It has been said that the most quoted verse in the Bible is no longer John 3:16 but instead Matthew 7:1: “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”
That is not surprising. Personal freedom is the touchstone of the era. Everyone should be able to do what they want, and no one should judge them for it. In earlier times, what marked a person as genuinely spiritual was love, a positive thing. Now, it is the absence of judgment, a negative thing.
Even a quick reading of Matthew 7, with its famous verse about not judging, will reveal that Jesus did not approach this subject like a typical postmodern. His very next words affirm that human beings will be judged, and he clearly instructs people to acknowledge their own failures.
Jesus did not prohibit people from making judgments about what is right; he elsewhere urges his hearers to do just that. He was not silencing people on issues of right and wrong or saying that morality is a personal matter. Anyone who has read Jesus’s words knows that cannot be true.
The command against judging is clearly not an endorsement of moral relativism. That, however, does not mean that we can fulfill Jesus’s command simply by affirming absolute truth. Jesus was not giving his students a philosophical model. He was telling them to stop judging other people.
Judging others is so common that most people don’t realize they are doing it. It is a habit that develops early and often continues throughout life. Why do we do it? It is the easy way to feel righteous. To judge people is to use them, usually unbeknownst to them, to boost our own self-esteem.
The Religion of Self-righteousness with its sacramental condemnations and ceremonies of judgment is not limited to religious people, whether Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, or Muslims. It is open to all, including atheists. It is a religion anyone can join. More than that, it is a religion everyone has joined. We have all sacrificed someone else on its altar.
However, the Religion of Self-righteousness is one that Jesus rejected and wants his students to utterly renounce. Simply no judgment. No condemnation.
But don’t some people need to be condemned? What about pedophiles, rapists, and perpetrators of domestic violence? What about the Bernie Madoff’s of the world, who steal from the vulnerable? What about Adolph Hitler and the Nazis? Does justice not demand our condemnation of such people?
Justice demands that we condemn their actions, and it may require society to punish them for what they have done. But Jesus’s followers are not permitted to condemn the person. God alone is wise enough and loving enough to bear that responsibility.
Bolstering self-esteem is not the only reason people condemn others. Condemnation is also used to force people to modify their behavior. This happens all the time on social media, where people with itchy “Twitter-fingers” try to shame others out of what they deem to be socially inappropriate behavior.
Dallas Willard called this “condemnation engineering” and noted that it often happens in families. Indeed, it happens in families more often than anywhere else. Of course, parents only threaten their children with condemnation for their own good, but the result is never good.
How can people break free of the habit of judging others? First, they must intend to do so. Long-held habits don’t go away by themselves. Until a person says, “I will stop doing this,” the behavior will not stop.
But people cannot stop judging others until they become honest about their own failures. This is what Jesus had in mind when he said, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? … first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
Until we are prepared to see the wrongs in our own lives, we are not ready to point out the wrongs in others. When we are looking for other people’s sins, we cannot help but be blind to our own.
A while back, our washing machine started leaking just a little, so after wash day, we would pull the machine out and use a rag to dry under it.
As time passed, the leak got a little worse, and then a little worse, and after a while, we needed a towel to dry the floor. So, I said the words my wife of 44 years fears most: “I can fix it.”
I went online and searched for “LG Washer leaks from bottom,” and found what I was sure was the culprit. I could follow the YouTube guy’s instructions and fix it for $20, or I could spend $150 to have a repairman come and do it. When I said that to Karen, she said, “But a repairman could get it done more quickly.”
Undeterred, I said I could get it done quickly, too. I would order the part immediately, even before I checked it out, and then I could install it on my day off. If it turned out that wasn’t the problem, we could send the part back, call a repairman, and would be no worse off.
I ordered the part on Thursday. On Friday night, I pulled the machine out further than ever and turned it sideways. Then I removed the access panel in the back, got down on the floor with a flashlight, and checked out the part. It was pristine. I mean, it looked brand new. Now what? I asked Karen to run a load of wash so I could visually inspect the source of the leak.
I was in my study when the machine began to discharge water. Our laundry room sounded like Niagara Falls. The water was gushing from a tear in the plastic drainpipe, which I had probably caused by pulling the washer out so many times without removing the discharge hose from the drain. So, it was worse than when I’d started. Now, I had to order a different part and take the front and top of the machine apart to install it. I’m pleased to say the installation was a complete success! We were back where we began with just a small leak … but, of course, I could fix that!
In my attempt to make things better, I made them worse. I was in a hurry and started repairs before I knew what was wrong. I was not patient.
When impatient people try to fix things – think of social injustice, mistreatment, or relational conflicts – they often make them worse. This reminds me of St. James’s first-century plea for patience. When his contemporaries in Israel tried to fix their society’s economic inequality, they initiated a civil war that became an international conflict that destroyed their economy, brought down their government, and brought an end to their nation.
The same thing happens on a much smaller scale in our everyday lives. We have a problem with a spouse, child, or coworker. We’ve been mistreated, and rather than praying and patiently seeking to understand how God intends such things to be handled, we rush in with harsh words and angry attitudes. Before we know it, we’ve made things worse. We’ve turned a minor problem into a major one.
