Tag: Outer Self

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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Will They Know?

Psalm 138:8-9 Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you keep me safe; you stretch forth your hand against the fury of my enemies; your right hand shall save me. God will make good God’s purpose for me; Abba God, your love endures for ever; do not abandon the works of your hands.

Introduction

Last week we touched on a few things. First, “What now?” Now that we find ourselves walking in the steps of the disciples, we are also faced with the same question they had, “What now?” And in this way we share in that same moment even though our place in history is very different; the question and the situation overlaps with similarity: we are without Jesus, just as they were; we are with the Holy Spirit, just as they were; we are called to participate in God’s revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world for the beloved, just as they were. Moving forward is precarious business and makes this time in our liturgical calendar EXTRAordinary rather than just ordinary.

Paul is our faithful guide through these beginning steps; for he knows what it’s like to be upended by Christ and brought to life by the Holy Spirit to the glory of God. So, second, Paul brought us into the necessity of full dependence on God, God’s word, and God’s spirit. We are exhorted to proclaim Jesus Christ (died, raised, and ascended) and not our own dogmas; this leads us to elevate the neighbor as the principal concern in our life (individually and together). To proclaim Christ into the world is to love the neighbor because to love the neighbor is to proclaim Christ because Christ is brought to the neighbor through our words and deeds (which both fuel proclamation). According to Paul, we must see Christ in our neighbor and our neighbor in Christ, thus, to love Christ is to love the neighbor and to proclaim Christ is to bring Christ closer to the neighbor whom Christ loves.

And, third, we do this as cheap, breakable vessels charged to carry within ourselves the very treasure of God: God’s self and God’s word. We are no longer our own, but we are Christ’s and if Christ’s than our neighbor’s and the world’s. We serve God and God’s mission in the world as vessels easily fractured but never destroyed because God’s strength is made known in our weakness; that makes us very strong.

But Paul isn’t finished with his “jars of clay”; there’s more to the story, there’s more to the answer to “What now?”

2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1

Therefore, we are not growing weary, rather even though our outer humanity is being utterly destroyed, yet our inner [humanity] is being made new day after day. For our immediate, light tribulation according to excellence is being worked out for us toward the surpassing eternal weight of glory, fixing our gaze not on the things that are perceived but [on] the things which cannot be perceived, for the things that can be perceived [are] temporary, but the things that cannot be perceived [are] eternal]. (2 Cor. 4:16-18)

Paul shifts the Corinthian’s attention away from the material to the spiritual. He does this in part because he is rendering his suffering, his struggle, his pain and turmoil as movement of the spiritual realm within the temporal realm. Paul’s faith places a demand on his body to speak (‘I believed therefore I spoke,’ also we, we believe, therefore we also speak (v.13). Faith leads to proclamation; love leads to deeds… there’s no way around it either for Paul or for scripture.[1],[2] Thus, if for Paul then for the disciples, too.

Pain and toil, tumult and suffering are going to come to those who move through the world turning the material world upside and bringing into reality the spiritual world; for Paul to really love God is to lead the lover through the torment of loving the neighbor in the world because this love of God which is love of neighbor is going to demand from the lover acts and words of love (the good news) for the beloved.[3] What Paul is talking about here are deeds and words that go beyond mere acts of charity and niceness because neither of those things necessitates the depth of love of God thus of God’s beloved (the neighbor). You can do those things without love and without gaining the attention of the system (because. The system isn’t going to create much fuss about it because it isn’t impacted by charity or niceness). But to really love God and God’s beloved in the world is to dare to transgress the red-lined boundaries drawn by the rulers of the kingdom of humanity forcing most to be out and few (who qualify) to be in. To love God and God’s beloved is to call sham on the inherent tendencies of the kingdom of humanity that gains power from us-ing and them-ing, friend-ing and foe-ing, including and excluding.

