Tag: Divine Liberation

What Now?: Centrality of Confession

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Our lectionary jumps from Romans 9:1-5 to Romans 10:5-15. This seems curious. However, Paul’s impassioned declaration of love for his siblings according to the flesh who do not follow Christ at the beginning of Romans 9 finds its conclusion in the very first part of Romans 10. Specifically, Romans 10:4 is crucial to understanding the link between what Paul says in the beginning of Romans 9 and what he continues to say in Romans 10:

For Christ is the end of the law toward righteousness for all who believe [in Christ].[ii]

Romans 10:4 is the hinge verse connecting Paul’s discussion of his siblings according to the flesh and why they do not follow Christ to the discussion he is having with the Roman Christians that they are justified by faith apart from works without forcing or causing supersessionism. 10:4 binds what Paul said before his impassioned cry in Romans 9:1-5 and what he goes on to say here in 10:5-15. Paul draws together the word of God in the First Testament and demonstrates how Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, of the Second Testament has fulfilled God’s promises to and covenants with Israel and how this Christ is the God of all, both Jewish and Greek.

Romans 10:5-15

For Moses writes about the justification out of the law, “the person who does will live by it.” Now the justification out of faith, in this way, says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘who will ascend into heaven?’ (That is to bring down Christ.) or ‘who will descend into the pit? (That is to bring up Christ out of the dead.) But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, on your mouth and in your heart. (That is the word of faith, which we proclaim.) (vv5-8)

Packed in these few verses are multiple references to various parts of Torah—Leviticus 18:5, Deuteronomy 8:17, 9:4, 30:12-14. Paul’s goal here is twofold. First, Paul’s argument follows from what he’s been writing regarding justification by faith, justification by the law, and the sustained call of his siblings according to the flesh. The source of Second Testament justification by faith alone is in the First Testament. Jesus the Christ, this man from Nazareth who is God, is the fulfillment of all the promises and covenants made in the First Testament. For Paul, Jesus is the one (the only one) who was able to secure justification out of the law because Christ is the only one who could live by it. Also, for Paul, Jesus is the one, in his incarnation, who “brings down the Christ” and the one who, in his resurrection, “brings up the Christ.” Finally, Jesus, the incarnate word of God, is near to those who hear the proclamation of the gospel, the one Paul proclaims to the Romans.

This then leads us to the second part of Paul’s goal here in these verses. While Paul is anchoring God’s fulfilling of the promises and covenants in Christ, he is also saying something about the people, the Roman Christians: once again, what they have in Christ by faith[iii] is nothing they can boast of or claim as their own. These ones are the ones who cannot live by the justification out of the law;[iv] no matter how hard they try, they will fail. They can only be justified if God acts on their behalf to justify them. Which God has done in Christ who fulfilled the law and the covenants. Thus is it only by faith wherein they are yoked to this Christ Jesus and receive his righteousness.[v] These ones do not need to ascend to heaven to find the Christ because the Christ has come in Jesus.[vi] These ones do not need to go down to the pit to find Christ, because the Christ has risen in Jesus’s rising from the dead. And, because of the power of hearing the gospel and faith that is given to them by God,[vii] the word is not only on their lips but in their hearts. Considering that in Romans 7 Paul declared that the good remains outside of one and evil close at hand, there is now the actuality that the good, for Christians, has taken up residence in their hearts and in their words by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who causes the disciples of Christ to become more like Christ. Thus, the Christian cannot be better than the Child of Israel; for the same faith that the Christian must have to be adopted into the family of God and Christ’s siblings is the same faith needed for Children of Israel and their called status.[viii] Thus why Paul then says,[ix] Because if you agree by your mouth that Jesus is Lord and if you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved (v9). This is the only confession that comes from faith and asserts and confirms that God is truthful and trustworthy.

From here, Paul can easily build a case for confession as central to Christian identity.[x]

For one believes by the heart toward justification, and one agrees by the mouth toward salvation. For the scripture says, “All who believe upon him will not be disgraced.” For there is no distinction of the child of Israel and Greek; for the same Lord [is] Lord of all people, being rich in all things to all who call upon him. For “All who might call upon the name of the lord will be saved” (vv10-13).

Confession, for Paul, levels the playing field.[xi] Anyone[xii] who believes in Christ, anyone who confesses Jesus is Lord, and anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord (ref. Joel[xiii]) are saved,[xiv] whether one is Jewish or Greek. Anyone who can agree with God that God’s declaration to humanity in Christ is trustworthy and truthful humbles themselves and finds themselves submerged in God’s righteousness and glory. [xv] Maintaining the flow of thought from the beginning of the letter through chapter 9, Paul reiterates the thesis of the letter: the one who is righteous is the one who believes in Christ and is justified by faith alone.[xvi],[xvii] God’s people, for Paul and the logic of Romans, are those who are defined by faith in Christ (both in word and deed, both inner and outer, even in alignment and misalignment).

A warning is needed here: Paul’s words should not be used as a means to segregate and separate who is in or who is out of favor with God. It is also not license to force people to believe in a certain way or certain dogma and doctrine. For Paul, the point is that our confession comes from our real need for God made known to us physically in Christ and spiritually by the power of the Holy Spirit. These verses are not meant to be weapons to spiritually abuse, ostracize, marginalize, and alienate those ones God came to save from themselves for God’s self and for others. For Paul, this is all about God for anyone who feels so called to come forward and participate at God’s table.[xviii] This is why Paul then writes,

Therefore how might they call upon him they have not believed? And how might they believe in one of whom they did not hear? And how might they hear separated from proclaiming? And how might they proclaim if they might not be sent? Just as it has been written, “As beautiful[xix] the feet on the one who preaches Goodnews and good things” (vv.14-15).

Without God sending one called to be an apostle (one sent[xx]), then no one proclaims, then no one hears, then no one believes, and then no one calls upon Jesus. In this scenario, the law and the power of sin reign. However, the reality is that God sent God’s word in Christ to fulfill the law and cause God’s grace to be accessible to anyone through believing. [xxi] And this is the entire point of Romans. Calling upon, believing in, hearing from , proclaiming about, and being sent are all sourced in God.[xxii] These ones in Rome who follow Christ and who are foreordained, called, justified, and glorified find the source of their news lives wholly in God and are adopted children of God, siblings of Christ thus of Paul and of those whom Paul calls siblings of the flesh because of the beautiful feet of the one who comes proclaiming the good news of Christ[xxiii] and all the good things (peace with God, others, and the self[xxiv]) that come with Christ and faith.[xxv] All of this starts and ends with God.[xxvi]

Conclusion:

All of this that we have from God we have by faith alone apart from works, apart from birth, apart from status, apart from what is or is not in our savings account, apart from our occupations, our pedigrees and the number of degrees we have. All of this is of God and beyond our zip codes and area codes, beyond social constructions of identity, sex, gender, and race, beyond whatever class we find ourselves in. And if all of this cannot be located in and is found to be beyond what we do as human beings plodding along in the kingdom of humanity, then it sure as heck cannot be here to support the status quo, the structures that keep some up and some down, some well and some sick, some filled and some hungry, some quenched and some thirsty, some housed and some houseless. We might have systems of merit that we live in (and some of us may even swear by), but these systems fall apart in the light of the reign of God, lose power to hold captive in the liberation of Christ, refuse indifference it’s priority by the power of God’s love, and cause death to be dead where divine life is present.[xxvii]

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] τέλος γὰρ νόμου Χριστὸς εἰς δικαιοσύνην παντὶ τῷ πιστεύοντι.

[iii] LW 25:405-406. “In the first place, as in the glosses, it is explained that the apostle is comparing the two kinds of righteousness with each other, so that he attributes works to the righteousness of the Law but the Word to the righteousness of faith. For work was required for the Law, but faith is required for the Word (the Law was required for the deed, so that we might know what ought to be done, but for faith the Word was required not so that we might know but so that we might believe). Thus the first kind of righteousness depends on the work which has been done, but the second upon the Word which we believe. And what this Word is…as if to say that the Word which must be believed is nothing else than this: Christ died and is risen again.”

[iv] LW 25:89. “Here the word ‘man’ is emphatic. It is as if he were saying that a man can do these things and thus live in them so that he will not die according to the Law. But this is not sufficient, because beyond man there is the righteousness of faith.”

[v] LW 25:89. “That is, he is teaching nothing else but that we must believe that Christ died and rose again. This faith causes a man to live, even one who has not performed the works of the Law according to the righteousness of the Law. For those works are not necessary in order that you may live and be saved, as is the case with the righteousness of the Law, for faith suffices without these works. In this way, the apostle is comparing these two, the righteousness of the Law and the righteousness of faith, in the case of the first attributing to it good works and to the second only faith without good works.”

[vi] LW 25:406.

[vii] LW 25:407. “….the intent of the apostle is that the total righteousness of man leading to salvation depends on the Word through faith and not on good works through knowledge.”

[viii] Lancaster, Romans, 176-177. “These images already had a history of use to say that one does not need to ascend so high or descend so low to gain wisdom because wisdom is available near at hand in the law. For Paul to speak of Christ in this way is to say that wisdom is now near in proclamation of Christ.”

[ix] LW 25:90. “For Christ, as has been shown in chapter 4:25, ‘was delivered for our trespasses and raised for our justification.’ Therefore the apostle adduces these two mysteries here as he expounds the word of Moses, for the truth is that our righteousness is not by the Law and good works but by the death and resurrection of Christ. For whoever does not deny these two points, as the text continues, ‘will be saved.’”

[x] LW 25:90.

[xi] LW 25:411. “…for confession is the principal work of faith by which a man denies himself and confesses God and thus he both denies and confesses to such an extent that he would deny his own life and all things rather than affirm himself. For in confessing God and denying himself he dies. For how can he deny himself in a more forceful way than by dying in his confession of God? For then he forsakes himself in order that God may stand and his confession of Him.”

[xii] Lancaster, Romans, 178. “Paul’s main point in 10:11-13, though, is less about glory and shame itself than about who is entitled to hope in such glory. He stresses ‘all,’ Jew and Greek, with no distinction. For the community in Rome, this inclusive statement would have a leveling effect. Neither group stands above the other, so neither group should be ashamed by the other. All of them are saved by their believe and trust in Jesus Christ; salvation is neither hindered nor made possible by their ethnic identity. Those who recognize him as Lord will receive his salvation.”

[xiii] LW 25:91. “For the prophet Joel is prophesying concerning the time of grace when he says, ‘All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’”

[xiv] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 177. “Mouth and heart—the public self and private self—function as one, so there is integrity in one’s identity. The external confession displays to whom one belongs because of internal commitment. The integrity of inner and out life (wholeness) that this allegiance to Jesus Christ brings must surely be included in what Christians expect salvation to be.”

[xv] LW 25:407. “For God does not require a magnitude of good works but the mortification of the old man. And he is not mortified except through faith, which humbles our own feeling of self-importance and makes a person subject to that of another. For the whole life of the old man is concentrated in the feelings, mind, or wisdom and prudence of the flesh, just as the life of serpent is in its head. And so when this head is crushed, the entire old man is dead.”

[xvi] LW 25:410. “But true righteousness comes into being by believing the words of God with the hole heart…”

[xvii] Lancaster, Romans, 177. “Jesus Christ is the end (goal) of the law. All that the law gave to Israel—the covenantal relationship, the faithfulness of God and the people, the possibility of life—is now proclaimed in Jesus Christ. Confessing Jesus is Lord acknowledges this proclamation.”

[xviii] Lancaster, Romans, 176. “By following the law that God has given, Israel shows its loyalty to God. God shows loyalty to the covenant by fulfilling the promise God made to give land to the people. When this fulfillment happens, the people are not to think (to say to themselves) that it has occurred because of what they have done. Nor are they to think heat their prosperity is due to their own actions. The law itself warns against attributing God’s gifts to one’s own righteousness. Paul’s words are not against the law or against obedience to the law, and they are not against works. Rather, they point to the way one ought to do works—gratefully acknowledging God’ grace instead of claiming credit for oneself.”

[xix] LW 25:415-16. “In the first place, they are called ‘beautiful’ because of their purity, since they do not preach the Gospel for personal advantage or empty glory, as is now the case everywhere, but only out of obedience to God as well as for the salvation of the hearers.”

[xx] LW 25:92. “From this one word ‘to preach the Gospel’ the apostle proves that they cannot preach unless they are sent. For ‘to preach the Gospel’ is the same as ‘to announce.’ But it is not possible for a man to announce the Word of God and to be a messenger of God unless God has sent him and given him the Word. For no one can snatch he Word of God, but it is taken up only when God commends it and sends it. But if this does not occur, doubtless only a lie is spoken, albeit the message has the appearance of the truth. Finally in the same message he is a wonderful manner describes the nature of peace and of good things, namely, that they are such that they can be heard alone in the Word and comprehended alone by faith, but not visibility demonstrated…”

[xxi] LW 25:417-418. “Therefore we have these two sets of contrary terms: Law—sin. The Law shows up sin and makes man guilty and sick; indeed proves him worthy of being damned. Gospel—grace. The Gospel offers grace and remits sin and cures the sickness unto salvation.”

[xxii] LW 25:412. “…When god gives, He gives so strongly and boldly that we would not have been able even to imagine such things. For He is so powerful, that is, so strong and bold, that He gives more than our weakness asks.”

[xxiii] LW 25:416. “For these good things and this peace are not exhibited to the senses but announced by the Word and can be perceived only by faith, that is, without personal experience until the future life comes.”

[xxiv] LW 25:416-417. “And the term ‘good things’ refers to the granting of the gifts of grace, and ‘peace’ to the removal of evils; therefore he places the term ‘peace; firs t and then ‘good things.’ Thus these good things are under the cross, for no man is able to possess this kind of peace and good things, unless he has renounced the peace and good things of the world and is willing to suffer for his faith in the midst of the evils and tribulation of the world and his own conscience.”

[xxv] Lancaster, Romans, 179. “Proclaiming the gospel is the occasion for God to use human words to reveal the Word, to make present the reality that is being proclaimed.”

[xxvi] LW 25:91. “Do not doubt at all that He has ascended; for this is the Word which will save you. This is the way the righteousness of faith teaches. This is the way of the compendium, the short way to salvation. For the righteousness of the Law is long, winding, and circuitous, as is signified by the wandering of the Children of Israel in the wildness.”

[xxvii] Lancaster, Romans, 180. “This Messiah is not furthering human imperial hopes, and so the good news of Jesus Christ is most welcome when it challenges messages from social institutions that act imperialistically by controlling and diminishing human life.”