We need patience. But patience is not a manufactured good. A person cannot order it; it must be grown across the various regions of a person’s life, which is why the Bible describes it as a “fruit.” Some people ask God for patience and expect it to drop out of heaven on them. That’s not how it works. Others say, “Whatever you do, don’t ask for patience because God will give you troubles.” That’s wrongheaded, too. Of course, we can ask the loving heavenly Father for patience, but we must understand that he doesn’t just hand it to us ready-made; he helps us become, through interaction with him, a patient person.
It is hard, and perhaps impossible, to be patient without faith. Patience is only enabled when faith is active. People with faith don’t need to rush; they can afford to be patient. They don’t carry the weight of the world, but they know who does. This is why the prophet Isaiah wrote, “Whoever believes will not act hastily.”
There is a wonderful story in the Gospel of Luke. Peter, who would later become one of Jesus’s apostles, was at the time a commercial fisherman on the Sea of Galilee. He and his coworkers had been out all night – Galilee fisherman worked the night shift – and were now washing, repairing, and stowing their nets before going home to get some sleep.
Jesus was only a few yards away, standing on the beach, teaching and Peter listened as he taught. Because the crowds were right on top of Jesus, he wished to teach from Peter’s boat and asked him to push it out a few feet from shore. He didn’t demand; he asked.
The rule of Jesus’s kingdom is to ask, and he follows his own rules. He tells us to ask – “Ask and it shall be given to you” – but he asks, as well. And when he asks, he lets us choose for ourselves whether we will respond to his request. If people wait for Jesus to make them do the right thing, they may wait a long time. We have choices to make, and our choices really count.
Peter made the choice to respond to Jesus, to do what he asked. It wasn’t a big ask, though it meant it would be a little longer before he got home and into bed. But when the teaching time was over, Jesus “said to Simon, ‘Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.’”
This was a bigger ask. The nets were already clean and stowed. This meant a time investment, and hard work at the oars.
That is the way of faith. People start in small things and move on to bigger things and then on to yet bigger things. We don’t start big, which is why people who are always looking for big experiences to sustain their faith do themselves a disservice.
Jesus commands but he doesn’t beg. He doesn’t, like some parents, repeat himself over and over in an effort to coerce or guilt people into doing what he wants. He doesn’t say to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets. I’m not telling you again. If you don’t put out into deep water right now, Simon Peter, you’re going to regret it!”
Peter had been out all night. For the last hour he had been stowing away equipment and washing his nets. It was time to go home. It was certainly not time – only a carpenter would think so – to go fishing.
Readers need to try to hear Peter’s response the way he said it. “Master, we’ve worked hard all night. . .” He pauses, waiting for Jesus to say, “Oh, you’re right. How thoughtless of me,” but Jesus says no such thing. “…and haven’t caught anything.” Another, longer, pause. He wants Jesus to know that he’s tired and that he thinks this is a bad idea. He doesn’t want to say no, but he is hoping that Jesus will change his mind. But Jesus does not change his mind. Now comes a big sigh: “But because you say so … I will let down the nets.”
The result was a miraculous catch of fish. Peter may or may not have understood a studious exegesis of the Hebrew text of Isaiah, but that’s not what Jesus gave him. He may not have understood a philosophy of ministry course, but Jesus didn’t give him that either. He did understand fish, and that’s what Jesus gave him.
God knows how to speak to people in ways they understand. He speaks to the poet in meter, to the architect in blueprints, to the child in games and laughter, to the wise in wisdom, to the fool in folly. He speaks to Isaac Newton in mathematical formulae, to Francis Collins in ribonucleic acids and to fisherman in fish.
This is one lesson of the incarnation: God comes to people where they are and speaks to them in a language they can understand. There is no language that God cannot speak, but everyone must choose whether they will listen.
This message was preached in March of 2020, during the pandemic. It celebrates God’s power and his love. I hope you will be encouraged by Paul’s great prayer as you listen to this sermon. (Listening time: 20:10.) Feel free to comment below.
During the 19th century, slaveholders sometimes used Bible verses to defend their right to own slaves. In our time, atheists have used the same Bible verses to defend their claim that Christianity is a sham and its moral standards noxious. But both those who used Bible verses to defend slavery and those who use slavery to condemn Christianity overlook slavery’s historical context and misunderstand the reasons for the apostolic instructions.
Slavery is very old, older than the Bible itself. When the Bible was being written, people could not imagine a world without slaves. As we take electricity for granted, they took slavery for granted. Burning coal or firing up nuclear power plants may be a selfish and harmful way to produce energy – people in future generations may think it the epitome of foolishness and even arrogance – but few people would suggest that we do away with electricity. Likewise, it never occurred to people in antiquity to do away with slavery.
Ancient slavery differed from the slavery we know about, which marred America from the 17th centurythrough the 19th century. When people claim that Christianity supports slavery, they have in mind the African slave trade in Europe and in the Americas, and that is at best misleading. It was, in fact, Christians who led the campaign to end slavery in Europe and America.
Ancient slavery differed from its modern counterpart. In antiquity, slaves often sold themselves into slavery, usually to pay off debts. They then saved their money (they frequently were paid) in order to buy their way back out. Some slaves were like family members: loved, honored and well-treated; others were treated poorly, neglected, and abused. Some slaves were better educated than their masters. They sometimes held positions of importance. Slaves were not only laborers; they were also accountants, lawyers, soldiers, teachers, and administrators.
