“We are new creations in Christ."
~ 2 Cor. 5:17
Summer Worship Schedule
(through Sept. 5)
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Worship: 10:00am
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(beginning Sept. 12)
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Sunday Bulletin
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March 17, 2008
March 16, 2008
March 3, 2008
December 27, 2007
May 18, 2008
“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” Luke 23:43
One of the better known gospel stories is the story of the two thieves, crucified on either side of Jesus. This story appears only in Luke. Matthew only mentions the two thieves briefly, and in Matthew’s gospel, they both taunted him. In Luke, however, one of the thieves, hardly repentant, demands salvation from Christ, while the other admits his own guilt, and proclaims our Lord’s innocence. It is then that Christ tells him that he will join him in Paradise.
It is easy to speculate on the lives of these two thieves. We really know nothing about the thief who proclaimed Christ’s innocence. Was he unjustly accused, like Christ was? Jesus could look into the hearts of men—did he perceive that this man really had a good heart? Perhaps he was only condemned for a minor offense, while the other thief was a hardened criminal. Perhaps his heart was in the right place, and only extreme circumstances led him into a life of crime.
The fact is, we do not know anything of his life. Speculations may be fun, and make for a good story, but ultimately they are useless. We do know one thing for certain, though. All this man did was admit his own guilt and the Christ’s contrasting innocence. Our Lord responded by offering him salvation.
This is a good lesson for all of us. Like the “good” thief on the cross, we may have done nothing all that wrong. Or, perhaps like him, we may have some rather nasty and embarrassing skeletons in our closet. We may be holding onto hatreds or harmful attitudes too comfortable to give up. We may have good hearts, or our hearts may be darkened by hidden or unconfessed sin. All this does not matter to Christ. He came to save us on his own merit, not on ours. Paul states, quite unequivocally in Romans, “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (5:8). All we need to do is turn to Jesus, recognize our own failings and his worthiness to save, and in for this he offers us salvation. The thief was willing to look at the truth of Christ’s innocence and his own guilt. That’s all that mattered to Jesus. It was enough to bring a thief into Paradise. No more is required of any of us.
Through the Spirit they told Paul not to go on to Jerusalem. (Acts 21:4)
Did Paul lose his way? Throughout Paul’s ministry, he was in close contact with our Lord through the agency of the Holy Spirit. The most prominent example of this was the first contact—his vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus. A light flashes around him, knocking him to the ground, and Jesus himself speaks to him. “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” he asks. Paul, at that time still named Saul, asks who is speaking to him, and it is then that Christ reveals himself to Paul. He tells Paul to “get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do” (Acts 9:4-6).
From this point on, Paul is directed numerous times by the Spirit, either directly, through hearing the voice of the Lord, through visions, dreams, or sometimes through a prophet sent from God. We also find God working directly through Paul, healing or performing other wonders. Consider the following examples:
In Acts 9:12, the Spirit tells Ananias that Paul has seen him in a vision. Ananias is a prophet, and the Lord asks Ananias to go and heal Paul of his blindness.
In Acts 13:2, we find Paul in the growing church of Antioch. During their worship, the Holy Spirit speaks to the worshippers, telling them to “set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”
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Again in Acts 13:4, we find Paul and his companions “sent out by the Holy Spirit.” They travel to Seleucia, and on to Cypress and Salamis.
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In Acts 14:3, in Iconium, they perform many signs and wonders. We learn that it was the Lord who does these signs and wonders through Paul and Barnabas.
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In Acts 14:27, back in Antioch, we find that the Lord has “opened a door of faith for the Gentiles” through Paul’s ministry.
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Acts 15:22-29 finds Paul in Jerusalem, meeting with the original apostles and elders of the church. aul is sent on a mission trip to Antioch, Syria and Cilicia, with instructions the leaders of the Jerusalem church have received from the Holy Spirit (see verse 28). Paul apparently desired to go into Asia, but the Holy Spirit prevents him in Acts 16:6. Instead, he travels through Phrygia and Galatia. Again, in 16:7, “they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.” Instead they journey to Mysia and Troas.