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

What Now?: Not Replaced or Forsaken

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Over the course of 8 chapters, Paul crafted a biblical and theological account of the union of the Roman believers amongst themselves and with God by faith in Christ and by the Power of the Holy Spirit. He demonstrated that they are the adopted children of God, they are siblings, and , they are a family, thus they are the body of Christ: one, unified, grown together, all of them foreordained, called, justified and glorified. According to Paul and the first 8 chapters of his letter to the Romans, there is no need for infighting between the Gentil Christians and the Jewish Christians because they are family, for crying out loud! [Said like a parent quelling the incessant bickering of their children on summer break.] Paul leveled the playing field with faith, removing an over emphasis on law-obedience and a complete disregard for law-observance. These Roman Christians—every single one—are the beloved of God who loved them first. None can claim the superior way to do this thing called church and the life of faith as representatives of Christ in the world by the power of the Holy Spirit.

In chapter 9, Paul, swept up in the good news of God’s work in Christ and the indwelling Holy Spirit, reflects on his siblings who have not heard their name called by Christ. While this reflection will inevitably open a discussion on how God’s grace and the proclamation of the gospel can be resisted, we must stay here with Paul in his inner grief and outer agony over the disbelief of his Jewish siblings who follow not this way.

Romans 9:1-5

I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie—while my conscience bears witness to me by the Holy Spirit—there is great grief for me and incessant anguish for my heart. For I was praying that I myself to be accursed and excommunicated from Christ on behalf of my siblings, my kindred according to the flesh (vv1-3)

Paul’s heart and soul are broken over his kindred who currently reject Christ. At this point in Christian history, “the followers of the way” are still tightly connected to their Jewish origin (hence the need for a letter to be sent to the Romans). Paul is writing from his heartfelt and faithful position that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel, the one who does and will (through those who follow the Christ by faith by the power of the Holy Spirit) right the wrongs of the world, the wrongs ushered in by Adam and Eve’s transgression against God’s law and disregard for God’s promise. Therefore, he painfully desires his siblings to follow this Messiah, Jesus the Christ of Nazareth, this man who is God. What he doesn’t know is that church history will find ample means to use these verses against the Jewish people, not only oppressing and ostracizing them but even attempting genocide.[ii] Paul never meant for these verses to be used as artillery against his siblings; this an emotionally charged[iii] moment that Paul shares with the Christians in Rome (esp. a predominantly Gentile congregation harboring animosity toward their Jewish Christian siblings[iv]). We must tread delicately and cautiously, refusing the tendency to cultivate violent doctrine and threatening dogma elevating Christians and Christianity above and as a replacement for Paul’s siblings according to the flesh.[v] For Paul and the thrust of Romans up to this moment in the letter, God calls and when God calls God doesn’t uncall.[vi] In this vulnerable moment, Paul knows his siblings in circumcision are still called, still God’s beloved…

They, They are Israelites, theirs is the adoption as children and the glory and the covenants and the institution of the mosaic law and the ministration of God and the promises; theirs is the patriarchs and out of them Christ according to the flesh, the one who is over all, God[/Christ be[vii]] blessed into the ages. Amen (vv.4-5).

Considering both the flow of chapter 8 and the fact that Paul was just caught up in Gospel fervor, doesn’t it make sense that he’d then consider his siblings according to the flesh?[viii] Doesn’t it make sense that the rapture he just felt would solicit a grief so powerful and anguish so strong that he’d turn immediately to consider his siblings who are not following Christ?[ix] In this light, Paul considers the faithfulness of God.[x] Thus, this isn’t about Christians replacing Jewish people as God’s people or the elevation of the “followers of the way” above the followers of not this way.[xi] Rather, it is about God’s historical activity coinciding with God’s current activity in foreordaining, calling, justifying, and glorifying this motley crew of faithful followers of Christ; the God of today is the same God of yesterday[xii] who called, covenanted, lead, liberated, sustained, gave the law to, and glorified the children of Abraham according to the flesh.

For Paul, these Roman “followers of the way” must never forget that both the Christ and their new covenant are sourced from the Jewish people. All of the covenants (even the new one) find their origin in the Torah and the Prophets (new covenant promises: Deut 30:6, Jer 31:31-34 and Ez 36:26-27); into these covenants (even the new one) the Roman Christians are adopted into by faith in Christ apart from any deed.[xiii] Thus, they cannot boast in the new covenant being theirs alone.[xiv] God elects and God calls; Paul has just finished writing this truth. Thus, this electing and calling holds for the Jewish people who were elected and called before these Roman followers of the way.[xv]

Conclusion

In these few verses, Paul shares and communicates his love for his siblings according to the flesh to the Romans; they are pulled into Paul’s love and, thus, God’s love because they are called to love those whom God loves.[xvi] And this is the whole point, right? Those who love what God loves are those who please God, and those who please God are saved even if they so wish to be accursed and separated from Christ so that others can be saved.[xvii]

As it was for those whose ears were the first to hear this letter, so it is for us, so many ears later. Being foreordained, called, justified, and glorified by faith in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit is not about recreating the hierarchies and structures of oppression and alienation of the kingdom of humanity. Rather, it’s about participating in the reign of God, bringing God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation to everyone. Thus, if this is true that we Christians are the adopted children of God by faith, shouldn’t we not only look like our adoptive parent but also prefer God’s will over our own, shouldn’t we be transformed through prayer and the presence of the Spirit into those who represent God and those who love whom and what God loves? We should so desire all to experience God’s grace and mercy, forgiveness and unconditional love that we’d be willing to ditch our status so that those over there who are convinced they are abandoned by God would be convinced otherwise.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 155. “In [Paul’s] time, the followers of Jesus had not yet become thoroughly Gentile and separated completely from Judaism. He did not know, and he could not foresee, that Christianity and Judaism would eventually define themselves in contrast to each other, that Christianity would become the religion of the empire, and that Christians would use that power to persecute the Jews.”

[iii] Lancaster, Romans, 156.

[iv] Lancaster, Romans, 156. Many reasons why he might be stressing this point, even “A mostly Gentile community that has been without its Jewish brothers and sisters for some times might be leaning toward the idea that the followers of Jesus should all be Gentile.”

[v] Lancaster, Romans, 155. “The best way to learn from him is not simply to accept his description of the Jewish situation that he knew and hoped for, but to listen carefully to what he has to say about God.”

[vi] Lancaster, Romans, 155. “His emphasis on God’s faithfulness to those who are called according to God’s purpose leads directly into the question of God’s faithfulness to Isreal, the people who were called according to God’s purpose long before Jesus Christ.”

[vii] LW25:80 Luther “…[Christ] be blessed forever.”

[viii] LW25:379 “From this text it is very clear that love is found not only in sweetness and delight, but also in the greatest sorrow and bitterness. Indeed it rejoices and delights in bitterness and sorrow, because it regards the misery and sufferings of others as if they were its own.”

[ix] LW25:380 “In the fifth place, the whole order of the text indicates that he is speaking with most fervent zeal about their salvation. For he wants to bring Christ to them, which he certainly was not doing then. For that reason he swore a most sacred oath, because it seems incredible that a man would desire to be damned in order that the damned might be saved.”

[x] Lancaster, Romans, 156. “He had just affirmed that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, but what about the Jews who do not follow Jesus? Can their lack of belief in Jesus as Messiah separate them from God’s love?…Rather, he wrestles with the faithfulness of God to Israel in light of what he has said about God’s faithfulness so far. God’s faithfulness demonstrates God’s righteousness, so his argument is showing the righteousness of God.”

[xi] LW25:79 “For he who ridicules and is pleased with the damnation of his neighbor and says that he loves his neighbor, he is adding a lie to his hatred.”

[xii] LW25:79 “In their obstinacy he has seen in effect what he already knew with his intellect, namely, that it is not the righteousness of him who runs but the imputation of God, who is merciful, which saves men.”

[xiii] Lancaster, Romans, 158. “All these things that belong to Israel make Israel a people to be honored, not scorned. Furthermore, by stating they ‘belong’ to Israel, Paul is not suggesting that they have been transferred from Israel to someone else. Rather, as he will go on to argue, Gentiles are given a way to participate in them.”

[xiv] Lancaster, Romans, 157. “…the new covenant is open to the Gentiles but does not ‘belong’ to them.”

[xv] LW25:80

[xvi] LW25:381 “…to those who truly love God with a filial love and friendship which does not arise out of nature but only from the Holy Spirit, these words are most beautiful and testimonies of a perfect example. For such men freely offer themselves to the entire will of God, even to hell and eternal death, if that is what God wills, so that His will maybe fully done. Therefore they seek absolutely nothing for themselves.”

[xvii] LW25:381 “For he wills what God wills; therefore he pleases God. And if he pleases God, he is loved by Him; and if loved, then saved.”

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

What Now?: Children of God

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

The last time we were in Romans, we were with Paul and his heart-felt confession that within him there is another law at work, the law of sin. Romans 7:15-25, describes that within the person a battle wages between desiring and acting, willing and practicing. Paul spoke of desiring to do the good but the evil, being closer at hand, that is the thing he does; it is easier because it, unlike the good, is in his flesh, it is embedded in his muscle memory, doesn’t demand change and requires less effort. Romans 7 reminds us that being comfortable isn’t the point of the incarnate word of God working in and through us; Christians are called to be afflicted, too, within ourselves and without. We must learn to battle against the other law that works within us, causing us to succumb (repeatedly) to the power of sin that readily lurks about seeking to devour. We are to be alert and aware that there is a misalignment between the inner and outer person; we are exhorted to do what we can to create alignment between inner and outer. Thus, for Paul and Romans 7, our need for Christ and the Divine Spirit, our encounter with God in the event of faith, is not a one and done deal. It’s daily; it’s forever until either Christ comes again or we find ourselves (bodily) in Christ’s presence in the resurrection. The only one who can save us from our wretched state and this body of death is Jesus.

However, Christians are not to be discouraged by this constant inner battle. Luther encourages us to stay the course in his treatise, the Freedom of a Christian, which discusses this tension between the inner and outer person. While it takes time and patience, perseverance and fortitude, we do learn—by following Christ and being influenced by the Spirit through our prayer, worship, and discipleship—that our wills can align with the will of God and this necessarily shapes our activity in the world. By divine love, mercy, forgiveness, and peace we are molded and shaped by God to be Christ’s representatives on earth as it is in heaven. Thus, in Romans 8, Paul beseeches us to live according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh because we’re no longer merely creatures of the flesh and of the kingdom of humanity. We are, by the presence of the divine Spirit and our faith, adopted children of God. And thus, as adopted children of God, we move and act in the world differently because we are inspired by and drafted into God’s reign and mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation.

Romans 8:12-25

Paul, addressing his “siblings” in Rome, tells them, …we, we are debtors/under obligation not to the flesh to live according to the flesh—for if you live according to the flesh you will die. But, if you, by the Spirit, put to death the practices of the body, you will live (vv12-13). This statement follows Paul’s exhortation in the first half of chapter 8 that these siblings by faith are to live according to the divine Spirit—the very person who unites them to God and moves them into their Christlikeness. The Christians in Rome are no longer bound by the law of sin and death but bound to the law of the Spirit and life. Thus, they are, in v.12, not under obligation to the flesh so as to live according to the flesh, but to God and the life God has given them and has in store for them.[ii] To live otherwise is to live oriented toward death and to serve death with the deeds and practices of the body. For the Christian, according to Paul, this is μὴ γένοιτο![iii] For how can those, who have been drafted into and are obligated to the service of God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation, now turn around and serve and become obligated to the flesh and therein the power of sin that lurks within (ref. Rom. 7)? (And if obligated to sin then obligated to die because death is a consequence of sin.) For Paul, the Christian cannot return to the old way of living; the patterns and practices of the kingdom of humanity[iv] are now blocked off.[v] These Roman Christians are new creations or, better yet, children of God, For many of you are brought by the Spirit of God, these ones are the children of God; for you received not a spirit of fear to return again to slavery, but you received a spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Papa Father!’ (vv.14-15).

To be adopted children of God by faith in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit[vi] means that not only do we bear the love of God for us in Christ, but also that we reflect that love into the world, representing God who chose us, pursued us, loved us, and grounded us in God’s self. And we love those whom and that which God loves.[vii] Thus, adoption status has public and private impact;[viii] Christians, for Paul, are obligated to God thus to one another as if family and friends, loving those whom and that which God loves.[ix] To be the adopted children of God comes with great blessing, we can call God our “Papa Father!” However, in being able to call God our “Papa Father!” we bear responsibility to suffer as our elder sibling, Jesus, suffered and, thusly, identify with the suffering of those with whom Jesus identified in his crucifixion[x] (those physically threatened and murdered by the state and ideologically threated and alienated by the status quo of the kingdom of humanity). As Paul writes, This same spirit bears witness to our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if perhaps we are afflicted in common with Christ so that we also might be glorified together with [Christ] (vv16-17). Christians are the adopted children of God thus those who inherit from God and with Christ both the suffering of God and the divinely gifted glory[xi] the follows.[xii]

This is why Paul then explains, For I reckon that the sufferings of the present time are not deserving of the glory about to be revealed to/for/in us. For the anxious longing of creation awaits eagerly the revealing of the children of God (vv18-19). For Paul, the current and present suffering of those following the will of the reign of God and forsaking the way of the kingdom of humanity pales in comparison to what is to come in the revelation of the children of God. Paul links the desperate cry of the person caught in misalignment of the inner and outer from Romans 7 to the cry of creation suffering under this power of sin waging war in the flesh of humans. Creation does suffer because of human sin and missing the mark.[xiii] (How many more unprecedented hot days do we need to see this is reality?) For Paul and our Holy Scriptures, it was not only Adam and Eve who suffered curses. While we know the serpent did, too, it is more important to see that humanity was pitted against the earth, to fight against the soil, to toil rather than work. For Paul, then, not only do we pray for deliverance, but so does the earth yearn to be released from the slavery of the kingdom of humanity unto the liberation of the dominion of those children of God who participate in the reign of God and God’s mission (vv20-23).