The slavery of the first century Mediterranean never oppressed a particular people group because of their ethnicity or the color of their skin. Slaves in Paul’s day were not kidnaped from their homes and forced into slavery. Unlike their 18th century American counterparts, few first century slaves spent their entire lives in slavery. And unlike 18th century slaves, first century slaves were often better off financially than the day-laborers who were free.
In ancient Israel, slaves would serve no more than seven years, when the law required their release. A slave could choose to remain with his or her master if they liked the work and appreciated the security, but a master could not force anyone to remain in slavery.
When people fault the biblical writers for their failure to denounce slavery, they frequently ignore what the writers did say. For example, the apostles counsel Christian slaves to buy their freedom if they are able. They command masters to treat their slaves with justice and remind them that they also have a Master who is watching and will hold them responsible for their actions.
The Christian perspective on slavery was unique among the ancients. Greek and Roman moralists sometimes addressed slaves’ responsibility to their masters (and for that matter, wives to their husbands) but not of masters to their slaves (or husbands to their wives). It took someone with a radically different outlook to even think in that way – someone with a mind being reshaped and renewed by a connection to God.
When the Apostle Paul told slaves to obey their “earthly masters with respect and fear,” he used the same words he employed in a different context of all Christians. He wrote, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” where in the original language the prepositional phrases are identical. That he used the same expression to describe working out salvation and working second shift reveals the importance of work and work relationships, regardless of one’s status as slave or free.
Though Christians like the Apostles Paul and Peter accepted slavery as a societal institution, they also recognized the dangers inherent in it. They insisted that Christian masters treat their slaves justly, and offered counsel to slaves that would make their lives better. Though they did not denounce slavery as an institution, they did denounce injustice and oppression within the institution.
Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice! Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you.
I want to remind you of something we learned a couple of weeks ago. The Greek word ordinarily translated “rejoice” was also used as a greeting in the first century. It was the word Jesus spoke when he first greeted his disciples following the resurrection.
We have that word in today’s text, and translators are not quite sure what to do with it. Of the 60 English translations provided on Bible Gateway, 31 favor “rejoice” and the rest prefer “goodbye.” I think it should be translated, “rejoice” here because it is the first in a list of five rapid fire instructions that clearly go together, and because Paul says almost exactly the same thing in Philippians 3:1 (here he says, “Finally, brothers, rejoice”; there he says, “Finally, my brothers, rejoice”), and every English version translates it “rejoice” in that passage. Besides that, “Rejoice!” was a command that was frequently on tip of Paul’s tongue and the stylus of his pen.
As he closes this letter, Paul offers these parting words to his spiritual children in Christ, who were going through conflict and crisis. He begins with, “Rejoice!” Whenever Karen and I would leave my parents’ house, my dad’s parting word would be, “Be careful!” My mother might have said, “Be good.” But neither of them ever said, “Be glad!”
But Paul does. He knew that people would find it easier to be careful and be good if they would only rejoice and be glad. In fact, everything would be easier: relationships, jobs, trials, even holiness. It is when we regret our decisions and lament our circumstances that everything becomes difficult: relationships, jobs, even holiness.
People, including me, almost always think they are unhappy because of the difficult situation in which they find themselves. That may be the case, but I wonder how often our difficult situations are linked to a long-term failure to rejoice.
There is a reason the word “rejoice” occurs over 280 times in the Bible. There is a reason God gave his people seven annual festivals and ordered everyone in Israel to attend three of them. God understood that “The joy of the Lord is [our] strength” (Nehemiah 8:10), and that unhappiness is our weakness.
I was sitting in my chair before dinner one evening this week, working on my computer. A can of cashews sat on the table next to me, and I was eating a few. There was no reason for me to snack – dinner would be ready soon, and I wasn’t even hungry – but there was food at hand and snacking is a habit.
I was working on this sermon at the time, and it occurred to me that unhappiness is like snacking. It is always at hand, and it too can be a habit – a habit that has made me and millions of other people weaker and more susceptible to temptation.
According to the CDC, we may have acquired our snacking habits from a parent or grandparent. We may even possess a genetic predisposition to obesity.[1]According to the Bible, we have acquired our sinful nature from our parents Adam and Eve and with it a predisposition to unhappiness.
Paul knew all this. And so, as he closes this letter and shares these parting words, he directs his spiritual children to rejoice, just as he does at the close of his letters to his spiritual children in Philippi and in Thessalonica. This is so important to their wellbeing that he simply must say it: Rejoice!
Now, here is the thing. Paul’s spiritual children in Thessalonica were going through severe persecution.[2] It was bad. People were suffering. Paul’s spiritual children in Philippi were going through persecution on the outside and church conflict on the inside.[3] The church in Corinth was in a terrible state and was carrying on a feud with Paul himself! So, how can he tell people in these churches to rejoice?
How could he do otherwise? Remember, when we are rejoicing, we are strong. When we are rejoicing, relationships and jobs go better, and holiness becomes possible. It is when we are unhappy that relationships go poorly, work is hateful, and holiness seems like a burden we shouldn’t have to bear. Discontentment makes us vulnerable. Sin always looks good when we are unhappy.
But we cannot rejoice without something to rejoice about any more than we can start a fire without anything to burn. Paul must have thought that the Thessalonians, Philippians, and Corinthians had something to rejoice about, despite the painful times they were going through – but what?
The Bible gives us many reasons to rejoice despite difficult circumstances. I’ll mention a couple. We can rejoice because God will make things come out right. He will have the last word. He will pay back those who hurt his people. The harm that has been done will be undone and the one doing the harm will face the consequences. This is a major theme throughout the Bible and a constant reason for rejoicing.
