Wednesdays with James Lesson Eleven: Stressed-Out Speech Sinks Ships
We continue our study in the central section of the Epistle of James today. In the body of this encyclical, the author takes up the three themes he introduced in chapter one, addressing them in more detail and in reverse order. The second theme James discusses has to do with wise behavior in the congregation — we’ve called it “Wise Behavior Makes Peace and Speaks No Evil” (3:1-4:12). The initial part of this section goes right to the horse’s mouth, as it were.
Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters; you know that we will be judged more severely. All of us make many mistakes, after all. If anyone makes no mistakes in what they say, such a person is a fully complete human being, capable of keeping firm control over the whole body as well. We put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, and then we can direct their whole bodies. Consider, too, the case of large ships; it takes strong winds to blow them along, but one small rudder will turn them whichever way the helmsman desires and decides. In the same way, the tongue is a little member but boasts great things. See how small a fire it takes to set a large forest ablaze! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is a world of injustice, with its place established right there among our members. It defiles the whole body; it sets the wheel of nature ablaze, and is itself set ablaze by hell. Every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, you see, can be tamed, and has been tamed, by humans. But no single human is able to tame the tongue. It is an irrepressible evil, full of deadly poison. By it we bless the Lord and father; and by it we curse humans who are made in God’s likeness! Blessing and curses come out of the same mouth! My dear family, it isn’t right that it should be like that. Does a spring put out both sweet and bitter water from the same source? Dear friends, can a fig tree bear olives, or a vine bear figs? Nor can salt water yield fresh. (3:1-12, KNT)
Other than the fact that this is a delightful passage, full of colorful language and striking metaphors, there is little to actually discuss here in terms of exposition. The wisdom message of the passage is mirrored in a multitude of proverbial teaching, culled from observing the human experience. Plato, for example, said: Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. And Will Rogers put it in clever form: Never miss a good chance to shut up.
Three of the many sayings from the book of Proverbs about speech parallel what James says here:
He who guards his mouth and his tongue, Guards his soul from troubles. (21:23)
When there are many words, transgression is unavoidable, But he who restrains his lips is wise. (10:19)
Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit. (18:21)
Jesus certainly spoke powerfully about how we use our words:
What the mouth speaks is what fills the heart. A good person produces good things from a good storeroom; an evil person produces evil things from an evil storeroom. Let me tell you this: on judgment day people will have to own up to every trivial word they say. Yes: you will be vindicated by your own words— and you will be condemned by your own words. (Matt. 12:34-37)
And James himself already introduced this subject in chapter one:
So, my dear brothers and sisters, get this straight. Every person should be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. (1:19)
If anyone supposes that they are devout, and does not control their tongue, but rather deceives their heart—such a person’s devotion is futile. (1:26)
And he will conclude this entire section with a clear exhortation:
Do not speak evil against one another, my dear family. (4:11)
I don’t think I need to take a lot of time explaining any of these, do I? The truth of these proverbs is self-evident, and each of us feels their sting. They are more suitable for meditation than for exposition, and we would all be wise to memorize them, contemplate them, and recall them frequently. After all, that’s why they were formed as proverbial sayings in the first place!
The only real question is: Why does James focus on this subject in his epistle?
Again, it is good to remember the setting in life of those who received this encyclical. He was writing to congregations of Christians who were under great pressures, and the letter gives us a picture of communities that were experiencing a multitude of “stress fractures” in their lives and relationships. I wrote this in an earlier post:
Whatever the exact nature of the external pressures facing the Christians he is writing, those pressures were causing stress fractures within the congregations themselves. The spectrum of potential divisions would run from those wanting to pander to the rich and compromise the faith to those who were itching to join the Zealots, who sought (sometimes violent) revolution. The very things James writes about in this letter portray a church “tested” by complaining, bitterness, conflicts, and a breakdown of love, unity, and charity.
Chapter one set the scene: these are Christians under “the test.”
And when we are put through stressful testing as individuals, families, and communities, one of the first parts that can malfunction is the tongue.
So, although James’s teaching is beneficial for us to remember at all times, it is especially pertinent in times of great stress.
In such times, we may well pray the prayer of Sirach (Wisdom of Sirach 22:27):
Who will set a guard over my mouth, and an effective seal upon my lips, so that I may not fall because of them, and my tongue may not destroy me?
The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans Under the Command of Titus, A.D. 70, David Roberts
I was pressed into service to preach on Sunday because of an illness, and I was delighted (delighted, I say!) to learn that the Gospel text for Sunday was Luke 12:49-56. Oh boy.
I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:
father against son
and son against father,
mother against daughter
and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
• Luke 12:49-56, NRSV
Here’s an example of the way I’ve always heard this text presented in evangelical teaching. It is also, generally, the way I would have preached it when I walked among the evangelicals:
Popular perception in the world concerning Jesus is that He was a man of love who came to bring peace, that His message was peace on earth, peace through love. That’s sort of the pop idea about Jesus…. But Jesus absolutely shattered that expectation.
…So Jesus says He’s come now to bring division. Instead of uniting people in His kingdom of blessing, He divides them and He divides them both in time and eternity.
…You see, the cross divides everybody. You’re either with the faithful or the unfaithful. You’re either in heaven or hell and hell will always be punishment, always cut off from the life of God, always void of peace and joy and satisfaction and fulfillment, to whatever degree it’s experienced. This is such an important text for people who think that those who are ignorant of the Gospel are going to somehow go to heaven. They’re not. The cross is the dividing point of all humanity. What you do with Jesus Christ on the cross in His death and resurrection determines your eternal destiny.
…I understand that the gospel that we believe, the gospel that I preach, cuts me off from people. I understand that it indicts them, that it condemns them by virtue of its message. It is divisive, really nothing new, by the way.
