Romans 4-6: God the Cosmic Actor #30daysofPaul

I used to think of God as a fairly passive presence in the universe.

I had a "clockmaker", slightly

Deist view of God. God cranked this whole thing into motion, and then sat back and observed, not interfering in the world.

I still have some leanings this way.

I'm definitely not a believer in miracles, or in God playing a role in personal or natural disasters and outcomes. I think the universe is an orderly, rational place that God did in fact set into motion, but that he allows to run by the laws of science for our sake, that we might understand and navigate the way things work.

But I've evolved in my thinking. I have a more open mind towards how God interacts with creation. I wrote a blog post on the subject around this time last year, saying:

I was created and born with certain gifts and abilities. As I grow and learn and realize who I am, I awaken to those gifts and abilities and recognize my proper place in the world. And that has lead me to ministry.
To say that God played no active part in this guidance is to deny the existence of God.
God may not have reached into people's bank account and moved money. He didn't whisper in my ear saying "You should go into ministry." But God's mark is all over my journey. And that is the true essence of a "Great Clockmaker." Even in things that seems completely disassociated from any mention of God, God's touch is still present in the very existence of those things.

I think that these three chapters from Paul's letter to the Romans really affirm that. Paul is still making an argument for justification by faith and why it is necessary that God provided salvation in that way. He ties it back to Jewish tradition by expounding on Abraham and Adam and how God acted in their stories.

And that's really the key here: God was, and is, and always will be, acting.

Justification by faith, the idea that we are reconciled to God by God's act of grace, is the ultimate proof of God's agency in the universe.

As Paul explains, Abraham didn't receive God's blessing because of his preexisting righteousness and good deeds; he was blessed because of his faith in God. He trusted that God would act, that God would make good on God's promise to give him a son in his old age. Paul uses Abraham as the quintessential example of faith.

Paul moves on to Adam, and compares him to Jesus, as the two men standing athwart history in a sense, one succumbing to death, the other overcoming it. Again, God acts through the example of Jesus, affirming that those who have faith even to point of suffering and death are not doomed, a la Adam, but instead are resurrected through reconciliation.

God is not a passive deity, sitting high above us, watching us scurry about. But neither is God reaching a cosmic finger into our world, pushing cars out of the way or misdirecting bullets. God has acted in the most perfect and necessary way, and has in consequence left us free to act and make choices on our own. Paul summarizes his thought process in the beautiful opening to chapter 5:

"Therefore, 

since we are justified by faith, 

we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 

through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; 

and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.  

And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, 

knowing that suffering produces endurance,  

  and endurance produces character, 

    and character produces hope, 

      and hope does not disappoint us, 

because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us."

Again, the action of God, spurring us onto a life of lived enveloped in love.

The wondrous thing about God is, God doesn't act to exert power.

God doesn't need to control.

God doesn't need to show us who's boss.

God acts from love, not power.

God acts with mercy, not condemnation.

Grace showers grace freely, 

  wildly, 

    wastefully, 

      irrationally, 

        inexplicably, 

on every 

single 

person.

None of this makes sense. Gods are supposed to be the embodiment of power, of control. Gods are like absolute monarchs, acting in ways that showcase their power.

Our God is not that kind of God.

Our God is a God standing in opposition to the ideas of deity throughout history. 

Our God is a God who exists in contradictions. 

A God who chooses to identify with the weak and the small and the oppressed. 

Our God is a God who picks a 100-year old man and his wife to father the chosen people. 

Who picks a stutterer to lead the people out of captivity. 

Who picks the youngest son to be the greatest king. 

Who chooses an single teenage mother to bear the ultimate expression of God amongst humanity.

Our God makes no sense, at least as far as the world is concerned. And that's the best kind of God.

It's like Rob Bell says in Velvet Elvis:

"The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God. We are dealing with somebody we made up. And if we made him up, then we are in control. And so in passage after passage, we find God reminding people that he is beyond and bigger and more."