Paul then weaves this discussion through hope, writing, For we are saved to/for hope. Now, hope being seen is not hope, for who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we await eagerly by endurance (vv24-25). Paul is drawing a correlation between the hope that drives the Christians in Rome to await eagerly by endurance and the anxious longing of the creation that is awaiting eagerly for deliverance into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.[xiv] As Creation yearns to be liberated from destruction, the Christian yearns to be liberated from death; both of these liberations come in the consummation of God when the new heavens and the new earth become one. Also hinted at here, is this: even right now[xv] the endurance of the children of God in their current suffering against the kingdom of humanity brings creation a step closer to seeing the children of God because they are exposed through their participation in divine liberation which is the glory of God being revealed in and through and to them.[xvi] In other words, as these Roman Christians participate in the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation the creation begins to receive liberation from the vile ways of the kingdom of humanity, liberated unto and into God’s glory through those who dare to follow Jesus.[xvii] These Romans, by faith, love, and hope, are transferred out of themselves and into God, forever changed in to the one in whom they believe, into the love they have received, and into the hope they have by the Spirit.[xviii]

Conclusion

Paul moves us from introspection of chapter 7 into extrospection of chapter 8. We are exhorted to see a correlation between our own yearning to be free of from the power and law of sin and the yearning of others and all creation. Our bodies and our deeds have impact on the world—this isn’t just about us and our personal relationship with Jesus. For Christians, we are new creations, new creatures called to be something different in the world, and we are neither controlled by the status quo nor in bondage to the indifference, death, and captivity peddled by the kingdom of humanity. In these words, Paul reminds us that we are not our own, that “private” sin is a lie, and that we have a divine obligation to give a heck about what happens to those of us sitting here, to our neighbors outside of these walls, and to respond when creation cries out in labor pains or, worse, in death cries. By the presence of the Spirit we are forbidden from not caring, from turning a blind eye, to letting it all burn. By the Spirit, as adopted children of God by faith in Christ, our ears are open to hear the cries of the many oppressed groups even the silent ones, our eyes are opened to see the fear and terror of those who are forced to run and hide, and our hands and feet are strengthened to respond in deeds aligned with incarnated word of God dwelling in our hearts and minds.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Heaner, Romans, 137-138. “In saying that we are not ‘debtors’ to the flesh, Paul is saying we are not obligated to live according to the mindset of the flesh.”

[iii] LW 25:358 “…Now that you have been freed, you have not received this spirit of fear a second time, but rather the spirt of sonship in trusting faith.”

[iv] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 137. “By adding the word ‘body’ to ‘flesh,’ Paul’s words point clearly to the way we enact our sinful orientation. The embodied actions of living ‘according to the flesh,’ referenced as ‘deeds of the body’ (8:13), bring up the ethical dimension of this exchange of laws.”

[v] Heaner, Romans, 139. “…the mindset  of the flesh seeks honor according to the structure that the world has established, that is, within a system of relationships of superiority and inferiority. This is not the system to which the followers of Jesus are obligated. They do not find their place there.”

[vi] Heaner, Romans, 140. “The status of child of God is not given to all humans simply by virtue of being human. It belongs specifically to those who have been led into this relationship by the Spirit.”

[vii] LW 25:359 “For we cannot love those things which God loves unless we have the love and will and spirit which He has…And those people are called godlike men and sons of God because they are led by the Spirit of God.”

[viii] Heaner, Romans, 138.

[ix] Heaner, Romans, 138. “Paul explains they are not ‘debtors’ to the flesh, and this word (opheiletēs) is the one he used also in 1:14 to refer to his obligations to Greeks and barbarians. The word was used at that time to refer to social obligations that bound people to one another. These obligations were extensive, so they pertained even in family relationships and friendships. Living up to those obligations determined one’s honor and reputation.”

[x] Heaner, Romans, 141. “Their allegiance to the dominion of the Spirit presets them with a new set of obligations—not obligations of slave to master but rather the obligations of joint heirs because of the common adopted status.”

[xi] Heaner, Romans, 142. “The passive ‘be glorified’ indicates that glory is not ours to be won, but rather it is God’s to give.”

[xii] Heaner, Romans, 142. “Suffering comes before glory.”

[xiii] LW 25:363 “And because of man the whole creation has become vanity, even though unwillingly.”

[xiv] Heaner, Romans, 145. “So creation expects and longs to participate in the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Hope for humans and hope for creation are interdependent.”

[xv] Heaner, Romans, 148. “We do not have to settle for the brokenness and injustice that we see, but we may reveal through our actions the alternative way of being in the world that God already makes possible.”

[xvi] Heaner, Romans, 143. “If the glory is revealed to ‘us,’ who are the children of God, and then we the children are revealed to creation, then the glory that is revealed to the children is also revealed in or through the children as they reflect the glory of God.”

[xvii] Heaner, Romans, 144. “As the gospel spreads, the children of God become known, and they reflect God’s glory, which is not like the glory sought in hierarchical social relationships.”

[xviii] LW 25:364…love transforms the lover into the beloved. Thus hope changes the one who hopes into what is hoped for, but what is hoped for does not appear. Therefore hope transfers him into the unknown, the hidden, and the dark shadow, so that he does not even know what he hopes for, and yet, he knows what he does not hope for. Thus the soul has become hope and at the same time the thing hoped for, because it resides in that which it does not see, that is, in hope.

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

What Now?: Simul Justus et Peccator

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

The last two Sundays we’ve covered Paul’s argument in Romans 6 that leed to his prohibitions against returning to sin and the life of the old person who is persuaded by the ways of the kingdom of humanity and exhortations to the believers in Rome to pursue the reign of God, to actively present themselves for service in God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation. Believers, according to the logic of chapter 6, are not defined by their works of the law in attempts to self-justify; rather, they are justified by God’s grace which is given to them when they assert and affirm (by faith) that what God says about them is true. In this exchange based on faith, the believer finds themselves forgiven and justified, the law fulfilled on their behalf by Christ and divine righteousness given of which the Spirit is a deposit and confirmation. The believer is, again by faith, united to God in such a way that they are grafted and grown together with Christ; thus, any attempt to return would result in a maiming and marring of the believer who would have to amputate themselves from the vine. For Paul, to go and seek one’s justification by own’s own accord and deeds is the basis of sin (which is founded in unbelief, not believing God is trustworthy and truthful) and is anathema for believers who have identified with Christ in his death and thus identify (and will identify) with Christ is in his life and resurrection. Believers are not justified by the law but by faith and therein receive the law fulfilled and are liberated—in accord with the law of love—to now go love the neighbor to the glory of God without needing to use the neighbor as a means to an end.

Sin, for believers and according to Romans 6, is a present reality but not one that controls them, for they are now no longer enslaved to sin and its impulses, its domination and control. Believers are now voluntarily enslaved to God’s reign through faith in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit; they are not their own (and, in fact, never have been!). What is important to retain from the past two Sundays is that, according to Paul, due to the encounter with God in the event of faith, believers—those who follow Jesus out of the Jordan and to the Cross—are no longer willing participants in the death, indifference, and captivity of the kingdom of humanity (no longer can they uphold and promote any institution and structure, ideology or authority that intentionally promotes these things). Rather they are Christ’s representatives who participate in bringing divine love, life, and liberation to God’s beloved, the neighbor and this brings God glory. But this does not mean they are sinless as if they will never sin again. They are still human creatures in need of intervention and disruption, and this is what the passage from Romans 7 tells us…

Romans 7:15-25a

Paul writes, For I do not know understand/cannot judge that which I accomplish[ii]. For I practice not that which I desire but I do this thing which I hate (v15). In humility, Paul uses himself as an example of the tension of being simul justus et peccator (simultaneously justified and sinner).[iii] No matter how much education and training any of us have—including clergy—we are not exempt from the tension we live in as new persons striving against the old person. For Paul, sin isn’t just some detached external act or something that lacks power, it is a force that can dominate and it must be resisted because it is actively prowling about looking to devour and dominate. Paul emphasizes the tension between the failure of the outer person to align with the inner (regenerate) person. This tension Paul emphasizes highlights a greater reality that the law is necessary and good, as Paul says, But if I do this which I do not desire, I concede to the law that [it is] good (v16). While Paul has articulated earlier that the law brings the trespass and this surely cannot be good, it is. (Theologically) In the discrepancy between the inner desire and the outer doing of the opposite, our need is exposed: we are brought to the end of ourselves and in need of a mediator through whom we can align the outer person with the inner person so that the desired thing is the thing that is done thus not hated but loved. Also, (Civically), failure to do that which is desired and opting for that which is hated leads us to conclude that law is needed so that we do that which desired even if we do it (internally) kicking and screaming and obeying the law (even in letter only) can maintain peace and order and keeps evil at bay while protecting the upright. And in this concession (both theologically and civically) we see that the problem isn’t the law; the problem is us.[iv]

Paul explains further about the inner/outer tension highlighting the role sin is playing (even in the new life of the regenerate),

But now I, I no longer accomplish this thing but that which dwells within me: sin. For I have perceived that good does not dwell within me, that is there in my flesh. For it is easy[v]/close at hand for me to desire, but not to accomplish the good. For I do not do the good I desire, but the evil that which I do not desire this I do. Now if I do not do that which I desire, I, I no longer accomplish this thing but that which dwells in me: sin (vv17-20).

Here Paul is highlighting that the tension between the new person/the inner nature and the old person/the outer nature is provoked by the misalignment between the two. Using the term “flesh,” Paul speaks of the part of the person that is in the world (the outer nature) and most prone to wanting to conform to the will of the kingdom of humanity rather than the will of God (the old person), which causes a the tension between the inner and outer, the new and old, the justus and peccator. Paul is not making a distinction between the good soul and the bad body;[vi] rather it is one person who is torn in two[vii] as the battle wages on through the will and flesh, through the mind and heart and the muscle memory of the body,[viii] through the self.[ix] This is why Paul centers that there is another at work here: sin;[x] sin (the domination and power of) is at work creating the discrepancy between what is desired (the good) and what is actually done (the evil).[xi] It is not enough to be educated in the good, the head and the heart can know all about the good but the *actual* doing of the good is something altogether different.[xii] As the colloquialism goes, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” (This also explains why things like sexism, racism, homophobia, ageism, ableism, etc., all, sadly, still exist.) This is why Paul can then say, Therefore, I find a law for me when desiring to do the good that for me the evil is easy/close at hand (v21). Sin and its domination and power reside in the person while good is external, it is outside the body, thus evil is easier or closer at hand to do. Just like the nervous system preferring a familiar hell to an unknown heaven, that which is easier to do is more comforting for a body eager to use the least amount of energy to do anything. To know the good and to do it are not only two different things, but it also demands a lot of energy and fortitude for the knowing to become the doing.[xiii] In fact, it takes external intervention and disruption of the self and the domination of sin. [xiv]

Conclusion

Thus why Paul then writes,

For I rejoice in the law of God according to the inner person, but I see in my limbs another law waging war against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity by the law of sin which dwells in my limbs. Miserable person I am! Who will deliver me out of this body of death? Grace/thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord (vv22-25a).

The necessary intervention and needed disruption to help bring the outer person into alignment with the inner person is no one else but the mediator Jesus Christ of Nazareth, this man who is God. When/ever we come into an encounter with God in the event of faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, we begin our journey through this tension and we receive a Spirit (the Divine Spirit) that brings the good—Jesus himself—closer to us than it ever was before (though not to such an extent that we not no longer sin[xv]…we still prefer to do that which is easy and comfortable).[xvi] In that Jesus—the good himself—is closer to us through the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we receive directly the mercy, forgiveness, love and grace of God (which is the fullness of good in the inner person) apart from/despite our external deeds. This spiritual reality, then, helps us to labor to bring the outer person in line with the justified and righteous inner person so that the good can be sought and done in the temporal realm for the wellbeing of the neighbor and to the glory of God.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] LW 25:64. “This ‘doing’ means not to fulfill our duty, but to try to do so and to desire to do so. Therefore he also distinguishes ‘to do’ (facere) and ‘to accomplish’ (perficere) (v.18).”

[iii] LW 25:339. V 17 “Therefore sin remains in the spiritual man for the exercise of grace, for the humbling of pride, for the repression of presumptuousness. For he who does not earnestly strive to drive out sin certainly still possesses it, even if he had not committed any further sin for which he might be condemned. For we are not called to ease, but to a struggle against our passions, which would not be without guilt…if the mercy of God did not refrain from imputing to us.”

[iv] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 126-127. “Because the law is holy and just and good, it is ‘spiritual,’ that is, it is of the Spirit, or of God. If sin is able to use the law to bring death, it is not because there is a problem with the law. Rather the problem is in ourselves.”

[v] LW 25:339. “Therefore he who comes to confession should not think that he is laying down his burden so that he may lead a quiet life, but he should know that by putting down his burden he fights as a soldier of God and thus takes on another burden for God in opposition to the devil and to his own personal faults.”

[vi] Lancaster, Romans, 127-128. Sin dwells in me/nothing good in me (vv17-18) “Paul’s point, though, is something different. Although he is talking about the self, he is not talking about the nature of human beings—what we essentially are. Rather, he is talking about where sin resides, and therefore where it exercises its control.”

[vii] LW 25:339. “Moreover, we must note that the apostle does not wish to be understood as saying that the flesh and spirit are two separate entities, as it were, but one whole, just as wound and the flesh are one. For although the wound is something by itself , and the flesh is another thing, yet because the wound and the flesh are one , and because the wound is nothing else than wounded or wakened flesh, we can attribute to the flesh the properties of the wound.”

[viii] Lancaster, Romans, 127. “‘Flesh’ conveys what it is like not to be oriented to God but to be oriented to the world without reference to God. This problem surely embodies the world without reference to God. This problem surely embodies itself in some way, but the problem is not the body. Being ‘of the flesh,’ Paul says, is having been ‘sold into slavery under sin.’ Paul is not concerned to explain how or why one gets sold into this slavery; he only describes the condition itself.”

[ix] Lancaster, Romans, 128. “Although a universal power, sin does not rule from a distance or exert its power in some diffused, impersonal way. Sin lives within the self, so its control of the self is near and personal. Because good does not live within the self, it is not in control of the self.”

[x] Lancaster, Romans, 127. “The explanation for this contradiction is that it is not ‘I’ or the self that is the controlling agent but sin (7:17).”

[xi] Lancaster, Romans, 127. “Living under the dominion of sin involves a deep and confusing contradiction, namely not doing what one wants but what one hates (7:15).”

[xii] Lancaster, Romans, 127. Ancient idea that reason keeps passions in order and if it knows the good it does the good, “Knowing what was truly good, then, should lead to doing what was good. Paul, though, points out that knowing what is good does not always lead to doing what is good.”

[xiii] Lancaster, Romans, 128. “…sin rather than good resides in the self, so evil rather than the good ‘lies close at hand’ (7:21). Because it is so close, it is much easier to grasp and implement what sin wants instead of what the law directs. So even if one delights in the law…and studies it regularly with the intention of learning from it, and keeping it, the self is in conflict—wanting to enact the goodness of the law but under the control of sin. So even if one knows the good intellectually (with the mind) one may not carry out the good (with the members of the body). What one actually puts into practice is in conflict with what one knows to be right.”

[xiv] Lancaster, Romans, 128. “Trapped in this way, the self is miserable. Furthermore, sin is so strong that it is not possible for the will to resolve itself out of the problem. The self needs to be rescued from it. Jesus Christ is, of course, the deliverer, and Paul thanks God for him (7:24-25).”