To step over these boundaries, to proclaim God’s love into this oppression and marginalization, is to draw radical attention to yourself and thus draw unto your mortal body the pain and suffering delivered by the kings of this material world. To conjure up the spiritual realm into the temporal realm is to up-end and un-do all that the kingdom of humanity values and esteems and will bring the heat down upon you. But this is why Paul then goes on to stress that he will be raised with Christ—for we know that the one who raised Jesus and us with Jesus will raise and will place [us] with you (v. 14). For Paul, the promised resurrection with Christ made him bolder and more active not smugger and more complacent in his future. It made him put everything on the line and not store it all up like grain in silos. He knew that no matter what happened to this outer body, this material body, there was (for him and all believers) a new body with Christ and with the community.[4] Therefore there was no reason to hold back and there was no reason for the Corinthian community to be worried because all the suffering and pain because of all things (Paul’s preaching and doing)[5] is for their benefit[6] and to the glory of God so that God’s grace and God’s love is abounding yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

This is why Paul then moves to speak of inner and outer humanity; these are not two separate entities vying for importance, rather Paul is speaking about the one person from two different viewpoints: the outer viewpoint (the material perspective: morality, praxis)[7] and the inner viewpoint (from the spiritual perspective: new creation).[8] In other words, Paul is employing a type of merism here, using two extreme points to speak of a whole, and in this case, he’s speaking of the whole person. And even if the material body, the outer humanity, is diminishing—through trial and tumult, pain and suffering, persecution and threat—the spiritual body, the inner humanity is not diminishing because nothing can steal from God’s glory and grace made manifest in the believer’s new creation.[9] And so Paul can exhort the Corinthian believers to fix their gaze on things that cannot be perceived rather than things that can be perceived because whatever is perceived is that which is passing away, temporal, temporary and will disappoint time and time again because it always goes away. Whether it is wealth, security, comfort, lack of trouble, things of this ilk are all based on the temporal, a material reality that is fleeting, and they will return to dust. Thus, to focus on Christ, press into God’s word, and rely fully on God’s Spirit is to fix the gaze on things that cannot be perceived and thus can never (ever!) pass away because they are of God and thus of the spiritual realm and are the things of eternity, never passing away thus a lasting reality rather than a temporary one.[10] Thus, as Paul fixes his own gaze on things not perceived, he exhorts the Corinthians to follow suit.[11]

Conclusion

So, Paul moves us closer to answering the question proposed by this ecclesiastical EXTRAordinary time: “What now?” Both the Christian and the Christian community will live in the tension of being in the world but not of the world, to quote John’s Jesus. We are exhorted to suspend disbelief especially when everything seems to be pointing to and advocating for death, indifference, and captivity. We must dare to step into the gap, the void, into the margins and fringe to carry our proclamation (in word and deed) of God’s good news and participate in God’s long esteemed mission and revolution in the world to bring divine love, life, and liberation to the beloved. To adhere to this tension and daring to enter in will render you, the believer, the epicenter of the material realm and the spiritual realm, where both collide and coalesce. For, according to Paul, it is the believer who can—with eyes fixed on that which cannot be seen—call out and expose that which is perceived to be false, as a sham, as a mocking of life by death, of love by indifference, of liberation by captivity.

Today we sing, “They will know we are Christians by our love.” So, part of answering “What now?” is honestly asking, “Will they?”

[1] Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC, eds. I Howard Marshall and Donald A Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 351. “Although suffering is part and parcel of the apostolic ministry, faith in God and in the gospel cannot but lead to the proclamation of the good news the open declaration of the truth (v. 2b).”

[2] Harris, Second Corinthians, 351. “…Paul views himself as sharing ‘the same spirit of faith’ as was expressed by the psalmist when he said ‘I believe, and therefore I spoke.’”

[3] Harris, Second Corinthians, 352. “…Paul is clearly focusing on the principle ‘faith leads to speech’ or ‘believing is the ground…for speaking.’ As the principle applies to his case, Paul is affirming that in spite of the inroads of θάνατος in his life (v. 12a), his unswerving belief in God and in the gospel as God’s powerful instrument to bring salvation to everyone who has faith…made it natural and necessary for him to declare (λαλεῖν) the good news.”

[4] Harris, Second Corinthians, 353. “For Paul, Christ’s resurrection formed the guarantee of believers’ resurrection, which is the probable significance of the phrase σὺν Ἰησοῦ.”

[5] Harris, Second Corinthians, 356. Τὰ πάντα “refers to all that Paul does and that happens to him, but in particular his preaching (vv. 2-3, 5, 7) and his suffering (vv. 8-12).”