…Beloved, Jesus is the great divider. The cross is the great dividing event and at that point, we’re divided. We’re divided for eternity and we’re divided in time and He calls for sinners to choose blessing and reward in heaven rather than cursing and punishment in hell. He calls for you to make the break no matter what the breach might be in this life…
What we have here is another example of preaching evangelical doctrine rather than hearing what the text actually says.
From a narrative-historical perspective, this text is not about Jesus, the “Great Divider.” Insofar as it is about Jesus, I would say it speaks of Jesus as “Israel’s Final Prophet.” The warnings Jesus gives here are not about “heaven” and “hell,” his words are not about how “the cross divides people in both time and eternity,” the context is not one’s “eternal destiny,” and there is no call to “choose” which side you’re going to be on. The text, as far as I understand it, is not even about how Jesus divides people at all, it is about their inability to interpret “the present time” (v. 56) as a season in their national life that will inevitably bring turmoil, division, and conflict upon them. There is a “fire” that Jesus’ coming sparked which will tear people apart and immerse them in distress.
What is that fire? Jesus is looking ahead to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD by the Romans. As Israel’s final prophet, he is warning the people that the fire of war is about to ignite. He also says that he himself will be touched by that — he will be burned by Rome’s fire in a “baptism” he wishes was over. Jesus is not just another prophet, teaching them how to live in peace. His coming and the announcement that God’s Kingdom is at hand means that the people (including himself) will soon pass through the painful birth pains of a new age. But they don’t get it. They can’t read the signs. They are not ready for the crisis to come.
So, how would I preach this passage? Here’s my sermon from Sunday. Let me know what you think.
Through Violence to Shalom Luke 12:49-56
When our Creator God made the world he made it to be a place of shalom. That beautiful Hebrew word means “peace and wholeness” in all aspects of life. However, when we read the Bible, we’re not more than a few chapters in when we read that the world was filled with violence and conflict. And it’s been that way ever since, hasn’t it?
One of the things we often forget about Jesus is that he came to a particular people in a particular place at a particular time in history. And we also forget that Jesus came to the Jewish people at one of the most turbulent times in Israel’s history, a time of impending crisis.
Israel was occupied by the Romans and ruled by their puppet king Herod. Herod rebuilt the temple at Jerusalem, but he was the loyal servant of Rome and the people hated him. All the different groups in Israel, such as the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Zealots, wanted the Romans out of Israel. Many Zealots were revolutionary patriots who hid in the hills and made surprise attacks on Roman soldiers. They were hunted down and tried as seditious murderers. It was a time of fear and terror.
Most of us can’t imagine what it’s like to live in a country with enemy soldiers patrolling the streets, checkpoints where you are regularly stopped and asked for identification, and places where you have to pay special tolls and bribes just to go about your ordinary business. But that’s what it was like in Jesus’ Israel. When he said things like, “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also,” and “if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile,” he was talking about daily realities the Jewish people faced as they lived in an occupied country.
And when Jesus talked about a coming judgment, he wasn’t talking most of the time about what we think of as “the last judgment,” at which some people will be sent to “heaven” and others to “hell.” No, he was talking about a day, soon to come, of violent reckoning when the Roman armies would trample Jerusalem, raze the temple to the ground, and destroy the Jewish nation. That is what happened in the year 70AD.
Listen to this passage from Luke 24, where Jesus foretells this coming crisis:
But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. 17 You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.
When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then those in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those inside the city must leave it, and those out in the country must not enter it; for these are days of vengeance, as a fulfillment of all that is written.
God was about to intervene dramatically in history. The nation of Israel was soon to reach its devastating end. Jerusalem would be judged and God would allow the pagan nation of Rome to ransack the country. In the midst of Rome’s oppression, however, Jesus, through his death and resurrection, would be vindicated and exalted as God’s King over all the nations. He would form a new people in his name to carry the announcement everywhere that God’s King had come to rule over all the world and restore it to his original design of shalom.
This background is essential for reading today’s Gospel. Here we hear Jesus reprimanding the people for not being able to recognize the signs of the times. He warns them that they mustn’t view his ministry and teaching as that of just another religious leader, teaching them how to live in peace. No! His coming will introduce a season of profound trouble. Jesus is telling them that he has come to be Israel’s final prophet. He’s the last voice warning them of the fire to come. He himself will have to face a baptism of death under the Romans. This fearsome time that is coming upon the nation will be so stressful that even close families will be torn apart.
This passage reminds us of a couple of important truths. The first is this: although we celebrate Jesus as the Prince of Peace — the Prince of Shalom — shalom only came to us through a time of great distress and suffering. It reminds us that the world is often a violent, hateful place and that Jesus didn’t shy away from talking about that or getting involved in life’s mess. Indeed, he walked right into the midst of this violent world and was baptized with fire himself when he was forcibly arrested, falsely tried, and nailed to a cross as a criminal by the ruling powers. The peace we enjoy in Christ came only because he was willing to submit himself to violent death.
This passage also calls us to be realistic about the world in which we still live today. Whether or not we are facing an impending crisis like Israel would experience, this world is filled with trouble and conflict. Bad things happen. Crises occur. People act violently and hurt others. The ruling powers can be corrupt. Religious leaders can lead us astray. In times of stress, people can turn on each other, even family members. We know this. We read and hear about it every day still. We see it on our TV and computer screens. We lament the daily loss of life, the crisis of people who flee the violence and become exiles from their own homes. We weep over lives turned upside down, children who grow up in chaos and hunger, families torn apart by competing allegiances, uncertainty, and fear.
This gospel text we’ve read this morning likewise describes a troubled, violent world. It tells us about Jesus, who was born into such a world, right at the point of one of history’s great disasters, when the Romans virtually destroyed the people of Israel. We’ve heard how he encouraged them to recognize the signs of the times, to be wise about how hard life in this world can be. I think he would urge us to be wise like that as well.