[xv] LW 25:64. “He uses the term ‘sin’ because according to blessed Augustine although in Baptism there is forgiveness as far as the guilt is concerned, yet it remains in fact and again turns us toward sin.”

[xvi] LW 25:63. “God in Christ restores man as created and cleanses corrupted man of his guilt immediately and of his weakness gradually.”

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

What Now?: Liberated Unto Life and Love

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Last week we looked at Romans 6:1-11 and saw how Paul, using baptism and faith, demonstrates that we cannot voluntarily re-yoke ourselves to sin and the death, indifference, and captivity of the kingdom of humanity. We are grown together with Christ in both his death and, thus, his resurrection through our identification by faith with Christ (and his death thus his resurrection). Being grown together provokes the imagery of grafting: we are grafted onto the branch of Jesse who is Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, this man who is God. For us who are justified with God by faith in Christ apart from deeds by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are forbidden from using our new spiritual liberation in a way that participates in furthering indifference, death, and captivity (intentionally); as those who are justified, we are not grafted onto and drafted into God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation for the neighbor to the glory of God.

Here, in the second half of Romans 6, we get our second μὴ γένοιτο! Also, we receive Paul’s profound insights about what it means to be the recipients of divine liberation as those who believe. We are not, according to Paul, free to return to our old ways and old patterns and the patterns of the kingdom of humanity. We are enslaved to God’s righteousness made known in Christ and proclaimed and promoted by the power of the Holy Spirit. In other words, in the second half of chapter 6, we see that our liberation in and with God is a liberation that sets us on a different path from our society and culture: we are liberated from ourselves for others and not from others for ourselves. We are not our own, we are God’s beloved children, siblings of Christ, indwelt by the Holy Spirit and are, thusly, drafted into God’s divine mission and heavenly revolution, on earth as it is in heaven.

Romans 6:12-23

Based on what was written in vv 1-11, Paul begins the second half of Romans 6 with two prohibitions and a command/exhortation,

Therefore do not let sin be ruler in your mortal body for the purpose of subordinating it to its various[ii] impulses, and do not present your limbs as offensive weapons of unrighteousness, but present yourself to God as living out of death and your limbs as offensive weapons of righteousness for God (vv12-13).

For Paul, and based on what he explained above in vv1-11, the logical conclusion of being liberated from sin is not a backward movement but a forward trajectory where the entire person (limbs and all) is used to bring glory to God in the world. Rather than using one’s liberation and limbs for destruction and death, the Christian, for Paul, is liberated to act both defensively and offensively in and for construction and life. By refusing sin to rule in the mortal body, the corresponding sinful impulses are quieted and are refused opportunity to find footing[iii] (defense); by presenting oneself as the living and being rescued from death, the believer can use their limbs as weapons for the glory of God[iv] (offense).[v]

Thus, why Paul then says, For your sin will not rule [unless you let it[vi]] over [you], for you are not under law but under grace (v14). Here, Paul quickly correlates his earliest arguments in Romans to his argument here about the relationship of the believer to the old sinful person. As the believer is no longer defined by obedience to the law but rather is defined by God’s gift of grace received by faith, so, too, is the believer defined not by sin and its rule and impulses but by the power of God living in them by faith[vii] anchoring them to the ground of the living.[viii] The law, in and through Christ’s death and resurrection, has been put back in its proper place: not as a divine tool to condemn humans, but as a divine gift for humans to use to love their neighbor and bring glory to God (original intent); as the law is put back in its place and stripped of its power to condemn, sin itself loses ground because sin thrives where humans are convinced they are justified by the law and their own deeds and not by God’s word of promise and faith clinging to the promise.[ix]

This is why Paul then says,

What then? Should we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? Hell/ck no! Have you not perceived that if any of you present yourself [as] obedient slaves, you are slaves whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness [through faith]? Now, thanks be to God that you were slaves of sin but you obeyed out of [your] hearts toward that which you were handed over to according to the rule of the gospel; now being liberated from sin, you were brought under subjection for righteousness (vv15-18)

In other words, what Paul is saying here, is that the Christian, though liberated is not an autonomous person—meaning, the believer is not a law unto themselves, liberated to do whatever they want to do at whatever expense to their neighbor and to God’s glory. Taking a cue from Martin Luther and his treatise, The Freedom of a Christian, the Christian is liberated from themselves for others/their neighbor to the glory of God. This notion rubs against the orientation of the person in the kingdom of humanity who believes that they are liberated from others/their neighbor for themselves. For Paul, there is no such thing as a liberation unto the self that is liberation in the true sense. Either you are a slave of sin and are free to serve sin and death, or you are a slave of God (righteousness) and are free to serve God and life. The language Paul uses in these verses highlights that there is no neutral ground here[x] and there is no blank slate; for Paul, you are either serving sin or you are serving righteousness, you are voluntarily selling yourself into slavery to sin or voluntarily selling yourself into slavery to righteousness, [xi] you are either being molded by sin or molded by the gospel[xii] and being made more Christlike,[xiii] an argument that is both highly logical and contemporary to his context (which is why Paul then says, I am speaking in a way common to humans… (v19a) and follows with a re-exhortation[xiv] toward active participation in righteousness and away from active participation in unrighteousness (v19b-c).

Wrapping up chapter 6, Paul writes,

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free/unrestrained for (had no claim to) righteousness. So then what fruit did you have at that time about which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things [is] death. But now after being liberated from sin being brought under subjection to God the fruit you have [is] sanctification, and the end [is] eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the favor/grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (vv20-23)

Paul presses home the point, when we are slaves to sin, we have no claim[xv] to divine righteousness and find ourselves molded to sin and its various impulses and held captive by its ruling over us (a rule ending in eternal death).[xvi] However, when we are liberated from sin by faith to be formed by the Gospel of God into Christlikeness where we receive divine eternal life.[xvii],[xviii] This means that believers, who are now slaves of God and of divine righteousness, serve the reign of God and reject the things of the kingdom of humanity that promote sin, its impulses, and its wage: indifference, captivity, and death (now and in the future).[xix] Believers, as those who have been handed over to the incarnate Word of God and are being formed by the law of love and the gospel, are forever altered,[xx] unable, according to Paul, to turn back to a life of upholding the status quo, supporting systems and ideologies that thrive in fear and anger, and promoting institutions and structures that promote death.[xxi]

Conclusion

We are free and liberated by faith and God’s grace revealed in Christ Jesus, this man who is God. However, we are not liberated unto autonomy or ease[xxii]; liberation from sin and death unto righteousness and life puts a “claim” on us,[xxiii] puts a demand on us: the law of love. Being encountered by Divine Love, reborn from Divine Love, and nourished and sustained by Divine Love means that this Divine Love puts a demand on us because Divine Love can acknowledge the demand and the claim and meet the Beloved there in the midst. To follow Christ is to endure the trial of the journey out of the Jordan to the Cross; Christians who are disciples of Christ will have lives decorated with the accolades of death and resurrection, of self-sacrifice and self-receiving, of solidarity and identity with the neighbor (esp. the oppressed). Daily the Christian will, by the grace and mercy of God, take a long hard look in the mirror, confess their complicity and captivity to the ways of the kingdom of humanity, and then, by the power of the Holy Spirit, try to be different in this world, as one scholar put it, “Being under grace, then, places us under continuing revolutionary struggle,”[xxiv] privately and publicly, just as it was for Christ—the one who was truly liberated from himself for the wellbeing of the entire world.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 110. “Epithumia could include desire for many pleasurable things, including food and comfort. The control of desire was n important topic of reflection in the ancient world that resulted over time in identifying many types of passions that could get out f control Anger and fear, for instance, could be as powerful as lust.”

[iii] Lancaster, Romans, 111. “Spiritual well-being has to include freedom from the temptations into which the passions lead us. With no passions, sin cannot find a place to enter.”

[iv] LW 25:320 “Thus the apostle wants to say that the members of the body must not be surrendered to ‘sin,’ that is, to evil lust and to the tinder of sin, for in obeying sin they become weapons of unbelief, and out of believers they make unbelievers in that they perform the orks of unbelievers according to the lusts of sin. But we must obey God, in order that ‘our members may be instruments of righteousness to God’ …that is of the life of faith and life.”

[v] Lancaster, Romans, 110. “If Paul’s concern about epithumia is limited to sex, we will miss the many ways that sin threatens to take control of our bodies. He reminds us that by being set free from sin, we no longer have to let those desires rule our lives. In fact, we are expected to present ourselves to God, thereby accepting God’s dominion of grace and receiving God’s grace to resist their controlling power. “

[vi] Lancaster, Romans, 114. “Never our own masters, we must choose whom to serve—sin or righteousness.”

[vii] LW 25:316 “Therefore sin has dominion over all those who are under the Law…For he who is without Christ is still in his sins, even if he does good works.”

[viii] Lancaster, Romans, 111. “Grace exerts shattering power as it makes the old person die so that the new person can live.”

[ix] LW 25:316 “For those people understand the expression ‘to be under the Law’ as being the same as having a law according to which one must live. But the apostle understands the words ‘to be under the Law’ as equivalent to not fulfilling the Law, as being guilty of disobeying the Law, as being a debtor and a transgressor, in that the Law has the power of accusing and damning a person and lording it over him, but it does not have the power to enable him to satisfy the Law or overcome it. And thus as long as the law rules, sin also has dominion and holds man captive.”

[x] Lancaster, Romans, 117. “We see that our choice is between death and life, with no middle ground.”

[xi] Lancaster, Romans, 114. “It was common for a person to sell oneself into slavery for economic reasons or event for eventual social advancement if serving someone of high social importance. This voluntary practice of putting oneself into servitude lies behind Paul’s explanation about presenting oneself as an obedience slave (6:16).”

[xii] LW 25:317 “For the wisdom of the flesh is opposed to the Word of God, but the Word of God is immutable and insuperable. Therefore it is necessary that the wisdom of the flesh be changed and that it give up its form and take on the form of the Word. This takes place when through faith it takes itself captive and strips off its own crown, conforms itself to the Word, and believes the Word to be true and itself to be false.”

[xiii] Lancaster, Romans, 115. “In other words, along with the enslavement image is also an image of being molded into the likeness of Christ. Obeideicne, then, is allowing oneself to be poured into the teaching, and so take the shape of Christ. Modern minds may find it easer to embrace this image than one of slavery.”

[xiv] LW 25:321 “For through the terms ‘sanctification’ and ‘cleanness’ he is trying to convey the same concept namely, that the body should be pure, but no with just any kind of purity, but with that which comes form within, from the spirit of sanctifying faith.”

[xv] Lancaster, Romans, 116. “The only freedom we have in the dominion of sin is freedom from righteousness: that is, freedom from being in right standing with God.”

[xvi] LW 25:53fn12 “That ‘sin reigns’ and ‘to obey’ sin is to consent to and do what sin desires.”

[xvii] LW 25:54fn16 “That is, you have been delivered from the form of error into the form of the Gospel…For the Word is not changed, but we are, and we yield to Him…For ‘the Word became flesh,’ so that we might be made the Word.”

[xviii] Lancaster, Romans, 116. “if we obey sin we get what we deserve: our wages are death. If we obey God, we receive God’s free gift, grace, which bring us into the relationship with God that means eternal life.”

[xix] Lancaster, Romans, 116. “If honor and shame are connected to social status, and if faith in Jesus Christ overturns the usual standards for honor and shame, then their participation in the entire social system is something to be ashamed of. A system of exploitation that assigns personal value hierarchically and treats those on the lower end of that scale as worthless is s a system of death.”

[xx] Lancaster, Romans, 116-117. “Living in the dominion of grace obedient to righteousness calls for a completely different way of life.”

[xxi] Lancaster, Romans, 116. “The followers of Jesus may not fully be extricated form that system, but where once they participated without questioning the system, now they are ashamed of it. Where once these followers of Jesus may have worked dot position themselves as high on the scale as they could, perhaps treating those below them poorly in order to get an advantage of over them, now they understand how pointless and harmful that behavior is.”

[xxii] Lancaster, Romans, 117. “Being under grace does not give Christians an easy life. Instead, grace puts us under pressure between its promise and its demand.”

[xxiii] Lancaster, Romans, 117. “The very power that affirms us also makes claims on us.”

[xxiv] Lancaster, Romans, 117.

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

What Now?: New Creatures by God’s Grace

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Continuing with our journey through Romans, we find ourselves in the first half of chapter 6. Here, Paul is addressing claims coming from the Roman church, specifically claims that if believers sin more than God’s grace abounds more. Paul is clear here, while we are justified by faith apart from works, we must not intentionally pursue sinful behaviors that drag and disrupt God’s revolution of the divine mission of love, life, and liberation in the world for the well-being of the neighbor to the glory of God. (Plus, we will have enough unintentional sin in our lives, we don’t need to pursue it!) We are, according to Paul, new creatures born of the waters of Baptism and are now defined by love, life, and liberation, and therefore voluntarily re-yoking ourselves to that which is indifference, that which is death, that which is captivity is not only anathema but also cut off.  

Romans 6:1b-11

Paul begins with a refutation of what is considered (by some scholars[ii]) to be a quotation from some at Rome, What then will we say? May we continue to sin, with the result that grace might superabound? Hell/ck no! We who have died to sin, how will we still live in it? (vv1-2). The question Paul asks in return is the driving theme of the chapter. It is also, especially for us, a crucial question for those who are justified by faith apart from works. Rather than the event of justification being a license to intentionally sin, it is an exhortation to live a new life. It is a gift given to be enjoyed—this is what the incarnate word is. Remember, back in chapter four, Paul gave a crystal-clear explanation of the gospel summarized by the events of Christ’s death and resurrection, [Jesus] was handed over for the sake of our trespasses and was raised for the sake of our acquittal/being pronounced justified/righteous (4:25). If we claim to believe in Christ, then we’ve come to the end of ourselves and have entered union with God by the power of the Holy Spirit. To intentionally return to the behaviors of the kingdom of humanity is to deny this belief and faith, it is to deny Christ and what Christ achieved for us because it is contrary to the very grace of God.[iii] In a sense, the claim Paul refutes makes God’s grace a human endeavor; for Paul, this is a μὴ γένοιτο! In the economy of God’s activity in the world and, especially, toward humanity, emphasis cannot fall on humans sinning to bring God’s grace. Rather, it must fall on God’s gracious activity in giving us God’s grace. Those who have been saved from the life of the dead are ushered into the life of the living and there’s no going back and certainly no human-centered way to make God’s grace abound more than it already is in Christ by the power of the Spirit. This is why Paul can then write,

Or are you ignorant that whosoever of us was baptized into Christ Jesus we were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him through the baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from death by the glory of Abba God, even as also we might walk in the newness of life (vv3-4).