Paul wants us to understand that this is all about God, not us. God is reconciling us, and we are acting in response to God. God is in charge, even if God doesn't feel the need to flaunt it.

And we should emulate the example of Godliness we see in Jesus, in order to bring the Kingdom here, every day, in a little way.

Next: Romans 7-9

For a PDF of the 30 Days of Paul reading plan, click here.

For more info on 30 Days of Paul, click here for my intro, or here for Cassandra Farrin's explanation.

Click Here for Cassandra Farrin's take on today's reading.

Romans 1-3: The Big One #30daysofPaul

We made it.

The Big One.

Paul's Epistle to the Romans.

Of all the letters in the New Testament, none has quite the stature of Romans. This is 16 gnarly chapters of pure Pauline theology, laid out for us in full. A large majority of what we consider Christian orthodoxy today, the theological concepts and ideas we take for granted, come from this magisterial work. The culmination of more than twenty years of thinking and writing and traveling and working, this is truly Paul's magnum opus.

But yet, we hardly seem to understand it.

Several times over the last few years, I've tried to plow into Romans and understand what this thing is all about. And each time, I've come crashing down, rarely making it past 8 or 9 chapters.

No doubt about it: Romans is dense.
It's hard to follow.
It has lots of big "church" words repeated over and over and over.

It's much easier to just dip in and grab what you need from here and there, rather than trying to comprehend the whole.

But that's what we are going to try to do.

Let's start by understanding why Paul wrote this letter.

We are nearing the end of Paul's ministry. At this point, he is in Corinth, visiting them in the aftermath of his letters of Tears and Reconciliation. His work in the Aegean peninsula is done for the most part; the churches there are well-established and thriving.

So now, he is about to set off for Jerusalem, to make good on his promise from a decade earlier, to deliver the tithes and offerings for the Jerusalem church from the communities he planted.

Remember his promise to Peter to "remember this poor"? This is that.

Before he sets off, he writes this letter to a church he has never visited, and who apparently has made it known that they are confused as to why he never has come to them. Since Paul plans to set sail for Spain after he finishes in Jerusalem for some more good church planting, he knows he needs to establish a rapport and relationship with Christians in Rome. This serves two purposes:

1) He's gonna need to stop there on the way, because Jerusalem-to-Spain is a long journey,

and

2) He knows he is gonna need financial support from Rome for his work in Spain.

So he figures he better lay that ground work now.

Now, the church at Rome is an interesting community. Rome is the center of universe, as far as first century humanity is concerned.

Imagine:
Washington DC.
New York City.
Paris.
Tokyo.

All rolled into one super-metropolis. That's kind of the role Rome played in the ancient world.

The church there had been through some turmoil. Made up of a combination of Jews and Gentiles, they had been expelled from the city around 50 CE due to some conflict with the rest of the Roman Jewish community. Let back in after the death of the Emperor Claudius in 54, they were now experiencing some conflict between the Jewish and Gentile elements in the church.

Keep that mind. That serves as the backdrop of Paul's writing here.

So, that density I mentioned earlier. It's very much evident in these first three chapters.

These chapters make up one sustained theological argument. Let's try to take it point by point here.

Verses 16 and 17 of chapter 1 are commonly held to be a summary of the ensuing argument Paul will make over the rest of the letter. Here it is:

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, "The one who is righteous will live by faith."

Dense as a rock, I know.

Paul begins his argument by giving us a short, "cliff notes" version of human history. Basically, he says, God made humans, and gave us the earth and everything in it, and asked us to be faithful to God, and then we decided to worship other things instead. We became idolaters.

This is so key. If we are thinking about the big picture of Romans, we need to keep "idolatry" in mind. That's the key behind everything for Paul. Paul has synthesized and centralized his view on sin to a central focus on idolatry.

