thing to recognize is John’s use of the word “Sin”, which evokes the Greek sense (same as Paul) of Powers (of Sin and Death) rather than moral action. In this sense, death is a reality. It is a state. Without Christ it is what we are left with.

Second, the point of this verse is directly interested in John’s discussion of schism, fellowship, knowledge (confidence) and love which precedes it. If we see this verse through this lens we can also then see it in the light of the “fellowship of believers” to whom John is speaking to. Here he is again distinguishing in an affirmative and life giving way the difference between the truth and the lie. This is why he (I think) accompanies this verse with the idea of praying for (sins that don’t lead to death) and not praying for (sins that do lead to death). The emphasis here is on the sin of fellowship (or schism) that has followed John’s letter throughout. Therefore, it only stands to bear that “all wrongdoing” is capital letter Sin (The Powers of Sin and Death) which John has already established we all, the whole world, are under, but that there is a functioning community (children of God)  who are still “with sin” (the lack of fellowship) that do operate within (or an awareness of) the Light and life (the Power of the Christ).

The point of the verse then becomes this. If the proclamation that Christ has defeated the Powers of Sin and Death is not true, as the schism continues to bear witness to, prayer has no power because all we then have is death and darkness. If it is true, then prayer has power to move us from sin (lack of fellowship) to fellowship (love).

This is why John comes immediately back to this statement as a way of underlining this verse. “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” (But) The son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true.” (5:19-10) Christ is for all, all are under the Power of Sin and Death (and thus located as sinners), and the reason for our fellowship (with one another, and therefore Christ) is to bear witness of His work (the defeating of the Powers of Darkness) to the world.

A powerful admonition indeed.

 

 

 

One of the most important sections of scripture for me growing up, and my favorite letter, was Philippians 2:1-11:

Christ’s Example of Humility
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

There was always something so extremely compelling to me and hard to grasp about Christ’s approach to humility. It felt displaced, counter-intuitive, and often less than rational when placed within or outside of our religious circles.

And yet it is also the place where I found a good deal of hope. The call to find encouragement in humility is formed against the opening admonition of 1:7-8, where Paul speaks of his audience as “partakers with me of grace” from both a position of “imprisonment” and “proclamation”. And what is the proclamation? The proclamation is Christ, and that in Him a “good work in you will” be brought to “completion at the Day of Christ.” (1:6). Paul’s prayer then is that this good work is expressed in a love (vs.9) that grows, and grows, and grows with “knowledge and discernment” of the work Christ is doing within us. And what is this work? The work is the “fruit of righteousness” (vs 11), a term that is synonymous with the word “justification” in that it speaks of what is still yet incomplete will be “made right” and “just”.

What Paul then exudes in 1:12-19 is that in our hopelessness we can know the hope that is Christ’s work, a work being driven by “love” (1:16) and centred around the proclamation of Christ as the one who is making what is wrong right.

The problem that Paul points out is the ways in which some are proclaiming this work in their lives, not out of humility but out of “envy” and “rivalry”. To live is Christ and to die is to “gain” Christ. And yet as we live, we live for the love of others. (1:24), the kind of love that finds “one mind, one spirit, standing side by side” in the great hope of our Proclamation. This is what positions this love between the saving work (of Christ) and the destructive work (of the Power of Sin and Death), the two competing agencies that we are positioned within (1:28). Our hope is that while things are not yet complete, Christ is at work making it right.

Which then unfolds in this grand statement about HUMILITY as the great virtue that can uphold us in this hope, recognizing that in Christ the destructive Power of Sin and Death no longer hold us in bondage. The grand statement is that this work is complete even as it is also being brought to completion within us. And so because of this great proclamation, embrace humility as the freeing force that it can be in our lives. “Count others more significant than yourselves and “look not to your own interests” because this is the “mind of Christ.” This is what He was doing on the Cross. “He made himself nothing” so that “every knee” and “every name” in heaven and on earth and under the earth (the full sweep of creation being restored) can proclaim Christ’s work. In his death, death becomes no more.

This is the light that shines as we “work out this salvation” in the already-not yet reality that is Christ’s work in us and for us. (2:12-13). This is why we can proclaim that we do not “run in vain” (2:16). This is the “word of life”. To see ourselves as “blameless and innocent” is to place ourselves, as Jesus did, within the brokenness of others so that others can see Jesus bringing that brokenness to completion in them. To love is to see without precondition a world that is equally in bondage to the Powers of Sin and Death and a world equally freed by the work of Christ. This is why Paul says in 3:7, “whatever I gained” from the hope I once put in the flesh (as a Jewish man under God), is “counted as loss” in knowing the hope of Christ, a “resurrection hope” through which the Power of Sin and Death that the law makes known no longer has power over the life that we have been given. This is where our hope is repositioned away from the works of the law and towards the works of Christ, a repositioning that not only moves us away from exclusive ideas of God’s righteousness (that is, who is made right and how one is made right) and sets us in line with one another as equal participants of this (grace), but one that calls us to give up this notion of equality for the sake of the righteousness (being made right) of others. This is the way hope is expressed and made known in the realm of God’s creation.

“Not that i have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”

This work, this hope, precedes us. This is why I found so much freedom in Philippians 2. This is why God’s work is built on the virtue of humility. Because of what Christs’ work proclaims we can begin to discover the work that Christ is doing within us and in the world. With this comes the firm declaration that without Christ the Powers of Sin and Death would still hold us bondage to its destructive and defeating force. Because of Christ we can proclaim that Sin and Death has been defeated and that we, all of us, are being transformed. This is the glorious truth that we are “making our own.” This is why we no longer need to be anxious, but “in everything by prayer and supplication (and) with thanksgiving” we can let our “requests be made known to God.” (4:6) This is the “peace” that hope brings. This is the “honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, worthy of praise” truth that Christ proclaims, and that we are called to proclaim in love to the world- what is wrong is being made right.