Ch.13: “Walk”: Membership in God’s Subversive Counter-Revolutionary People (5):5:3-14

The Three “Be’s”

          Paul’s next three sections I call the three “Be’s”:  “Be sure” (5:5), “Be careful” (5:15), and “Be subject” (5:21).  In each he extends and makes more concrete his exposition of what membership in the community, or “walking” in faith means for God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people.  In fact, our key posture image “walk” appears in the first two sections (vv.8 and 15).

“Be Sure” (5:3-14)

          This section is in two parts (5:3-5; 6-14).  The first deals with various forms of disobedience, the second with the disobedient and the difference baptism makes.  Each section is marked by Paul’s concern for certainty on the matters he addresses:  “be sure” in v.5 and “Let no one deceive you” on v.6.

5:3-5

          God’s people, set apart for God’s service (“saints,” v.3), children of the Holy One of Israel (Is.17:7), are marked by their Father’s holiness.  That rules out the presence of the corruptions Paul highlights: vapid and vulgar talk, sex, compromises of various sorts, and greed/idolatry (more on this later).[1]  No “talk-show” mentality shall govern our conversations with each other.  No greed shall mark our lifestyles either. The church is to be the kind of people whose life does not give credence even to rumors of such things.  Or when such things happen they are dealt with in constructive and health-generating ways (see comment on 5:26).

          Rather, it is “thanksgiving” that marks this people out as God’s people.  Elsewhere in Ephesians “giving thanks” is related to being filled with the Spirit (5:20).  Thanksgiving turns our hearts and minds to God and all that God is and has done for us.  Gratitude orients us to life as gift and generosity as a way of being.  It invites us to treasure God’s gifts (esp. each other) and encourage others to live into their giftedness.  Thanksgiving anchors our attention on God’s agenda and opens us to his call to action.  New Testament scholar Peter O’Brien even calls thanksgiving “a virtual synonym for the Christian life” (see esp. Rom. 1:21; 14:6; 2 Cor. 4:15; Col. 3:17).[2]

          In my reformed tradition thanksgiving or gratitude is considered the chief response of faith to God’s grace.  In fact, in The Heidelberg Catechism, a 16^th century statement of faith in the PC(U.S.A.)’s Book of Confessions, gratitude is the rubric used to characterize the entirety of a faithful human response to God!

          The most interesting feature of this verse is Paul’s equation of greed with idolatry, or more precisely, the greedy person with an idolater (v.5).  Greed is not usually paired or associated with idolatry.  It grabs one’s attention.  Perhaps that’s part of what Paul intended.  

          19^th century preacher Albert Barnes suggests four reasons why greed is not taken too seriously by us:

(1) it is so common;                                                                                                         (2) it is socially acceptable;                                                                                                (3) it is not so easy to definitively define what is greed; and                                                                                                                             (4) because the public conscience is seared.[3]

          This situation still prevails today, 150 years later.  And it probably wasn’t all that different in Paul’s day.  Except they took it more seriously than we do.  The Jewish tradition and early church teaching strongly condemned greed and what we would call today materialism.  They linked greed with injustice as well.

          In addition to our passage here, three other texts also equate greed and idolatry.  Colossians 3:5 makes the same equation.  And Jesus twice makes it (Matthew 6:24 and Luke 16:13).  And this same seriousness attends Christian attitudes toward greed on through till the modern period till it became, in effect, our de facto religion.

          What does he mean by this equation of greed with idolatry, though?

          Brian Rosner helps us understand.

