Tag: Inner Life

Growing From and Into Love

Psalm 145: 10-11, 19 All your works praise you, O God, and your faithful servants bless you. They make known the glory of your kingdom and speak of your power…Abba God is near to those who call upon him, to all who call upon him faithfully

Introduction

Through Ephesians we’ve talked about the need for heartfelt, mind-filled remembrance of Christ’s work in the world thru the Cross and Resurrection event and how remembering this brings Christ close to us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus, here, we have hope. What God has done combined with God’s presence with the community through remembrance makes us hopeful because we are not abandoned and have something to participate in: the divine mission of the revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world for the beloved. And at the intersection of hope and remembrance we find ourselves bending our knee to pray, not as a last-ditch effort but to find our ground and our language so we can move through God and toward our neighbor, bringing tangible hope that is faith working itself out in action for those who are in need, on death’s door, frail and fatigued, on the verge of giving up.

Last week we dove into the peace that Christ brings us by destroying dividing walls, ridding us of hostility and enmity, and rendering inoperative laws that cause in groups and out groups. Within the Christian walk and life, the act of rebuilding walls keeping many out and few elite in, fomenting hostility and fear, and forcing the gospel to become a law in the church or the state is anathema. According to Ephesians, the followers of Christ cannot support any of these things or anything that supports these things. We have been liberated into radical equity with our neighbor through the work of Christ and the event of the Cross and Resurrection—(we are not, have never been, and will never be superior to our neighbor).

But all of this is moot if we don’t grow—individually and corporately—bringing the outer person in line with the inner person. Ephesians 3 exhorts us to grow in such a way so we can be stronger and more able partners of God participating in God’s mission in the world made known to us in Christ and inspiring our hearts, minds, and actions by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 3:14-21

…so that [God] might give to you according to the abundance of his glory the power to grow through [God’s] Spirit to align with the inner person [and] establish Christ in your hearts through faith. Having been fixed firmly on and having laid the foundation of love, [stand on love] so that you might be perfectly able to comprehend with all the saints what the breadth and length and weight and depth, and to ascertain the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge… (Eph. 3: 16-19a)

This portion of Ephesians is a prayer to God the Father. The hint is For this reason I bend my knees to the Father, from whom all families in heaven and on earth received [their] name… I retained the use of “Father” in the translation to highlight that Paul isn’t praying to some distant deity,[1] but to a loving parent, who is involved in our lineage and our name.[2] But the point of the passage isn’t the emphasis on “Father” but rather the “bending of my knees,” the fact that Paul prays for the Ephesians.

So, Paul prays and prays these three petitions: for 1. Inner strength, 2. Profound understanding of God’s love, and 3. Being filled with God’s fullness.[3] The request for “inner strength”—so that [God] might give to you according to the abundance of his glory the power to grow through [God’s] Spirit to align with the inner person [and] establish Christ in your hearts through faith—is a statement that nothing is taken from God[4] as God inspires and woos the believer and the congregation as a whole[5] to bring the outer person into alignment with the inner person. In other words, the wholeness of self—the receipt of the believer’s self—hinted at in chapter 2 (last week) is confirmed here in chapter 3 as Paul prays that God out of God’s abundance gives abundant strength to the believer to be a whole person by bringing the outer person in line with the inner person. According to our letter, to be loved by God is healing balm that then empowers the believer to love as they have been loved and this is done from the firm ground and fixed foundation of Christ’s love and the believer’s faith that this God (as parent) really does love them.[6]

And because Paul sees the Ephesians as grounded and substantiated in God by love, Paul can write, Having been fixed firmly on and having laid the foundation of love, [stand on love] so that you might be perfectly able to comprehend with all the saints what the breadth and length and weight and depth, and to ascertain the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge… In this prayer, the author of the letter bases everything on the love of Christ—on which the Ephesians have been firmly fixed and which is the foundation under the ground where they stand in the spiritual realm. The love of Christ is the starting point for the believers in Ephesus, from here they not only understand just how massive and astounding is God’s love (which is truly beyond human understanding),[7] but from where they move, have their being, and participate in God’s mission of divine revolution of love, life, and liberation for the beloved. The great mystery that the Ephesians are let in on is the divine mystery that is Christ’s birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension and the impact of this divine event for the cosmos. But even then, understanding those points does not now make the Ephesians perfect or filled, or the arbiters of all that is of God[8] as if there is nothing more to learn or understand; this mystery surpasses all human knowledge. [9] For Paul these two things—the alignment of the outer with the inner person and the understanding the depth of God’s love—are woven together to create the situation where the believer might be filled into all fullness of God.[10] Embedded in the prayerful entreaty is Paul’s awareness that the Ephesians can never fully be filled with God’s fullness as if it is one and done. Rather, it is to be worked out; it’s on going—happening in the future and happening right now. This is what it means to grow: to grow in strength, to grow in act, to grow in prayer and dependence on God, to grow into fullness of the relationship with God, with the neighbor, and with the self.[11]

Paul then ends with And to the one who is able to do abundantly more than all things of which we ask or we can perceive according to the one who strengthens us, to [that one] be glory in the assembly and in Christ Jesus from all the families of the ages of ages, amen. As the three petitions work themselves out in the lives of the believers by the power of God, the Spirit,[12] glory is brought to God because where this community remembers, hopes, and prays, there is God in Christ. It is this that is the firm foundation and starting point for the one community that is the temple of God who worships together and then proceeds to move through God to serve the beloved, the neighbor. And as the neighbor is served, their God’s name is blessed (hallowed,[13] honored[14]) and glory is brought to God in the community and in Christ Jesus.[15]

Conclusion

Beloved, we remember, we hope, and we pray. We have wholeness with God, with our neighbor, and with ourselves by faith in Christ as divisions, hostilities, and laws cease to pull apart in Christ. From here we grow, constantly being brought to the edge of our understanding of God’s love for us and not just for us but for our neighbor. Because, for Paul here in Ephesians, the community who is open to and able to go outside of itself is the community that is growing—individually and corporately—in the knowledge of God’s love.