[6] Harris, Second Corinthians, 356. “The apostle reminds his converts that all aspects of his life promote not his own good but theirs—a sentiment already expressed…”

[7] Harris, Second Corinthians, 360. “He is contemplating his total existence from two contrasting viewpoints. The ‘outer self’ is the whole person from the standpoint of one’s ‘creaturely mortality,’ the physical aspect of the person.”

[8] Harris, Second Corinthians, 360. “The ‘inner self’ is …the whole person as a ‘new creation’ (5:17) or a ‘new person’ (Col. 3:9-10), ‘the renewed being of the Christian,’ the spiritual aspect of the believer.”

[9] Harris, Second Corinthians, 363. “…[Paul] had this paradoxical attitude toward affliction because his spiritual sights were set on the δόξα that could not be seen but was continuing to be produced.”

[10] Harris, Second Corinthians, 364. “Paul had not fixed his gaze exclusively on τὰ μὴ βλεπόμεν. Rather, he is affirming that his affections were on the ‘the realm above’…on lasting realities—some future, but others already present although still be fully realized.”

[11] Harris, Second Corinthians, 365. “Christians should be characterized by a fixation on invisible, enteral realities. Paradoxically, their eyes are riveted on what cannot be seen. The world of sense does not determine their outlook and action.”

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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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Love Without Hypocrisy

Psalm 149:5-6, 1 Let the faithful rejoice in triumph; let them be joyful on their beds. Let the praises of God be in their throat and a two-edged sword in their hand… Hallelujah! Sing to the Lord a new song; sing his praise in the congregation of the faithful.

Introduction

Last week Paul exhorted us to lean upon the mercy and grace of God so we are “transfigured by the renewal of the mind”, no longer conformed to this “present age” but to proving the will of God into the world. The gist (tl:dr): as those who follow Christ out of the Jordan and into the world, we take the path of the Cross. We seek out and go to the least of us, to identify with them, to be with them, considering ourselves no better and no worse but as them because this is what Christ did. For Paul, when we are encountered by God in the event of faith, everything changes; by “everything” he means e 👏ver 👏y 👏thing 👏

All of this depends on the change that occurs with the inner person in the encounter with God in the event of faith as the inner person is redefined and substantiated by the love and grace of God producing faith and trust that God does really love you. In this faith, the need to use works to make one right with God dies away. The one who has this faith, who trusts God, is the one who can now be and act in the world toward the beloved of God, the neighbor, without using the neighbor or works to justify oneself before God because they are justified by faith alone.

Now, Paul says, we can act and be in the world as we are on the inside with God; that which we have received from God we now share outward toward our neighbor and this proves God’s will in the world. How do we do that? Well, according to Paul, it’s as easy as…

Romans 12:9-21

[Let] Love [be] without hypocrisy. Abhor the evil, adhere to the good and to tenderly-loving siblingly-love toward one another, prefer valuing one another, shrink not regarding diligence, be fervently devoted to God in conformity with the Spirit, rejoice according to hope, bear up against tribulation, persevere in prayer, share in the needs of the holy ones, and pursue loving strangers. Speak well of the ones who persecute you, speak well and do not curse. (Rom. 12:9-14)[1]

Our passage opens with an odd construction of a noun and adjective in the nominative case (subject): [Let] Love [be] without hypocrisy (Η αγάπη ανυπόκριτος). There is no verb in the Greek, it’s implied. However, the most interesting aspect to this construction is that it’s the only expressed and explicit subject stated for the passage.[2] So, we can see this nominative phrase as the controlling thought for the passage. In other words, Paul tells the Romans to let love be without hypocrisy, and this is how you do it…

Paul starts with the exhortation to abhor evil. Anything threatening the will of God being proved into the world is to be abhorred/detested. This means, in light of letting love be without hypocrisy, the Romans are exhorted to love that which is of God in a Godly way: up front and honest, not secret and cloaked darkness. We cannot love authentically and entertain that which is antagonistic to the love, life, and liberation of divine activity in the world. Anything that is indifferent, death, and captivity is of the reign of evil and to be abhorred and detested. How are the Romans to detest this evil? By joining themselves to the good, to the tenderly-loving siblingly-love toward one another. In other words, love each other as siblings, as if you are all related, as family…this is the good that one is to cleave to: treating your neighbor as if they are blood relations. And, as Paul goes on to say, preferring to value one another, having esteem for the neighbor who is also a sibling.[3]  This is what love without hypocrisy looks like; this is the good way, the better way, the way that is configured to the renewed mind born of faith in Christ.[4]

