FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Scripture Reference: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31

The gospel of Christ is not obscure and deceitful. It does not ask for blind faith, faith without a reason, but it does ask for confession. It does not spare us the decision to recognize Christ as Lord. That decision is not made for us by the facts of the case, or by our parents, or by some irresistible logical proof. We sometimes try to avoid the risk of faith for our children by telling them that there is no other choice, that faith is unavoidable. That used to be convincing in a society dominated by the churches. However, that doesn’t bode well for an individual’s right to choose, no matter their choice.

As an example, Jesus was very forthright when He warned His listeners that they should not follow Him unless they were ready to suffer, as He was going to suffer.

The disciples of Jesus however, are a minority, not because particular doctrines that they hold on the grounds of particular revelatory experiences are not convincing to others. “The Greeks” could have respected that kind of special information. The disciples of Jesus are an unpopular minority because they love their enemies as Jesus did, and because their commitment to this path does not depend on its prior acceptability to others. It is not that they choose to be foolish but that they are committed to another standard of wisdom.

Sometime in August of 1525, in the midst of a frustrating debate about infant baptism in the office of the German Protestant reformer Oecolampadius, one of the Anabaptist participants said:

“What is needed is divine wisdom in order to see honor in the cross and life in death; we must deny ourselves and become fools.”

He was quoting our text, repeating a well-worn argument, familiar in the medieval pursuit of a mystical insight and in the Protestant argument against the then, scholastic church. What he was calling for, and what Paul is calling for, is not some sort of mysticism as being over or against reason, nor blind faith as being over or even against scholarship. What they called for is the understanding that the cross of Christ is in fact a new definition of truth, both as power and as wisdom.

One way all of us, both “Jews and Greeks,” seek to avoid this call is to redefine “following Jesus” so that it focuses on some point other than the cross. Like the famous Pastor Henry Maxwell in the best-selling Christian novel In His Steps, we transform “doing what Jesus would do” into doing with integrity and courage whatever we actually think is right in a particular situation. Yet the early Christians did not make Jesus an example in His celibacy, or in His not having a gainful occupation or a domicile—only in His cross; of which we also are to carry our own on a daily basis. In the Christian light, it is not foolish or weak, but rather showing our strength in following Jesus!

The other way of escape is to give great importance to the cross, but to give it some other meaning. In Christian pastoral care we speak of a person having a cross to bear and mean by that some conflict in interpersonal relations, or some intractable sickness or handicap. An accident or an illness may be called a “cross.”

In yet another school of pastoral care the cross symbolizes the experience of death to self: the discipline which in mystical or devotional exercises one can undergo as a part of becoming a Jesuit or a Quaker or a Wesleyan.

Or it is possible to move the cross from the realm of pastoral care to that of theology. In the realm of sin and grace it refers to the miracle of atonement. In the realm of history one can puzzle over the historical details of the Gospel accounts.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31

The cross of Christ later comes to have other meanings as well as the ones we covered in the previous part. It may be spoken about as penalty, as sacrifice, or as victory. But all such additional depths of meaning derive from and are dependent upon the social and historical one: a righteous Man was put to death because of the way He refused to let stand the unrighteousness of the powers in control of the people He came to liberate. It is also the way He calls all of His followers to take. That is what causes us to stumble; not that the cross is weak but that it asks too much strength from us.

Then, when Paul states that “Greeks seek wisdom,” again he is describing not a race or a nationality but a mental culture. By Greek he does not mean someone like Zorba. Nor does he mean all his readers in Corinth, the Greek city. He means to identify a mode of moral reasoning. Greek was the language of culture and of philosophy, even in Rome and in Egypt.

When he says “Greeks seek wisdom,” he is putting his finger on a way of reasoning with which we in most Western cultures have all learned.

All of our culture since then is indebted to the fathers of Greek philosophy, for the ability to ask regularly and rigorously, “But is that always true? Is it true for everyone?” We have learned to ask that truth be validated by its being general and not just particular, by its being true for everyone, not dependent upon perspective or bias. The philosopher Kant told us to ask of a moral statement whether it could be true for everyone. Democracy teaches us to consider as right what most people will vote for. Scholarship teaches us to respect the consensus of authorities. Truth is suspect if it cannot be commended to everyone.

When we apply that perspective to the Christian’s obligation to love the enemy, questions follow: “Can you ask that of everyone? Can you convince people that it will work? Does it not strike people as counter to common sense? Is it not most credible if you agree to label it as a rare peculiarity of a minority denomination, not to be asked or expected of others? Is it not irrelevant as guidance for the whole society?”

Paul does not agree with the “Greeks” that the word of the cross is foolish, but he understands how they might see it that way. He points out further that such wisdom does not in general facilitate people’s becoming believers:

“For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth” (1 Corinthians 1:26).

God’s message runs across the grain of our sense-making reflexes because those reflexes are tilted in our favor. What we call “reasonable” is against sacrifice and for self-preservation, against trusting and for demanding explanations, against risk, against the outsider and the enemy.

The human spirit is a sense-making organ, and that certainly is a good thing. We learn to test thoughts for their consistency. But, unfortunately, that skill can run away with us if we try in the same manner to handle situations that are different. Or we can assume that something must be false, since we don’t know everything about the situation.