The Bible tells us to rejoice because “The Lord reigns” (1 Chronicles 16:31). Even now, amid American decadence, Chinese imperialism, Russian brutality, record setting heat, the emergence of hitherto unknown diseases, and the evil machinations of ambitious schemers, our God reigns. The One enthroned in heaven is not biting his fingernails. He is laughing (Psalm 2:4), and he invites us to laugh with him, to rejoice! Evil and sadness will not, cannot succeed. God has given humans and angelic beings a short leash and a brief time to do what they will, but it is God – our God – who reigns. So, rejoice!
The Bible further calls us to rejoice in God’s salvation. I wish I could express to you the wonders of salvation. I wish that I could understand them myself, for they are grander and more glorious than the human mind can comprehend – “Things that no eye has seen, or ear heard, or mind imagined, are the things God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).
Here is a little of it. Earth itself will be saved – reborn, resurrected, if you will – out of its sorrow and slow death. Then “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things [will have] passed away” (Revelation 21:3). The inanimate creation (I’m not sure that is even the right word for it) will be forever liberated from the slavery of the second law of thermodynamics (Romans 8:21). No longer will the world around us grow old and decay.
But this is not all, by any means. What happens to the inanimate creation is a result – an echo of sorts – of what happens in human beings – in us who belong to Jesus Christ. We will be changed. Our very bodies will be transformed to be like Christ’s glorious body (Philippians 3:21). Theologians call this “glorification”. It will enlarge us. Abilities – some we don’t even know we possess – will be enabled, and the wonders of which humans will then be capable will be nothing short of staggering.
At the same time that glorification enlarges us, it will also (and just as gloriously) reduce us. Sin, hatred, fear – even the inclination to these things – will be taken from us forever. This is the salvation of our God. So, rejoice!
I have just scratched the surface of the Bible’s reasons for us to rejoice. But the hour is advancing, and we have much more to cover, so we need to move on. But I want to say one more thing first. We are at a critical juncture in the life and usefulness of Lockwood Church. It is easy to be anxious about what is going to happen in the search for our next pastor. I have been keenly aware of the danger of division. The way we set up the process is, I think, better than the way most churches do it in terms of congregational participation but also more dangerous in terms of potential division. In times like these, it is hard to rejoice.
In times like these, we must rejoice! Remember, we are strong and well protected when we rejoice; we are weak and vulnerable when we embrace anxiety and sadness. Let Lockwood rejoice in the salvation of our God.
The next instruction that Paul gives is, like the first, just one word in Greek, though the NIV translates it using four: “Strive for full restoration.” That one word is translated in a wide variety of ways by English versions. It is the verb form of the word Paul used in Ephesians when he wrote that church leaders are given to the church for the “equipping” of the saints, or (in the NIV) “to prepare God’s people for works of service.”
This word was used in the Gospels in an instructive way. Before meeting Jesus, some of his disciples had been commercial fisherman. Commercial fishing was a night shift job on the Sea of Galilee, and one morning Jesus found the fisherman still on the shore cleaning and repairing their nets so that they would be ready for their next night out on the lake. The nets needed to be examined for holes, retied in places, weeds and debris removed, then folded and readied for use.
The idea of repairing and restoring something (or someone) for useful labor is what this word is about. People, like fishing nets, get rubbed the wrong way and tear. Relationships between one person and another can begin to fray and need to be re-tied. We pick up debris – habits, ideas, practices – that clutter our lives and get in the way of the work God has for the Church of Jesus Christ to do.
Then we must be restored, put right, prepared, which is exactly what Paul tells the Corinthians to do. All of us – church members, deacons, elders, pastors – need this. You need this. If you are not in need of some cleaning and repair, then you haven’t been doing anything. God intends his people – you and me – to be useful in his great work, and that requires regular restoration.
Where do we get this restoration? We get it from each other, through encouragement, prayer, counsel, and admonishment. We get it from God’s word. Regularly hearing, contemplating, and applying what God says is a powerful restorative. We would be wise to set aside time every day to read, think about, and pray over God’s words and to gather on the first day of each week to hear them preached. Restoration also happens when we worship. Nothing mends our brokenness like a connection with our heavenly Father through worship. It is not without reason that Lockwood’s covenant partners make a promise to exalt God regularly in worship.
Take a look at yourself right now. Are you in need of some restoration work? Are the knots that tie you to others coming lose? Have you picked up some debris as you’ve gone through life? Has the abrasion of difficult circumstances or difficult people rubbed you raw? It is nothing to be ashamed of. The only thing to be ashamed of is molding in some comfortable cupboard somewhere, unused by the master in his great work. Paul says to you, as he said to the Corinthians, “Be restored!” Seek it. If you do not know how, talk to me and I will give you some pointers.
The NIV ’84 translated the next line, “listen to my appeal.” The NIV 2011 changed that to “encourage one another.” The Greek is again one word, though English requires at least two words to translate it: “be encouraged.” Another possible rendering is, “be open to appeal or exhortation.”
“Be encouraged” implies that a person has a choice in the matter. We can choose not to be encouraged, not to listen to the appeal. I can remember more than once when I was discouraged in my work and questioning my value. I would complain to Karen, “Nothing is happening! What have I accomplished? Nothing.”