Paul continues to explain love without hypocrisy. He exhorts the Romans to be hot and not lukewarm in the Spirit. This is connected to being devoted to the Lord. This heat and devotion render the Christian eager to bring the outer person inline with the inner person and to see the very seriousness of the situation at hand in the world holding the neighbor captive. To be lukewarm in the spirit is equivalent to not caring about how the world is catapulting itself into death and destruction and taking everyone with it.[5] To be hot in the Spirit is to feel the urgency of God, the pathos of God, to be caught up into the great line of prophets who go into the world proclaiming in word and deed God’s love, life, and liberation.

The Romans are to rejoice according to hope; hope is a reason to rejoice, and rejoicing invigorates hope, just as a fiesta participates in resistance and liberation![6] From here the exhortation moves to bear up against tribulation and persevere in prayer. Moving through the idea of love without hypocrisy means daring to rejoice in having hope even now, in pulling together and resisting the goal of tribulation and persecution, which is death and destruction. And there’s no better way to do this than through honest and presence-filled prayer[7] individually and corporately participated with the goal to commune with God, to draw close to God through Christ and by the power of the Spirit so that our strength and focus are continually renewed.

From prayer the exhortation moves toward the neighbor: share in the needs of the holy ones. Meaning, among Christians there is not the mentality of “you made your bed now lie in it”; rather, like the one who helped Christ carry his cross, we take a share in the needs of our siblings. You do not walk alone; you are seen, known, and loved; let us walk together.[8] Paul pushes this further, it’s not just those with whom you share a pew or those in your neighborhood, but strangers, pursue the love of strangers (τήν φιλξενίαν). Give this unhypocritical love even to strangers freely and willingly; you did not earn God’s love therefore others do not have to earn your love.[9] This goes for language toward other people, especially those who persecute you. The Romans are charged with loving the stranger and to bless the enemy, speak well and do not curse. Through the presence of God’s love in our hearts and minds, clinging to love without hypocrisy, we love as we have been loved; we love even those whom we do not know and those who persecute us; we do not become that which we abhor.[10]

Conclusion

Rejoice with the rejoicing, weep with the weeping, have the same understanding toward one another, do not think lofty things but be carried away with lowly things, do not think yourself wise, return to no one evil over evil, foresee the beautiful in the face of all humanity…be at peace with all humanity, do not vindicate yourselves, beloved…do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil by the good. (Rom. 12:15-17, 18b-19b, 21)

Beloved, we love because we have first been loved. We dare to love in a real way, invested with our entire selves even if it means we might get hurt, even if it means we may sacrifice our own lives. There’s a story written by Leo Tolstoy that I believe, in the ending of Master and Man, encapsulates the thrust of this part of Romans 12,

STRUGGLING up to the sledge Vassili caught hold of it, and stood for some time without stirring, trying to get back his breath. Nikita was not in his old place, but something was lying in the sledge covered with snow, and Vassili guessed it was Nikita. His terror was altogether gone now, and if he feared anything it was that state of terror he had experienced whilst riding, and especially when alone in the drift. At all hazards he must not let himself fall into that state again, and in order to safeguard his mind it was necessary to think of something, to do something. So he commenced by turning his back to the wind and unbuttoning his coat. Then, as he began to recover a little, he wiped the snow off his boots and gloves, and girded himself afresh, tight and low down, prepared for action, as when he went out from his store to buy grain from the peasants. The first business that occurred to him was to free the pony’s legs, which he did, and then led and tied Mukhorty to the front of the sledge, and went behind him to put the breeching and pad in their proper places. During this operation he saw something move inside the sledge, and from beneath the snow Nikita raised his head. Evidently with a mighty effort the peasant gained a sitting posture, waved his hand in front of his face with a strange gesture as if chasing flies, and said something which seemed to Vassili as if he were calling him.

He left the sacking without arranging it, and came up to Nikita.
“What is the matter with you? What do you say?”
“I am dying; that is what is the matter,” answered he in a broken voice. “Look after my son and my wife.”
“What is the matter? Are you frozen?”
“I feel my death! Pardon! The love of Christ,” murmured Nikita in a tearful voice, continuing all the while to wave his hands, as if keeping off flies.