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In Acts 16:9, Paul has a vision “of a man from Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’” This results in Paul’s ministry in Philippi, and consequently the letter to the Philippians. Acts 16:25-34 relates the story of Paul and Silas in prison. An earthquake shakes the foundations of the prison, “and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened.” The jailor, afraid for his life, sure that the prisoners will have escaped, attempts to kill himself, but Paul calms him. The result is that the jailor and his family are baptized as Christians. Up to this time, Paul has preached Jesus mainly to the Jews. But upon being continually rejected by many, he gets fed up and declares that he will go instead to the Gentiles. This decision is confirmed for him in Acts 18:9-10, when the Lord again appears to him in a vision. Significantly, part of this vision includes a guarantee of safety. “I am with you,” the Lord says, “and no one will lay a hand on you to harm you.” Though Paul will suffer at the hands of others many times, we find later that this security is no longer in effect. "God does extraordinary miracles through Paul” in Acts 19:11.
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In Acts 19:21, Paul “resolved in the Spirit to go through Macedonia and Achaia, and then to go on to Jerusalem.”
It is in this last resolution that we begin to see trouble developing. Though Paul has “resolved” on a course of action, “through the Spirit,” he himself does not go to Macedonia and Achaia, but instead “sent two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, to Macedonia, while he himself stayed for some time longer in Asia” (Acts 19:22). If this is something the Spirit was directing him to do, why would he have sent Timothy and Erastus? Certainly, Paul had important work to do in building up the church in Ephesus, but perhaps the Spirit had other ideas.
Paul eventually leaves Ephesus (in Asia) and journeys on to Macedonia. We read in Acts 20:1-3, that Paul passes through Macedonia, and continues on to Greece. Here, Paul testifies that “as a captive to the Spirit, I am on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there” (Acts 20:22). But in contrast to the early promise (18:10) through a vision that he would come to no harm, now we find that “the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and persecutions are waiting for me” (Acts 20:23).
It is hard to understand what this might mean. Paul has received many beatings and even was stoned and left for dead in other cities where he preached. The earlier promise that Christ gave him that he would not be harmed may have only referred to one specific stop of the many that he made on his missionary journeys. But this is the first time that the Spirit speaks to him of imprisonment and persecution. And this only comes after Paul delays in obeying the direction from the Spirit to go to Macedonia and Achaia, sending his helpers instead.
Note, too, that this particular message does not direct him to go to Jerusalem. That instruction seemed to come earlier, in Acts 19:21. But now, after Paul delays, the instructions are not repeated. In fact, as we will learn later, this direction to go to Jerusalem has been changed. Rather than being directed to a different part of the world, all we read is that when Paul arrives in Jerusalem, he will find trouble. It is as if the Spirit is saying, “Okay, you can do what you want, but there will be trouble.”
This is further complicated by a message from the Spirit to Paul in Tyre. Paul has continued his journeys through Cos, Rhodes, Patara and Phoenicia. From there he boards ship to Syria, landing at Tyre, which was then a part of Syria. When they arrive in Tyre, they meet with some of the disciples, who explicitly warn Paul, through the Spirit, not to go to Jerusalem. Up until this point, with the exception of some early messages, the Spirit has been speaking to Paul directly. But now we notice a change. The Spirit now speaks to Paul through others. But despite this warning, Paul decides to go on to Jerusalem anyway, in direct contradiction to the Spirit’s leading.
What has happened? After one of the most effective missionary journeys ever recorded, Paul begins to disobey the guidance he gets from the Spirit. First, in Ephesus, he delays in obeying, and now in Tyre he acts contrary to this guidance. Some commentators have concluded that the warning of the disciples in Tyre “reflect a fearful misinterpretation of the Spirit’s message” (NRSV Study Bible, p. 2099n). Paul has already gotten at least a hint that he was to go to Jerusalem earlier in the 19th chapter of Acts (see v. 21). But apparently something has changed, if we accept the words of the disciples in Tyre as being genuine. Either conditions have changed in Jerusalem, and the Spirit is now guiding Paul away from Jerusalem for a time, or the disciples don’t know what they’re talking about. Or perhaps the Spirit has stopped guiding Paul, now that he has begun to disobey. If Paul has received other instructions, we are not privy to them through the text in Acts. But one thing is certain. After this, Paul’s effectiveness as an evangelist is greatly curtailed.