Then she would say, “What about so and so? And this person has grown so much. And that one just led someone to Christ. And this is happening, and that.” She was trying to encourage me, but I wouldn’t take it. I didn’t want to be encouraged.
I not only ignored the truth Karen was speaking, I violated the instruction that Paul had given. God expects his people to be encouraged, not to wallow in self-righteous pity. Wallowing is easier, but we have to take responsibility for our own encouragement.
How would a person go about taking this instruction seriously? If I chose to be encouraged, what would I do? I Once again I would spend time daily in the Scriptures and prayer. That has been the biggest single help to me in bringing stability and encouragement to my life.
I would also spend time with truthful, loving people. Truthful because flattery is not encouragement; it leaves people bloated, not strengthened. Loving because when people speak into our lives without love, the result is not encouragement but something else—usually hurt, or guilt, or manipulation.
I’ve come to think that the only thing that ever really changes a person is love. Truth is important. Admonishment is sometimes required. Explanations can be helpful. Insights can spark new ideas. But let it be truth in love, admonishment in love, explanations and insights that spring from love and then – and only then – will there be change. Love starts and fuels the spiritual reaction that brings about change.
From what Paul is saying, it is clear that we need to take responsibility for our own encouragement. Are you ready to do that? Will you take steps to be encouraged? To a large degree, it is up to you.
The next instruction is to “Be of one mind.” Now, how are we going to do that? Last week, we had Brad Kittle speak, the first of three candidates for the lead pastor role. Next week, Kevin Looper will speak and the following week, Brett Gray. Brad has already been affirmed by the church family and will be on the final ballot. If Kevin and Brett are also affirmed, we will choose one man from among the three. What do you think is the likelihood that we will all agree that God is leading the same candidate here?
And isn’t that what needs to happen for us to follow this instruction? No. We don’t need to agree on the man; we need to agree that God’s will be done, not our own. That is the oneness of mind the apostle is talking about. It pleases God and preserves our unity. See that you have it!
Finally, Paul says: “Live in peace.” This is the same word we saw in 1 Thessalonians 5 just two weeks ago. It is a one-word command that means something like, “Peace it!” You have a choice: choose peace.
Do you know what gets in the way of peace? It is not having different opinions. We can hold very different opinions and still have peace. But if one (or both) of us holds a commitment to getting their own way, peace goes out the window. Jesus’s followers must not be committed to getting their own way. They must be committed to getting God’s way, and they must have the humility to realize that their way is not automatically his.
Look at the amazing promise that comes with these instructions. If we will rejoice, be restored, of one mind, and at peace, then the God of love and peace will be with us. No one likes to hang out with discouraged, contradictory, and contentious people, not even God. He likes to hang out with people who are happy, encouraged, and fun.
When the God of love and peace is with a person or a church, good things happen. People come to faith. New ideas start popping up. Joy is on the rise. Love is in the air or, more importantly, in the heart. What could be better than having the God of love and peace with us?
I’ve shared five instructions from the Apostle Paul for Jesus’s people to follow: Rejoice. Be restored. Be encouraged. Be of one mind. Be at peace. Now, what are you going to do with them? The ball is in your court.
The term “culture wars” came into its own in the 1990s, though it had been coined approximately a hundred years earlier. It describes the clash that results when cultural groups holding conflicting values try to influence public policy.
In the past there was more than one culture war being waged. The women and men who fought in the abortion war might not take a stand with either side in the climate change war. But now it seems that the various culture battles have merged into a single great war between two sides with profoundly incompatible worldviews.
With the presidency of Donald Trump, the culture wars became a culture of war. There was no longer any lull in the battle. So-called news outlets are now training grounds for culture warriors, and media celebrities have become high-ranking field officers.
Many different conflicts have been sucked into the culture war. Vaccines became a battlefield during COVID in a way that would have been unthinkable at the introduction of the polio vaccine in the 1950s. Masking was weaponized. Teaching U.S. history became a battlefield. Neutral ground has all but disappeared.
In today’s climate, a social scientist can ask a few questions of almost anyone and know on what side of the culture wars they stand. “Are you religious?” “Are you from a rural or urban background?” “Do you have a college education?” “With what political party do you most agree?” And with just those questions they can predict with surprising accuracy where a person stands on the issues of abortion, climate change, gender identity, and more.
The war of values has become a war of words as each side tries to control the language that is used to describe them and their opponents. They are conservatives and liberals, right wing and left, traditionalists and progressives. There are reactionaries and extremists, the close-minded and those “led by the science,” patriots and woke communists. These words explode like shells and drive the sides further and further apart.
In the 1970s and 1980s, churches began to take sides in the culture wars. People like Jerry Falwell and, later, Pat Buchanan, characterized conflicts over social issues as a religious war for the soul of America. It became increasingly common for churches to identify themselves by their stance on social issues rather than by their theological distinctives.
There is little ground left on which someone like me can stand. Because I take the biblical writings as authoritative for faith and practice, I do not think that homosexuality or gender transitioning are God’s intention for men and women. But precisely because I take Scripture seriously, I cannot see gay or transgendered people as enemies. I see them as people like me, made by and responsible to their loving Creator. The culture war discourages such an outlook.
Teaching history has become a combat exercise in the culture war. Culture warriors must either ignore the abuses inflicted on non-white, non-European peoples or they must highlight those abuses almost to the exclusion of history’s other significant events. This leaves little room for anyone who understands that history, which is sometimes glorious and sometimes horrific, is always complicated.
