Reflections on Paul

Number 12

Just out of curiosity, I quickly scanned both Galatians and Romans and found that wherever the name Abraham was found, the word faith was virtually always found nearby. In fact it was almost always within the sentence. The message was communicated over and over again that we are inheritors of Abraham through his faith in God. Not only were the children of Israel, the chosen ones, inheritors of God’s mercy and grace, ALL nations were equally and literally blessed. To be sons and daughters of Abraham carries the obligation to be faithful to God and to continue in his kindness in justifying us by ordering our life in the flesh toward sustenance and fulfillment of our life in the spirit. It becomes very clear that through Moses God gave the Jews the law to order their lives and to keep them from error it is only through the faith of Abraham they are justified and saved.


Peace.

Reflections on Paul

Number 11

What Paul says about God:

1.        God gave us Jesus whose sacrifice would rescue us from evil in accordance with God’s will. (1:1 and 1:4)

2.        God extends us grace and peace. (1:3)

3.        God destined Paul from birth to proclaim gospel of Jesus to the gentiles (1:15)

4.        It was through the grace of God that Christ freed us from justification through the law (2:21)

5.        God supplies the Spirit that works might deeds among us does it through grace that comes from faith and not works. (3:5)

6.        God foretold the good news he would justify the gentiles when he blessed Abraham because of Abraham’s faith. (3:8)

7.        God sent Jesus to that we might be adopted as free children, free from the burden of the law. (3:26 and elsewhere)

8.        God does not want us to be “lawless” because he wants us to refrain from immorality that would keep us from “inherit(ing) the kingdom of God.”

Paul’s repudiation of the law is striking from his prior life as a Pharisee. He morphed from being a driven defender of the law and Judaic tradition to emerge as even more driven opponent of those things. Paul was not satisfied with simply preaching a message of redemption by God’s grace through faith and to just proclaim that Jesus came to fulfill the law. Instead he defiantly smashed the idea that adherence to the law would serve God’s purpose. He personifies well the old maxim that there is no zealot like convert. 

Paul confidently proclaims his understanding of God’s purpose over and over again to drive home the message God wants us to have faith in him for the blessings he bestowed on us through Christ. His interpretation of God’s revelation is God blessed us through Abraham’s faith, determined we needed to be schooled us through Mosaic law but then freed from that same law through the death, resurrection and promised return of Jesus. 

The simplest way for me to relate how Paul preached the will of God is to say, according to Paul, God did not want us to rely on doing things like observing the law but by to have faith in him through the freeing gospel of Jesus. I understood the message well by the end of the first chapter but became dizzy from the repeated pounding he delivered to the Galatians by the time I staggered to the conclusion of the letter.

Peace.

Reflections on Paul

Number 10

The recurring, or more precisely, the continuing theme of Paul teaching to avoid reliance on the law and to live by faith in Jesus is both simple and yet maddeningly complex in grasping. The law proclaim by Moses was really quite simple  and was contained in 10 simple commandments. Laws are important because they provide a construct for forming a community or society and provide a framework that will endure down through generations. 

We need law for there to be order so laws are critical to the successful formation of a human organization. The problem is that what God gave to us in simplicity we made complex through our use of logic. We managed to take 10 simple rules and make them so burdensome that they become paralyzing. How did the commandment to keep holy the Sabbath get to the point that it became unlawful to drag a chair across the room? We lost the ability to remember to focus on the giver of the law but rather became consumed by the law itself. 

Paul preached that we should return our focus to God and his gift to us. the reality of Christ crucified for us is that God chose that gift as a way of restoring our focus on him. Paul does not teach us to be lawless because he exhorted us to "walk with God" and to live a moral life befitting our spiritual relationship with God. If we allow the gospel to govern us we will not need the old law but will allow God to guide our actions as Jesus taught us in the beatitudes.

Reflections on Paul

Number 9

In Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians we learn in the very first sentence that God calls us to do his will. Paul was called to be an apostle and he so states in very plain language. He goes on to remind the church in Corinth, through a message just as relevant today, that through Christ we are sanctified so we “are not lacking in any spiritual gifts.”

Later in the letter Paul talks at great length about how God has created each of us to seek certain gifts, charisms, bestowed on us by the Holy Spirit so we each might have a role to play in the building of his body which is the church. Spiritual gifts are not talents or attributes like speed, strength, intelligence or attractiveness but are, rather, gifts intended to empower us to become effective ministers on his behalf. In chapter 12 Paul references some of the gifts of the spirit such as the expression of wisdom, the expression of knowledge, healing and so on. He compares the gifts to parts of the body and we are challenged to not “consider (one part of the body) less honorable…”  Paul taught us to not exalt the possession of any particular part of the body over another because honor is given to the body as whole. He said if “one part is honored, all parts share its joy.”

