Tag: Freedom of a Christian

Theodidacti by Prayer

“‘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.’”[1]

Introduction

“Thoughts and prayers.” Any day of the week, on any social media website you will see people sending “thoughts and prayers” into tragic situations—either global or local. The sentiment is kind and hints at “emotional solidarity.” As our world becomes increasingly more violent—violence seeming to be our primary form of communication—the sending of “thoughts and prayers” increases. What else can we do but say: hey, I’m praying for and thinking about you during this time. There’s nothing wrong with it.

Until there is. Typing (and speaking) “thoughts and prayer” to those who are suffering and grieving makes us feel like we’ve done something. To some extent, we have; we spoke to and someone’s pain. And even though that dopamine surge feels good, it doesn’t do anything for their pain, and it certainly doesn’t do anything to address the issue. Now, to be gentle here, many of us feel like we can’t do much to overhaul a violent, polarized, and death dealing atmosphere and landscape. Many of us may feel that God needs to step in and set it all straight. Some may feel that our socio-political activity has nothing to do with our faith and so, to be faithful, we opt out of action and lean in to prayer.

Is everything really that helpless and hopeless? I don’t think so. Without jettisoning our orientation toward “thoughts and prayers” we can (maybe!) see that our prayers and thoughts are just the beginning of our socio-political activity in the world to make this place better for our neighbor who is grieving because they have experienced its trauma firsthand. In other words, when we shift our perspective and see prayer as our first step and not our last (ditch) effort, we might find a way to push our activity beyond uttering “thoughts and prayers” and living it in the world to the wellbeing of the neighbor and to the glory of God.

1 Timothy 2:1-7

In Paul’s first letter to Timothy,[2] he begins with an exhortation to prayer (in all its forms), Therefore, first of all things I urge petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings to be made on behalf of all people, on behalf of kings and all the ones being in authority so that we might pass time with a quiet and peaceable life in all piety and respectability (v1-2). Paul centers the life of prayer within the life of the believer. Why is this important[3] for Paul? A few reasons.

First, Paul understands that both Timothy and his flock will come under pressure not only from the opposition of the false teachers in Ephesus (who are antagonistic to Paul’s mission[4]), but that they will also come under fire by the local culture who will demand conformity to its status quo.[5] For Paul, prayer—the whole kit and kaboodle—will help to ground the believers and form and shape their lives, strengthening and uniting them together against these oppositional forces.

Second, the church, for Paul, is to be both missiological and present in their community (despite the opposition). Rather than being compliant to the surrounding socio-political realities by either playing nice through their “thoughts and prayers” for those others in their society[6] or living quietly off the radar bringing no attention to themselves by being good and obedient citizens,[7] Paul sees prayer as a feature of their corporate and private life of worship that will position these believers in the world by bringing the gospel in word and deed and serving their society by means of living out the gospel and it’s law of love.[8] This includes praying for all people; thus the believers cannot pick and choose subjecting themselves to an insular mindset.[9]

Third, prayer is to promote and provoke the believer in conformity to God’s will (which happens in the event of prayer) to be those who are Christ’s representatives and who participate in God’s mission in the world.[10] This means that as they pray for others and (especially) the rulers and those in authority they are praying for a specific outcome that will align with God’s mission in the world in which they participate. This is more than just nice thoughts and kind prayers for these leaders, it’s requesting God’s intervention by power of the Holy Spirit to change the hearts of these leaders and authorities.[11] The believers are to pray that their leaders are able to bring forth such a quiet and peaceable life, respectable and able to be godly; this is not that the believers are to live quietly while falling in with the demands of society and its leaders,[12] it’s about their being able to live according to the ethics of the reign of God within the kingdom of humanity with an eye to overhaul it where needed.[13],[14] This form of prayer, resulting in robust space to participate in God’s mission in the world to the glory of God and the well-being of the neighbor, is vital for the life and praxis of the church in the world and conforms to God’s will for the church’s life and praxis in the world.[15] This is doing church.

