Living Story Grace

“So, my dear family, this is my appeal to you, by the mercies of God:  offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.  This is your true and appropriate worship.  What’s more, don’t let yourself be squeezed into the shape dictated by the present age.  Instead, be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you can work out and approve what God’s will is, what is good, acceptable and complete.”  Romans 12:1-2

I learned this verse many years ago, in my early Christian days.  Sadly, over the years I think I marginalized it in my vigilant battle against “works-righteousnesss.”   In his book, After You Believe,  N.T. Wright writes about this strange happening in all camps of contemporary evangelical Christianity, reminding us that THINKING is a necessary and essential part of growing as a Christian.  Listen to how he says it:

“Part of the problem in contemporary Christianity, I believe, is that talk about freedom of the Spirit, about the grace which sweeps us off our feet and heals and transforms our lives, has been taken over surreptitiously by a kind of low-grade romanticism, colluding with an anti-intellectual streak in the culture, generating the assumption that the more spiritual you are, the less you need to think.

I cannot stress too strongly that this is a mistake.  The more genuinely spiritual you are, according to Romans 12 and Philippians 1, the more clearly and accurately and carefully you will think, particularly about what the completed goal of your Christian journey will be and hence what steps you should be taking, what habits you should be acquiring, as part of the journey toward that goal right now. Thinking clearly and Christianly is thus both a key element within the total rehumanizing process (you won’t be fully human if you leave your thinking and reasoning behind) and a vital part of the motor which drives the rest of that process.” P. 158

“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. ¹⁰Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.”  Romans 12:9-10

Let’s face it, love is tough.  It’s hard to know what it means to love in every situation.  The challenge of love keeps us on our knees, seeking the Holy Spirit’s wisdom and guidance for the loving words to speak in each situation, the kind actions to take.  Hear what Tim Keller has to say about Romans 12:9-10

First, we are told that our love must be true to our heart. Literally, the word “sincere” in Greek is an-hypokritos (unhypocritical). We are not to be phony in our dealings with people. We are not to be polite, helpful and apparently warm on the outside while on the inside despising them. This is so important because, within the church and any community which emphasizes traditional values, a culture of “niceness” can develop in which a veneer of pleasantness covers over a spirit of backbiting, gossip, prejudice.  There is a total lack of “tough love” in which people love each other enough to confront and be direct about problems and sins in oneself and in one’s friends.

Second, we are told, both negatively (hate) and positively (cling) that our love must be true to God’s will. We are told here that our love must “remember” and operate on the basis of the moral order of God. We must hate (literally to “be horrified” by) what God calls evil and we must cling (literally, to glue ourselves inseparably) to what God calls good. Why is this so important? Well, because when we love someone, it so often distorts our view of good and evil. Song lyrics capture the problem: “If loving you is wrong, I don’t want to be right!” “It can’t be wrong, if it feels so right!” In other words, if you love someone, your heart is bound up with the heart of the other. Their distress becomes yours and their happiness becomes yours. Therein lies the temptation to give the loved one what creates emotional joy, rather than what is best for them (but which may create emotional sadness or anger). It is an extremely common problem in child rearing. The parents don’t punish children consistently because they cannot bear their tears and anger. But the result of a discipline-less childhood is always disaster.

It may seem strange to tell someone to love, and then to hate in the same sentence, but that is what Paul does. We cannot love rightly without hating rightly! Now we see that this is closely linked to the “sincerity.” Real love loves the beloved enough to be “tough.” Real love “is so passionately devoted to the beloved so that it hates every evil which is incompatible with his or her highest welfare.” (Stott) God’s law reveals how our world and our souls were designed. To disobey God’s law is always bad for the beloved. Therefore, real love is concerned about truth.

Any love that is afraid to confront the beloved is really not love, but a selfish desire to be loved. This kind of selfish love is afraid to do what is right (toward God and the beloved) if it risks losing the affection of the beloved. It makes an idol out of the beloved. It says, “I’ll do anything to keep him or her loving me!” This is not loving the person — it is loving the love you get from the person. In other words, it is loving yourself more than the person. So any “love” that cuts corners morally or that fails to confront is not really love at all.

But true love is willing to confront, even to “lose” the beloved in the short run if there is a chance to help him or her. Here is a great quote that gets this across.

“Think of how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships… Real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys. Nearly a century ago the theologian E.H.Gifford wrote: ‘Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.’ The fact is… anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference.”

– Becky Pippert, Hope Has Its Reasons

in Tim Keller’s Romans Study, available through http://www.redeemer.com

I love Eugene Peterson’s Conversations, which integrates The Message Bible and commentaries and devotions from Peterson.

Today I continue the examination of Romans 12 with his thoughts on worship:

“Here’s a basic tension:  We keep trying to confine worship to the sanctuary — to preaching, prayers, and parish announcements, to religious experiences.  But God is commanding us to extend it to home, work, neighborhood, and leisure.  Worship is the style of life in which our bodies become living sacrifices offered up before God.

People have different skills, different strengths, different sensibilities.  God has given us one another so that we may have a shared life.  None of us can live the abundant life as hermits.  Nor can we live to the glory of God if we carefully pick whom we’re willing to associate with.  All who live are God’s creation and parts of the body of Christ.  We’re members of one another.  We exist in a family, together, not alone.

And here’s how God wants us to live in such a family:  worshipfully.

Life is full of financial inequities, and worship involves a generous response to the economic needs of others.  This reverses the natural inclinations of all of us.  We sometimes convince ourselves that everything we have has come from our own hard work and achievements.  And with pride we then hold on to it all, and in moments of good, we’ll dole out a little to church or to charity.

But worship is meant to be more complete than that:  It’s the offering of our total economic selves to the glory and service of God.  It means a liberal and generous assessment of other people’s needs in relation to our own.  Income and earning capacity is God’s gift to us, too — and must be part of offering our lives.”

This is a great devotion from Peterson.  I’ll stop here and offer some more tomorrow.  But between now and then it seems like a good idea to reflect on the hard challenge put before us — how do we view our gifts, and how do we view our giving?