Gun ownership is another battleground in the culture war. I have my own opinions regarding gun laws, but they are only indirectly influenced by the writings of the apostles and prophets. Because of this, I hold them lightly. But in the culture war, people must hold their opinions as firmly as their guns.
The culture war has left little space to stand, but there remains the higher ground of Jesus’s lordship and biblical teaching. Those who stand here must refuse to allow cultural battles to force them to retreat or to move them to antipathy for those with whom they disagree.
The end of the culture wars has been declared by various social commentators in the past. Years ago, the Center for American Progress predicted that the culture war would end soon in victory for progressives. That prediction has not come true, the war rages on. But we do not have to rage with it. We can stand, stand our ground, but do so without anger or hate.
This sermon was preached in January 2021, during the series, Finally, Some Good News. We were all tired of COVID and were looking for good news. But in this message, we saw that we also needed to be good news to the people around us.
Viewing time: 29 minutes (approx.)
In philosophy, there are five principal arguments or proofs for the existence of God. One of those is known as The Cosmological Proof and argues there must be a sufficient and non-contingent cause for the contingent beings and processes that exist; and God is that cause.
We could talk more about the Cosmological Proof, but some of you are already nodding off; so, instead of the cosmological proof, let’s talk about what I call the cosmetological proof. This might be the first time those words have ever been used together, so I’ll explain what I mean. Cosmetology is the study and practice of applying beauty treatments. Christians are called to be cosmetologists. We are to make the teaching about God attractive.
This is Titus 2:9-10: “Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them,and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.” Later, we will think about the instruction in these verses but, at this point, note their purpose: to “make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.”
That is what we do. Make the teaching about God attractive. The Greek word Paul uses here is “cosmeo,” from which we derive not only the word “cosmos” but also the word “cosmetics.” Cosmeo has the idea of ordering or arranging something, whether the universe or a person’s face and hair. When used of people, the thought is to make them attractive.
Some Christians are poor cosmetologists. Instead of arranging the teaching about God our savior to bring out its beauty, they derange it and make it look clownish and ugly. Take the hypocrite (someone who suffers from reality detachment). Going to him for teaching about God is like going to a stylist who suffers from a retinal detachment for a haircut. The end result in both cases will not be pretty.
For the last few months, we have been thinking hard about the gospel: what it is, what it means, and what we should do about it. Here is one thing we should do: make it attractive. Bring out its beauty. In Paul’s words, “make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.”
That idea is present in many places in the Bible. We are to be “wise in the way we act toward outsiders, making the most of every opportunity” (Colossians 4:5). Paul tells the Thessalonians to order their daily lives in a way that is becoming (that is what the word he chose means) to outsiders (1 Thessalonians 4:12). St. Peter suggests a way for wives to make themselves – not just their bodies – beautiful (same word we have here) so that their husbands can be won over to God’s side.
In the same letter, Peter calls on all Jesus’s people to live in a way that will attract others to God, that will cause them (in his words) to “glorify God.” Peter was simply echoing teaching he heard from Jesus about being the light of the world and the salt of the earth. Salt brings out the flavor in food. Light reveals the beauty of a place. Jesus wanted his people to reveal the beauty of God and the remarkable flavor of the life spent with him.
There is an Old Testament text that can help us understand the cosmetological proof. God tells the prophet Jeremiah to buy and wear a linen belt. This was not like men’s leather belts today but a kind of sash that was worn around the waist and was meant to be stylish and attractive.
Then God told the prophet to take off the sash and hide it in a crevice in the rock. Jeremiah buried it in the crevice. When God later told him to dig it up, Jeremiah found it ruined – stained, mildewed, nasty. God used the ugly belt as a metaphor. He said, “…as a belt is bound around a man’s waist, so I bound the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah to me,’ declares the LORD, ‘to be my people for my renown and praise and honor” (Jeremiah 13:11).
As Christopher Wright put it, “God wants to wear his people.”[1] They make God look good, enhance his renown, praise, and honor. His people – that is, we – are intended to live in a way that brings out the goodness, glory, and beauty of God for others to see.
TheCosmetological Argument does more than prove the existence of God. It proves him to be desirable. It is not advanced by philosophers’ dialectic but by our delight in God. We attract people’s attention to God by the attention we give God.
So far, we’ve seen (from Jesus, the apostles Peter and Paul, and the prophet Jeremiah) that God wants us to attract other people to him and his kingdom. We are his salespeople, his promoters, his advance team, his marketing team. Those words help us form an idea of what we ought to be doing, but we need to go carefully here.
Ideas are always context dependent. They make sense within a context. Outside of that context they may have a different meaning – or no meaning at all. The words I just used to describe our role (salespeople, promoters, advance team, marketing team) are found in a marketplace context. Salespeople coax shoppers to spend money on their product. Marketing teams try to capture market share. But the marketplace is not the best context for understanding our role.
Let’s try a different context that might help us gain a more biblical understanding of our mission. Instead of the Madison Avenue executive who attracts dollars, or the social media influencer who attracts followers, let’s substitute the revolutionary who attracts recruits.
I realize how controversial that image is in our day, when extremists are radicalizing young people and recruiting them to perform atrocious acts of violence. But I prefer it nonetheless because it has biblical resonances the other images lack. The good news we have been investigating is the gospel (the announcement) of the kingdom and of the king. It is the good news, as was said in ancient Thessalonica, “that there is another king, one called Jesus” (Acts 17:7).