What this passage doesn’t do is tell us how to live in the light of these things. For that, we must look at the rest of Jesus’ teaching. Here are the kinds of things he taught about how to behave in the midst of a violent and conflict-filled world:
“Blessed are the merciful,” in a world like this
“Blessed are the peacemakers,” in a world like this
In a world like this, “love your enemies”
In a world like this, “pray for those who persecute you”
In a world like this, “take food and drink to the hungry and thirsty and clothe the naked”
And, welcome the stranger
And, visit the sick and those who are in prison
In a violent and suffering world, the duty of the faithful is to practice sacrificial love. Just like Jesus did. Acts of love and compassion in a world of trouble and violence can begin to mend the torn and tattered places.
As a hospice chaplain, I see it every day. A woman I visit regularly used to be continually serving others. She was active in her work, her community, her family, and her church. Now she’s unable to do that. She’s in the final season of her life and must allow others to serve her. And they do. A family from her church stops by each Sunday after services just so they can give her her “Sunday hugs.” A dear friend flew up from Florida to stay with her and help her get things set up for the days when she will need constant care. Another friend who lives locally has come and painted the interior of her house and got it ready for new carpet to be laid so it can be sold more easily when she dies. A group of friends picks her up and takes her to Bob Evans for breakfast so she can get out once in awhile.
These are simple things, but as Mother Teresa once said, “We cannot all do great things, but we can all do small things with great love.” We may not think we are making much of an impact on the world’s problems by such actions, but I think that is a complete misperception. Our ears are bombarded every day with stories that are “out there” and that make it seem like life is falling apart. But your real life and my real life is right here, right now, and it is through tending our own gardens that the world will ultimately be fed.
The book of James in the New Testament says that true religion involves caring for the orphans, the widows — the neediest and most vulnerable people among us — and keeping ourselves unstained by the world — that is, by keeping ourselves from becoming violent and divisive and caught up in the conflicts that keep our world from being at peace.
God’s design for this world is shalom. And his design for us is that we be people of love, people of shalom, people who bring shalom to others. In a world of violence and conflict, Jesus calls us to follow him right into this world, announcing his peace and working toward it through acts of sacrificial love.
Christians who feel responsible for the “growth” of other Christians. When I was a youth minister charged with turning the rug rats into good little Southern Baptists, my “Grace to Works” ratio was about 10/90, i.e. I talked about grace about ten percent of the time, and rattled on about how everyone was supposed to behave decently ninety percent of the time. Yeah, what Jesus did was great, but what did you do last Friday night? Hmmmmm? That’s the real deal. Yuck. (Sorry to all the legalists I produced. Forgive me, for I knew not what I was doing.)
Pastors who want people to _____________ (fill in the blank with dozens of major church projects). The great appeal of preaching obedience and duty is that it seems to be the best way to get people to do all the stuff that has to be done in a church. Grace is icing and decoration to these people. Obedience is bricks and concrete.
If you’ve ever been around a pastor who has descended to the depths of harping and nagging to get a few bucks in the plate and a Sunday School teacher for the middle school boys, then you know why I am writing this essay. Many pastors don’t think grace preaching will keep their machine running. They may be right. Maybe they ought to look at their machine. On the other hand, I Corinthians 15:10 says, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” Anyone believe that?
Parents who want their kids to be Christians, and also look and act like it…..whatever that means. Grace as a way of parenting? You gotta be kidding? No. I’m not kidding. Parents need to give up the idea that God is the big stick who is going to bully you if you don’t get rid of that nose piercing. I work at a school with the children of Christian parents. A lot of those parents are worried that their little Joey isn’t going to be a worship team member and might not make it to the mission trip this year. So they’ve brought out the rules, the law, the consequences, the shrinks, the medications, the exorcists, the high pressure tactics and the Christian school with lots of rules.
Guess what? Joey’s not turning out according to plan. He’s hanging out with his goth friends, who say their strong point is that they really accept people without prejudging them on appearance and performance. Sound vaguely ironic? Yep–parents handing out rules, and peers talking their version of grace.
Of course, God is the original grace parent, and the Bible describes the rocky ride He had with his kid, Israel. He never let go, He held him and He loved him through the rough times. Israel saw his angry side, but they met his grace over and over, too. Sometimes they recognized it, sometimes they crucified it. But God eventually got what every parent wants–offspring who love him from a grateful, faithful heart. (Of course, he cheated. He made it happen.) It’s just that along the way, God showed that he had to go beyond the power of the rules–and he had good rules. God used the power of grace to win the battle so many parents are trying to win with little grace and much law.
Christians who equate grace with weakness, permissiveness and excessive leniency. Try this one out at any gathering of evangelical Christians: “Once you are justified by faith, you can do what you want. And if you want to do all the things you did before you knew Jesus, then you just don’t get it.” (Gasp) You’ll immediately notice that some Christians want it very clear that you can’t expect to be saved by grace if you don’t live right. Straighten up and fly right, and you’ll get to heaven. Oh yeah….by grace. Grace has become just a codeword for works in a lot of evangelical minds. The point to see here is that we tend to get anxious about the way God is doing things. If he starts getting all overly generous on us, we want to call him off to the side and see if we can’t add a few rules and expectations in there so WE feel better. God, of course, isn’t changing anything because we’re nervous, but he’s not stopping us from putting out our own versions of the Gospel either. Unfortunately.
Christian young people, who have been brought up in the battle for the moral high ground in our culture wars. Young people are told from birth to be good and do good. They live with rules, grades and expectations. Those who are successful in keeping those rules and meeting those expectations often find grace to be difficult to accept. To them, grace can seem like a covering for evil. They usually think that when the grace talk is over, the behavior is going to be bad, and Christian young people are usually most careful in the area of distinctive and different behavior.