And fourth, thanksgiving helps to form those who recall God’s wonderful work in the world and in this way they find their hope in what God will do, giving assurance to their prayers that the God to whom they pray in the name of Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit is the same God who is oriented toward love, life, and liberation, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.[16]

Paul then affirms, This is good and acceptable in the presence of God our savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come into the knowledge of truth (vv3-4). Through prayer and thanksgiving, the believers become formed to the will and mission of God. In this way they can go into the world as Christ’s representatives and bring Christ (thus God) to those in their society.[17] Prayer is so closely linked to God’s mission of salvation that we can see that it’s crucial to the believer’s discipleship formation and causation. Through the humble posture of prayer, the will of the one who prays is conformed to the will of the one to whom they pray. As believers pray for God’s will to be done on earth as in heaven, they are also praying for their will not to be done and to be replaced with God’s will so that they can be active participants in God’s reign coming and God’s name being hallowed. As the believers in Ephesus are conformed to God’s will and move out and work in the world, God’s mission of salvation goes forward in and through them and truth (real truth) is knowable.

Paul then says, For God [is] one, and one mediator [between] God and humanity the person Christ Jesus, the one who gave himself [as a] ransom on behalf of all people, a testimony for the due season, into which I, I was placed [as a] herald and apostle—I speak the truth, I do not lie—a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth (vv5-7). According to Paul, all have access to God because God is one,[18] and this one God has a mediator who is Jesus Christ through whom all have access to God.[19] Jesus Christ is the one who liberated (all!) humanity from death by means of his death and resurrection. This is the good news and the very thing believers not only believe but through which they are conformed to God’s will and mission in the world. For Paul, the church is responsible[20] to this person, Jesus Christ, who identified with humanity in its plight; it is also for this person they are to be his representatives in the world and the foundation of their faith and love for God and for others.

Conclusion

[21]Dorothee Sölle’s and Fulbert Steffensky write, in Not Just Yes & Amen, “[God] stands on the side of life and especially on the side of those to whom life in its wholeness is denied and who do not reach the point of real living. He is not on the side of the rulers, the powerful, the rich, the affluent, the victorious. God takes sides with those who need him. He sides with the victims.”[22] Where God sides is the location—the starting point, the continuing point, and the end point—of Christian existence and praxis in the world toward the neighbor to the glory and in the will of God. Thus, Christians are exhorted by their life of Christ and by their own faith to dare to move beyond the deafening silence of “thoughts and prayers,” extend their voices and hands beyond the heartless “yes and amen,” and lay claim to the long dormant divine “No!” This is done not by the believer’s own strength or alone, but by and in the strength of Christ and in the witness of the community witnessing to Christ in the world.

In Romans 13:14, Paul exhorts his audience to “to put on [as clothes] the Lord Jesus Christ and do not allow the flesh provision toward inordinate desires.” Christians are to clothe themselves in Christ, to shed the cloaks and covers of the kingdom of humanity, to shrug off the mythologies of power and privilege peddled by church clerics and state councils aimed toward inoculating Christians against active participation in the world as Christ for the well-being and benefit of the neighbor. To put on Christ is to participate in Christ’s life in this world now as Christ did in his own witness to the love and will of God more than 2000 years ago. This exhortation is echoed in Philippians 2:5, “Let the same mind be in you that is in Christ Jesus…” The believer is to be clothed in and have the same mind as Christ. The inner and outer person is to be aligned to the image of Christ who witnessed to God’s life affirming and liberative love in the world for the oppressed, for the victims. To be as Christ, to be formed—inwardly and outwardly—to the image of Christ comes with comfort and liberty in God by faith, but it also comes with a great burden to be as Christ to the neighbor. As theodidacti[23] through prayer, Christians are summoned to hear the silent cry and to respond by joining the divine revolution of life, love, and liberation for the beloved. Beloved, we pray first, and then we act for the wellbeing of the neighbor and to the glory of God.

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

[2] I’m using traditional language for the author of this letter so I can just keep it simple for the audience. I am aware of the debates of authorship and dating.

[3] Towner, Timothy, 165. “If the church has discerned the mandate character of this letter, it understands that Timothy’s task is to ensure that these instructions be implemented.”

[4] Philip Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus, TNICNT, ed. Gordon D. Fee (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 162. “The context throughout will continue to be that of false teaching and opposition to the Pauline missions.”

[5] Towner, Timothy, 162. “…the church will often still feel the presence of opponents and their teaching activities, and the latter will come up for specific treatment in several place…the local culture is also exerting pressure on community life in a way that causes Paul to intervene forcefully.”