“Greed and idolatry in the ancient world in fact had a lot in common. First, both focused attention on items made of gold and silver. In biblical and Jewish tradition, these two metals are frequently associated with both the greedy, who can be called literally ‘lovers of silver’, and the idols of pagan worship, beginning with the golden calf. Secondly, both the greedy and the idolater visited pagan temples—the latter for obvious reasons, and the former since in antiquity the temples operated not only as places of worship but as banks. And thirdly, both greed and idolatry, according to moral exhortation found in the New Testament, were considered to be of such gravity that they ought to be “fled”; greed in 1 Timothy 6:11 and idolatry in 1 Corinthians 10:14.[4]

In sum, then, greed is idolatry in that it is a distorted, misdirected love.  The “sweet poison of the false infinite,” as C. S. Lewis aptly called it in his science fiction novel Perelandra. 

          

 “Be sure,” Paul warns, such practices and lifestyles disqualify one from “the kingdom of Christ and God”.  Here, as elsewhere in the New Testament, such statements mean habitual practice of these things, not a singular occurrence.  We all fail or fall from time to time.  If our response on those occasions is repentance and renewed pursuit of God, that is as it should be.  If, however, we rationalize, deny, or ignore these failures, virtually justifying them, we stand in danger of repeating them and falling into habitual patterns which place us in the jeopardy Paul warns against here.

          In this first part of the “Be Sure” section Paul diagnoses the most common sins which betray our Lord and nullify our witness to the new life and new creation we have and are in him.  He is blunt and uncompromising here.  Sins of tongue corrode the quality of our community and do not build one another up or minister grace to them.  Ravenous greed, that is our insatiable appetite for more and more stuff, not only leads to injustice (e.g. extremes of poverty and wealth in the church, not to mention the world) but sunders our relation to God at its root. 

          In the next section Paul moves on to a prescription.

                                                                  5:6-14

          In v.6 Paul doubles down on his theme:  “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes on those who are disobedient.”  You can’t be a counter-revolutionary subversive for God’s kingdom if you’re enmeshed in the very activities with the very people that need to be subverted! 

          Therefore Paul uses another sun-word[5], “be associated” (co-participants), here with another to follow in v.11.  Only here he negates them:  “do not be associated with them”.  Obviously, he cannot mean never have contact with folks who do these sorts of thing.  This would be impossible (1 Cor.5:10), on the one hand, and counter to the mission of the church on the other.  No, what Paul means here is that we do not “join up” with them.  That is, we do not derive our sense of identity and purpose in life from them and we do not share with them in their disobedient attitudes and actions.

          In v.8 we meet two features we have already seen in ch.2:  the “once . . . but now” contrast (2:3-4, 11 and 13) and the baptismal setting of change from one state to another (darkness to light) in 2:5-6, 14-16.  Baptism dramatizes the change in our life brought about by Christ.  This change is both real and pervasive.  So real and pervasive that in consequence Paul admonishes his churches to “live (literally “walk”) as children of light”.  Again we meet the characteristic pattern of Paul’s ethics:  become what you already are.

          Indeed, Paul mixes familial and agricultural images here to capture the reality and depth of this baptismal change.  “Children” are to bear light’s “fruit” – acts that embody goodness, justice, and truth[6] - essential characteristics of Christ himself.  Neufeld Yoder notes the role of this triad of terms in Ephesians:

“All three virtues are prominent in Ephesians:  justice and truth are constituent elements in the creation of the new human in the likeness of God (4:24) and are the first items listed in the divine armor in 6:14.  They are thus related to the ‘nature’ of the new human and also constitute the way the new human acts.  No other virtue is as frequently stressed in Ephesians as truth (1:13; 4:21, 24, 25; 6:14 . . .) At the same time, goodness takes on a comprehensive quality, especially in 2:10 where it is explicitly related to works. . .[7]

This triad of virtues is what is “pleasing to the Lord”, what we are to “try to find out” (v.10).

          Baptism transforms God’s people into light.  God’s light is reflected in the world through attitudes and actions embodying God’s goodness, justice, and truth by those who seek and embrace them.  Paul rounds off this section in vv.11-14 with some direction on how the transforming power of God works itself out in practice.