Christian young people who have made different moral choices than the majority may truly not see the wonder of grace. They haven’t sinned enough. Or to be more exact, they don’t see the outrage of their own sins clearly. The foundation of morality their parents and teachers built in their lives may make it difficult to see their own sinfulness honestly. The culture war focus that rages around Christian young people puts unusual emphasis on making choices and “being righteous.” It’s not at the exclusion of the Gospel, but it’s often at the expense of the Gospel.
Most people with “Christian” books in their hands. What you can do, not what God has done, is the great theme of most of what is published and recorded in the evangelical world. Grace writers and poets stand out like lighthouses in a sea of mediocre legalism and do-it-yourself religion. Grace is an endangered species, and we all need to celebrate and promote any writer who truly, passionately communicates grace. This isn’t a matter of theological labels. We can quibble about the footnotes some other time. No matter who they are, when they wrote or where you find them, applaud, buy and give away the grace writers and artists. The beauty of what they are saying needs to be heard in a church choking on legalism, moralism and timidity about the Gospel.
For is there a thought in the wide world so sweet,
As that God has so cared for us, bad as we are,
That He thinks of us, plans for us, stoops to entreat,
And follows us, wander we ever so far?
Welcome to Saturday Ramblings for August 13, 2016.
Since we looked at the restoration of Elvis’s BMW last Saturday, it made we think, “Surely I can find some pictures by someone who restored an old Nash Rambler!” And that’s when I found Dave Simley’s post, showing how he brought a 1953 Nash Rambler Custom Convertible back to life. It’s a good read, with lots of great pictures, a few of which we’ll show you here today.
Note from CM: In the light of some of the excellent discussions we’ve had this week, I thought this piece from our friend across the pond, Rob Grayson, would fit in nicely. Here are some good thoughts to encourage a Jesus-shaped spirituality. Rob blogs at Faith Meets World.
• • •
Metaphysical Jesus by Rob Grayson
The farther I proceed on my theological and experiential journey, the more convinced I am that one of the most fundamental mistakes many churches and believers have made is to turn the Jesus of the Gospels into a kind of abstract spiritual persona.
Let me explain.
For many evangelicals in particular, the important thing is to have a “relationship with Jesus”. That might sound very earthy and real, but in practice what it usually amounts to is believing that Jesus somehow lives inside you, having conversations with him, either out loud or in your head, singing to and/or about him with other believers at church and, most importantly of all, believing that he is the Son of God who died to free you from the curse of sin, death and hell. Do all this and you can be assured of your ticket to heaven.
I realise that one might easily conclude from the above paragraph that I am deriding huge and important aspects of Christian practice, namely faith, prayer and worship. However, that’s not my purpose. I’d simply like to ask one question about this approach to Christianity: just who or what is this Jesus with whom one has a relationship?
It seems to me that in this paradigm, Jesus basically functions as the recipient of one’s prayers and worship and the invisible object of one’s faith in a theological mechanism that is believed to procure post-mortem salvation for the believer. That, in a nutshell, is all Jesus needs to be. Anything else about his actual, embodied existence in time and space – in particular the circumstances and manner of his living, teaching, dying and resurrection – is largely relegated to the realm of background information, if not total irrelevance. Jesus’ ethical teaching, his radical inclusion of social and religious untouchables, his dangerously subversive take on scripture, his outrageous flouting of established religious practice and expectations… as long as your “relationship with Jesus” is intact, none of this is of more than passing interest. The only thing that really matters in your reading of the Gospels is that Jesus is “God with a flesh suit on” and the perfect, spotless sacrifice; everything else is moot.
In approaching Jesus this way, we have essentially turned the fleshy, down-to-earth and very human Jesus we read about in the synoptic Gospels into an abstract entity of purely theological value. According to one definition (found at dictionary.com), metaphysical means “concerned with abstract thought or subjects, as existence, causality, or truth” or “highly abstract, subtle or abstruse”. One might say, then, that we have metaphysicalised Jesus.
This kind of metaphysical approach to Jesus admittedly does a decent job of honouring his divinity. But it also has a powerful side-benefit which, in my opinion, explains its longstanding and widespread popularity: it purports to confer upon us great benefits in terms of the assurance of our eternal security, while at the same time allowing us to continue with our comfortable, self-oriented, exploitative lives more or less unhindered. To put it bluntly, if salvation is all about going to heaven when you die, then Jesus needn’t be anything more than a Golden Ticket dispenser, and how we live here below has little or no bearing on our ultimate future.
So how do we untangle this problem and put Jesus back in his proper place? Well, just as we have so often metaphysicalised Jesus, so now we need to demetaphysicalise him.
Put simply, I think we need to start deliberately paying a lot more attention to Jesus’ life and teaching, rather than focusing almost exclusively on his assumed divinity and the role he plays in our theological system. Yes, Jesus was and is fully divine. We can take that as a given. But as long as that’s all he is, the only kind of relationship we’re ever going to have with him is the kind I described earlier – one where he is, in effect, little more than our invisible friend and divine sponsor.
What we need to get back to, I would suggest, is examining how Jesus lived and what he taught. And, in light of how he lived and what he taught, we need to consider what it might mean to be one of those to whom he says, “Come, follow me”. This is not – and never was – an invitation to believe in a set of abstract theological formulae and to have a metaphysical relationship with an invisible deity. Jesus didn’t teach much about abstract things that you must believe, or about what happens to you after you die. Instead, he was pretty relentlessly focused on how you live in the here in the now, how you treat other people, where you stand in relation to questions of social justice and violence, how generous you are with what you have, and so forth. If you try to read the synoptic Gospels with your head in the metaphysical clouds, Jesus will drag you back down to earth time and time again, and he’ll challenge your motivations and lifestyle to the core at every turn. That’s the kind of guy he was in first century Palestine, and I really don’t see why his focus and his message would have changed for today.