[6] Towner, Timothy, 163. Misconception 1 needing to be addressed, “…the church has often understood the text to lay down a broad commission to pray for all people and for government leaders without really stipulating what direction such prayer ought to take. But the real concern, as close attention to the argument wills how, is for the prayer that supports the church’s universal mission to the world. That is, Paul urges Timothy to instruct the Ephesian church to reengage in an activity it had apparently been neglecting—prayer in support Paul’s own mandate to take the gospel to the whole world.”

[7] Towner, Timothy, 163. Misconception 2: “Dibelius saw this text as introducing the new shape that Christian existence took following the departure of the apostles and as a result of the disappointment over the delay of Christ’s return. In his estimation, prayer for all and for those in authority sought the goal of the quiet and peaceful life—that is, a Christian existence characterized by outward behavior conforming to secular notions of ‘good citizenship.’”

[8] Towner, Timothy, 163. Solution:  in Romans 23 (and 1 Peter 2) “There Paul lays down a theology of the church-world dialectical reality in which the church is to find itself in a position of missiological service to society.”

[9] Towner, Timothy, 167. For all people, “to counter a tendency toward insular thinking in the Ephesian Church brought on by an elitist outlook or theology.”

[10] Towner, Timothy, 165. “The theological interests and the universal theme reveal that the prayer practice Paul sought to reinstate in Ephesus had the evangelistic mission to the Gentiles as its target.”

[11] Towner, Timothy, 1623-164 “In our text with its specific evangelistic focus, it may be argued that the church’s commitment to acknowledge the secular power structure and society’s expectations is to be expressed in its payer for salvation and effective political leadership.”

[12] Towner, Timothy, 169. “The two terms (‘quiet and peaceful’) that initially describe this life express the Hellenistic ideal (conveyed variously) of a tranquil life free form the hassles of a turbulent society It is obvious enough that Paul envisions the state with God’ help, as being capable of ensuring the conditions that would make such a life possible.”

[13] Towner, Timothy, 169. “The next phrase, ‘in all godliness and holiness,’ describes this life’s character and observable shape. …Yet when the theological reshaping of these concepts is taken into account, it becomes clear that Paul had others aims—namely, to express the theology of a dynamic Christian ethics by means of the language of the day. This technique would of course ensure intelligibility. But Paul almost certainly intended also to reinvent the language and subvert alternative claims about the nature and source of godliness associated with politics and religious cults in the empire.”

[14] Towner, Timothy, 170. “Prayer for the tranquil setting is prayer for an ideal set of social circumstances in which Christians might give unfettered expression to their faith in observable living. This distinction allows us to place the second prayer (for leaders) into the missiological grid of the passage: the church is to pray for the salvation of ‘all,’ and it participates in that mission by making God present in society in its genuine expression of the new life for all to see.”

[15] Towner, Timothy, 177. “Thus Paul explains that prayer for the salvation of all people, and specific prayer for the effectiveness of the civic powers, conforms to the will of God. It is not simply an optional church practice that pleases God, but a practice as integral to the church’s life with God as was sacrifice in the time before Christ.”

[16] Towner, Timothy, 167. “…thanksgiving not only bolstered confidence by focusing reflection on God’s past responsiveness to petition, but also was an expression of confidence in anticipation of God’s future response…”

[17] Towner, Timothy, 179. “In the Ephesian context of false teaching Paul emphasize that salvation and adherence to the apostolic message are inseparable. God’s will is that all people will commit themselves in faith to the truth about Christ.”

[18] Towner, Timothy, 180.

[19] Towner, Timothy, 180.

[20] Towner, Timothy, 183. “Paul invites the church of Ephesus to view its own location within God’s redemptive story and its responsibilities in relation to the appearance of this ‘human.’”

[21] This portion is taken from my unpublished dissertation (University of Aberdeen, 2024), Leaving Heaven Behind: Paradoxical Identity as the Anchor of Dorothee Sölle’s Theology of Political Resistance.

[22] Soelle and Steffensky, Not Just Yes & Amen, 82.

[23] Martin Luther, Freedom of a Christian

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Liberated and Devoted

Psalm 78:3-4 That which we have heard and known, and what our Elders have told us, we will not hide from their children. We will recount to generations to come the praiseworthy deeds and the power of God, and the wonderful works God has done.