          We meet our second sun-word in this section here.  It carries the same sense of non-participation in the “works of darkness” as we saw in v.7.  It’s worth re-iterating that Paul is not talking about physical separation or non-contact.  He’s not promoting the church becoming a “holy huddle” turned in upon itself.  Rather, as we will see, we are called to “expose” the works of darkness which presumes contact and relationship with others.

          Paul’s reason for our non-participation in these activities is that they are “unfruitful”.  In v.9 we learned that the “fruit” God desires and has given us to bear consists of goodness, justice, and truth.  “Unfruitful” actions, then, are those that do not promote these virtues.  Indeed, they actively work against them.   

          Our task as the people of God is to “expose” these actions, some of which take part under the cover of darkness because they are exceedingly “shameful”.  Paul may have sexual sins in mind here.  If so, it is not because they are worse than other sins, but because they display in graphic ways the distortions living apart from God creates in our lives.  But what does Paul mean by “expose them”?

          In simplest terms: be a contrast to them.  In word and deed, attitude and action, embody a different way of life that exhibits and recognizes the goodness, justice, and truth of God.  Goodness is the human shape of God’s love in this world, justice the human shape of God’s way in this world, and truth the human shape of God will in this world.  By living, loving, listening, laughing, lingering in and with those we encounter from day to day in these ways differences will be demonstrated and noticed.  The light of God’s way and will shine through the church making visible what’s really going on the world.

          Here we meet the public face of the discernment we met in v.10.  There the community works to discern what God would have them do, what is pleasing to him.  We can call this the inner face of discernment.  To live as a contrast to the world around them is a public demonstration of the fruits of such inner discernment, hence its public face.

          Exposure by the light is not to one-up those outside the church.  It’s not to condemn or embarrass them, though it may occasionally do this.  Rather the purpose of this exposure of deeds of “darkness” is evangelical.  It intends to open the way of life to them.  That’s what Paul seems to point toward in the first phrase of v.14:  “for everything that becomes visible is light.”  When God’s light shines on someone or something that person or things takes on the quality of light; it becomes light.  Our intent in living as and spreading divine light is transformative through exposure of darkness to light.

          Paul closes out his exhortation to “be sure” by quoting a traditional saying  (“Therefore it says”) that recalls baptism as the event and sacrament of the transformative power of light.  His churches have shared in this sacramental event and Paul reminds them of the certainty they share because of it.  They were once “Sleepers” but have now awakened and experienced resurrection because Christ has shined on them.

          This language of shining and light would also remind Paul’s hearers of the great prophecy of Isaiah 60:1-5:

“Arise, shine; for your light has come,
   and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover the earth,
   and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you,
   and his glory will appear over you.
Nations shall come to your light,
   and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

Lift up your eyes and look around;
   they all gather together, they come to you;
your sons shall come from far away,
   and your daughters shall be carried on their nurses’ arms.
Then you shall see and be radiant;
   your heart shall thrill and rejoice,
because the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you,
   the wealth of the nations shall come to you.”

          Allusion to this prophecy reminds Paul’s churches of their calling and vocation.  They are that people of Abraham whom God intends to use to spread his divine blessing to everyone else.  They are, as I have been calling them in this commentary, God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people.  Isa.60 relates this calling and vocation directly to God’s arising and shining on his people which enables them to arise and shine on the world!

          Thus we can “be sure” that we belong to the light and have been delivered and enabled to shine that light and refrain from being shackled to or consumed by the practice of darkness that were formerly their lifestyle.  The certainty of God’s transforming work for and in us and the reminders of our identity and vocation are powerful aids in our efforts to live as God would have us.

We Practice “Walking” as God’s Subversive Counter-Revolutionary People (11): 5:3-14

    

        Few things have captured the church’s heart and imagination in North America than the idolatry of greed.  Few would even try to deny it.  In fact, we done our best to try and bless and sanctify our greed and priority of the pursuit of wealth.  In the early church it was not so.  Among the most eloquent dissenters from the idolatry of greed is St. John Chrysostom, the aptly named “golden tongue”.  We can do little better than to hear from him about this utterly crucial matter.