Paul then explains more,

For if we have become grown together with [Jesus] in the likeness of his death, but also we will be [grown together with him in the likeness of his] resurrection. Knowing this that our old person was crucified together with [Christ] so that the body of sin might be abolished, so that we are no longer a slave to sin, for the one who dies has been declared to be righteous from sin (vv5-7).

Paul anchors the believer’s new life not in the old life and person of the kingdom of humanity, but in the new person who is of the reign of God and who identifies (by faith) with Christ’s death and resurrection. This new person is born from the trifold dipping of Christian baptism, marking the fullness of the invested Godhead and our identification with Christ in the tomb.[iv] For Paul, this is all the believer needs to cling to. The believer does not need to take matters into their own hands and cause God’s grace to manifest; God’s grace is (already) made manifest in their lives (in its fullness) because they believe. Now, it is also shared out and into the world as they proceed to live into their resurrected new life and leave the old person and body of sin to the kingdom of humanity (like: “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead” Mt. 8:22, Lk. 9:60). These ones are grown together with (bonded to) Christ,[v] just as they were previously bonded to and grown together with sin and the old person. Therefore, they cannot return to the old way, old life, and old person. Again, Paul is refuting any notion that believers must return to sin to make God’s grace abound; the believer causes God’s grace to abound in the world as they live into their new life by the power of the Spirit and by faith in Christ and in union with God.[vi] (But they cannot cause God’s grace to become more present in their own lives than it already is by returning to sin.) Thus, believers become midwives of God’s grace by God’s grace and are encouraged and exhorted to go further and deeper into the world bringing God’s love and grace to all, especially the oppressed. Anyone who identifies with Christ by faith and baptism has identified with Christ in his death and will identify with him in his resurrection; herein is our justification: for the one who dies is declared righteous from sin. Sin is no longer in control and no longer boss (so, too, the law[vii]); God is now in charge of this new life, and Paul exhorts the Romans to live as such going forward and not backward. Saying,

Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. Knowing that Christ, being raised from death, dies no longer, death no longer rules him. For he, he died, once for all he, he died to sin; but he, he lives, he, he lives to God. And in this way, you, you reckon yourselves to be dead to sin and living to/for God in Christ Jesus (vv8-11).

Conclusion

For Paul,[viii] Christ is the sacrament[ix]; it is Christ with whom we identify in both the waters of baptism and in the broken bread of the eucharist. It is not that water and bread are significant in themselves, but through them we come into contact with the dead and risen Christ; in partaking in these sacraments we identify in Christ’s three-day death and in his body broken; and as we identify so here, we can and will identify with Christ in his new life and bodily resurrection (today and tomorrow, present and future).[x] Further, to identify with Christ in his death—sacramentally and spiritually—means that we, too, like Christ our elder brother, are caused to be dead to sin, as in, sin no longer has dominion over us,[xi] eternal death,[xii] too, is rendered impotent for those who believe. (Because of Christ, death is dead, captivity is held captive, and indifference has met is own cold fate.[xiii],[xiv]) Sin’s stain and its consequence, death, are forever removed from the life of the believer;[xv] they are new creatures[xvi] (forever and daily[xvii]) no longer defined by sin but by God’s grace, no longer under the dominion of sin but under the reign of Christ.[xviii] No longer defined by death, but by life; no longer defined by captivity, but liberation; no longer defined by indifference but by love.[xix] We do not need to return…Nay! We cannot return to the sinful existence of the old person, of the kingdom of humanity; [xx] for God’s grace enters in anew every morning with God’s mercy.

Thus, we walk in all this newness, on the move because the Christian life is on the move because it is defined by Christ the gospel, defined by God and God’s Holy Spirit all of whom are always on the move looking for and seeking the beloved.[xxi]As those who identify with Christ by faith, we also identify with whom he identified: the lost, the unheard, the unvoiced, the ignored, the pushed off and pushed aside, the ones the society of the kingdom of humanity has deemed unworthy of love.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Martin Luther Lectures on Romans: Glosses and Scholia (1515/1516) LW 25 Ed. Hilton C. Oswald (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1972), 50. “…as falsifiers understand the passage, when they say, ‘Let us do evil,’ that is, let us commit sin, ‘That good may come’ (Rom. 3:8), that is, that grace may abound.”

[iii] LW 25: 50. “By no means, because this idea is absolutely contrary to the work of grace,..”

[iv] LW 25: 50-51. “…the threefold dipping of Baptism signifies the three-day death period and the burial of Christ, into Christ Jesus, that is, by faith in Christ Jesus…”

[v] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 108. “The kind of participation that baptism makes possible is an incorporation into Christ that is a secure joining for a thorough sharing, a kind of bonding.”

[vi] Lancaster, Romans, 107. “For Paul, baptism is s a clear sign of leaving the dominion of sin and entering the dominion of grace.”

[vii] LW 25: 308. “But he over whom sin reigns, no matter how he resists sin, is still under the Law and not under grace.”

[viii] LW 25: 310. “thus in this passage the apostle is speaking of the death and resurrection of Christ insofar as they refer to the sacrament, but not to the example.”

[ix] LW 25: 309. “For having put on our mortal flesh and dying only in it and rising only in it, now only in it He joins these things together for us, for in this flesh He became a sacrament for the inner man and an example for the outward man.”

[x] Lancaster, Romans, 108. “By being buried with Jesus, we are made participants not only in his death but also in his resurrection. To be united with him in death means also being united with him in resurrection (6:5).”

[xi] Lancaster, Romans, 107. “[Paul] describes sin’s power as ruling power; sin has dominion over us, enslaving us to its purposes and exercising influence over us as a kind of lordship. When we are under the lordship of sin, we are bound to submit to its influence.”

[xii] LW 25: 310. “Eternal death is also twofold. The one kind is good, very good.it is the death of sin and the death of death, by which the soul is released and separated from sin and the body is separated from corruption and through grace and glory is joined to the living God. This is death in the most proper sense of the word, for in all other forms of death something remains that is mixed with life, but not in this kind of death, where there is the purest life alone, because it is eternal life.”

[xiii] LW 25: 311. “Just as the death of death means to act against death, which is the same things as life, so the sin of sin is righteousness.”

[xiv] LW 25: 311. “Because for death to be killed means that death will not return, and ‘to take captivity captive’ means that captivity will never return, a concept which cannot be expressed through an affirmative assertion.”

[xv] LW 25: 310. “This is the way sin dies; and likewise the sinner, when he is justified, because sin will not return again for all eternity, as the apostles says here [v9]…”

[xvi] LW 25: 313. “The term ‘old man’ describes what kind of person is born of Adam, not according to his nature but according to the defect of his nature. For his nature is good, but the defect is evil.”

[xvii] LW 25: 314. “The meaning is that we must undergo this spiritual death only once. For whoever dies thus lives for all eternity. Therefore we must not return to our sin in order to die to sin again.”

[xviii] Lancaster, Romans, 107-108. “Those who have died to sin because they have been baptized into Jesus’ death. By participating in the death of Jesus, the follower of Jesus is dying to the lordship of sin and accepting the lordship of Christ.”

[xix] Lancaster, Romans, 108-109. “Dying to sin means that a person dies to an old way of life, and participating in the death and resurrection of Jesus means that a person enters a new way of life. The one who was crucified conquered death, and because we share in his victory, we are no longer enslaved to sin….The proper commitment to the new dominion in which we are privileged to live is to give up sin and live for God.”

[xx] Lancaster, Romans, 107. “To follow Jesus Christ means leaving the dominion of sin and living in the dominion of grace. If that is the case, then the follower of Jesus can no longer do the bidding of sin. By changing dominions, a person has changed lords and loyalties.”

[xxi] Lancaster, Romans, 109. “…new life in Christ is not static…Rather to walk in newness of life means to be on the move, to be ever attentive to what it means to live to God and to exercise our allegiance daily.”

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

Anchored in God, Hope Comes

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Lately, I’ve heard much about hope and our need to have it. Considering that we are immersed in socio-political events (both national and global) that are chaotic and tumultuous, this plea to the keeping and having of hope makes sense. Have hope! Cling to hope! Hope is all you need! Those exhorting us to hope see hope as the antidote to the creeping threat of despair and our increased paralysis to do anything. Hope is seen as the foundation and motivation to keep on keeping on as we feel lost in a sea of unmanageable events. It’s the supposed driftwood keeping us afloat among the raucous and stormy waves.

Unfortunately, the pleas to cling to hope above all else render the human being turning in on themselves. Hope becomes this illusive thing that we fight to have while finding ourselves increasingly unsure about what it means or even feels like to have hope. Hope is strangled in our death-like grip as we strive to keep it refusing to let go. We kill hope as we burden it with power it doesn’t have, forcing it do magic for us. We are convinced by those who encourage us to have hope that hope is the only way through events feeling way bigger than we are. And the more we fight to keep and have our hope, the more we turn in on ourselves; sadly, this trajectory will secure we not only lose touch with hope but will also lose touch with her little sister perseverance.

We can’t cling to hope thinking that it will keep despair away. It won’t. Hope isn’t the antidote to despair (it’s not even a good antonym for it). Comfort is the foundation of the reversal of despair. Encouragement, too. Once we have these two things in place, then, and only then, can we begin to make space for hope to show up. This is why Peter in our epistle does not tell his audience to cling to hope. Rather, he anchors them in something bigger, something outside of themselves, something that will comfort them and encourage them.

1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11

Peter begins his final thoughts to his audience with endearment and encouragement. Calling them Beloved, he writes,

…do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal occurring among and in you to test you as taking place as alien to you. Rather, rejoice! according to which you are having a share of Christ’s passion so that also you might rejoice jumping for joy in the revelation of his glory. If you are defamed in the name of Christ, [you are] blessed because of the Spirit of glory, namely the Spirit of God, is resting upon you (4:12-14).

Peter knows that his audience will face persecution for their faith in Christ (from their neighbors and not as sent by God), especially as they participate in God’s mission of the revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world. [ii] Peter has already addressed the manifold fruit that comes from faith that will cause them to stand out. So, they will be tested[iii] and persecuted. There is no way to live in such a way that is both faithful to the proclamation of Christ crucified and raised and without test and trial.[iv] So, they must remember who and whose they are. Peter’s use of “beloved” in address isn’t just a nice way to address his audience; it’s a way of reminding them that their faith unites them to Christ in his belovedness of God. This is important because the testing and persecution that will happen is not bad but good, and Peter must try to help them reframe these experiences in the name of Christ.[v] Thus, as Christ is beloved of God so, too, are they. This also goes for their “fiery ordeal” and the persecution that will come because of their faith (in the name of Christ); as Christ suffered[vi] at the hands of errant humanity, so, too, will they.[vii] To experience both is to be “blessed”;[viii],[ix] again, just as Christ is blessed.[x] For Peter, it boils down to identification:[xi] if the believer is eager to identify with Christ’s blessedness and belovedness, then they must prepare to and welcome identification with Christ’s foundational[xii] suffering; there’s no option to have the former without the latter. So, Peter encourages them, rejoice now because you will rejoice later,[xiii] cloaked and covered in divine glory just like Christ.[xiv] (They are not to rejoice in or because of their suffering, but only because of what is to come in Christ.[xv])

Peter then shifts the focus away from his audience to God.[xvi] In light of what has been said,[xvii] Peter urges them, Therefore, humble yourselves under and toward the strong hands of God, so that God might elevate you in time (5:6). By centering God in the text, Peter gently directs the audience’s attention to God. There’s movement here; it’s more than just turning one’s head but directing one’s self, one’s body toward and under God. The only way to do this is through humility; in humbling themselves, Peter’s audience can direct their entire selves toward and under God. It’s here—under and toward God—where Peter’s audience will find their comfort and their protection, their foundation and stability, their sustenance and their fortitude, and (even) their hope and perseverance. He does not direct them inwards, but outwards toward God, the divine parent and loving progenitor of Christ, all of Creation, and of the faithful whom Peter addresses. Those who bring themselves low will be brought high by God.[xviii]

Thus, Peter can further beseech his audience,

Cast all your anxiety upon God, because this one, God, cares about you. Be sensible, be alert. Your opponent, the devil, walks about as a roaring lion seeking something to drink down. Oppose him, solid in faith, having perceived that your siblings in all the cosmos are undergoing the same kind of sufferings (vv7-9).

Peter’s audience need not bear their own anxiety as if no one is in their corner.[xix] Peter has spent the entirety of the letter telling them they are not alone even when they suffer for doing good and especially when they are anxious facing the reality of the suffering that will come. Peter’s audience can cast their cares on God because this one, this God, the parent of Jesus Christ with whom they identify, have God in their corner. This is important to remember[xx] because an adversary is on the loose, looking to devour[xxi] the faithful; [xxii] the faithful will only have success in opposing the opponent when they cast their entire selves toward and under God’s mighty hand of protection. This explains why Peter admonishes them to resist by faith, being clear minded and alert like a soldier on watch ready to resist incoming attack.[xxiii] It is not that they will resist this adversary by memorizing scripture passages or blindly holding to certain dogma and doctrine;[xxiv] rather, it’s about humbling oneself and being protected under the strong hand of God who will strengthen those who know they are weak apart from God. Peter’s audience is encouraged to find their support and strength[xxv] in God by faith; they can be comforted in knowing that the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also raise them both from the dead and into glory like Christ.[xxvi] God will help God’s people because God has helped God’s people in Christ. [xxvii] God will triumph over evil because God has already in Christ. Peter then takes this encouragement one step further and broadens their awareness to include their siblings who also suffer similarly; they are truly not alone.[xxviii]

In closing, Peter reminds his audience,

Now, the God of all grace, the one who called you into God’s eternal glory in Christ, after suffering a little while, God, God will mend, fix, strength, and establish you; to God be the strength forever and ever. Amen (vv10-11)

What they will experience and endure for this little bit while still here in the temporal realm will be vindicated in the coming of Christ and the resurrection of the dead; God will not let God’s people endure suffering while here on earth and not follow through with restoration that comes in eternal glory for those who are located in Christ by faith.[xxix] At this point, Peter’s audience can have hope; here, they can receive hope because of all that has occurred before them and on their behalf. In remembering and recalling Christ and God’s work in and through Christ and what will come for those who are in Christ by faith, Peter’s audience can believe that this God is faithful to who God says God is and this is the foundation and the source of their hope. And it’s this hope born from this assurance that then gives them the necessary perseverance they need to endure the chaos and tumult that is present and will come.

Conclusion

When we think about hope we think about something we expect to happen in the future. In this way, hope is that thing that can disappoint rather than please. When hope fails to produce material or spiritual alterations to our life, it makes sense to ditch it. If my hope keeps presenting as dreaming of phantoms of good and better, then it’s nothing but that which perpetually disappoints me. The mythological carrot of sadistic King Future luring on the peasants of the present eager to steal their labor and love.