Vassili Andreïtch stood for half a minute without speaking or moving, then rapidly, with the same decision with which he was wont to strike hands over a good bargain, he stepped back a pace, turned up his cuffs, and with both hands began to dig the snow off Nikita, and out of the sledge. When this was accomplished, he hurriedly undid his girdle, threw open his fur coat, and flung himself upon Nikita, covering him not only with his coat, but with his whole glowing warm body.

Arranging the skirts of his coat between Nikita and the back of the sledge, and grasping him between his own knees, he lay flat, resting his own head on the bast, and now he could no longer hear the movements of the pony or the whistle of the wind, but only Nikita’s breathing. Nikita at first lay motionless, then sighed deeply, and moved, evidently feeling warmer.

“There now! And you talking of dying! Lie still and get warm! That’s how we shall…” began Vassili. But to his huge astonishment Vassili could not get any further in his speech, for the tears crowded into his eyes, and his lower jaw trembled. He left off talking and only gulped down something rising in his throat.
“I have got a regular fright, and am as weak as a baby,” thought he to himself; but that weakness, far from being disagreeable, gave him a peculiar pleasure, the like of which he had never felt before.
“That’s how we are!” he repeated, experiencing a feeling of curious quiet triumph, and lying still for a long time, wiping his eyes on the fur of his coat, and tucking under his knee the right side of his coat which the wind kept blowing loose. But he wanted terribly to tell somebody how happy he was.

***

Several times he glanced at the horse, and saw that his back was bare and the sacking was draggling in the snow; he ought to get up and cover him but he could not make up his mind, at that moment, to leave Nikita, and break in upon the happy condition in which he was revelling. He no longer felt any fear. He was warm from below from Nikita, and above from his coat, only his hands, which were holding the fur round Nikita, and his feet, which the wind kept uncovering, were beginning to be numbed. But he gave no thought to them, but only how best to restore warmth to the peasant lying beneath him.

***

He woke, but not altogether the same as he had fallen asleep. He strove to rise, and could not; to move his arm, he could not, nor his leg. He tried to turn his head, and could not even do that. It astonished him, but did not vex him in the slightest. He knew that this was death, and neither did that vex him. He remembered that Nikita was lying under him, warmed and alive, and it seemed that he was Nikita, and Nikita was he, and that his life was in Nikita, and not in himself. He strained his ears and heard Nikita breathing.
“Nikita is living, so that I am also alive,” said he triumphantly to himself. And something quite new, such as he had never known before in his life, came over him.

He remembered his money, his store, his house, his buying and his sales, and the Mironoff millions, and could not understand why the man they called Vassili Brekhunoff had worried over what he had worried over. “You see! he did not know what he was about,” thought he, referring to Brekhunoff. ‘He did not know as I now know. For I know now without a mistake, I know now.” And again he heard that voice calling. “I come, I come!” he answered joyfully, with his whole being. And he felt that he was free, and nothing further held him back. And these were the last things that Vassili Andreïtch saw, heard and felt in this world.

Around the storm still raged, and the snow whirlwinds covered the coat of the dead Vassili, the shivering head of Mukhorty, and sledge with Nikita lying warm in the bottom of it under his dead master.[11]

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[2] the other subjects addressed are the audience in the following imperatival participial and the imperative verbs implied by the masculine nominative plural or second person plural, respectively.

[3] LW 25, 455. “He is speaking here of that inward honor which is a high regard and esteem for one’s neighbor.”

[4] LW 25, 454. “In this passage the apostle is dealing with the idea that the love among Christians ought to be a special and more perfect thing than the relationship among strangers and enemies.”

[5] LW 25, 456. “For they must be fervent in one of the two, either the spirit or the flesh. And the fervor for one is the freezing out or extinction of the other … Therefore the man who does his work with lukewarmness of necessity will be fervent in the flesh. And on that account he is compelled as it were to ‘waste the work’ which he performs, because of the fervor of the flesh.”

[6] Ada Maria Isazi Diaz Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the 21st Century. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997.

[7] LW 25, 458.

[8] LW 25, 462.

[9] LW 25, 463.

[10] LW 25, 466-467.

[11] Leo Tolstoy Master and Man, Trans. S. Rapoport and John C. Kenworthy. Rev. George Gibian. New York, NY: Penguin, 1995. Pp. 74-81.

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