1.     St. John Chrysostom[8]

“Nothing is more fallacious than wealth. It is a hostile comrade, a domestic enemy.”

“How think you that you obey Christ's commandments, when you spend your time collecting interest, piling up loans, buying slaves like livestock, and merging business with business? ... Upon this you heap injustice, taking possession of lands and houses, and multiplying poverty and hunger.”

“Do you wish to honor the Body of the Savior? Do not despise it when it is naked. Do not honor it in church with silk vestments while outside it is naked and numb with cold. He who said, 'This is my body,' and made it so by his word, is the same that said, 'You saw me hungry and you gave me no food. As you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me.' Honor him then by sharing your property with the poor. For what God needs is not golden chalices but golden souls.”

“In the matter of piety, poverty serves us better than wealth, and work better than idleness, especially since wealth becomes an obstacle even for those who do not devote themselves to it. Yet, when we must put aside our wrath, quench our envy, soften our anger, offer our prayers, and show a disposition which is reasonable, mild, kindly, and loving, how could poverty stand in our way?”

“For we accomplish these things not by spending money but by making the correct choice. Almsgiving above all else requires money, but even this shines with a brighter luster when the alms are given from our poverty. The widow who paid in the two mites was poorer than any human, but she outdid them all.”

“Every day the church here (in Antioch] feeds 3000 people. Besides this, the church daily helps provide food and clothes for prisoners, the hospitalized, pilgrims, cripples, churchmen, and others. If only ten [other groups of] people were willing to do this, there wouldn't be a single poor man left in town.”

“The rich man is not one who is in possession of much, but one who gives much.”

What would have to happen in you and in your church to take Chrysostom’s counsel to heart and reorient our lives around the gospel call to live simply, give generously, and serve the poor and needy in our neighborhoods? 

  

2.    Sins of the tongue feature large in scripture.  Among the “obscene, silly, and vulgar talk” Paul warns against here, surely gossip ranks as the least feared and most practiced.  Few things undo the fabric of our community more insidiously and comprehensively than gossip.  I define gossip simply as anything we say to others about people that we would not say to them personally.  There may be some legitimate exceptions to this but by and large most of the time this definition will apply.  And it’s those usually small and seemingly inconsequential things we share about others as a matter of course that undo us.  Such banter assumes that the lives, reputations, motivations, and intentions of others are legitimate matters of conversation between us and others who normally know little or nothing about such.  Nevertheless they speculate about them together in a way that negatively shapes our attitudes and actions about these sisters and brothers in the body.

Here’s an excerpt from C. S. Lewis’ famous sermon “The Weight of Glory”.  If we take him seriously, we will never engage in gossip again.  A bold claim, I know.  Yet see if you don’t agree after reading Lewis’ words.

“It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter;  it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor.  The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’ glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.  It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.  All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations.  It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.  There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilization – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.  But it is with immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.  This does not mean that we are to ne perpetually solemn.  We must play.  But our merriment must be of that kind )and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously – no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.  And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner – no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.  Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your sense.  If he is you Christian neighbor he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ . . . the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.”[9]

         

Ponder and pray over these words.  And then ponder and pray over them again.  And again, until God uses them to change the way relate to each and every person you meet, and particularly the way we talk and shape our own and others’ attitudes and behavior toward them.

         

         

         

         

---

[1] Yoder Neufeld notes, “The radical covenanters at Qumran censured such behavior severely (thirty days for someone who ‘giggles so that his voice is heard,’ along with such inappropriate behavior as spitting, exposing oneself, speaking ill of fellow members of the community, or falling asleep at meetings)”, Ephesians, 229.

[2] Cited in Snodgrass, Ephesians, 269.