Another problem arises when we cling to hope as if it is the thing that will save us. As we do this, we turn in on ourselves, digging deeper eager to mine hope from the subterranean self. But it’s not there; it’s not deep in us like a precious ore waiting to be excavated. Our persistent digging only makes matters worse because in this instance it is all up to us.

Hope rides in neither with blind optimism about the future nor ruthless determination to have it. It’s comes with remembering and recalling; specifically, it comes in remembering and recalling what God has done in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. When I’ve read through the First Testament and the recorded stories of Israel’s journey and walk with God, Israel’s hope in God is a ripe present hope based on historical stories hallmarking the past: we hope now because God has done… Today we can press on because yesterday God saw us through it. These ancient stories of God’s journey with Israel and God’s work in Christ reminds us that what is isn’t ever all there is. We live in the collision of the possible with the actual, in what has been and what will yet be. Here in is hope’s realm.

Hope always takes up residence in the present with every anthology of the past stacked against her walls. Hope comes to us as we remember what is right now, isn’t all there is right now because in the past what was wasn’t all there was; all things are possible with God. Hope comes as we remember possibility. Hope comes with the whisper filled wind of history surging and coursing around our fatigued bodies causing us to remember. And as we remember, we find ourselves accompanied by hope and then perseverance.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] I. Howard Marshall, “1 Peter,” The IVP New Testament Commentary Series, eds. Grant R. Osborne, D. Stuart Briscoe, and Haddon Robinson, (Downers Grove: IVP Press, 1991), 151. “[Peter’s Christians are to see themselves as] suffering at the hands of those opposed to God and his sovereign rule, and as part of the cost of bringing salvation to the world.”

[iii] Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, TNICTNT, ed. F.F. Bruce (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 164-165. “The picture of a refiner’s fire was picked up in the Intertestamental period as a picture for testing (therefore ‘to test you’)…”

[iv] Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, 164. “…our author turns toward the future. All the careful and considerate living possible will not prevent persecution…”

[v] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 165. “Thus these Christians are to see what is happening to them as a refining process that will reveal the genuineness of their faith…and therefore be to their ultimate benefit. While painful, this type of suffering is not something they should think strange, but something they should welcome.”

[vi] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 165. “there is a second reason why the readers should not think their ordeal is strange: it is the same type of thing that Christ received and thus it is an indication of their identification with him.”

[vii] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 164. “Thus he encourages the Christians in Asia Minor, ‘do not be shocked’ as if what is happening ere ‘strange,’ using vocabulary familiar from 4:4….Do not think it is foreign; do not think that this ought not to happen.”

[viii] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 167. “On the one hand, they are blessed now if this is the case…The very persecution is a sign of their blessedness. On the other hand, they are ‘insulted because of the name of Christ.’ To be so insulted is not simply to recive a rebuke…but as is the case in the contexts in which the term appears elsewhere in the NT and the Greek TO…it means to be rejected by the society (or even by humanity). And the reason they are rejected is ‘the name of Christ’; that is, because of their association with Christ either because of their life-style or because of their direct confession…Thus it is that because of their association with Christ their social group now rejects them; they are outcasts. But that is not their true state, for peter tells them they are blessed.”

[ix] Marshal, 1 Peter, 153. “To be insulted publicly is, by normal reckoning, a source of misery. But Peter echoes Jesus and says that, on the contrary, appearances are deceptive. IN fact, you are blessed.”

[x] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 164. “…these Gentile converts had no experience of being a cultural minority. Before their conversion they were perfectly at home in their city. And instead of rebelling against God they had accepted the gospel message. But now they were experiencing cultural isolation and personal hostility, not what they might have expected as the blessing of God. Well might they have wondered if something had not gone wrong. Thus our author reassures them: persecution is not something ‘strange’ or foreign to their existence as Christians. What is happening is right in line with Christ’s predictions.”

[xi] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 166. Identification with “…Christ’s suffering during his life on earth, especially his death on the cross.”

[xii] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 166. “Instead of focusing on Christ’s present suffering in the church, Peter focuses on the church’s sharing in Christ’s foundational suffering, not in a salvific sense (there is no hint in 2 Peter that this sharing either forgives their sin or adds to the work of Christ), but in a sense of identification and real unity. In other words, as the Christians suffer because of their identification with Christ, they enter into the experience of Christ’s own sufferings.  This experience creates a re-imaging of their own suffering, which will allow them to see the real evil as an advantage as their perspective shifts.  This process is precisely what each of the passages in 1 Peter that use this language does; each encourages a reimaging of suffering as an identification with Christ (and thus a type of imitatio Christi is encouraged in how they behave in the suffering situation) that will lead to an eventual participation in his glory.”

[xiii] Marshal, 1 Peter, 152. “He is talking about rejoicing that, when suffering does come to us, we can see it as a sharing in Christ’s suffering.”

[xiv] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 168. “Thus those suffering for Christ experience through the Spirit now the glory they are promised in the future…Indeed, their very suffering is a sign that the reputation (glory) of God is seen in them, that the Spirit rests upon them. They can indeed count themselves blessed.”

[xv] Marshal, 1 Peter, 152. “…Peter is not urging Christians to seek suffering, even suffering for Christ.”

[xvi] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 186.

[xvii] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 186. If all that has come before is true, then “the duty of the believer is not to resist (either attacking the persecutor or raging against God), but to ‘humble p[himself] under the mighty hand of God.’”

[xviii] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 186. “…they are to see God’s work behind their suffering and submit, allowing themselves to be brought low, for his purpose is that ‘he may exalt you in due time.’”

[xix] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 188. “When pressures come on the Christian the proper response is not anxiety, for that comes out of a belief that one must take care of oneself and a lack of trust in God. It is rather a trusting commitment to God….in the assurance that God indeed cares and that his caring does not lack the power or the will to do the very best for his own.”

[xx] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 189. “Thus, after writing his comforting thoughts about God, Peter must go on to warn…[the devil] is on the prowl.”

[xxi] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 191. “The goal of the hunt is to find someone to devour.”

[xxii] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 190. “The devil is not a neutralized foe, but one who is seeking the destruction of the believer.”

[xxiii] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 189. “…here…the meaning is not literal soberness as opposed to drunkenness, but a clear-headedness that comes from a freedom from mental confusion or passion. Likewise alertness, which in military contexts refers to a soldier on watch, is opposed to mental and spiritual lethargy…. that would prevent one from recognizing and meeting an attack on one’s faith.”

[xxiv] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 191-192. “The devil is resisted by being ‘firm in faith.’ The concept is not that of holding certain doctrines firmly, which is a meaning of faith found in the Pastorals…but that of remaining firm in one’s trust in God.”

[xxv] Marshal, 1 Peter, 171. “What Peter is talking about is not putting strength into believing but drawing strength from what we believe.”

[xxvi] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 195.

[xxvii] Marshal, 1 Peter, 172. “During this period of affliction God will help his people.”

[xxviii] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 192-193. “One thing that will make their commitment firmer is the awareness that they are not suffering alone. It is not ‘just me’ who is suffering or even ‘just us,’’ laments that make the suffering seem unfair and unjust, but ‘our brotherhood throughout the world.’”

[xxix] Davids, Frist Epistle of Peter, 196-197. “The one who has planned and promised is also the one to whom belongs the power to fulfill. This is indeed assurance for his readers.”

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

Suffering Evil to Resist Evil

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

There’s a malignant and pervasive feature of Protestant Christian social and political ethic that goes like this: faith has nothing to do with the temporal realm, preaching is never supposed to be political, and obedience for obedience’s sake is law. Faith is only of and for the spiritual realm and has no activity in the temporal realm. There, in the temporal realm, the Protestant Christian is to, simply put, abide in obedience to temporal leaders and authorities, getting along nicely with others, and—if it so fits—proclaiming Christ in word to those who are without Christ by faith. There might be some room for actions of charity toward those less fortunate than we. However, when it comes to social action, even political response including resistance, the Protestant Christian is summoned into quietness and socio-political abstinence—our job is to obey whatever and whomever is in charge, bearing badges of model citizenry. The Christian is to endure passively all the actions of the temporal realm, no matter how gross and offensive they are; and not only endure but to advocate for such wayward temporal leadership and calling others into obedience. The tl/dr: faith is only about being saved from some future hell and has no legs, no arms, no hands, no words or deeds to act in the temporal realm; such action is only for those selected by God to lead, however they see fit.

I understand the impulse behind this notion of socio-political quietness and hyper-obedience. However, I also know that it’s an impulse built from a partial and thus inadequate understanding of Christian endurance in the face of violence and abuse. How we got to this quietness and hyper-obedience stems from an impoverished reading of Luther himself, a relentless influence from late 16th and early 17th century protestant and Lutheran scholars trying to further establish Protestantism and Radical Protestantism after Luther’s death, and, sadly, a corrupted reading of biblical texts like our passage from 1 Peter. While the first two are interesting and about which I would be more than happy to wax ineloquently, it’s the last one that is our focus.

1 Peter 2:19-25

For Peter, the important thing in Chapter 2 is that those who are stuck in the captivity of the institution of slavery with non-Christian masters,[ii] abide their unjust[iii] suffering when they do good.[iv] They are to direct their reverence to God and not to their earthly masters,[v] who might be taking perverse pleasure in unjustly punishing a slave for doing good.[vi] Peter writes, For this [is] grace if, through consciousness of God, one endures the unjust suffering of pain of body and mind. For what sort of fame [is it] if you endure when missing the mark and being treated harshly? But if doing good and suffering you will endure, this [is] grace in the presence of God (vv.19-20). Peter encourages his audience—people who are in slavery—to endure being mistreated when they do well. Peter credits this endurance under unjust suffering to the grace of God and the consciousness tuned in and toward God and God’s will.[vii] This endurance under unjust suffering won’t get one saved; this endurance under unjust suffering is evidence of being saved, for it is evidence that the grace of God is present and the one who has this grace of God by faith in Christ is in the presence of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. While the phraseology is exhausting and difficult,[viii] Peter is not emphasizing suffering as salvific; Peter is centering the idea that to endure is God in you enduring through you, thus, it is grace and God bearing the unjust suffering. Concurrently, this endurance of unjust suffering is not only a benefit to the person so enduring[ix] (tangible experience of the grace of God with them in this unjust suffering[x]), but it becomes a point of witness to and an exposing of the perpetrator of the unjust suffering.[xi] Patient endurance by the grace of God in the face of unjust suffering renders both the unjust suffering and the one committing it exposed and guilty.

Peter then brings up Christ’s suffering and death. He writes, for into this you were called, because Christ also suffered on behalf of you, leaving for you an example to be imitated so that you might devote yourself to his footprints, ‘he did not miss the mark and he was not found with deceit in his mouth’ (vv.21-22). For Peter, not only did Christ set an example for believers to follow, but Christ’s innocent suffering on behalf of becomes paradigmatic for believers, too. In other words, yes, Peter is making a correlation here between Christ’s work on the cross as “enduring unjust suffering” as participation in God’s mission in the world to save the world from captivity, indifference, and death—for these are present when one embarks on dolling out unjust suffering on an innocent person (or on any person). Peter yokes the believer not only to Christ, but in Christ underscoring that since their newborn[xii],[xiii] location is in Christ (like an address) they will—by God’s grace and with faith—walk in Christ’s footsteps, imitating them like a young child copies and traces over letters.[xiv] Refusing to make suffering itself salvific, Peter is practical in addressing his audience of slaves to pagans: beloved, you, too, are going to suffer unjustly…fear not, for you are not alone or lost; God not only goes with you but has gone before you.[xv] Peter is emphasizing that by enduring unjust suffering for doing good, they will reinforce their identification with Christ.[xvi]

Peter drives this idea home by making the point[xvii] that this isn’t promotion of blind endurance to suffering but actively resisting revenge and retaliation.[xviii] Peter writes, When he was being abused, he was not abusing; when suffering he did not threaten; but he was handing [himself] over to the judge who judges justly (v.23). And this is the point of it all: foregoing retaliation and revenge while trusting in Abba God who is the just judge, the Judge who was judged in our place.[xix] Peter’s audience—familiar with just and unjust violence due to their station in life[xx]—is to see their endurance under unjust suffering as a way of mimicking and following in the example of Christ that has, like Christ’s work, tangible application and implication in the world. To seek revenge or to retaliate[xxi] is to take matters into one’s own hands and determine that both God is untrustworthy as judge and deny the efficacy of Christ’s work on the cross.[xxii]

Thus why Peter then adds, [xxiii]

He himself he carried up our sins/missing the mark in his body upon the wood/cross, for the purpose and result of removing/causing to be dead sins/missing the mark that we might live for righteousness; for by his wounds you were healed. For you were as sheep being misled, but now you were returned towards the shepherd and over seer of your souls (v.24-25).

It is not by the wounds endured in temporal unjust suffering that the slave is saved,[xxiv] but by the wounds of Christ who suffered on behalf of Peter’s audience[xxv]—Christ who suffered a death reserved for rebels and slaves (Peter drives home Christ’s identification with his audience).[xxvi] Thus, for Peter, they can endure for Christ’s sake and to the glory of God because Christ is the foundation of their salvation.[xxvii],[xxviii] For they were lost like sheep, says Peter, and found and returned to the fold of God, given new life, divine love, and enduring liberation—things denied slaves, people considered not to be people worthy of saving at all.[xxix] Through them, God will work to expose unjust suffering and the person causing the unjust suffering because God is a trustworthy and just judge; Christ’s resurrection is the demonstration that unjust suffering does not go unnoticed and unvindicated by God.[xxx]

Conclusion

So, what do we make of what Peter has written to his audience? There’s wisdom to be had here that resonates with both faith and socio-political praxis (these two are not in opposition). Can we not have faith and endure suffering and be an advocate against injustice without retaliating?[xxxi] I believe Martin Luther can help us here. In his treatise, Temporal Authority: To What Extent it Should be Obeyed, Luther writes about this very tension in the life of the Christian in the world,

…at one and the same time you satisfy God’s kingdom inwardly and the kingdom of the world outwardly. You suffer evil and injustice, and yet at the same time you punish evil and injustice; you do not resist evil, and yet at the same time, you do resist it. In the one case, you consider yourself and what is yours; in the other, you consider your neighbor and what is his. In what concerns you and yours, you govern yourself by the gospel and suffer injustice toward yourself as a true Christian; in what concerns the person or property of others, you govern yourself according to love and tolerate no injustice toward you neighbor. The gospel does not forbid this; in fact, in other places it actually commands it.[xxxii]

We—you and I—can turn the other cheek when unjust violence comes our way, enduring, as Peter exhorts, patiently by God’s grace and in faith and trust that God is who God says God is. What we cannot abide by, though, is when our neighbor is under attack—spiritually, emotionally, physically, mentally, psychologically, etc. We can let injustice directed toward us roll off our backs especially when it is for doing something good (and, these days, that “doing something good” is a rather low bar!), but we cannot let our neighbor suffer so. Just as Peter encourages us to walk in the way of the suffering Christ, he, without words, encourages those of us who are not immersed in and held captive by modern institutions of slavery to expose senseless and unjust violence for the sake of our neighbor and to the glory of God. We can suffer in a way that brings release from captivity, life where there is death, and love where there is indifference. In this way we walk in the footsteps of the Christ who redeemed us and liberated us through his death and resurrection. We love because God so loved us first (1Jn 4:19).