When we look at Jesus from this much more practical perspective, we find that he begins to come alive and affect our thinking and living in myriad ways. He is no longer safely contained in the pages of a holy book; instead, he messes with our comfortable and unjust world. And he does so in ways that bring good news to the oppressed, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim freedom to captives and announce God’s favour – not in some invisible heavenly realm or some distant, disembodied future, but right here, right now.
Maybe, just maybe, that’s the kind of salvation Jesus really offers. I think the world could use some of that kind of salvation, don’t you?
Yesterday, in our discussion about James, Rocky asked some good questions about distinctions that are sometimes made between Christians and non-Christians and how that doesn’t always make sense to him. Christians are called to do “good works,” but many non-Christians do those same works, and it is hard sometimes to know what is supposed to be distinctive about Christianity. Here is part of what he said:
…Charles also hits on something closely related, namely: what is unique about the “Christian Life”? I’ve already hinted that I’m not convinced it is ethics, and I’m not convinced that it is salvation or what happens in the afterlife. Those are the two major answers given most often. But if not those, what? Simply a shared belief in the idea that a certain historical event (namely, the Resurrection of Jesus) actually happened? Maybe….and shared beliefs about history can be powerful in their own right….but I’d like to think something more is happening here.
What is unique about the “Christian Life”?
I’ll be the first to say I don’t have the definitive “answer” to that question, but I do have some ideas to share and discuss today.
(1) My first response may be surprising, but it’s something I have tried to emphasize ever since I started writing here at Internet Monk. It has to do with one of the most important reasons I left the world of evangelicalism and entered the “post-evangelical wilderness.”
Here it is: there is nothing unique about the “Christian” life.
This came up in a conversation I had with Damaris once, and I remember we came to agreement that the “Christian” life is just life, lived Christianly. Life. Ordinary, human life. In all its dailiness. Through all its various seasons and circumstances. For better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. Getting up each day and putting our pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else.
The separatist nature of some religious traditions tries to deny this. When listening to Christians talk, I sometimes get the idea that we hover a foot or two above other human beings.
We promote gnostic tendencies toward insider-ism and elitism that imagine Christians are in a special category, a “members only” club, dialed-in to special knowledge and privileges to which our neighbors don’t have access.
We maintain docetic tendencies among us. We elevate “souls” and “spirituality” over day-to-day living by embodied persons who live in communities in relationship with others. “This world is not my home, I’m just a-passin’ through” is our song, and we devalue the mundane and the ordinary in favor of the esoteric and “spiritual.”
We harbor many modernist prejudices, rationalizing, categorizing and generally thinking that what is most important is the world of ideas and theological systems. We imagine that success for Christianity means winning arguments and making sure all of our doctrinal “i’s” are dotted and “t’s” crossed.
We imagine a moral superiority that sets us above “sinners,” and we set up our lives and institutions to avoid meaningful and equal relationships with them.
Folks, we’re all in this together. Fellow human beings. If we don’t get this and learn the true humility that comes from realizing we are no different than anyone else, we will never truly see our neighbors as “neighbors,” akin to us and beside us in this thing we call life. We will always look down on others instead, in one way or another. We will take up the role of judges rather than friends and companions. We will imagine that we have privileges and advantages others don’t have and will build walls rather than bridges in our relationships with them.
(2) However, there is one thing that makes being a Christian special, and that’s Jesus.
And the outline of what is particularly significant about Jesus is that he became incarnate, announced the dawning of God’s rule, died, was buried, rose again, and ascended into heaven to be crowned Lord of all.
Yesterday, Scot McKnight ran a post about what it means to do evangelism if you believe that the gospel is the “King Jesus gospel” rather than the “soterian gospel” of modern evangelicalism.
In the “soterian” model, evangelism is all about defending the truth, and persuading and convincing others to embrace it so that they can be saved from God’s judgment and gain the hope of heaven. Its focus is on them, on drawing the contrast between us and them, on convincing them that they need to change.
By contrast, in the “King Jesus gospel” approach we simply witness to Jesus. We tell his story. We announce that, by his life, death, resurrection and ascension, Jesus has been crowned Messiah, Lord, Savior, and King of all. “We want to stir an interest in Jesus. We are not trying first to stir interest in our church, or in someone’s sins or in some kind of theological debate,” McKnight writes.
We are witnesses. First and foremost we are witness to and about Jesus. Our calling is to draw attention to Jesus and to call folks’ attention to Jesus. The Story of Jesus awakens faith and in that context the summons to repent, to be believe and to be baptized can be given.
The focus is not on what people get if they accept Jesus; the focus is Jesus. He’ll give them what he wants.
This is essentially the focus of N.T. Wright’s newer perspective on Jesus, Paul, and the new community which has been created in Christ. In a review of one of Wright’s books, Bruce Epperly summarizes it well:
N. T. Wright sees the heart of Paul’s theology as involving his experience and expression of God’s new creation, brought about by God’s action in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. Although Christ as Messiah is profoundly Jewish – you cannot find any foundation for anti-Judaism in the authentic Pauline literature – he sees Jesus Christ as embodying and inviting us to live in God’s new age of Shalom. Accordingly, Pauline theology is profoundly concrete. He is a preacher-theologian: his thinking is ultimately practical. Paul believes that the theological is transformational. The message of the Gospel and God’s new creation, the heart of Paul’s message, is transformational and invites us to become transformed persons, living in transformed communities, and working toward a transformed world order.
…The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ brings about new creation in the here and now and the spirit of Jewish monotheism, this new creation is cosmological, ethical, and soteriological – we are new people, experiencing a transformed universe, touched by the healing Christ, and living by the values of God’s realm “on earth as it is in heaven.” Our vision of God’s faithfulness throughout history and in all creation nurtures the confidence that transforms behavior and beliefs.
…Paul’s letters to emerging congregations are invitations to live in God’s realm of Shalom right now.