[3] Cited in Brian Rosner, “Unmasking Greed,” at http://www.matthiasmedia.com/briefing/2000/02/unmasking-greed/

[4] Brian Rosner*

[5] See ch.7 for list of other clusters of sun-words in Ephesians.

[6] The “fruit” language is also found in Gal.5:22, the “fruit of the Spirit”, with a more extensive list of qualities.

[7] Yoder Neufeld, Ephesians, 233.

 [8]http://www.quotesby.net/John-Chrysostom.

[9] http://www.verber.com/mark/xian/weight-of-glory.pdf

Ch.12: “Walk”: Membership in God’s Subversive Counter-Revolutionary People (4):4:25-5:2

Movement Busters, Movement Builders

          Paul now moves into the nuts and bolts of how this subversive counter-revolutionary movement works and the dynamics that animate it.  He builds on the baptismal foundation he laid in the previous section.  Note the repetition of the “put away” language from v.22).  Instead of taking the first phrase of v.25 as a command (as in the NRSV and NIV), which is grammatically possible, I think it better to take is as the basis for the succeeding admonitions, “having put away falsehood” (as in the CEB, NET).  Further, I think Yoder Neufeld is right to take “falsehood” as parallel to “your former way of life” of v.22, leaving us with a translation:  “therefore, having put away this false way of living”.[1]

          Having put the old way of life behind us in baptism, Paul begins his exhortations by urging his churches to live truthfully (“speak the truth”; see 4:15 and the comment there on “truthing it in love) with each other “for we are members of one another”.  This language suggests more than simply “telling the truth”.  That’s certainly included in Paul’s exhortation but seems a little trite if taken literally.  If we are indeed “members of one another,” that is, organically related to each other, it seems appropriate to take “speaking the truth” in a larger sense of sharing the truth of the new life we’ve been given in baptism with each other (as we did at 4:15).

          That new life, the attitudes and behaviors that bust or build God’s movement, looks like this according to Paul:

                   Movement Busters                       Movement Builders

Be angry (v.26)                           but do not sin (v.26)

Thieves stop stealing (v.28)          do honest work (v.28)

No evil talk (v.29)                        but edifying talk (v.29)

Do not grieve the Spirit (v.30)        (rather please the Spirit)

No bitterness, wrath, anger,          kind, tender-hearted, forgiving (v.32)     wrangling, slander, malice (v.31)

          Now most of these movement busters and builders don’t need extensive comment.  Understanding them is not the problem.  Practicing them is. However, a couple of them do need some unpacking.

          Paul’s teaching on anger is first.  Traditionally, Paul is thought to be saying that anger can be justified and only becomes sinful if we allow it to linger and fester (“to let the sun go down” on it).  Not allowing our anger to fester is certainly sound advice.  However, it may well not be what Paul is talking about here.  Let’s look a bit further.

          The word “anger” is not used elsewhere in the New Testament.  In the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint or LXX) this word parorgismos means “provocation to anger”.[2]  In this case we would read “do not let the sun go down on your provocation to anger.”  It is no longer anger that is the problem but that which provokes it. In this case, the sin is to be angry but to fail to deal with that which causes it.  Whether anger is justified or not, it is a reality we face in the body of Christ.  Things happen which make us mad.  But it those “things that happen” that need to be dealt with, not our anger.  Indeed, our anger should be the impetus for us to act and deal with what is causing it.[3] 

In our context, “provocations to anger” will be attitudes and acts that violate the integrity of the body of Christ.  The devil finds “room” in our community when we leave such “provocations” untouched and allowed to wreak further havoc among us.  When relationships are fractured, injustice perpetrated, promiscuity tolerated, authority abused, and so on, these things must be dealt with post haste.  Our anger at such happenings is the fuel that moves us to deal with them, however unpleasant and even conflictual that may be.  Paul counsels “tough love” within the church here.  In the spirit of Jesus’ own counsel in Matt.18, we must find ways to confront, have conversation about, and conciliate around our issues, thus demonstrating the love of God in action.  Thus, Paul’s teaching here is much more radical than the traditional interpretation allows.