In his view, all the subsequent sins of humanity -

"Wickedness,
  evil,
    covetousness,
      malice,
        envy,
          murder,
            strife,
              deceit,
                craftiness,
                  gossips,
                    slanderers,
                      God-haters,
                        insolent,
                          haughty,
                            boastful,
                              inventors of evil,
                                rebellious towards parents,
                                  foolish,
                                    faithless,
                                      heartless,
                                      ruthless"
- all is a result of idolatry.

Side bar: This section of Romans is one commonly used to condemn homosexuality. To do so is to miss the point Paul is making here, not to mention to disregard two thousand years of subsequent human development, scientific understanding, and psychological study. Paul is speaking of idolatry as the prime sin of humanity; it's clear he views homosexuality in the first century context as a product of excessive lust, and thus on the idolatry of human sexuality. His views on homosexuality were a product of his times, and aren't consistent with our modern understanding of homosexuality and committed, monogamous relationships.

And it certainly isn't a commentary on gay marriage.

So, idolatry.

We all are guilty of the sin of idolatry in some way or form. And yet, Paul says, we are so quick to cast judgment elsewhere. We ignore our own sins, our own shortcomings, and focus on others, pointing fingers at the deficiencies all around us, like we know so well right and wrong.

This is undermining God, and is another form of idolatry, Paul writes. So now, not only have we rejected God, embraced idolatry, spawned numerous other sins as a result, but then we turn around and want to blame everyone else.

Yikes. We kind of suck.

So God acted. He gave us The Law.

Specifically, he gave the Jews the law.

This is where Paul starts trying to bridging some of the gaps in the Roman church. Remember I said there was a split forming between the Jews and the Gentiles in Rome? Well, this was mostly centered around opposite interpretations of the Gospel message.

Jewish Christians argued that, as Jews, they had received God's revelation first, that they were first and foremost God's people, that Jesus had taught and lived among them, and thus this privileged them within the early church.

Gentile Christians argued that the coming of Jesus heralded in a new covenant, that all old distinctions and barriers were no more, and thus being a Jewish Christian afforded no more privilege than anyone else got.

Paul is seeing a dangerous divide upon up in the universal church he loves, and he writing here to desperately try to bring everyone together under the banner of One God, One Church.

First, he reminds them that the chief focus isn't on the Law anymore, but on acting in a way consistent with the Kingdom. He tells them circumcision (that is, Jewishness) is of no use to anyone, if they don't live right.

"Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart - it is spiritual and not literal."

But, he says at the beginning of chapter 3, there is some specialness in being a Jew. Jews received the Law first. They were "entrusted with the oracles of God." It was Jews who were first made aware of the righteousness of God. There is a cultural memory and heritage there, and that is definitely something to always be proud of. But, it doesn't make them "better" than anyone else.

This brings us to the final part of Paul's initial argument. We know God is righteous because of our own inadequacies, made know through the Law. Some would argue then that our shortfallings actually work to the glory of God, and thus we should fall short more often, in order to raise God up some more!

It seems some enterprising folk have found a loophole in Paul's teachings, and Paul is fully ready to address that.

By no means, he says. God's righteousness is attested to through our own need for a Law, yes, but it is also attested to by the life of Christ. In fact, because Christ lived and we have faith, the need for a Law has been nullified. Instead of the old Law, Paul writes, now we live by the "Law of Faith."

This is an evolution of Paul's thought from Galatians. People have exploited loopholes and weaknesses in his teachings, and Paul has worked to shore up the message he is preaching. He no longer completely rejects the role of the Law, but instead, as he says in the last verse of chapter 3, "Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no mean! On the contrary, we uphold the law."

There we go. We made it through three chapters of Romans. Let's recap.

God created us.
We sinned.
God made the law.
We failed under the law.
Jesus came and lived a righteous life.
We have faith.
By our faith, we uphold the law.
Finally, we have found righteousness.