Introduction

The paradox of faith is that it’s both private and public, it’s big and small, it’s dynamic and restrained, it’s orderly and chaotic, it’s strong and weak, it’s life and death, it’s liberation and devotion.

The journey through Romans collides into this paradoxical faith that refuses to be categorically defined by one set of rituals or dogmas; in fact, it suspends ritual’s and dogma’s feeble claim to define or contain it. The reason for this paradoxical substance is that faith reflects the substance of God: faith is from God and faith is for God and is directed (back) to God. Neither faith nor God can be confined to human assumptions and intellectual concoctions. With faith and God, every day is a new day—every day presents and offers God’s mercies that are ours by faith, and this day will not be like the last one or like the one that comes next. You wake up and you are thrust—once again—on to God in faith, trusting that God loves you today as God loved you yesterday and will love you tomorrow.

So, our activity from day to day is defined not so much by our schedules and lists—although those can be so helpful with daily demands—but by what may happen. We have no control how God will summon our faith to manifest as love in the world to the benefit of the neighbor. Maybe the day will be quiet as you care for creation—weed the garden, water the plants, walk the dog, pet the cat, make dinner, rest and relax. Or maybe the day will present with neighbors (literally) knocking on your door, a phone call summoning you, an email needing your complete presence, or a random encounter with a stranger at the store.

Paul has worked hard to demonstrate how we are to discipline our outer nature to come in alignment to our inner nature, where our deeds are in alignment to our faith. Thus ,these actions take on the genetic and chromosomal likeness of our faith: loving, life-giving, and liberating. Faith orients us to God but that is not all, faith orients us to God through our neighbor and to our neighbor through God.  And this liberating faith will manifest itself in loving devotion to the well-being of the neighbor. And this may even mean, says Paul:

Romans 14:1-12

Now, welcome the ones who are weak in faith, but not for the reasons of plotting judgments. Indeed, some people believe in eating all things; but the one who is weak eats vegetables. The one who eats must not treat with contempt the one who does not eat, and the one who does not eat must not judge the one who eats; for God welcomes [that person]. Are you, you the one who judges the household servant belonging to another? [They] stand or fall to their own Lord, but [they] will be made to stand for the Lord is able to make [them] stand.[1]

Rom. 14:1-4

At the end of the disciplined outer nature is a return to the inner nature: do not judge. Literally. Are you, you the one who judges the household servant belonging to another? It’s here where Paul unifies the believer as a whole person: we are justified by faith apart from works which makes us love our neighbor in word and deed thus we do not judge our neighbor by their works, for their inner nature is the thing that is in line with God (or not!). Thus, they will express themselves into the world as they are so lead and as they can handle according to their conscience.[2] So, welcome the neighbor in but not to force them to become more like you or to fight with them about how they are (self) expressing their faith in love. The only thing that is necessary is love (remember 13:8, the believer is to be indebted to the neighbor in love).[3]

Driving the point home, it’s not necessary everyone eat the same way, dress the same way, view the day the same way—all these things are liberated from condemnation.[4] The only thing essential and necessary is love, divine love for the beloved, calling the beloved unto God and into the well-being of the neighbor (mutually). In this way, the believer is freed up from two very exhausting things: judging and controlling the neighbor. Letting the inner nature, of the neighbor be that which is between them and God is to give your own attention to yourself. For those who feel comfortable and called to eat and dress in a certain way should do so without judgment—whether another person agrees with them. Ultimately, the Spirit is at work in the conscience of the neighbor, especially the ones who share in the faith.[5] Why spend so much energy trying to get everyone to look the same, eat the same, be the same…wouldn’t this fly in the face of the singularity in plurality that is at the heart of Abraham’s call to be the father of many nations? Not one, but many (remember Romans 4?); so, too, should each gathering of the beloved reflect plurality and multitude…

Paul rounds out the discussion by bringing it all back to Christ and the love of God.