Paul does not lose sight of the Lord, however. The Spirit continues to speak to him. In Acts 21:10-11, Paul receives word through the prophet Agabus that he will be bound and handed over to the Gentiles. But we note in this communication, that the Spirit is once again speaking to Paul through others. Here, the words of the Spirit do not come through disciples in his presence, as had happened before, but Agabus had to “come down from Judea” to deliver this message (v. 10). The disciples plead with Paul not to go to Jerusalem, but Paul remains stubborn.
After this, Paul only receives two further divine communications. In Acts 23:11, the Lord appears to Paul and encourages him, telling him to “keep up your courage! For just as you have testified for me in Jerusalem, so must you bear witness in Rome.” In the second instance, in Acts 27:23-26, we find Paul on his way to Rome for trial. A storm arises, threatening to sink the ship, but an angel appears to Paul and assures him that he “must stand before the emperor” and that God “has granted safety to all those who are sailing with you.”
Paul has not lost his powers of healing. When the ship taking him to Rome runs aground on the island of Malta, he survives a poisonous snakebite with no ill effects, and furthermore, he is able to heal many. We read in the last chapter of Acts that Paul preaches in Rome, but his success is limited. “Some were convinced by what he had said, while others refused to believe” (28:24). That’s all. We don’t get the same sense of Paul’s success, or of Paul being able to travel constantly to new locations, founding or strengthening new churches.
All in all, after Paul’s decision to go to Jerusalem, against the wishes of the Holy Spirit as revealed through the disciples in Tyre, his ministry no longer has the same energy it originally had. Paul gets into too many arguments with the Jewish authorities, and expends a great deal of time and energy trying to convince the Roman authorities that he is not guilty of anything. While his defense is eloquent, and offers us a glimpse into his theology, we can only wonder what he could have done had he not gone to Jerusalem. He spends a lot of time in jails—two years in Caesarea alone before his trip to Rome to defend himself before the emperor. And once he arrives in Rome, he spends most of his time in jail there, too. To be sure, Paul’s ministry was not extinguished. Certainly he used his time in jail to write many of the letters that have had an immeasurable effect on our beliefs today. Without these, Christianity could be a very different religion. In the last chapter of Acts, we find that Paul continues to preach without hindrance (v. 31), although we know that Paul was eventually executed. The author of Acts makes no mention of this.
So what can we make of this? Did Paul lose his way? Did he compromise his effectiveness as an apostle and evangelist by his refusal to obey the leading of the Holy Spirit? We can only guess, and hindsight is always 20-20, as the proverb goes. But when we look at the activities of Paul, we see a definite diminution in his success. We probably can’t blame Paul. Most of us know how difficult it is to separate our own desires from the voice of the Spirit, if we can hear the divine voice at all. But it is a lesson to be considered nonetheless. When the Spirit speaks, it is only to our advantage to listen. Not only will we be doing what God wants of us, but we will be acting in our own interests as well, even if we are not always aware what those interests are.
For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? (Luke 14:28).
It is very tempting for a Christian to judge his or her walk with Christ by considering how life is going. If things are going well, then we figure that God has blessed us. But if we find a lot of disturbing circumstances in our lives, it is just as easy to conclude that the difficulties we face are a result of something we have done. These difficulties can be as trivial as a flat tire, or a lost item, or can be as severe as a debilitating disease, or the loss of a loved one. Perhaps God is punishing us, or is angry with us. We begin to search our lives, to see if there’s some unhidden sin that we need to confess, or an attitude that needs to be “adjusted.” After all, does not the Psalmist say, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting”? (Ps 139:23-24). And again, “Clear me from hidden faults”? (Ps 19:12).