…Dynamic in nature, the lively, inspired body of Christ can become God’s embodied vision of Shalom – of new creation – in this very moment of time.
…God is truly in Christ reconciling the world, and we are intended to be companions in God’s ministry of reconciliation. We are intended to be a microcosm, a foretaste, of the world to come, participating in God’s new creation and becoming God’s temple making sacred the world.
There’s a lot of highfalutin’ language in there, but what it all boils down to is this:
In Jesus, God began to implement his end-times rule in the world (“the kingdom of heaven has drawn near”).
The ultimate goal of this rule is God bringing about a new creation of justice and peace (“on earth as it is in heaven”).
The process of implementing God’s rule involves him creating a community of people who are called to witness to Jesus the King and the new creation to come (“you are the salt of the earth; the light of the world).
This involves us living among our neighbors, pointing them to Jesus by our attitudes, words, and actions (which includes acknowledging our imperfections and failures). Christians and Christian communities are called to be signs and examples of the new creation to come as we live our ordinary human lives through all the seasons and circumstances of life. In other words, Christians are simply to live in this world and this life with genuine humanity.
This means we don’t worry so much about “setting ourselves apart” from those around us or emphasizing our “distinctiveness.” We eagerly embrace our common humanity with others. We live in community with them. There are moral and ethical boundaries we maintain, but this fact is part of our common humanity, for all human groups do this and part of living in community with those who differ is to negotiate how we are going to live together while maintaining different values and perspectives. We are also free to participate with our neighbors in good works of love to mend the world’s broken places and plant seeds of goodness that will come to fruition in the new creation. As we live in the world, we constantly give credit to Jesus our King, who is making all things new.
As Epperly says, “God is truly in Christ reconciling the world, and we are intended to be companions in God’s ministry of reconciliation.”
Wednesdays with James Lesson Ten: The Old “Faith & Works” Debate — Completely Unnecessary
We continue our study in the central section of the Epistle of James today. In the body of this encyclical, the author takes up the three themes he introduced in chapter one, addressing them in more detail and in reverse order. The first theme James discusses is, “Faith Works through Impartial Generosity.” Last week, we explored the “impartiality” part of the theme, today we look at what it means that faith works through loving generosity.
That brings us to the most famous text in this epistle.
What use is it, my dear family, if someone says they have faith when they don’t have works? Can faith save such a person? Supposing a brother or sister is without clothing, and is short even of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; be warm, be full!”— but doesn’t give them what their bodies need— what use is that? In the same way, faith, all by itself and without works, is dead. But supposing someone says, “Well: you have faith, and I have works.” All right: show me your faith— but without doing any works; and then I will show you my faith, and I’ll do it by my works! You believe that “God is one”? Well and good! The demons believe that, too, and they tremble! Do you want to know, you stupid person, that faith without works is lifeless? Wasn’t Abraham our father justified by his works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You can see from this that faith was cooperating along with the works, and the faith reached its fulfillment through the works. That is how the scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” and he was called “God’s friend.” So you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. In the same way, wasn’t Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she gave shelter to the spies and sent them off by another road? Just as the body without the spirit is dead, you see, so faith without works is dead.
• James 2:14-26, KNT
Peter Davids puts his finger on why this passage has proven controversial, when he writes:
The problem with James arises because he stresses the results of commitment to Christ and uses much of the critical theological terminology in a way different from Paul.
In particular, James’s use of “faith,” “works,” “save,” and “righteous/righteousness” appear to respond to such Pauline texts as Romans 3:20 — “No mere mortal, you see, can be declared in the right before God on the basis of the works of the law,” and Galatians 2:16 — “But we know that a person is not declared ‘righteous’ by works of the Jewish law, but through the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah [or, through faith in Jesus Christ]” (Kingdom New Testament).
Based on texts like those, the common evangelical interpretation boils down to their understanding of the Pauline perspective: A person cannot be saved or declared righteous by God through works, but only through faith in Jesus Christ.
But then they run into a problem when they read James, for James says that Abraham, for one, was “justified by his works.” He also indicates quite clearly that you cannot so quickly divide faith and works, for they are part of an organic whole when it comes to being “saved” and being “righteous.” The question then naturally arises: Do Paul and James contradict each other?
I happen to think this is a completely unnecessary debate.
James is not addressing Paul’s teaching.
James is addressing a completely different situation.
Paul’s concern is the inclusion of the Gentiles into the community of the Messiah. “Works” in that context mean “works of the Jewish law,” as N.T. Wright’s translation above shows. Gentiles can be included in the community of the Messiah (and thus, saved, declared ‘righteous’) apart from having to keep the requirements of the Mosaic law, such as circumcision, food laws, and sabbath. They are accepted solely on the basis of “faith,” which usually refers to the “faithfulness of Jesus.” In shorthand: Gentiles do not have to become Jews to become Christians.
When Paul (or a “Pauline” author) does expand beyond this specific concern of the inclusion of the Gentiles and speak of faith, works, and salvation in a more universal sense, his message turns out to be the same as James (we’ll come back to this in a moment).
James’s concern is to convince his Jewish-Christian readers that genuine faith leads naturally to loving deeds. In the context of this letter, he is expanding upon an issue he introduced in chapter 1. In times of testing, it is easy to turn inward and forget about serving those who are truly vulnerable. In our study on 1:22-27, I put it this way: “James reminds these communities that there are needy, vulnerable people among them who need loving care. What good is it to keep myself pure if my brother or sister is suffering and I do nothing about it? So, James says, don’t stop at receiving the word which means your own salvation. Instead, practice the love that God’s word everywhere commends. Guard yourselves, yes, but even more, love your neighbors. …When you consider that James is writing to communities who find themselves under severe trials, the task becomes even more daunting. When under that kind of stress, folks, no matter how strong their faith, can easily become selfish, withdrawn, impatient, angry, snippy with others, and forgetful of those in their midst who have it much worse.”