“Do not grieve the Spirit,” also needs some additional comment.  What does this strange (to us) expression mean?

          

 A review of what Paul has taught us about the Spirit thus far in Ephesians gets us started. 

-the Spirit is the “seal” or down payment that initiates our experience of God’s salvation and assures us that God will deliver its full reality to us (1:14)

-the Spirit is God’s “wisdom and revelation” to us that we might truly know and encounter God (1:17)

-in the Spirit we are being built into a “holy temple,” “a dwelling place for God” (2:22-22)

-the Spirit is the source of God’s power in us (3:17)

-the Spirit is essential to our experience of God (4:4)

-here the Spirit is described similarly to 1:14 as the “seal” or promise of a full experience of salvation

          

 To “grieve the Spirit,” then, means attitudes and actions that undermine the very best resource God has given us to experience him and be and do all that he has called us to be and do.  The Spirit is the life of the body; to grieve the Spirit is to act in death-dealing ways detailed in this and other parts of this letter.

          What is more important for us to note are the reasons Paul gives for such behavior.  We are to “walk” (5:2) in ways that are life-giving “for we are members of one another”.  If we are organically related to one another, our well-being and destiny are inextricably united.  We must work to keep the life flowing through the whole system.  Blockages and breaks anywhere lead to diminished well-being for the whole body.

          We deal with the sin and difficulties in our communities through confrontation-conversation-conciliation to remove the provocations to anger from our midst so the devil has no foothold to continue to divide and conquer us.  Again, it is the well-being of the whole community that is at stake in this practice.

          Thieves no longer steal but engage in honest labor.  It is interesting to note that erstwhile thieves are among Paul’s churches!  At any rate, they engage in such labor “so as to have something to share with the needy” (v.28).  For their own sake and integrity and for the reach of the church’s care for the poor, these reformed thieves do a 180° turn and instead of seeking their own interests by whatever means, they find themselves seeking the good of the poor by means of honest labor.

          We forswear evil talk, talk which divides, demeans, and diminishes others, for such talk often irreparably harms the quality of our community.  Trust, honesty, and transparency go by the boards when evil talk sows its wretched seeds.  Instead, we discipline ourselves and our tongues so that our speech edifies others and graces them up to better fulfill their roles in the body and help it grow to maturity (v.29; see also 4:16). The health and well-being of the community again provides the rationale for such counsel.

          We have seen above that “grieving the Spirit” has ultimately to do with the character of the congregation as a subversive counter-cultural movement.

          We are to eschew bitterness, wrath, anger, wrangling, slander, and malice – quintessential movement busters – in favor of kindness, tender-heartedness, and mutual forgiveness.  Obviously community well-being is to the fore here as well.  But Paul adds something startling at this point.  We are to forgive one another “as God in Christ has forgiven you” (v.32).  This is no mere human action, the milk of human kindness showing our essential goodness.  No, this is the radical, cross-bearing, suffering servant love that goes far beyond what we can generate on our own.  God in Christ has forgiven us totally and completely, unconditionally, no longer counting our trespasses against us.  In a word, God in Christ forgives in such a way that our sin never again shadows our relationship to him.  That’s the way we are to forgive, says Paul.  In forgiving others we are to let go of their sin against us in such a way that it never again shadows our relationship and vice versa.  And his assumption is that we can indeed forgive that way because we have been forgiven that way.  We also have the Spirit ministering God’s life to us and strengthening us to live as God desires.

          We can now fill out an adjusted profile of these movement busters and builders along with their various rationales. 