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] I. Howard Marshall, “1 Peter,” The IVP New Testament Commentary Series, eds. Grant R. Osborne, D. Stuart Briscoe, and Haddon Robinson, (Downers Grove: IVP Press, 1991), 87. Peter is addressing a crowd very familiar with overt slavery

[iii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 88. “This advice cannot have been easy to accept. Slaves could well suffer at the hands of their masters. Peter calls it unjust suffering. This contrasts with the view of many people who would have argued (like Aristotle) that, strictly speaking, one couldn’t be unjust to slave because slaves were not persons, but chattels and workhorses. This view was not universal (the Stoics repudiated it, for example). And naturally Christians recognized that slaves were people.”

[iv] Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, TNICTNT, ed. F.F. Bruce (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 106. “Thus the motive for the submission and service is not their respect for their masters, but their respect for God, who receives the service as if it were done to him and whose name is honored by their good behavior. Therefore their submission is not bounded by their masters’ actions…but extends ‘to the unjust’….”

[v] Davids, First Epistle of Peter, 106. Slave’s “reverence or fear is directed to God, not to the masters, is indicated by the facts that (1) the phrase comes before the reference to the masters in the Greek word order, and (2) fear or reverence…in 1 Peter is always directed toward God, never toward people, whom Christians are not to fear…”

[vi] Davids, First Epistle or Peter, 106. “Peter…is writing in a time of persecution in which slaves, who were under almost total control of their masters, would be especially vulnerable. He can make no assumptions that their masters will not take perverse delight in torturing a slave for his faith. Even in such a case the slave is to follow the teaching of Jesus and submit…”

[vii] Davids, First Epistle or Peter, 107. “..it is more likely that ‘of God’ is to be understood as describing the character of the conscience, that is, one conscious of God and his instruction, as in the normal connection of God with conscience in the NT…even if Peter makes this connection in a grammatically difficult way. What he means, then, is that God is pleased with Christian slaves who bear up under unjust suffering, not because there is no other option or because of their optimistic character, but because they know this pleases God and conforms to the teaching of Jesus.”

[viii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 88. “Nevertheless, Peter says, it is possible to bear unjust suffering in a different way. When a person puts up with suffering because he is conscious of God, this is commendable. These two phrases are difficult to understand even if their general sense is clear.”

[ix] Davids, First Epistle or Peter, 108. “This endurance is an act that finds favor with God, on which he smiles with approval. It is a deed of covenant faithfulness to the God who has extended grace to them…and as such leads to the paradoxical joy already mentioned in 1:6-7.”

[x] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 89. “It stands to reason that if slaves receive a physical beating or lashing because they have committed some misdemeanor or crime, there is no particular credit to them for it, even if they bear it patiently….However, if a slave endures suffering  that is undeserved—in deed, punishment actually inflicted for doing good—then this is a different story. This is commendable in the sight of God.”

[xi] Davids, First Epistle or Peter, 108. “….there is a type of fame if one does good and suffers. In this situation one can show true endurance because it is wrongful suffering.”

[xii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 91. “…right from the opening phrase it is apparent that Peter is presenting far more than an example. He briefly tells the story of the Christ who suffered for you and develops a doctrine of Christ’s death that shows how Christians can be transformed to live for righteousness.”

[xiii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 92. “Christ has called them to a new way of life which involves patient suffering like his. As his followers, they must share his lot.”

[xiv] Davids, First Epistle or Peter, 110. “…we are like a child placing foot after foot into the prints of his father in the snow, following a sure trail broken for him. But this trail of Christ includes suffering, not for our sins (he has already suffered ‘on your behalf’ in that respect), but as part of the pattern of life to which he has called us.”

[xv] Davids, First Epistle or Peter, 114. “For slaves this was good news. They might be suffering; indeed, they might be suffering because of their faith. But they were not lost. Christ was with him, and they were under his care even if their present physical experiences were unpleasant.”

[xvi] Davids, First Epistle or Peter, 111. “This teaching fits well as an encouragement to suffering slaves, for they are concerned about suffering for doing right. Jesus their lord was perfectly innocent in every way, they are reminded, and yet he suffered. Thus their innocent suffering can be part of their identification with Christ.”

[xvii] Davids, First Epistle or Peter, 111.

[xviii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 90.

[xix] Ref. to Karl Barth’s CD 4.1

[xx] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 87-88. “Unlike Paul, who taught mainly slaves with Christian masters, Peter is concerned here with slaves working in the homes of pagan masters. In a Christian household the close contact of slaves and masters could lead to brotherhood ….In a pagan household this familiarity increased the possibilities of friction, especially if Christian slaves, who now believed themselves spiritually equal to their masters, tried to force their position. Whatever their situation, Christian slaves should fulfill their obligation to be subject to their masters. Whether their masters are gentle or perverse is not the point; the relationship demands obedience.”

[xxi] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 96. “Peter’s teaching also clearly states what is involved in following Christ. The pattern that must be followed is his refusal to retaliate when he was attacked.”

[xxii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 92-93. “Jesus modeled patient suffering for Christians to follow. The way in which he endured his suffering is the binding pattern that those who have been saved by the death of Christ must follow.”

[xxiii] Davids, First Epistle or Peter, 114. “For slaves this was good news. They might be suffering; indeed, they might be suffering because of their faith. But they were not lost. Christ was with him, and they were under his care even if their present physical experiences were unpleasant.”

[xxiv] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 92.

[xxv] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 92. “Jesus suffers as the Servant of Yahweh and fulfills his destiny to bear the sins of others and so bring them to God.”

[xxvi] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 94. “….Peter simply drives home the fact that Jesus really suffered physically. On the cross  may well allude to the fact that Christ shared the kind of execution which was normally reserved for slaves and rebels.”

[xxvii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 91. “….Christ cannot be an example of suffering for us to follow unless he is first of all the Savior whose sufferings were endured on our behalf.”

[xxviii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 92.

[xxix] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 95.

[xxx] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 94. “The purpose of this sacrificial act, however, is not simply that we should be set free from the consequences of our sins. Perter sees it as an act which is meant to set us free form sin itself….”

[xxxi] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 90. “One can take actions against injustice and unjust structures in society without engaging in personal retaliation.”

[xxxii] Luther LW 45 96

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

persona semper reformanda est

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

The Christian journey into God should be marked by the many deaths we walk through with Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Wherever we’ve encountered Christ in the event of faith anew demands both a death to what was before the encounter and a rebirth into what will be after that encounter. God, being dynamic and not static, is always on the move and we, being found in Christ by the Spirit and thus located in God, should always be on the move, too; this will demand our periodic and recurring death and rebirth as we make contact with what we’ve not known or experienced before in and with God.

Ecclesia semper reformanda est. The church is always reforming. But this only happens if we intimately embrace persona semper reformanda est (a person is always reforming). We, individual Christians who make up God’s Christian church, are the ones who must change for the church to change. This means, wholeheartedly embracing that love requires risk and a new life means new thoughts and new actions in the world.

The bad news is, we don’t like to change; we like what we know and are familiar with. Thus, we elevate what makes us comfortable to the seat of God, hold ourselves (and others!) captive to what was, and halt any movement forward (sometimes calling it “tradition”). Even worse, when things become turbulent, we often clamor to go backwards to shores recognizable and mundane. However, and this is the good news, God, per above, is always on the move and eager to usher us into God’s self-disclosure thus giving us plenty of opportunity for the persona semper reformanda part. Our part in that encounter with God by faith in Christ is by the power of the Holy Spirit, but we can stall it, ignore it, and even prevent it if we lack humility, trust, and love.

1 Peter 1:17-23

In the epistle passage, Peter sets up a dynamic correlation between our faith and trust in Abba God through Christ and our living in and by love as new creations. Our faith and trust are grounded in a God who ransomed us from captivity through the precious body of God’s self thus we can hand ourselves over (entirely) to this God and allow ourselves the genuine risk of loving deeply those around us. As new creatures, says Peter, we can live in a new way, with awe and not fear,[ii] trusting that the very one who ransomed us from futility will see us through all that comes.

Peter begins, And if you appeal to the one who judges without respect for persons according to their own deeds as parent, behave in reverence during the time of your sojourning as strangers (v17). For Peter, to call God “Father”/”Abba” or by any other intimate relational term (“parent”, “elder,” “caregiver”) simultaneously demands a way of living in the world that is different from the way one would live if they did not call God thusly. Peter is certainly and heavily implying that there should be a “like parent, like child” correlation. There should be genetic similarities between the one who is the Creator and the one who is so created by the Creator. Christians, those who are created by the Creator through the encounter with God in the event of faith, should be the ones who carry traits of their Creator into the world.[iii] In other words, the world and those around us should be able to experience aspects of God’s self-revelation in the world through us and our words and deeds. This includes judging without respect for persons according to their own deeds… As in, those of us who have this Judge as Abba should be slow to judge others since we are now, because of Easter and through faith in Christ, in life and not in death because of our sins, thus finding ourselves on the other side of condemning judgment.[iv] And, none of this because of our own deeds, for God did not judge us according to our deeds since our God, Abba God, is the one who doesn’t so judge a person.

Peter underscores our creaturely status in the world living by faith by anchoring our liberation from death and sin in Christ’s (genuine) sacrificial ransoming of us from captious eternal fates and states.[v] Peter writes,

You have perceived that you are ransomed out of the inherited conduct of your ancestors not by perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like a blameless and unblemished lamb, having been known beforehand before the conception of the Cosmos, but now being revealed at the end of time for your sake [that] through [Christ] [you are/can be] believers in God—the one who raised him from death and gave to him glory—so then your faith and hope is in God (vv18-21).

For Peter (and the culture around him, not to mention First Testament theology), redemption is accomplished by payment of a ransom.[vi] Peter is using this imagery to highlight and emphasize the cost[vii] of this new life the believers have by faith and how they are liberated[viii] from the useless[ix] ways they inherited from their ancestors—from which they could never escape of their own powers.[x] Peter’s ultimate concern here is that the believers do not take their redemption for granted; to prevent this they must remember it’s cost and that their liberty from uselessness is not of their own doing.

Thusly, these believers are expected to live differently in the world in a way that is toward God and reeking of gratitude for God’s action on their behalf;[xi] they are expected to live as the new creatures they are, ransomed as they were, liberated and freed from uselessness[xii] for usefulness (usefulness of the reign of God). So, Peter, closes with, Having purified your soul by the obedience of truth into genuine siblingly love, you love fervently one another having been begotten again not out of perishable seed but imperishable, through the living and abiding Word of God (vv.22-23). For Peter, the believers have “purified souls” through their obedience to the truth of the “living and abiding word of God.” In other words, they are expected to have new desires, new thoughts, and (as a result) new ways of living in the world.[xiii] Faith in Christ by and through hearing the truth of the Gospel will change the one who hears and this change will be more than just internal, it will be external (mind and body).[xiv] This necessarily starts with loving those around them,[xv] specifically other believers. But not only this; they will pour out that sibling like love for one another into the world toward the neighbor who is as stuck as they once were, and acting toward and for them in ways that emphasize their wellbeing in the world and not their own to the glory of God.[xvi]

Conclusion

Peter speaks to us, today. He speaks to us as those who have just come through the resurrection event of Christ and are encountered by the risen Christ on our way to look for the living among the dead. We aren’t addressed as those who were once saved many years ago or those baptized even earlier. Peter addresses us as those who are newly encountered by the movement of God causing earthquakes and rolling back massive stones. We are new! This morning, we believe again, what was is of the dead and meant to stay behind in the tomb like useless funeral linens. But what lies ahead of us is life and living in new ways, thinking new thoughts, having new desires and expectations. Because of Easter, we are called by the angel of God to be new in the world; we are, by faith again in Christ again, embarking on our own persona semper reformanda est because this is what faith causes the believer to do and because this is what is expected when you follow a living Christ and not a dead one, when you are inspired by a loving divine Spirit and not an indifferent one, when you are united to the God of always-liberating and not to a god who desires your always-captivity.

Beloved, once again we must hold fast to our Easter Sunday experience and see that we, too, are no longer dead but living, no longer captive but liberated, no longer caught in indifference but surrounded by love…by a Love that moves us toward each other, toward others outside of these walls, and then toward our selves who are found and grounded in Christ. We do not need to be afraid to live differently in the world, Peter exhorts us. We live in awe of the work of God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit on our behalf and on behalf of the whole world. We should be the ones who dare to participate in God’s mission in the world of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation into a world whose industry is just the opposite. We’ve been redeemed from our uselessness for our usefulness; to go any which way but forward into the new, to deny our divine state of semper reformanda is to deny Christ lives now. And, Beloved, we are no longer creatures of death, but of life!

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, TNICTNT, ed. F.F. Bruce (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 71. “Their reverential awe before God, however, is not based simply on their recognition of judgment, but on deep gratitude and wonder at what God has done for them.”

[iii] I. Howard Marshall, “1 Peter,” The IVP New Testament Commentary Series, eds. Grant R. Osborne, D. Stuart Briscoe, and Haddon Robinson, (Downers Grove: IVP Press, 1991), 54. “Christians are not in a position where it doesn’t matter how they live because they believe in Christ and all will be forgiven at the last judgment. On the contrary, they should live in this world, filled with its temptations, with reverence for God in the face of his judgment.”

[iv] Marshall, “1 Peter,”  53-54. “The prayer that Jesus taught his disciples and that was used in the early church addresses God by this name [Abba]…But those who address God in this way must remember who [God] is. As Father [God] does not cease to be judge.”

[v] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 54. “…Peter now introduces a deeper motive for Christian conduct in the fact of redemption. The picture is of people who were in bondage but have now been set free.”

[vi] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 54. “Redemption generally takes place by the payment of a ransom.”

[vii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 55. “Redemption from bondage was possible only by the payment of a ransom price. Peter wants to emphasize the great cost involved, so he points out that the ransom was not paid with precious metals like silver and gold, which despite their durability are not of lasting worth, but rather with the blood of Christ which is generously costly. He contrasts material wealth and a person’s life, and the contrast is enhanced because it was the lifeblood of Christ that was spilled.”