For not one of us lives for themselves and no one dies for themselves. For if we live, we live to the Lord; if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live and we die, we are of the Lord. For to this [end] Christ died and lived, so that also he might be Lord of the dead and the living. Now, why do you, you judge your sibling? And why do you, you treat your sibling with contempt? For we are all placed beside the tribunal of God…

Rom. 14:8-10

The goal here is to live liberated in love with the fullness of life; but not just for you, for your neighbor, too. You are pleasing to God as you are right now; so, too, is your neighbor/sibling—whether they act like you or not. If you feel led and called to freely participate in this or that ritual, this or that tradition, this or that act of worship, to dress this or that way, or eat this or that, you are free to participate; but, says, Paul, do so freely and according to your conscience which is the divine location of encounter with God in the event of faith.[6] You are enveloped in the grace and mercy of God and not held hostage by your ability to conform to the status quo or another’s expectations, not even society’s expectations, not even parents’ expectations; you are free to be you to the glory of God and the well-being of your neighbor.[7]

Conclusion

Two words of caution by way of remembrance:

  1. Remember we don’t live for ourselves; we don’t live alone, work alone, exist alone; rather we are intimately and profoundly connected to others be it family (immediate and extended), to our neighbors, to others in society (work and play), and even connected to those who have transitioned into God before us by means of our remembering-love. The glorified self-autonomy perpetuated in the mythology of the post-modern and western conceptions of human existence must be captured and put to death. If not, liberation will take on isolating and divisive characteristics. This means that any notion of liberation that is for you and you alone is a lie; in Christ’s economy it is sin. Putting ourselves first and foremost is the number one way to miss the mark when it comes to divine love and the neighbor.
  2. And with this emphasis on the other and divine love, remember that our encounter with God in faith is a return of God’s love for you with love for God. To love another is to love whom they love (1 Jn 4:19-21[8]). As my mother loves me, she loves my children because I love them; as a mother, I love those whom my children love because I love my children and they love these. As it is with us who are so basic, so it is with God. God’s love for me is never to be used as a weapon to abuse or threaten my neighbor or to cause them neglect and isolation. It is always liberative love making itself known in devotion to the neighbor.

Luther, at the very beginning of his treatise on The Freedom of a Christian, writes,

A Christian person is a free lord above everything and subject to no one.
A Christian person is a devoted-peer servant of everything and subject to everyone.[9]

The Freedom of a Christian

This paradox expresses the thrust of Romans in the best way. The believer is absolutely and positively free—above everything—a queen and priestess. But in this true and real freedom, the believer is so free she can and will serve her neighbor. Liberation fosters devotion; freedom is oriented toward justice. For the truly liberated person is free to put herself aside, like Christ who, to quote Philippians,

…though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death–
even death on a cross.

Phil. 2:6-8 NRSV

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[2] LW 25, 485. “…understanding the term ‘weak’ as referring to people who are overly careful or still superstitious in some respect, who think they ought to do what they really do not need to do.”

[3] LW 25, 486. “Thus the meaning of the apostle is that in the new law all things are free and. Nothing is necessary for those who believe in Christ, but love is sufficient for them, …”

[4] LW 25, 487. “For every day is a feast, all food is permitted, every place is sacred, every time is a time of fasting, every kind of apparel is allowed, all things are free, only that we observe moderation in their use and that love and the other things which the apostle teaches us be practiced.”

[5] LW 25, 492-493. “For the strong man has his own opinion and is moved by his own reasons, and likewise the weak by his…leave him in peace and let him be satisfied with his own motives (or to say it in more popular language) let him stand secure and immoveable in the directions of his own conscience.”

[6] LW 25, 495. “Thus the whole error in this idea is that we fail to consider that if we are pleasing to God, all of these things must be done not by the compulsion of necessity or by the drive of fear but in happiness and a completely free will.”

[7] LW 25, 499. “But the apostle has something special in mind in this verse, namely, that he wants each person to be content in his own mind, or as it is commonly phrased, in his own thinking, and not judge another man in his thinking, nor should the other spurn him in return, lest perhaps he who is weak in faith, having his own mind, thinking, or conscience, but being disturbed or offended at the ‘mind’ of another person, begin to act contrary to his own ‘mind’ and thus conclude one thing and do something else and so be at odds with. Himself.”

[8] The NRSVUE has “19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Those who say, “I love God,” and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”

[9] WA 7, 21; LW 31, 344. Translation mine from the medieval high german

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Deprivatized Faith as Neighbor Love

Psalm 105:1-3 Give thanks to God and call upon God’s Name; make known God’s deeds among the peoples. Sing to God, sing praises to God, and speak of all Abba God’s marvelous works. Glory in God’s holy Name; let the hearts of those who seek God rejoice.