In writing to the church at Rome, and addressing their growing schism, Paul is making the argument that although, yes, once God was made known exclusively to the Jews through the Law, now all people are reconciled to God through faith, because we have seen a new way of living in Christ. As he writes,

"For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."

See! Not so hard.

Three down, thirteen to go. You can do this. We can do this together. We are going to understand and appreciate Romans in an all new way. Let's just keep building from here.

Next: Romans 4-6

For a PDF of the 30 Days of Paul reading plan, click here.

For more info on 30 Days of Paul, click here for my intro, or here for Cassandra Farrin's explanation.

Click Here for Cassandra Farrin's take on today's reading.

Philippians 3:1b-4:3: Christology and Kyrios #30daysofPaul

Let's talk about Christology.

I love Christology. This is the kind of thing I nerd out about.

Christology is the theological study of the nature of Christ.

It's a sub genre of systematic theology. It's the process of exploring what one means when one refers to Jesus as "Christ." It's studying the role that Jesus Christ specifically plays in our faith.

Exciting stuff, right?

It concerns such things as:

the divinity of Christ,

  the eternal nature of Christ,
 
    the miracles and teachings of Christ,

      Christ's birth,

        Christ's death,

          Christ's resurrections,

            what it means to call Christ "Lord",

              what it means to call Christ "Son of Man," or "Son of God,"

                the role of Christ in the Trinity.

It is the theological, academic, focused study of all things "Jesus."

We are talking about Christology today because some scholars consider Paul's letter to the Philippians, and specifically chapter 3, to be one of the earliest examples of Christology.

Now, let me clarify a bit. Each of the Four canonical Gospels are advancing a specific Christology, ones that advance the arguments they are making in their accounts of the life of Jesus.

Additionally, Paul has reflected on the nature of Christ in earlier letters. But Philippians is the first time there seems to be a specific emphasis on such.

It begins in chapter 2, with the hymn Paul quotes in verses 5-11:

5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Clearly and obviously, the early churches were playing with who and what Christ was, and what his life and death meant.

This beautiful early hymn says things we take for granted today, but at one point in the young church, these things weren't so well-known. At some point, somebody wrote these things down, as a way of laying down a marker for what Jesus meant to the church.

That process is Christology.

So, back to chapter 3.

Paul, throughout his letters, likes to use the Greek words "Kyrios" to describe Jesus. Kyrios means "Lord." Kyrios is central to the development of early Christology.

The common use of kyrios by Paul established it as the go-to title for Jesus. The early ideas about who Jesus was and what he did were all colored by the use of the word. It is impossible to understand the development of the meaning of Jesus to those who lived when he did without understanding the importance of this word.

Early in chapter 3, Paul recounts the confidence he could have in who he was, due to the great names and titles and associations he had:

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

But he switches gears, and makes one of his most famous statement through all of his letters, one of the most quoted verses in the New Testament:

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.

This right here. This is so, so important to our understanding of the nature of Christ, to our common Christology.

To associate one's self with a kyrios, with a Lord, was to associate one's self with success, with power and prestige and honor. All the great things you had done, all the titles you won and the powerful relations you had, would raise you in the eyes of your kyrios, would be immensely important to your standing in the world.

And Paul is saying Jesus turned that all on it's head.

By associating with our kyrios, Jesus, we don't count those earthly accolades in the credit column. Instead, they are counted against us. They are debits to our accounts.

Because in Kingdom of this kyrios, the least are counted as the first.

Our standing with God does not come from the honors we have achieved. It comes from our willingness to lower ourselves, to become meek and lowly, to live in service to others, instead of served by others.

And it's that way because that is the example we saw from the life of the one who showed us God.

Jesus humbled himself.
He ate with the sinners.
He hung out with the outcasts.
He touched the sick.
He mourned with the small.

His success came through failure; the symbol of his victory, of the victory of God's Kingdom, was not a crown,
or a scepter,
or a throne.

It was a cross. 