Movement Busters                          Movement Builders                       Rationale

Be angry at sin and injustice           do not sin by failing to deal with it     don’t give the devil room in the church

Thieves stop stealing                         do honest work                          to give to the poor

No evil talk                                       but edifying talk                         to give grace to the community

Do not grieve the Spirit                     (rather please the Spirit)             because you are a people of salvation

No bitterness, wrath, anger,            kind, tender-hearted, forgiving          as Christ has forgiven us              wrangling, slander, malice

            If we put all these rationales together, we get an overview of Paul’s vision for what the church’s “walk” looks like.  We live our lives as a gift, a gift of salvation through the Spirit who empowers us to become God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people.  The basis for this gift and power of new life is God’s total, complete, and unconditional forgiveness for us.  In the power of such forgiveness we are able to live with each other graciously, even when we have to confront and correct matters that come between us, and are focused on our mission of standing with and caring for the poor.

           Does that look like your church, or mine?  Probably not much, unless I miss my guess.

Conclusion

            Paul draws this section to its conclusion with an even more astonishing call:  “Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children” (5:1).  Paul is not alone here.  Jesus calls us to “perfect” as God the Father is perfect (Mt.5:48) and Peter echoes Leviticus in calling us to holy as the Lord himself is holy (1 Pet.1:16; Lev.19:2).  All of this is to say that as “beloved children” we ought bear the family characteristics.

          We do this, of course, not on our own steam.  We do it by living out the love we have been given by the Father’s unique Son as he sacrificed himself to the Father for us.  In his love we too can love as a child of the Father, thus “imitating” him as did Jesus Christ.  This call to imitate God puts all the movement builders Paul has enumerated for us in context.  They are each and all of them together expressions of this imitative love that proves to the world the Father’s love for his creatures and creation.   

We Practice “Walking” as God’s Subversive Counter-Revolutionary People (10)

4:25-5:2

          Since forgiveness is so crucial to everything Christian, I offer for our “practice” section on this passage the following reflection on forgiveness by Professor Ben Myers on his blog “Faith and Theology” (http://www.faith-theology.com/2006/10/theology-for-beginners-19-forgiveness.html).  Read this carefully and meditatively and consider your own views and practice of forgiveness in its light.

Theology for beginners (19): Forgiveness

Summary: The freedom of the Christian life is above all the freedom of forgiveness: living in the forgiveness of God, we are set free to forgive the debts of others.

We have spoken of the freedom of the Christian community. And we must now focus on the most distinctive and most fundamental form of this freedom: the freedom of forgiveness.

Right from the start, the Christian life is constituted by the gift of forgiveness. At the beginning of the Christian life, the bath of baptism dramatically enacts the free and unconditional gift of forgiveness by which God receives human beings into the fellowship of his own triune life. In baptism, the past is washed away. All our guilt and shame is removed – it is drowned and left behind in the water. In this way, the power of the past is broken, so that a person emerges from the water into new life, into a life wholly open to the future of God’s coming kingdom.

Forgiveness is not, however, merely the start of the Christian life. Each day and at every moment, we continue to live by the power of forgiveness. Each day, the Christian community repeats the same prayer: “Forgive us our debts!” Each day, we continue to need and to ask for God’s forgiveness. Thus although we are baptised only once, throughout the whole Christian life we continue to share in the eucharistic meal – the meal of forgiveness. Just as we share together in the bread and wine, so we are reminded that God’s forgiving grace is our food and drink, our nourishment, our very life. To eat and drink forgiveness, to be sustained by forgiveness – this is the meaning of the Christian life.

And so our prayer each day is: “Forgive us our debts!” Forgiveness is the opposite of being treated as we deserve to be treated. It is the opposite of restitutive justice. It is the opposite of “karma,” of reaping what has been sowed. It is the opposite of every kind of moral legalism. So too, it is the opposite of making amends for the past. It is the opposite of conditions, negotiation, exchange.