Paul prays for the believers—in Ephesus, and here today—that we would completely and fully—as limited as we are—understand just how much God loves us. Paul reminds us of the work of Christ on our behalf—the great mystery of the divinely inspired cosmos—and that we—who were once far off—are now counted among the children and families of God—spanning all time and space. And all of this never for ourselves in some privatized fashion so promoted by current American evangelical theology, but in a deprivatized way: for we are so loved by God that we can bring our outer person (personal and corporate) in line with the inner person (personal and corporate) and live in the world in love as we have been loved—no dividing walls and fences, no enmity and hostility, no laws keeping some in and some out. As we remember Christ, hope, pray, embrace radical divine equity, and grow, we can work to bring love to those who suffer under the oppression of indifference, life to those who are dying and liberation to those who are captive.

[1] Allen Verhey and Joseph S. Harvard, Ephesians, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2011), 123-124. “The ‘every family’ would have God as ‘Father,’ and every tribe and nation would be counted among the children of God. Then the invocation could be translated, ‘Father of all families [or tribes or nations].’ It is clearly not a biological relationship that is affirmed, but the care a father takes to supply the needs of his family, as when God is praised in Psalm 68:5 as the ‘father of orphans,’ the father of the fatherless. The scope of God’s parental care is not limited to those who know to call God ‘Father.’ Its reach extends beyond those who are near, and even beyond those who have been brought near.”

[2] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 124. “This is no tribal deity, no local god, not just the god of our ancestors. This God is not just committed to the flourishing of ap articular culture, country, or family. This God is the God of ‘all the families of the earth,’ the God of ‘all things.’ And to this God alone the Jews and Gentiles of the Lycus Valley—and we—owe ultimate loyalty.”

[3] Barth, Markus, Ephesians: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on Chapters 1-3, The Anchor Bible Series (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971), 368. “Three petitions may be discerned in what follows. (a) Intercession for the inner fortification of the saints; this is unfolded in the prayer that Christ reside in their hearts (vss. 16-17). (b) supplication for their strong perception of all the dimensions of God’s will; this supplication is interpreted by a request for knowledge of Christ’s love (vss. 18-19a). (c) Petition for perfection with God’s perfection (vs. 19b).”

[4] Barth, Ephesians, 369. “In remembering the ‘riches’ and ‘glory’ of the Father, Paul is convinced that God need not change or lose anything by granting the requests made to him. God is expected to act according to his nature, his character, i.e. his radiating love and power.”

[5] Barth, Ephesians, 385. “The gospel proclaimed in Ephesians is distinct from many variants of secular and religious collectivism by the vital concern shown for the enrichment, strength, stability, love, knowledge, grown, and perfection of each member of the community and, virtually, of every man.”

[6] Barth, Ephesians, 369. “If this command is a parallel to the prayer contained in 3:16, then ‘the Lord’ is the aim, focus, and source of gathering strength—he, and not some innate self that resides in the nature of man and constitutes his individual quality.”

[7] Barth, Ephesians, 369. “In Eph 3 these nouns are so arranged as to make it clear that man must be invigorated by God’s Spirit before he is able to grasp God’s manifold wisdom and hold onto it in knowledge. Paul would hardly affirm in general terms, that knowledge is power. Rather he avers that through his Spirit God empowers man to know things that are beyond the human mind, eye, ear…”

[8] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 127-128. “Paul pleads that the church will grow strong enough to hold onto the mystery of God without claiming to be able to understand that mystery fully. That is, after all, what ‘all the saints’ (Eph. 3:18), including Job, did.”

[9] Barth, Ephesians, 373. “God laid his heart bare when he showed that from eternity the Gentiles are included in his love and in the Messiah’s realm, but the saints’ knowledge and understanding of the secret is still ‘imperfect’…”

[10] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 128. “Here Paul prays that the church will in fact be ‘filled with all the fullness of God’…that is, with Christ…., in whom the secret was made known and who will bring the plan of God to complete fruition. That grace, that glory, that loves is not created by human beings, but it exalts human beings. It creates and restores humanity, and it strengthens the church to respond to God’s grace and glory and love, to be responsible agents in service to God’s plan.”

[11] Barth, Ephesians, 373. “While Col 1:19 and 2:9 speak of the ‘indwelling’ of ‘the whole fullness of God’ in Christ and the church, and described it as an accomplished fact, it is (despite all elements of ‘realized eschatology’) characteristic of Ephesians to speak of ‘filling’ as a process still going on.”

[12] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 125. “The petition is that the church will be empowered by the Spirit to grow into Christ.”

[13] Let your name be hallowed (Lord’s Prayer)

[14] Honor your Father and Mother (Ten Commandments)

[15] Barth, Ephesians, 376. “In Eph 4:4-6 Paul mentions the church first because he starts from the actual locus of God’s praise. Then he adds a reference to the Messiah Jesus to designate the basis of the that praise. The existence and manifestation of God’s glory in the church is and remains dependent upon glorification of God through the Son. The secret of God is indeed now known only to the church, but it was revealed in Christ of the benefit of the whole world.”

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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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