And so James speaks here in chapter 2 about the duty to care for poor brethren who have insufficient clothing and food, and he reminds them of Abraham, who was under a test and faithfully did what God had told him and Rahab, who met another test with faithful care for others.
In other words, this is one of those instances where James is applying teaching that his Jewish readers would have known from childhood, “Torah” about the moral and ethical life that comes forth from fearing and trusting God. Those who so trust and those who so live are known as “the righteous” throughout the Hebrew Bible. They are people whose professed faith shows itself in a life of loving deeds, especially toward those in need. “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and 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).
James has already magnified the grace of God as that which saves us and brings us into God’s family: “Don’t be deceived, my dear family. Every good gift, every perfect gift, comes down from above, from the father of lights. His steady light doesn’t vary. It doesn’t change and produce shadows. He became our father by the word of truth; that was his firm decision, and the result is that we are a kind of first fruits of his creatures.” (1:16-18, KNT)
Now let me expand upon something I said earlier. There are Pauline (or pseudo-Pauline) texts about faith and works that are not specifically addressing the inclusion of the Gentiles. For example, the most well known is Ephesians 2:8-10 —
How has this all come about? You have been saved by grace, through faith! This doesn’t happen on your own initiative; it’s God’s gift. It isn’t on the basis of works, so no one is able to boast. This is the explanation: God has made us what we are. God has created us in King Jesus for the good works that he prepared, ahead of time, as the road we must travel. (KNT)
A couple of other passages are found in Titus:
God’s saving grace, you see, appeared for all people. It teaches us that we should turn our backs on ungodliness and the passions of the world, and should live sober, just, and devout lives in the present age, while we wait eagerly for the blessed hope and royal appearing of the glory of our great God and savior, Jesus the king. He gave himself for us so that he could ransom us from all lawless actions and purify for himself a people as his very own who would be eager for good works. (2:11-14, KNT)
We ourselves, you see, used at one time to be foolish, disobedient, deceived, and enslaved to various kinds of passions and pleasures. We spent our time in wickedness and jealousy. We were despicable in ourselves, and we hated each other. But when the kindness and generous love of God our savior appeared, he saved us, not by works that we did in righteousness, but in accordance with his own mercy, through the washing of the new birth and the renewal of the holy spirit, which was poured out richly upon us through Jesus, our king and savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and be made his heirs, in accordance with the hope of the life of the age to come. (3:3-7, KNT)
When you read these texts and compare them with chapter 2 of James, it is obvious that the Pauline perspective matches James to a T.
God saves us by grace through the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah.
Our good works do not earn us any merit before God. It’s by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone that we are declared righteous.
In saving and justifying us, God made us new, to walk in lives of loving good works.
Of course, there is much to add to all of this, but this is the essence.
Tomorrow, a final reminder that God’s grace to us in Christ sets us free to love.
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.
• Galatians 5:2, NRSV
For Christ at the last day will not ask how much you have prayed, fasted, pilgrimaged, done this or that for yourself, but how much good you have done to others, even the very least.
. . . Therefore take heed: our own self-assumed good works lead us to and into ourselves, that we seek only our own benefit and salvation; but God’s commandments drive us to our neighbor, that we may thereby benefit others to their salvation.
In May of 2014, we spent a week talking about good works here on Internet Monk. I was reminded of this as I began preparing for our Wednesday Bible study on James the other day. So today, I thought I’d revisit the first post from that series with you. I think this is a very important article, because there is so much misunderstanding out there, especially in popular evangelical teaching, about “good works.”
Martin Luther gets a lot of credit (or flak) for promoting a particular view of faith and good works, but I’m persuaded that the doctrine as commonly presented is mostly a caricature of what he actually taught. As is usually the case, the students go beyond the teacher, and I think Luther-ans and other Protestants have out-Luthered Luther on this one. The scholastic teachers and preachers who followed the reformer set certain formulae into theological concrete, which people have repeated as though God’s finger itself engraved it there, when in fact the original teaching was much more vibrant, fulsome, and true to life.
So, I want to encourage you, if possible, to read through or at least consult Martin Luther’s A Treatise on Good Works (1520). The link will take you to a Kindle edition which is free on Amazon. You can also download it at CCEL or read it at Project Gutenberg.
Luther’s perspective is formative for most subsequent Protestant teaching on this subject, and it would be good to review what lies at the source of the tradition as we talk. You might also consult an earlier post here on IM, “On Good Works,” which summarizes a few of Luther’s main themes in the treatise.
For now, let us look at a few important matters related to Martin Luther’s perspectives on good works.
We should remember, first of all, the contextual nature of Luther’s teaching on faith and good works. For him, this was not only a religious question based on the doctrines and practices of the medieval Roman Catholic church, but also a public question in a society which mingled church and state. Luther was not only accused of being a heretic because of his emphasis on justification by faith, but also a fomenter of societal upheaval. “Good works” was a subject kings and princes cared about for the proper functioning of society, and because the Church played such a key part in ruling society, leaders counted on her to promote morality and order. Luther was being pressed to show that his reforms of Church teaching would provide salutary effects in the real world and not cause havoc.
You will recognize much of what you read in Luther’s Treatise on Good Works, particularly:
God defines what good works are in his commandments.
Faith is the greatest good work, and is not just one good work among the rest, but rather the source of all other genuine good works.
In the Treatise the reformer also emphasized certain aspects of good works that form the foundation of such distinct Lutheran emphases as the doctrine of vocation.
The church had defined good works narrowly, limiting them to “religious” acts and exercises separated from the stuff of everyday work and relationships. Luther sought to restore a much more down-to-earth understanding of the deeds God requires and to encourage Christians to practice works of love and mercy in the course of ordinary life.