Forgiveness is not restitution – it is unconditional pardon. It is cancellation of debt. Forgiveness therefore involves both a recognition of the debt that is owed, and an irreversible decision that the debt will be cancelled. It is thus not a matter of simply forgetting the past – it is a powerful annulment of the past, an act in which the chains of the past are broken. Through forgiveness, the past itself is thus transformed into something new, just as the future is suddenly opened in a new way. Liberated from the power of the past, I am now set in motion towards a future rich with hope and possibility. This, then, is the unique freedom of the Christian life: to stand forgiven before God, and thus truly to be free in relation to my own past and to the future of God’s kingdom.

But our daily prayer is not only “forgive us our debts.” In fact, our prayer is: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive those who are in debt to us.” This prayer means: “Set me free from the past, just as I release others from the chains of their past. Cancel my debts today, just as today I release others from the debts they owe me. Do not demand restitution for guilt from me, just as I refuse to demand restitution from others. Set me free from the need to make amends, just as I excuse others from this need. Forgive me unconditionally, just as I forgive without negotiation or condition.”

To pray this way is to pray for something radical, something that shatters all our assumptions and expectations about the basic patterns of ordinary social life. In our world, you don’t get anything for nothing. If you want something, you must pay for it; you must make some kind of exchange. But forgiveness overturns the entire economy of exchange – in forgiveness, I give you something for nothing, without requiring payment or exchange, without demanding anything in return. In the economy of exchange, you are bound to me by various contracts and conditions – but in the economy of forgiveness, you are set free from all bondage to me, unconditionally liberated from all indebtedness to me.

Forgiveness is thus something shocking, something astonishing and unexpected. It lies outside the basic patterns and assumptions that underpin our entire culture. It is wholly undetermined and contingent. It is an event that can never be anticipated in advance. It is an irruption of the ordinary. Until we have been shocked and astonished – yes, frightened! – by the power of forgiveness, we have not yet even begun to understand what is involved here.

Forgiveness is shocking because it is a miracle. In and of myself, I lack the capacity to forgive – but as I receive the forgiving love of God in Jesus, I am empowered by the Spirit to become an agent of that same forgiveness. Because I have been forgiven, I can and must forgive. When I forgive a person who has wronged me, that person is truly forgiven – she is liberated from the chains of the past and set free to participate in the life of God’s coming kingdom. So too, when this person forgives me, I am truly forgiven – I am liberated from the past and welcomed into the life of the kingdom. Through the power of the Spirit, human society in all its forms can thus begin to glimpse and to participate in the life of the kingdom through this astounding miracle of reciprocal forgiveness.

To forgive, therefore, is not only a personal act – it is also a social and political act, an act pregnant with the promise of a new future for our world. In international relations and in domestic penal policy, it overturns the politics of vengeance. In social relationships, it overturns the demand for retribution and compensation – the violent demand to be “given one’s due” at any cost. Indeed, in the first century the early Christians interpreted Jesus’ entire ministry as a liberating act of debt-cancellation: in Jesus, the Year of Jubilee had arrived, a time in which all debts were written off, so that the poor could be released from their financial servitude. This, too, is what forgiveness means today. This is what we are asking for when we pray: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors!” The prayer for forgiveness is thus a revolutionary act, a radical contradiction of the whole economy that underlies the accepted patterns of thought and behaviour which drive our culture.

Indeed, the petition for forgiveness is identical with the petition for the coming of God’s kingdom: “Your kingdom come, your will be done; … and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors!” To live by forgiveness is already to participate in the life of God’s coming kingdom. To practise forgiveness in all our day-to-day social interactions is already to show the power and the life of God’s kingdom.

For the kingdom of God – the kingdom that Jesus announced, the kingdom that is now approaching all history like a fast train from the future – is a kingdom of forgiveness, a kingdom whose fundamental economy is one of unconditional, liberating love. To live in the power of this liberating love is the meaning of Christian freedom.

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[1] Yoder Neufeld, Ephesians, 209-10.

[2] This is the meaning of the verb form of this word in Eph.6:4:  “do not provoke your children to anger”.

[3] I owe this insight to Yoder Neufeld, Ephesians, 212.