But to come to such a conclusion is not really supported by Scripture. The Psalmist is not worried that God will punish him because of these hidden faults, but rather because his love of God is so great that he wishes to present himself pure before his Lord. Rather, the presence of difficulties in our lives may very well be signs of God’s love—that he is working in us to prepare for him a people purified and ready to receive blessings beyond our imaginings.
If scripture does not equate suffering with punishment for sin, it does support the opposite—that those answering God’s call will suffer for it. That is the cost we pay when we become his children. Consider those who came before us, the prophets and the apostles of our Lord. Isaiah was required to go about naked for three years (Is 20:2-3). What a humiliating condition that must have been! The Lord commanded Ezekiel to cook his bread over fires of human dung—and furthermore to do this in the sight of the nation of Israel—to make of himself a public sight. Furthermore, he was required to lay on his left side for three hundred ninety days, during which time he was to bear the punishment of the house of Israel (Ez 4).
God is no easier on those he loves in the New Testament. Paul was afflicted with some unknown condition, and begged God to relieve him, but to no avail. And Jesus himself ended his earthly life on a cross, beaten, ridiculed, nails driven through his living flesh.
We cannot expect our lives to be blessed, if we consider blessing in terms of the good things this earth has to offer. Indeed, we must count the cost of following Christ. Otherwise, we may find ourselves unprepared for the trials that God may choose to afflict us with. The Christian path is not necessarily an easy one.
March 24, 2008
And seeing a fig tree by the side of the road, he went to it and found nothing at all on it but leaves. Then he said to it, "May no fruit ever come from you again!" And the fig tree withered at once. (Matthew 21:19)
For many Christians, an urgent question is what, exactly, Jesus requires from us. He has done so much for us, that we certainly want to do whatever he asks, either because we love him, or because we fear the consequences of ignoring his requests. If we turn to scripture, answers to this question can run the gamut from nothing to everything. On the one hand, we read in Micah, "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8). Sounds easy enough. On the other hand, in his sermon on the mount, Jesus says, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48) We may find that a little more difficult to live up to. And we can easily find everything in between.
If we are seeking to know what Jesus asks of us, the parable of the fig tree can be quite troubling. What if Jesus asks something of us, and we are unprepared? What if we have only leaves when he asks for figs? Will he cause us to wither, no longer able to bear fruit? Are we not to be ready at all times for him? After all, this parable occurs toward the end of Matthew's gospel, not far from other parables of a similar nature. In Matthew 24, we read how "the slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives" is blessed. (24:46) The slave who is not ready doesn't fare so well. In the next chapter, we hear the parable of the ten bridesmaids, five of whom had not prepared for the Lord's arrival, and are denied entrance to his kingdom.
In the case of the parable of the fig tree, however, Jesus is probably not speaking of the individual. Consider where Matthew places this parable. He has just cleansed the temple, "overturning the tables of the money changers" and "driving out all who were selling and buying". (21:12) Immediatley following the parable of the fig tree are two other parables, both clearly referring either to the temple authorities, or to the whole Jewish nation. In his actions and words, Jesus is referring either to groups of people, or to institutions managed by those groups. It is likely, therefore, that the fig tree Jesus curses represents not the individual who has been unable to do what Jesus asked, but rather the nation chosen by God–or at least to those responsible for mediating between God and humankind.
Furthermore, Matthew used the image of the tree in this parable, the same image that he used earlier in his gospel. When John the Baptist appears in the third chapter of Matthew, we find "many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism." John's response to them is very similar to Jesus's when confronted by the temple authorities. "You brood of vipers!" he says. "Who told you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance .... Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." (Matthew 2:7-8, 10)
Matthew very carefully assembled the materials from which his gospel was written. There can be little doubt that such a conscientious writer would have used such similar imagery merely by chance. He probably meant the tree in both the third and the twenty-first chapters of Matthew to refer to the same entity–a people, a race, or a nation to whom the words of God had been entrusted, and who did not use their honored status to bear the fruit that God had intended by giving them such a wonderful gift. This parable should most likely be seen as a judgment against Israel, in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets, and cannot be applied to an individual who, for whatever reason, is not ready when Jesus calls. In fact, when we consider that many of the parables in the last few chapters of Matthew seem to refer explicitly to the nation of Israel, it is quite possible that the parables which seem to be addressed to individuals refer to the nation as well–a nation which has squandered the riches God has bestowed upon them. If Jesus refers to individuals in these parables, they would be quite a difficult burden to bear. For someone who criticized the scribes and Pharisees for laying on the people "heavy burdens, hard to bear" (23:4), it is unlikely that he, himself, would lay such a difficult burden on a single person.
Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to decide between one believer and another, but a believer goes to court against a believer—and before unbelievers at that? (1 Cor 6:5-6).
Sometimes Paul’s advice can be very impractical. In his first letter to the Corinthians, he complains of something one of his parishioners had done. He writes of a man who had started an immoral relationship with his father’s wife. We don’t know if this was his own mother, or if it was a step-mother. In the notes accompanying this verse in the NRSV, the editors have noted that “father’s wife” was “an idiom used to refer to one’s stepmother.” But either way, Paul is incensed that the congregation has countenanced such actions to continue in their midst. He expected “that he who has done this would have been removed from among” the Corinthian congregation (1 Cor 5:2).
An instance like this is easy to judge. Certainly what the man in this instance has done was wrong, at least by any morality currently in fashion in our country today. But such an instance as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 5 is rare in our churches. I have never run across such an instance in any church I have attended. However, other conflicts are certain to arise in any congregation where it’s not so easy to determine what’s right and what’s wrong. Obviously, conflicts had already arisen in the early church. As Paul writes earlier in the same letter, the Corinthian congregation had already split into factions: some aligned themselves with the teaching of Paul while others had apparently been more attracted by Apollos (1 Cor 3:4). If these conflicts had already started to separate the body of believers in Corinth, it is to be expected that other conflicts would arise as well.
We have a tendency to think we all believe the same basic things, since we all belong to the same church. Don’t we all recite the Apostles’ Creed in unison each Sunday morning? Are we not called to be unified in our belief—to be of one mind, as Paul encourages us in Philippians 2? Certainly we have developed to the point where we can understand diversity within unity, but when it comes to a point of law, and we are called upon to judge another of wrongdoing, most of us would be at least a little hesitant to assume we were indeed of one mind. Who are we to judge another member of our congregation, especially in situations where there is no clear scriptural reference to aid us in a decision about another’s actions?
In many cases, we can certainly answer Paul’s question with a “no.” In many of the conflicts that arise in modern day life, there are very few in our congregation “wise enough to decide between one believer and another.” Who would envy someone in the position of having to judge between believers in certain cases, unless they had at least the same training in secular law that many of our official judges have today—and in addition, a sound basis in church doctrine and law? And what authority would a judge set up by the church have? Do we simply drive members away each time such a conflict comes up? Won’t they just appeal to a secular judge in these cases—exactly what Paul warned against?
It’s very difficult to know exactly how to respond to conflicts within the church, when we are very unsure of our own basis for coming to a decision. One of the last things we desire is to become arrogantly self-righteous. Modern life is too complicated for us to have such a sure confidence in our own abilities to judge. But Paul offers a better solution, though one that may be distasteful to many of us. He writes, “In fact, to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded?” (1 Cor 6:7). That is tough advice to accept. In our litigious society, we can’t imagine merely turning the other cheek like this. But it is advice which Jesus himself offered in his Sermon on the Mount. In both Paul’s and Jesus’s doctrine, it is better to be defrauded than to take another believer to court. But who has enough faith in God’s work in our lives to accept this?
He allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us (Acts 17:26-27).
We Americans don’t like limits. We don’t like being told where to live or that we can’t do certain things. It’s part of the notion of freedom that we grow up with. But as we see in Paul’s speech to the Athenians in Acts 17, those limits may serve an essential purpose in our lives.
To establish the background for this verse, we find Paul in Athens, debating with various philosophers and thinkers about the nature of God. Paul perceived they were religious, based on his observations of the people. They had erected a statue “To an unknown god” just to cover their bases. Paul wanted them to know about the one true Lord, and the direct access to him which Jesus guaranteed us by his death and resurrection.