If you ask further, whether they count it also a good work when they work at their trade, walk, stand, eat, drink, sleep, and do all kinds of works for the nourishment of the body or for the common welfare, and whether they believe that God takes pleasure in them because of such works, you will find that they say, “No”; and they define good works so narrowly that they are made to consist only of praying in church, fasting, and almsgiving. Other works they consider to be in vain, and think that God cares nothing for them. So through their damnable unbelief they curtail and lessen the service of God, Who is served by all things whatsoever that are done, spoken or thought in faith.
It is also important to remember that even though he often spoke disparagingly of them, Luther was not opposed to or distrustful of good works. He did not hesitate to talk in terms of their necessity and stated that his goal was to lead people to “to the true, genuine, thoroughly good, believing works.” In fact, Luther says in his Treatise that teaching faith must inevitably lead to teaching and practicing good works. However, Luther was concerned for the health of Christendom in his day, and in a vivid illustration he remarked on what he felt his priorities must be:
Therefore, when some say that good works are forbidden when we preach faith alone, it is as if I said to a sick man: “If you had health, you would have the use of all your limbs; but without health, the works of all your limbs are nothing”; and he wanted to infer that I had forbidden the works of all his limbs; whereas, on the contrary, I meant that he must first have health, which will work all the works of all the members. So faith also must be in all works the master-workman and captain, or they are nothing at all.
What Luther opposed was a number of false understandings about good works, but always with the intention of helping Christians to follow Christ’s example of self-giving love.
Indeed, in a chapter in Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther, Simo Peura argues that Luther was not interested in faith merely as an answer to the question, “How can I find the merciful God?” Instead Pero says, “He was trying to work out a solid answer to the great commandment of Scripture: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself’ (Luke 10:27).”
The “whole intent” of Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith was more than the verdict of being declared righteousness. He was concerned about how people could be brought into union with God so that they might receive God’s love and so be enabled to fulfill the Law of Love. As sinners, we are turned in upon ourselves — incurvatus in se. It takes becoming united with God — the self-giving One — to turn us from ourselves toward God and our neighbors.
Luther’s entire theological work can be viewed as an attempt to solve the problem of self-serving love. Both his view of salvation and his social-ethical writings concern the same problem. . . .
. . . Luther offers several examples of his intention to deal with the problem of pure love. His effort to build a system of social welfare with the city council of Wittenberg, his emphasis on the Golden Rule as the basis for all interhuman relations, his doctrine of two kingdoms, his critique of usury and the legal system, and his instructions for being a righteous and fair sovereign are all attempts to point out the necessity of loving God from one’s whole heart and the neighbor as oneself. He was convinced that the problem of true love can only be solved through faith in God. For individuals cannot find the love that is commanded of them in themselves; it has to be given to them by God. (Union with Christ, p. 78)
Peuro discusses how the Large Catechism teaches us to understand God’s essential nature as that of pure, self-giving love. Through faith, we receive God’s gifts, but these gifts do not come to us in a way that is separate from God himself. Above all God gives himself to us. Since God is love, in union with him we too are enabled to love.
Faith is important because it alone enables us to receive God’s unselfish love. When God first reveals his pure love and gives himself with all of the gifts of salvation to us, we become partakers of God and of his nature as pure love. Only under the condition of God’s presence and participation do we begin to bring God’s love into existence in our lives. It is actually God himself who extends through our lives his love toward all of those who need his love and want to be saved. We, like all other creatures, are the hands and all of the means of God’s unselfish love.” (Union, p. 95)
Faith is a great gift of God, because it is the essential key which enables us to participate in God’s greatest gift, the gift of love, which fulfills his commandments and brings his life to the world.
Note from CM: One of the chief characteristics of Michael Spencer’s life, ministry, and writing was his emphasis on grace. On Mondays for a season, we are drawing from his writings on the subject.
• • •
For me, the Gospel itself is “the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24).
The Bible is incomprehensible apart from grace. It is the tidal wave predicted in the first scenes, and it eventually arrives to soak everything and everyone in Jesus. Titus summarizes the incarnation and work of Jesus as, “the Grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people.” The New Covenant is grace and truth from Jesus, as contrasted with the law that came through Moses. (Consult Hebrews for the difference.) Every single New Covenant blessing comes through grace. Listing the scriptures that substantiate this would be woefully redundant to most of my readers. The air of heaven is grace. The heart of the Father is grace. The “Good” in the Good News is grace.
Paul knows that grace is a potent brew, and so in Romans 6 he anticipates the objection that is running around in the minds of thousands of evangelical preachers. “Shall we continue to sin that grace may abound?” In other words, how can we be sure people will live the way they are supposed to if this grace thing is as good a deal as it appears to be? What a great opening for a chapter on all the things we HAVE to do to really, really, really be serious Christians. Get ready to take notes.
Instead, we get a list of the miraculous accomplishments of grace, all done by Christ, for us, outside of us and in the past, accompanied by an expanded admonition to “consider yourselves dead to sin, and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Yes, I know he says to “yield yourselves” to God, which sounds like works, but keep reading. “…As men who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (Romans 6:13b-14).
Ahem. In other words, the entire sixth chapter of Romans says act like God has graciously done everything necessary for your salvation and you can’t do anything to save yourself. Grace, not legalism, not works, is the great motivator of the Christian life. Every appeal in Romans 6 is based on what God has done that we cannot do, and the greatest obedience flows from the grace of God.
The reason for this is clear: grace magnifies the giver.
It’s not that obedience has no capacity to magnify God. It does–if it comes from hearts ravished by grace, and not the accounting department.
, Simo Peura argues that Luther was not interested in faith merely as an answer to the question, “How can I find the merciful God?” Instead Pero says, “He was trying to work out a solid answer to the great commandment of Scripture: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself’ (Luke 10:27).”
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