Instead of a Madison Avenue context, try picturing a Majority World context where upheaval and discord have been the norm for a generation. The leader in power has been there for over 30 years, ever since a popular uprising and military coup landed him in office. But his government is corrupt. Tax monies, which are bleeding the nation dry, end up in the pockets of a dozen powerful men, along with vast sums of misappropriated foreign aid. Those men live in luxury while the rest of the nation is hungry and hurting. Whenever common people go to the streets to protest, the military is ordered to mow them down like grass.
But now a great national leader who has been abroad for decades is planning to return to put an end to the corruption and injustice. His advance team is in your town, and they tell you about him. He is a great man who is humble and kind, honest and just, wise and powerful. They tell you about his plans to install a government that will protect its people, not feed on them. You have questions. They have answers. At some point, they challenge you to join them, to come over their leader’s side in anticipation of his return – and you do.
Now it is your turn to recruit others. This is not about market share or follower stats. It is about freedom, justice, truth, mercy, grace. What hangs on this is the future. You are advertising for a ruler, not a dollar.
That is roughly the position in which we find ourselves. We are not trying to corner the ecclesial market. We are not fighting for our share of religious dollars. Our only competition is with those principalities and powers that have usurped God’s place. We have news of a king and his coming kingdom. He will change things and make them right – and is already making things right in our own lives. Our lives provide the proof – the cosmetological proof – that he knows how to make things right. And we can tell people with confidence that he accepts everyone who comes to him, no matter who they are, what they have done, or what side they have taken in the past.
This acceptance is known as the reconciliation. Listen to how St. Paul speaks of it (2 Corinthians 5:18-20). “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of the reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of the reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”
This is an important passage that deserves careful study, which is not something we can do today, but we will come back to it. Today, I just want you to grasp the context: God has begun the reconciliation and has given Christ’s people the role of his advance team, promoting God, appealing to people to join the coming kingdom, to come over to God’s side.
How do we do that? How do we make the teaching about God attractive to people who have never given it any thought – don’t even know there is anything to think about? How do we help them trust the unseen God, when there are so many things they can see that everyone else trusts?
We make the teaching about God attractive and motivate people to join his side both by who we are (or by who we are becoming, since who we are now is still so very incomplete) and by what we do. What we do is the outworking of who we are (or who we are becoming).
First, who we are (or who we are becoming). This only works if we are different from the people around us. God’s plan depends on it. It is the difference that attracts people to God.
A magnetic field depends on having a north and south pole. It is the opposite poles that attract. Likewise, our power of attraction depends on us being polar opposites to those around us. That doesn’t mean being weird or hostile but it does mean being different.
In Leviticus 19:2, God says to his people, “Be holy for I, the LORD your God, am holy.” More than one famous Bible scholar has pointed out this could be translated, “Be different for I, the LORD your God, am different.”
Because the LORD is different from other gods (both those in the ancient and the contemporary world), we who serve him will be different from people who bow to other gods, including money, political power, science, and education. (By the way, Christians should be involved in all those things. They are good things as long as they remain humanity’s servants. They are devilishly evil things when they become humanity’s gods, which is something we have seen played out before our eyes in recent months.)
But what makes us different? The fundamental difference is that we are God-oriented. If somehow God could be removed from our lives or we could be removed from our God (thankfully impossible), we would no longer be us. God is not just a part of our life, not even a big part; he is our life (Colossians 3:4). I’ve known people who have left the faith, moved from professing belief in God to professing disbelief in him, and the curious thing is that nothing really changed. I don’t see how that is possible – if they were really God’s people. Our lives, put bluntly, are about God.
Our values are also different. Most people’s chief values are: current comforts and pleasures (what St. John calls “the lust of the flesh”); future acquisitions of comfort and pleasure (“the lust of the eyes – gotta have that!”); and a position of status or prestige (“the pride of life”). I don’t say they enjoy those things – they don’t time; they’re too busy trying to acquire them – but they value them.
Our values are different. When we are granted pleasures and possessions and positions, we enjoy them; but we don’t need them and we won’t let them derail us from our pursuit of God, of love and of truth. That makes us different.
We don’t fear – or at least the person we are becoming is starting to overcome – the fears that control most people’s lives. They fear loss, humiliation, weakness, age, and death. It is ironic: in Western society, people lead the safest lives in the history of the world, yet they experience more anxiety than ever before. People have been taught to fear the next snowstorm, the next president, next market reversal, virus, disease, and internet outage. Unbelievable amounts of money are spent to protect people from their fears. But we fear God and, because we do, we are getting over our fear of everything else.
Another difference is our hope. In our day, distraction has usurped the place of hope, but that is not so in our lives. Even when we are nearing the end of life here, we continue to look forward. Our hopes transcend the next election, the end of COVID, our next vacation. The vacation may get cancelled; COVID may not get cancelled – it may continue; the election may usher the wrong party into power; but our hopes remain undiminished. Even immanent death cannot take hope from us.
We are not only different in who we are but also in what we do. I have a niece by marriage whom I really like. After her first baby was born – I’d never heard of this before – she ate the placenta. I’m sure someone will rush to tell me why that is a good thing, but it is different, at least by my standards. But it is not doing unusual things that makes us different.