The God that Paul preaches is a powerful God, setting not only the place where we live, but the time as well. (And we think we move freely about!) We have each been born into a specific time in our world’s history, and into a specific geographic location. And why? As Paul explains it, for one purpose only—so that we would attempt to find God. Our Lord knows us intimately. As the Psalmist says, “For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13). He knows exactly what circumstances will cause us most efficiently to seek him.
Yet we constantly try to transcend those circumstances. We are not satisfied where we are, and want to see other lands and meet other peoples. Some of us think we were born before or after our time. When limited, we moan and groan, the limit itself seeming to tempt us with enough reason to try to overcome it.
But those limits have their purpose, as Paul explains. It is exactly the circumstances of our lives that gives rise to a yearning to know God. It’s a wonderful opportunity we have, many of us, to be able to see other countries, and to learn of the customs of other people. But our own home is a blessing. God has put us in a particular place, and caused us to be born at a particular time, only so we would seek him—grope for him is the word Paul uses—not an easy task! The Lord’s concern is that we do not get lost in this valley of the shadow of death, but that we use every opportunity he has provided us, limited and limiting though it seems, to begin—and stick to—the eternal path that leads most surely back home to him.
March 3, 2008
You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. (James 2:24)
James can be a difficult book. One of the main tenets of our faith is that we are saved by faith rather than works. Most of Paul’s letter to the Romans supports the notion that we are saved by faith, and not by works. He writes, “For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law” (Rom 3:28). And yet we can also find the opposite in Paul’s letters. Earlier in Romans, we read “For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified” (Rom 2:13). And we have the words of Christ himself, who said in his Sermon on the Mount, “For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished” (Matt 5:18). How are we to deal with this riddle?
It is not easy to understand just how we are to respond to the law as it has been handed down to us—either in the Old Testament or the much more difficult law in the New Testament. Most of us hold the Ten Commandments to be the core of our ethical belief system. But what about all those other laws we read of in books like Leviticus? The New Testament hardly lets us off the hook. In their book, Invitation to the New Testament, authors David deSilva and Emerson Powery state that “Jesus actually deepens and extends the application of two of the Ten Commandments, teaching that the righteousness for which God calls extends to speech, attitude, and even how we perceive other people.” Can we really be held accountable if we merely perceive someone in unflattering terms? According to the New Testament, we can indeed.
This is a dilemma that has been presented to the church for centuries, and we can certainly not outline a definitive answer in a short space. But there are some hints in Scripture that help us understand why James emphasized the law so much, and why even Paul often refers to the importance of obedience to the law. When some Pharisees approached Jesus regarding laws concerning divorce, they were confused by his answer. The Pharisees wanted to know if it was legal for a man to divorce his wife for any cause (Matt 19:3). Jesus answered that it was not. But then, responded the Pharisees, “Why did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?” (19:7). Jesus’s answer is illuminating. It is “because you were so hard-hearted.” If we truly loved each other as God would have us do, we would not need such laws. But to the extent that refuse to act out of love for others, such laws will continue to exist to govern our behavior.
This gives us an idea of why writers such as James would focus on the role of the law—our works of righteousness—rather than God’s grace for both our salvation, and for our continuing walk with our Lord. Consider for a moment James’s audience—the people he is writing to. What else does he have to say about them? They favored the rich, giving them the best places while telling the poor to accept a humiliating position “at my feet” (2:2-4). He complains that some members of his church are willing to kill to get something they want, or to enter into disputes and conflicts because they covet something someone else has (4:2). They are adulterers (4:4). They hire employees to work for them, but then withhold their wages (5:4). This is certainly a hard-hearted bunch in need of some legal correction!
And we can find the same types of problems in churches Paul wrote to. “It is reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans” (2 Cor 5:1). And apparently others approved of this. We also learn that they were very litigious, pursuing lawsuits against one another (2 Cor 6:7). In his letter to the Thessalonians, we read that some of the believers apparently thought their inclusion in the body of Christ was enough to supply all their needs, and had merely become busybodies, doing no work but expecting to be cared for by the other members of the Thessalonian congregation (2 Thess 3:10-12). Hardly a response of love.
