By Such Stripes Are We Healed
by Jack Shaver
©The United Church of Canada, 1985
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 0-88622-196-X
7M/12/85/APL
Used with Permission
Friday
The zeal to be blameless is well lost
Philippians 3: 3-11
Of all the biblical writers, Paul is the one who deals most profoundly with the puzzling connection between righteousness and sin. Throughout his writing we see him putting sin and death and the law in the same class. At the same time he names the law as God's good gift! If life didn't have any organizing principles, any code of behaviour for society, any standards or values, humans would live in a state of constant war. If human beings didn't strive for righteousness, their life together would be disastrous.
But the problem is that a world full of people striving after righteousness is also enormously destructive. The world's religious wars have been as brutal as any. Our present conflict between superpowers which threatens to engulf the earth in the most destructive war ever, is a conflict between two righteous-minded solutions to the problem of social organization. In the medical field, the more zeal you have for healing, the more problem you have with letting people die with dignity. The more you seek to be a successful parent, the harder it is for you to free up your children to be
their own people. The more zeal you have to be blameless, the less you can undertake responsibility for putting right the evil in the world!
I don't think there is a neat comment that can put the problem of the relationship between sin and righteousness to rest. Paul admits several times that he sounds as if he is contradicting himself. I think it is that kind of problem. Every neat statement we make about it will have something wrong with it.
But one of Paul's most helpful comments on the matter comes in this Philippian letter. I like to call it Paul's own description of his conversion. The conversion we are familiar with is reported several times in the book of Acts. He is on his way to Damascus to seek out and punish the Christian community there when he sees a great
light and falls blinded to the ground. There we have a story written about Paul. Even if the words are often put in Paul's mouth, it is still in a book about him. This passage is from a document by him.
- First of all, note the unconventional thinking around the wordflesh. What does he list as examples of his confidence in the flesh?
- 1. Circumcision, the mark of his belongings to Israel,
2. his qualifying as a pharisee,
3. his zeal for God, so that he persecuted the church,
4. his blamelessness under the law!
Zeal for God, zeal to be blameless, these are confidence in the flesh!
And these are things to be well rid of, for the sake of Jesus Christ.
According to Paul, what he got converted from was "a righteousness of my own". That names the culprit. That's the heart of the predicament. That's what puts the world at odds with itself and with God. People with righteousness of their own.What he gave all that up for was righteousness from God, that depends on faith, a putting right that is God's doing, not our accomplishment. It is God who puts the world right with God.
Speak Lord
Almighty God, we beheld your glory, full of grace and truth in the Word made flesh.
We weren't expecting it. We expect you to reach us through something spiritual. We'd kind of given up on the flesh. We'd almost come to see the flesh as an affliction, as something to escape from.
What a breakthrough for the Word to become flesh, and dwell in our midst! We are inclined to think it is not possible.
But if it is possible, there is no better news. How our flesh would benefit from a Word made flesh!
O Holy Spirit, witness with our spirits to the Word made flesh. Point us to those places where we meet your Word made flesh.
Open our eyes to your visitation, our senses to your touch, our ears to your call. Renew our weary flesh, for it is with our bodies that we serve you, and it is in our flesh that we love and serve the world.
Purge our flesh with the glory we behold in the one who wa~ made sin for us.
And keep us in the way everlasting.
Amen