Introduction

Since chapter twelve, Paul has impressed upon his reader the necessity of aligning the outer person with the inner person. For Paul, the entire person of the believer in Christ, who has faith and affirms that God is trustworthy in God’s promises, is brought into the light. This is not an issue where only your soul is important or only your body; rather, the entire person is important. Remember in 12:2 Paul exhorted that through the renewing of our minds we are to live in the world in alignment to that renewed mind and not in accordance with this present age. This alignment between the inner and outer Paul referenced is presenting the body as a holy living sacrifice well-pleasing to God; this is to prove God’s will in the world which is allowing faith to manifest as love, life, and liberation in the world to the benefit of the neighbor. Working together as the body of Christ in the world, we dare to love forward in the world representing God into it. Thus, love is to be without hypocrisy (12:8) by means of detesting/abhorring evil and cleaving to the good which looks like: siblingly-loving one another, valuing each other, hastening to service, rejoicing in hope, enduring tribulation, praying, sharing in each other’s needs, pursuing the stranger, even speaking well of and blessing those who curse and persecute us.

Remember that chapters 4-11 hammer home that none of this work justifies but is the way faith makes itself known in the world by the law of love resident in the heart of the believer. You do not need to do any of these things to get God to love you; you’ve been liberated from that hamster wheel of self-justification before God. Before God you are righteous because by faith you ascribe to God trustworthiness and honor. You trust that God loves you—who you are, as you are, faults and talents and all. This knowledge also liberates your body because now you can spend time just loving your neighbor rather than being caught up in the dos and donts of a ritual and purity system causing you to be self-consumed, pulling anyone and anything, even God, into orbit of your solar system where you’re the sun. By faith in Christ, the law is given back to you to be used by means of love to serve your neighbor and not as the mediator between you and God—that spot, for Christians, belongs to Christ.

But Paul isn’t done pressing how much our outer natures are to be aligned with our inner natures. So, he writes,

Romans 13:8-14

Owe nothing to no one except love to one another; for the one who loves the other has fulfilled the second law. For which [these commandments are] do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet, and any other commandment summarized in this word you love your neighbor as yourself. Love does not practice evil toward the neighbor; therefore, love [is] a fulfillment of the law.[1]

Romans 13:8-10

The lead up to our spot in Romans 13 contains Paul’s discussion about obedience to government, structured, according to Paul, for the benefit of the civilians to create order and to control and thwart acts of evil. Paul locates the entire cosmos in God. Even this realm of government authority is under God’s control and those whom God places in control should be obeyed. Now, our lectionary leaves this portion out. We jump straight to 13:8, owe nothing to no one except love to one another. But this thought trails Paul’s discussion on paying taxes, revenue, respect, and honor to whomever those things are due. Thus, be in debt to no one unless that debt is love then love others like you are in debt to them!

We miss out on the ramifications of this hinge of verse 8 by skipping vv. 1-7. It may sound cacophonous to our ears moving from a discussion on obedience to the government and being good citizens and neighbors, but it makes sense. Following Luther’s lead in his Freedom of a Christian, the believer submits to the government for the benefit of the neighbor, principally by being an example of submission to the government so that the neighbor opts to submit, too. Ultimately, this is the law consumed by the law of love in the hands of the believer in service to the neighbor. The believer is to use the law as a means of loving service to the neighbor, refusing the option to cause the neighbor to stumble. This line of thinking is in line with Paul’s exhortation to love the neighbor as yourself (v.9). This is one of the means by which the Christian, for Paul, loves the neighbor in an indebted type of love, this is a way the Christian esteems highly and honors the neighbor by refusing her own (selfish) urges to thwart the civic law for her own pursuits and desires.[2]