The underlying theme is one of humility. In considering this, I thought about an old aphorism about pride which comes in the form of a cutting personal insult attributed to former football coach Barry Switzer who said of some unfortunate person, “He was born on third base and has went through life thinking he hit a triple.” We can be like that, we humans can and those of us who work in the service of God can live up the full measure of Switzer’s insult as well as anyone. When we engage in service or the ministry of God, we can be filled up with pride which can cause us to forget who is the minister and who is God.

Look to 1 Cor 3:6-8: “I planted, Apollos watered but God caused the growth. Therefore, neither the one who plants nor the one waters is anything, but only God, who causes the growth.” I need to constantly remind myself service is a demand to seek humility for having been called and an opportunity to be grateful for the chance to be a conduit of the gifts granted me by God. Whatever we accomplish we achieve only when we become willing to humbly serve his will and not our own.

Peace

Reflections on Paul 

Number 8

It is funny to think I have read the First to the Corinthians countless times, reflected on several passages in some considerable detail but still failed to fully recognize the exact impact of 6:11:

That is what some of you used to be [sinners of various stripes and kind]; but now you have had yourselves washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

Though baptized, the Corinthians did not receive a spiritual salvation which freed the Corinthians from the vagaries of human desire and coarse behavior. Baptism did not provide some sort of religious get out of jail free card to allow Corinthians to live within the culturally acceptable mores of a hedonistic culture pervasive in the 1^st century which were incompatible with Christian moral teaching. 

I was struck by the similarity between this way of thinking and an unfair and inaccurate concept the sacrament of confession allows Catholics to sin freely because they can be washed free of sin via a quick trip to the confessional. Nothing could be further from the truth but a number of non-Catholics belief we can live a life filled with debauchery and sin and then go to confession and being freed from the effects of immoral behavior. Sadly, there likely a far greater number of Catholics than we would like to admit exist who share the same I-can-do-what-I-want-as-long- as-I-go-to-confession mentality.

During the course and scope of the epistle, Paul deconstructs the notion pride is beneficial; incest is acceptable, associating with anyone who is immoral, greedy, an idolater, a slanderer, a drunkard, or a robber. He goes on to explain that sexual immorality is destructive and is a desecration of a temple for the Holy Spirit. The trick for us to see beyond the archaic construct of ancient society and to seek to live up the moral standards defined by Paul.

Peace.

Reflections on Paul

Number 7

The question is asked is if we are a body with a soul or soul with a body. To argue the point allowed the Gnostics and the Corinthians before them to think that we are a body with a soul. If so, once the soul has been saved through baptism, would the body still matter? Conversely if we are soul with a body, do we need the body to to be saved? Either answer misses the point Paul is making. We are body AND soul. If our soul is saved through baptism we are called to use our body to glorify the savior. To do so allows us to begin to experience the joy we will find on heaven while we are still here on earth. Thanks be to God for making this known to us through Paul!

Reflections on Paul

Number 6

A short quote from Simone Weil that is relevant to the Philippians hymn - Phil 2:4-11:

"An imaginary divinity has been given to man so that he may strip himself of it like Christ did of his real divinity" (Gravity and Grace, 30)

When it comes to learning about our faith, I feel as if I am standing on a beach trying to drink down the entire ocean one coffee cup full at a time. There is so much to swallow and so little time to swallow it. At moment I am trying to drink in so much so quickly that most of water of knowledge is spilling off my chin onto my previously clean white dress shirt.

Anyway, I have spent some time sharing space with the concept of a grant of imaginary divinity. The connection to the hymn, I suspect, comes from the use of the word form. Jesus was in the form of God but he emptied himself to take the form of a slave that was human in likeness and appearance. We tend to describe things has having both form and substance.  Jesus was in the form of God and then also became in the form of man but he was also in the substance of God and man through the mystery of homeostatic union. His divinity and humanity were not imaginary in and sense.

So what of imaginary divinity? Humans are created in the image of God. In order to be visible or understandable the image must have a form that we can grasp. The form, however, does not have the substance of God. We are promised we that through the promised glorification of the second coming, we will be of the same substance as the risen Christ but for now our divinity has form but no real substance. It is imaginary.

What is the invisible divinity we strip away? Our freedom to choose, to make our decisions, to act on our initiative, to attempt to create what something new. We have to use our God granted free will to empty ourselves of our drive to rule our lives as we wish to chose to be obedient. Like God we have the ability to choose. Unlike God we are not free to determine his will. We have to strip away this notion of freedom in order to find the true freedom of eternal life by becoming obedient.

Peace.