[viii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 54. “The former state of the readers was one of bondage—bondage to a particular way of life inherited from their ancestors.”

[ix] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 55. “The old way of life is characterized as empty, lacking in purpose and leading to no good results.”

[x] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 55-56. “Peter is saying that the readers were caught, with no possibility of escape, in a futile way of life that would end in condemnation from the Judge who judges everybody according to their works. Chrit’s self-offering to God as a sacrifice, however, constituted the ransom price by which they were set free from the old way of life and brought into the new life of the children of God.”

[xi] Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, 75. “It is God who takes the initiative and enables the human response of commitment. But the commitment is directed toward God, specifically because of his raising Jesus from the dead and glorifying him.”

[xii] Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, 71-72. “This ‘way of life,’ which includes not just their religious beliefs but also their ethical values and actions was ‘empty,’….worthless, futile, and empty of hope and value when viewed in the light of the gospel.”

[xiii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 59. “The way in which he says that they have purified their souls…suggests the actual purification of their inner nature, which will issue in new motives, thoughts and actions. This cleansing has taken place through their obedience to the truth…The truth is the gospel, both with its promises and its demands, so that he intends not just an assent to the message but also the commitment to live by it.”

[xiv] Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, 76. “The truth is the gospel…and obeying the gospel indicates that conversion is not simply a matter of intellectual change, but of a transformation of behavior, that is, response to a command….”

[xv] Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, 76. “The result of conversion is ‘sincere love for your fellow-Christians.’”

[xvi] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 60. “If the ideal is that Christians should love their brothers, then let them love one another. Get on and do it. This is a clear and direct command. We must take action without ifs and buts. Peter assumes that Christians can and must love one another.”

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

Clothed in Divine Righteousness: Easter Sunday!

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

On Friday, we bore the crushing weight of being utterly exposed; we felt the shame of being stripped down, our few fig leaves ripped from our bodies.[ii] On Friday, we viscerally felt the depth of our fragility,[iii] our unsafety,[iv] our hurt,[v] our lostness,[vi] and our guilt.[vii] On Friday we gazed long in the mirror and what was reflected back terrified us, angered us, grieved us, made us anxious, and was detestable to us; what we saw on Friday was that we are hopeless, helpless, lifeless, groundless, and ruthless creatures who lie to themselves, preferring to kill an innocent man than attend to the infection of the mythology of control we’ve grown quite drunk on. On Friday, we were abandoned to ourselves, left to our errant judgments, and found ourselves held captive in the tomb of arrogance and desperation, tombs we’ve constructed for ourselves, tombs we are unable to escape from because we are so curved in on ourselves. On Friday we were sealed in darkness and left for dead, alienated and isolated from God, from others, and from ourselves.

But then…God.

Today, where there was darkness there is now light, where there was death there is now life. This morning, the exposure we felt on Friday becomes the warm light of the risen Son, bringing us into himself, into the lap of Abba God, and wrapping us up like newborn babes in the heated blanket of the Holy Spirit. God sent death and his siblings packing because nothing stands between God and God’s beloved, not even death.

This is the goal and trajectory of God’s love: bringing that which is dead back to life, that which is encased in darkness into the light, that which is curved in on itself and loveless into belovedness. Today the oppressive burial linens of fragility, unsafety, hurt, lostness, and guilt are pulled off and we find ourselves dressed in the divine clothes of divine grace, mercy, kindness, joy, and righteousness. As God calls Jesus from the tomb, so does God call us from our self-imposed tombs. As Jesus is raised to life out of death, so, too, are we raised out of death into new life, new hope, new help, on to a new ground, with new confidence not in ourselves but in God, in love, in life, and in liberation. This morning, in our encounter with the risen Christ, our terror is quelled, our anger is released, our grief met with divine comfort, our anxiety gives way to peace that surpasses all understanding, and our detestable state is exchanged for cherished. And all of this as a gift from God to us through Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit; all of it dependent on God’s never-stopping, always and forever, unconditional love for us.

Happy Easter! Christ is Risen!!

Matthew 28:1-10

Matthew opens on the tomb. Unlike the Gospels of Mark and Luke,[viii] there is little movement here. Matthew begins at the tomb with the women Mary already there, Now late on the Sabbath as it was dawning into the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look on the tomb[ix] (v.1). As the women are already there, they know the tomb is sealed because they can see it. They are not planning to do any funeral and burial rituals; for them, what’s done is done. For Matthew, these women are not professing prodigious faith; they are there to confirm that Jesus is dead,[x] secured and sealed in the tomb, the supposed divine mission of God ended. However, God’s ways are higher than human ways: the last shall be first…[xi]

Matthew then tells us,

And, behold!, a great earthquake happened; for an angel of the Lord came down out of heaven and approaching rolled back the stone and was sitting upon it. Now the angel’s appearance was as lightening and their outer robe [was] bright as snow (vv. 2-3).

The Marys who were prepared for darkness and death find themselves immersed in the presence of the divine light, witnessing divine activity overhauling human space and time, folding death in on itself.[xii] As the male guards began shaking and (ironically[xiii]) became as corpses (v.4), the women hold ground through the earthquake caused by the angel’s arrival to roll back the stone.[xiv] Unphased by the men who are now on the ground and, thus, out of the picture,[xv] the angel of God addresses the women,

“You, you do not be afraid! For I have perceived that you are seeking Jesus, the one who has been crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised just as he said. Come and see the place where he was laid. And quickly go and tell his disciples, ‘he has been raised from the dead, and, behold!, he goes before you into Galilee, there you will find him.’ Behold! I told you (vv.5-7).

Those who were last at the cross become the first at the tomb;[xvi] those who were last in the economy of the kingdom of humanity become the first in the economy of the reign of God. The discipleship of the risen Jesus does not start with men minding their own business, but with grieving women coming to confirm death; the Marys, for Matthew, become the first witnesses to the resurrection of their beloved Jesus.[xvii] As they look in the tomb, as they see emptiness, as they remember that the stone was there when they arrived,[xviii] the Marys become the first to experience life amidst death. these humble ones get to be the divinely chosen preachers of the good news: Jesus lives![xix] Where they expected to find a dead body already in decay, they find the presence of God and the altering of history forever in the victory of life over death. [xx] And it is about this victory they are commanded to declare to the disciples with the authority of heaven behind them.[xxi]

And so, as quickly as they could, they left … from the tomb with fear and great joy and they ran… (v.8a). Matthew could have stopped here like Mark did in his Gospel; but Matthew doesn’t.[xxii] The women are eager to convey the divine message to Jesus’s disciples (v.8b), but God has another gift to give. Matthew tells us, And, behold!, Jesus encountered the women saying, ‘Rejoice!’ (v.9a). Just in case they might be doubting what just happened, Jesus shows up and greets them. What they saw back at the tomb wasn’t a figment of their imagination; Jesus is raised,[xxiii] Jesus lives.[xxiv] The event is so real, in fact, that they drew near [to Jesus] and held fast his feet and bowed down to him (v.9b). This was no ghost,[xxv] this was no figment of their imagination; Jesus stood before them, talked to them, and they grabbed hold of his feet.

As they are genuflecting, Jesus exhorts them, echoing the words of the angelic messenger of God, “Do not be afraid! Go your way and proclaim to my brothers so that they may go into Galilee, and there they will see me” (v.10). Jesus refers to the disciples as “brothers”; those who failed Jesus, those who betrayed him, those who denied him, those who ran and hid, those who are still hiding, are declared “brothers” and not merely “disciples” [xxvi] Divine victory of life over death eclipses the existential death the disciples are experiencing as they are still held captive in the oppression of darkness, of silence, and of guilt. In the raising of Jesus, God’s mercy, grace, love, kindness, and forgiveness come pouring out of that tomb rather than the stench of decay, decomposition, and death. As Jesus walks the earth in his resurrected state, life, love, and liberation are on the move.

Conclusion

To us who are exposed and found naked, not in control, fragile and hopeless, unsafe and helpless, hurt and lifeless, lost and groundless, and guilty and ruthless we are given, this morning, Christ himself—all of him—so that we never again find ourselves trapped in our self-imposed tombs. For us who find comfort in the consistency of our terror, we received an assurance like the Marys holding Jesus’s feet! For us who find ourselves addicted to our anger, we are beckoned in divine pleasure and given celestial joy through the resurrected Christ, the incarnate word of God’s love for the world. For us who know the weight of grieving, we are heralded into divine comfort in the surety of God’s presence always with us in Christ, the very one who overcame death with life. For us who are suffocating under anxiety, we receive peace that surpasses understanding. For us who find ourselves stuck in detest, we find ourselves cherished.

Today we’re given something completely new,[xxvii] completely different, completely strange to the kingdom of humanity. We are given life, love, and liberation. And while we benefit from this, we are given these things specifically so we can participate in God’s divine mission of the revolution of love, life and liberation in the world for the God’s beloved. We are refused the option of living as if we’ve not heard, seen, felt, tasted, smelled the good news. We are charged to take up the way of Christ and live as if the Cross isn’t the end of the story but the beginning. Today, we’re not the same as we were yesterday morning; today we’ve encountered an empty tomb and heard the announcement from the heavenly realm: he is not here; he has been risen! How could we ever live in the old way?

Today, our willful and chaotic self-determination collides with the steady path of Christ. Today we live under the weight that Jesus’s resurrection is not an event isolated to the past or retained for some future time, but is right now.[xxviii] We must hear our summons to go! and proclaim! in word and deed, not only telling but living in such a way that Jesus’s resurrection—thus life’s victory over death—is real for those most threatened by a world on fire, by leaders consumed with their own well-being, by institutions and systems hardwired to consume them. This morning, we, too, are resurrected and called out of our tombs to go and live radically and wildly in the name of God and for the well-being of your neighbor and to do so in a way that brings God glory and might get you in a little bit of good trouble. You’ve been summoned into life not death, into love and not indifference, into liberation and not captivity.

Today, we live because Jesus is alive, [xxix] we love because Jesus is love, we are liberated because death is no match for life.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/02/18/exposed-and-naked-we-are-not-in-control/

[iii] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/02/22/exposed-and-naked-we-are-fragile/

[iv] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/03/08/exposed-and-naked-we-are-unsafe/

[v] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/03/22/exposed-and-naked-we-are-hurt/

[vi] https://laurenrelarkin.com/?p=7127

[vii] https://laurenrelarkin.com/?p=7130

[viii] R. T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 1097. Four distinctive features of Matthew’s account: “…the earthquake, the angel rolling away the stone, the effect on the guards, and the women’s meeting with Jesus himself on their way from the tomb.”

[ix] Τάφος

[x] Case-Winters, Matthew, 336. “It was not uncommon for friends to come and wait by a tomb incase an apparently dead person should revive. This might continue as far as the third day. The effect of these visits was to confirm death.”

[xi] Case-Winters, Matthew, 336. “Waiting and watching in sadness, they have become the first witnesses to the resurrection. Once again the last are first. They are also first to worship the risen Lord.”

[xii] France, Matthew, 1099.

[xiii] France, Matthew, 1100. “Note the irony that those assigned to guard the corpse themselves become ‘corpses,’ while the on they guarded is already alive. The attempt at human security has been neutralized, and the guards play no further part in the scene until they have to report back in vv. 11-15.”

[xiv] France, Matthew, 1099. “…here the removal of the stone form Jesus’ tomb is attributed not to the earthquake but to the direct action of an angel. Indeed, Matthew’s connective ‘for’ suggest that the quake is itself the result, or at least the context, of the angel’s coming, so that emphasis falls on the angel rather than the earthquake.”

[xv] France, Matthew, 1100.

[xvi] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 336. “‘Last at the cross, first at the tomb,’ the women have come to watch.”

[xvii] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 618. “I: ‘In those times nobody paid much attention to women. And that’s why those women maybe didn’t run any risk, as Laureano says. Their role was only to go and weep and then embalm the body of Jesus. A humble role. But this Gospel assigns them a more important role: they were witnesses to the resurrection.’”

[xviii] France, Matthew, 1097-1098. “The action of the angel in removing the stone from the entrance to the tomb draws attention even more clearly than in the other gospels to the fact that Jesus has already left the tomb, while the stone was still in place.”

[xix] France, Matthew, 1101. “The women are not only themselves the witnesses of the empty tomb, but also the chosen messengers to convey the amazing news to Jesus’ male disciples.”

[xx] Cardenal, Solentiname, 619. “I: ‘The important thing about this story is that they find an empty tomb. They were arriving to embalm a corpse and there wasn’t any corpse.’”

[xxi] France, Matthew, 1101. Angel’s last words to women “reminiscent of the frequent TO formula, ‘The Lord has spoken’….The formula marks an authoritative pronouncement (perhaps even that the agnel speaks for God), and functions now as a call to action. The message has been delivered, and now it is up to the women to act on it.”

[xxii] France, Matthew, 1097. “Matthew’s account of the empty tomb is thus, like his account of the death of Jesus, more dramatic than Mark’s and supplies the surprisingly missing element in Mark 16:1-8, an actual encounter with the risen Jesus.”

[xxiii] France, Matthew, 1098. It’s “…a demonstration that Jesus has risen….What matters to the narrators is not when or how he left, but the simple fact that now, early on Sunday morning ‘he is not here’…”

[xxiv] Cardenal, Solentiname, 619. “Maria: ‘And afterwards he appears before them and shows them that he’s alive.’”

[xxv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 336. “The women ‘took hold of his feet.’ This latter establishes not only their posture of worship but that this resurrection appearance had ‘feet’—this is not a ghost.”

[xxvi] France, Matthew, 1103. The disciples become Jesus’s brothers, “The concept itself is not new….This time, however, it follows the abject failure of the Twelve to stand with Jesus when the pressure was on, a failure which was hardly less shameful because Jesus had predicted it in 26;31. But now it is time for the second half of that prediction to be fulfilled…and that Galilean meeting will eventually restore the family relationship which they must surely have thought had come to an end in Gethsemane.”

[xxvii] Cardenal, Solentiname, 621. “William: ‘Resurrection is a new life, not the prolonging of this life.’”

[xxviii] Cardenal, Solentiname, 621. “Laureano: ‘What’s important is for us to live resurrection here, right now, and for us not to believe, as many have believed, that this world doesn’t count, that what counts is to go to heaven afterwards and all that nonsense.’”

[xxix] Cardenal, Solentiname, 621. “I: ‘It’s certain they they’ve put Jesus resurrected in heaven, in another life, in the blue beyond, so that the earth will go right on being the same, and they’ll still be injustice, and there’ll still be poor people…But he rose to be here on earth: ‘He was dead and he goes to Galilee before you.’…”

Posted on by laurenlarkin 2