The Romans are exhorted by Paul to love their neighbors no matter who those neighbors are; no matter their status or wealth or prestige, Christians are to love their neighbor as if there’s a debt there, pouring themselves into it completely as if this was about loving oneself.[3] And the beauty is this paradox: to love your neighbor is to love yourself. Here’s why: when your neighbor is thriving, you’re thriving; when your neighbor is liberated, you’re liberated; when your neighbor is loved, you’re loved. In that union between you and your neighbor there is God. (Where two or three are gathered.) Because, as Paul is wont to demonstrate, the believer by serving and loving the neighbor comes face to face with God and is brought into that exposure and acceptance discussed back in Romans 4. In overcoming lethargy toward serving the neighbor, the believer is reminded of their tendency toward clinging to the evil rather than abhorring it, reminded of their tendency to wallow in the works of darkness and not renouncing them.[4]

Even this, behold the time; the hour [is] now to be awakened out of sleep. For now salvation is nearer to us than when we [initially] believed. The night advanced, but the day has come near. Therefore, we may renounce the works of the darkness, and may put on the weapons of the light. As in the day we might walk decently…

Romans 13:11-13a

It is through the neighbor we are summoned out of our sleepy living (walking deadness). We must be summoned from this sleep that comes from a privatized faith residing only between you and God.[5] Faith is too active to be this comfortable and complacent. So, through the demands of our neighbor we are summoned awake in Christ again and again and we are brought further into faith manifesting itself as love in the world to the benefit of the neighbor.

Conclusion

Chapter 13 of Romans puts the neighbor front and center of the Christian’s existence in the world. According to Paul, the believer is yoked to God and to the neighbor, but rather than being pulled insufferably apart, limb from limb, the believer is pushed together more and more, becoming more and more themselves in every encounter with God with the neighbor by faith working itself out in the law of love. The one liberated to be themselves is now asked (intentionally) to set themselves aside for the well-being and benefit of the neighbor; this is the best way to receive the self in return, as a new creation, a resurrected self out of the death of the self.

This demand does not exclude self-care, rest, boundaries, or the like. Rather, all it does is remind us that we do not float about this world content in only knowing we are going to heaven when we die. This is a malnourished, weak, and (frankly) violent perspective on what it means to be Christian. The demand to love the neighbor reminds us that, ultimately, our neighbor’s life and liberation is intimately connected to our own. The loved love, the liberated liberate, those summoned to life, summon to life. Or, to quote an ELCA Lutheran theologian, Kirsi Stjerna, referring to Luther’s Freedom of a Christian, “Freedom feeds justice…”[6] The beloved loved by God loves the beloved of God and comes again into the love of God as the beloved; “we love because God has first loved us,” (1 John 4:19).

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[2] LW 25, 475. “First, we can understand it in the sense that both the neighbor and one’s own self are to be loved. But in another sense it can be understood that we are commanded to love only our neighbor, using our love for ourselves as the example. This is the better interpretation, because man with his natural sinfulness does love himself above all others, seeks his own in all matters, loves everything else for his own sake, even when he loves his neighbor or his friend, for he seeks his own in him.”

[3] LW 25, 475. “For through the expression, ‘as yourself,’ every pretense of love is excluded. Therefore he who loves his neighbor on account of his (money, honor, knowledge, favor, power, comfort) and does not love the same person if he is (poor, lowly, unlearned, hostile, dependent, unpleasant) clearly has a hypocritical love, not a love for him himself, but a love for his neighbor’s goods for his own benefit, and thus he does not love him ‘as himself,’ for indeed, he does love himself, even if he is a pauper, or a fool, or a plain nothing. For who is so useless that he hates himself? But no one is such a nothing that he does not love himself and does not love others in the same way.”

[4] LW 25, 477. “He who would do this would come to a complete knowledge of his faults and to humility and fear or God; otherwise he remains secure and saintly in his own opinion. For he would often discover not only that he is sluggish in helping his neighbor—while at the same time he nevertheless finds that he wants everyone to be kindly affectioned, loving, and favorably disposed toward him—but that he himself is actually an enemy and false brother toward his brothers, indeed, a detractor and full of every kind of sin.”

[5] LW 25, 478. “Christ in many ways in the Gospel wakes us up against this kind of sleep, admonishing us that we must be watchful. And we must take note that he is not speaking of those people who are dead in the sin of unbelief, nor about those believers who are lying in mortal sin, but rather about Christians who are living lukewarm lives and are snoring in their smugness…”

[6] Kirsi Stjerna, Lutheran Theology: A Grammar of Faith, (London: T&T Clark, 2021). p. 28.

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