One difference is our habit (it’s not just an occasional thing) of doing good deeds. Jesus taught us to let our light so shine that people “will see [our] good deeds and glorify [our] Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). Peter echoed this: “…they may see your good deeds and glorify God” (1 Peter 2:12). Paul taught that God has prepared good deeds in advance for us to discover and perform (Ephesians 2:10). Most people try to get out of doing anything they don’t have to do. We go out of our way to do good for all people, especially our fellow Christians (Galatians 6:10). It’s a habit.
One of the big things we do that is different – countercultural, even – is we forgive. We don’t forgive because someone deserves it – forgiveness, by its very nature, is never deserved. We forgive because God forgives. We are different because he is different. When we forgive, we reveal what he is like. Forgiveness makes the teaching of God our savior attractive. When we forgive, we make it possible for people to believe that God will forgive.
When the people of Mother Emmanuel AME church in Charleston forgave Dylan Roof for the murder of their loved ones, they were different. That difference evoked a backlash from people who cling to unforgiveness as a kind of power. But how attractive Mother Emmanuel made the teaching of God our savior! If they can forgive, then maybe God can forgive me.
Go back to the passage in Titus, only substitute the words “employee” for “slave” and “boss” for “master”. (Titus 2:9-10) Teach employees to be subject to their bosses in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.” In the workplace, that kind of employee is different. That’s the kind of employee God wants us to be.
We could go one listing examples. I’ll just mention a couple of relatively easy ones that have biblical sanction. First, simply joining other Christians regularly for worship (which the Bible instructs us to do) makes us different. In an average week, only about 20 to 25 percent of our neighbors go to church (this was pre-COVID). If we go, we are different. Exploit the difference.
Another thing: the use of profanity has increased dramatically in American life, especially among religious people. If we will just refrain from using that kind of language (which the Bible instructs us to do), and from the anger and condemnation that underlie them, we will be different.
Remember the mission: to attract people to the king and his kingdom, where people live differently, live better, live forever. We have our orders. Let’s carry them out.
[1] Christopher J.H. Wright, The Mission of God’s People, p. 137.
The Book of Acts recounts the arrival of the Apostle Paul in the great city of Corinth. It was a Roman colony, which meant there was a large military presence there. Prostitution was ubiquitous and sexual immorality was more prevalent than any place Paul had ever been. It was the Las Vegas of the ancient world.
Paul entered this city and did what any devout Jew traveling alone would have done. He went to find a synagogue. In a city the size of Corinth, with perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, there were probably several, and it was not long before Paul had found one.
A synagogue in the ancient world was not like a church in modern America, which only fills with people on weekends. A synagogue was more like a community center. Everything in the Jewish community revolved around the synagogue. On Sabbath days there were religious services, but there were people hanging around every day of the week.
It was probably at the synagogue that Paul met Aquila and Prisca. Aquila was from Pontus, a city on the southern shores of the Black Sea. He and Prisca were also Jews and may have been, like Paul, Jesus-followers. They had recently arrived from Italy, forced to leave Rome by the decree of the Emperor Claudius.
That biblical note ties into secular history. Scholars know that Claudius issued the deportation order in the year 49, possibly because of conflicts between traditional Jews and Jewish Christians. The Roman historian Suetonius, writing 70 years later, says the conflict was over someone named Crestus, which seems to be a reference to Christ. It is possible, and perhaps even likely, that Aquila and Prisca were Jews who had already acknowledged Jesus as the Jewish messiah.
Paul hit it off with them right away. Both men were from what is now Turkey (Aquila from the north and Paul from the south.) Interestingly, Paul usually refers to Prisca by her nickname Pricilla, which would be like calling Susan, “Suzie.” Paul, like all rabbis, had been schooled in a trade: tent-making (or leather craft, since ancient tents were usually made from leather), and Aquila and Pricilla made tents.
Tent-making was probably a thriving business in Corinth, because so many visitors came to the city for the Isthmian Games (second only to the Olympic Games), and to the religious festivals that drew pilgrims from all over Europe. So, Aquila and Pricilla offered Paul a place to stay and gave him a job, and on weekends he went to the synagogue and taught about Jesus and tried to persuade both Jews and God-fearing Greeks to believe in him.
All this calls for reflection. Paul had found the perfect couple to stay with. Aquila already had a tent-making business and needed to increase his workforce. Pricilla was an intellectual who shared Paul’s love of the Scriptures. Ironically, the reason Paul ran into these people in just the right place at just the right time was because of an ugly ethnic prejudice and a distant Roman emperor’s unjust and inconvenient decree.
Perhaps that sounds familiar? It should. Once, about fifty years earlier, God made use of a town’s unfriendly attitudes and a different Roman’s emperor’s unfair and enormously inconvenient decree to move a young pregnant woman to a little town called Bethlehem, which was just the right place, at just the right time for the savior of the world to be born.
That is how good God is at what he does. He holds Roman emperors in his hands. And Turkish tentmakers. And people like us. Both the accidents of nature and the circumstances of life are forced to do his bidding. We’d prefer to see his hand when everything is going well, but it is often when we’re stuck at the intersection of unfair and inconvenient that God shows up.
If Paul had been on a mission to secure a comfortable station in life and settle down, he would not have had the opportunities he had to see God’s providential work. It is those who seek God’s kingdom, not their own comfort, who find God waiting for them with gifts in hand.