It must be admitted that none of our churches is perfect. We do not have to look far to find abuses of power within churches today. We can also find plenty of acts of wrongdoing. But we court difficulties when we attempt to see these issues merely in terms of black and white. We may have our problems, but are we really as bad as the churches James and Paul were writing to? Would anyone write a letter to our own congregation and accuse us all of being adulterers and murderers, as James did? How many of us hire others and withhold their wages, as James complained of? Do we have many members who circulate among us, expecting to be fed, clothed and housed as seems to have been the case in Thessalonia? The point is that both Paul and James seem to be writing to churches that were just getting off the ground, and whose members were still acting as though God’s love and Christ’s example meant nothing to them. And we should not be surprised at this. We have the Scriptures to guide us, but the early churches had no such body of text. There must have been a few letters that circulated among them, but at the time Paul and James were writing, none of the gospels would have been as widely available as they are now to us. They had no body of tradition that dictated what Christianity should mean for them. There were no Sunday Schools to guide their children into an understanding of what Christ meant to the world and to them personally. Christianity, and any ethics based on Jesus’s words were all quite new. In the environment of the early church, when quite a few hearts were still hardened toward the message of Christ, it is no wonder that Paul and James had to be so strict with their congregations.
Certainly we cannot relax. We are surrounded by temptations of all different kinds, and we need to be vigilant lest we take too many steps down a path that would lead us far from the grace and mercy which God intends us to enjoy. But on the other hand, most of our churches today have come far from the days of the early church. Our ethical systems have changed a bit, and few of us look at the church or of God’s saving grace as a free ticket to do whatever we want, no matter how degraded and harmful to ourselves and to others. And perhaps this gives us a hint why James and Paul demanded such strict obedience and concentrated at times on adherence to the ethical works we have all come to expect of our collective congregations. They were dealing with a slightly different situation than exists in the church today. This has to be taken into account whenever we attempt to understand the messages the early apostles attempted to spread among their churches. And even today, as long as we are tempted to act in a way not consistent with God’s perfect love, and until we fully realize God’s infinite grace in every act of our lives, we will occasionally need to refer to the body of law that has developed through the ages in order to keep us from going too far astray.
But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,
will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. (John 14:26)
Imagine what it must have been like to be one of Jesus’s disciples. To actually walk in his physical presence. If they wanted to know something, all they had to do was ask him, and he would give them an answer. How many times have we prayed, hoping for an answer, to be met only with an impenetrable silence!
But is that really the case? As Jesus was preparing to return to the Father, he spoke of the Holy Spirit which he would send. “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you” (John 14:26). If we look closely at the conversations the disciples had with their teacher, we see that Jesus’s remarks were often confusing to them. They often could not understand what he was talking about. In many cases, his answers to them were no clearer than the answers we get to our prayers.
Perhaps we are actually in a better position to understand the things of heaven than the disciples were. From the time that Jesus returned to the Father, and sent the Holy Spirit to us, we are all able to learn directly from the Father. The Spirit reminds us of the things Christ had once said, even though 2000 years later. The Spirit “will teach us everything.” Perhaps it is we who have the advantage over the original twelve when it comes to understanding spiritual things. But how can we hear and understand what Christ would say to us through the Holy Spirit?
When the disciples misunderstood what Christ was saying, it was often because they tried to put his words into their own worldly context. In the same way, we often do not hear the voice of the Holy Spirit because we are trying to understand the things of the Spirit based upon our understanding of the things of this world. As Jesus said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” To listen to the voice of the Spirit, we, too, must realize that we are not of this world. We are called out of the world (while yet remaining here) to be members of a Spiritual community, of which Christ is the head. To hear the voice of the Spirit, we must claim this heritage, and put aside the things of this world. We need to be more like Paul, who wrote to the Philippians, “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Phil 3:8-9).