For instance, we don’t need to concede that a peace commitment is irrelevant, or illogical. It is, in fact, possible to argue for love of neighbor on the grounds of the general wisdom of an ancient philosophical consensus, and the lessons of the history of the race, and what will make sense to most rational beings thinking carefully. But at the outset we cannot and should not attempt to validate the “love of enemy” by such criteria, as if our using such arguments were to be taken as granting that they have the final authority.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31

When the Apostle Paul says, “Jews demand signs,” we can surmise that statement sets the tone and is the precedent for the visions of national renewal by means of military upheaval which today are destroying Central America and the Middle East, Ukraine and other countries. We have a tendency to believe God is with us when we win with military might.

However, when you analyze it in that perspective, Jesus didn’t win. Any death is a defeat of a kind, but crucifixion was even worse than that. The Romans were military and they didn’t crucify petty thieves or murderers. It was the penalty for rebels, for murderers. From their perspective, Jesus’ death was the dramatic defeat of a movement leader.

That fact is still a stumbling block today. How can we believe in God if He is not our helper? How can Jesus be Lord if He is defeated?

One true answer to that kind of question is to say that Christian love is not so ineffective as all that. There are things that love alone can get done. There are kinds of nonviolent process which are quite effective in achieving valuable goals.

A social science called conflict resolution demonstrates that there are better and worse ways, which can be analyzed and learned, to defend valid interests. It can be shown as a fact of social science that massing destructive threat against destructive threat postpones the solution of problems, even if the war never happens, to say nothing of destroying most of what both parties wanted to save, if it does come.

Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., demonstrated the power of truth made effective through active noncooperation with evil. It is costly, though hardly more costly than war. To recognize the sacredness of the adversary’s life and dignity, to refuse to meet him on his own terms, is at once a moral victory and the beginning of a tactical advantage, but you will only do it if you truly believe.

But the best answer to those questions, according to our text, would be to say that the question is wrong. It is wrong to be scandalized by the cross as weakness, because it is wrong to demand strength. It is wrong to assume that the measure of right decision or the validation of correct behavior is its power to make events come out right. To claim that it is our right, or that it is even our duty, or that it is within our capability to take charge of events to assure the results we consider desirable, is by no means so simply true as we always assume. That principle stands today as it did even in Jesus’ day.

Yet only if one does assume such a right, such a duty, and such a capability, does the notion that the cross is weakness have to follow. This assumption explains that dissatisfaction with the cross as powerless which lies at the heart of the “scandalized” reaction of those who ask for “a sign.”

The cross of Jesus, the crucifixion as it happened in history, was not the result of any decision to be weak or of any sacrifice of the will. It was the product of the firmness with which Jesus held to the path to which He had been called. Crucifixion was the normal result of who He was and how He acted, in the face of the powers of this world whose rule over mankind He challenged. One who acts and speaks as He did will be treated as He was treated. It takes strength and hope to act that way, not weakness.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31

The apostle Paul was no anthropologist. When he speaks here of Jew and of Greek he is most likely not saying that a specific race, even less a specific religion, makes its members all the same. He is speaking about the mental types represented then, more or less, by different ethnic communities, and present in any age. We are all more or less Greek and more or less Jewish in this sense.

When Paul states, “Jews demand signs,” he is speaking not so much of a religion or of a race as of a culture. By Jew he does not mean somebody like the actor/producer, Woody Allen; he means people who want to see proofs of God’s power. The sign is an evidence of power. The people in the Gospels were asking Jesus for a sign to accredit His ministry. They wanted the kind of performance from Him that would save them from the risk of trusting Him by assuring them that God was on His side.

There have been cultures in which power was less important than something else: pleasure or wisdom, wealth or sex. But in the heritage of Abraham, Moses, David, and Elijah, Jews and Christians have learned to expect God to act powerfully in the interest of justice. Other religions may see the world as static and history as cyclical; the children of Abraham see it as drawn ahead by promises and driven by memories of past deliverances. The prophets proclaim God at work. Zealots believe they help God with His victory. Christian emperors and crusaders triumph in His name. The empire then assumes it spreads His glory around the world.

For good and for ill we are their heirs. We ask of a command, “Will it work?” We ask as well of a moral principle, “What will it produce?” If we are told to renounce violence, we ask, “But then what should we do if someone threatens our friends or our values?” Nationally we ask, “What would you do if the Russians came?” or “How would we keep the peace if no one would defend the country?”

The Hebrews differ from the Hindus, for whom divine power and light are diffused through multiple complex and contradictory forms. They differ from the Buddhists, for whom the power of events in historical experience needs to be downplayed or even denied. They also differ from tribal cultures where no change is expected and the gods are the guardians of stability. The JHWH of the Hebrews is a mover and shaker. At Sinai He was known in a storm cloud. He saved His people from Pharaoh by mobilizing the sea. The God of Joshua, of the judges, of Saul and David helped His people, against their enemies, by mighty saving and oft times miraculous acts.

Mary was told that her child should be named Jesus, because he would liberate His people. It was no surprise that some thought of such liberation after the model of Moses and Joshua, or after the more recent model of the Maccabean revolt, which had for a while set up Jewish priests as kings of an independent Israel.

Some people in Jesus’ time wanted Him to take that path. For them the weakness of the cross was a barrier to faith. There were still such people in Paul’s time. When Paul was taken prisoner in Jerusalem, we read that the Roman tribune mistook him at first for the leader of a group of four thousand nationalist rebels. A decade later Jerusalem was in fact “liberated” by one Menahem, who held it against the Romans for a few months, and provoked the city’s destruction.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.