It was the place of the most humiliating execution possible. It was the tree of dishonor and shame and public ridicule. It was the final resting place of traitors and slaves and the scum of the earth.

He was tortured and killed. His followers were scattered, his name forgotten. 

And yet, here we are, twenty years after his ignominious death, and Paul has branded him kyrios, and announced the way in which we properly honor our Lord.

That's Christology right there.

That's working through what and who Jesus was, what his life meant.

Isn't that exciting stuff?

Next: Romans 1-3

For a PDF of the 30 Days of Paul reading plan, click here.

For more info on 30 Days of Paul, click here for my intro, or here for Cassandra Farrin's explanation.

Click Here for Cassandra Farrin's take on today's reading.

Philippians 2:19-3:1a, 4:4-9, 4:21-23: The Big Picture #30daysofPaul

I've almost been defeated. 

I've been plugging away over the last ten days or so at this #30daysofPaul reading challenge, writing about these little note-like missives from Paul. Sections of 2 Corinthians, the letter to Philemon, the Epistle to the Philippians: all these have been light on the theology, and heavy on  personal notes and minutiae and specific instructions and answers to questions.

There is only so much one person can say about this stuff.

And today was almost the day it got me.

I've been thinking and thinking on this passage since yesterday afternoon, and after 18 hours of fruitless reflection, I was ready move on to Romans.

And then I pulled out my handy, dandy Interpreters Bible set.

Thank goodness for fifty year-old scholarship.

So, let's think about the big picture here.

Paul's seven+ authentic epistles weren't written in a vacuum. They did not spring forth fully formed, free of any context and or personality traits. Paul wrote these in a specific time, to a specific audience, with a specific purpose in mind. His writings have very little to do with guiding the faith of American Christians in the 21st century, and very much to do with addressing the needs of his congregations and friends.

I know, you're saying "duh, we've already been over this." But I think it's important to point out again. We get into the weeds of these Epistles sometimes, and we lose sight of the purpose Paul was writing with. We start pulling out individual phrases and verses to back up an argument or make a point, and we lose sight of the big picture.

So Philippians: what was Paul's purpose in writing this letter? 

According to my Interpreters Bible, it is widely held that Paul was writing a letter of thanks in response to a large monetary gift from the church at Philippi, as referenced near the end of the letter. It seems the church raised a large sum of money, something that took a lot of work, to send to support Paul.

Now, we have seen elsewhere that Paul wasn't much of one for accepting money for churches. It appears he made an exception for Philippi, at least in this case, perhaps because he saw how much work and pride they put into their fundraising. But there is still a note of embarrassment from Paul, a hint of the uncomfortable feeling he had in accepting money. This has been Paul's consistent attitude throughout his ministry, and in fact, in previous letters, he had always had a point of pride in acknowledging his refusal of funds from the churches he supported.

(A quick side note here: I know that for the purposes of this #30daysofPaul study, Philippians has been split up, and 4:10-20 was actually the first thing we read from this letter. I don't have a copy of The Authentic Letters of Paul, the book this study comes from, so I have no idea why this decision was made. I trust the authors and their reasonings in reconstructing the chronology of Paul's letters, but I'm going to ask us to focus on the original composition of this letter, as handed down to us in the Bible. Maybe they got it wrong, and this is how the original letter flowed, or maybe an ancient compiler thought it would work better if that was the last bit included from Philippi: whatever the reason, for the purposes of my point, we are going to view the letter as an uninterrupted whole.)

Back to my point: this is supposedly a letter of thanks from Paul to his benefactors in Philippi. But go read the letter as a whole, or at least skim the headers. I'll wait while you do.

We don't see much reference to that gift, do we?

In fact, it's not really mentioned until the end, in chapter 4. The rest of the letter is a status report on Paul's situation, and exhortations to live humbly and be a light to the world, and some information about Timothy and Epaphroditus.

If this is a letter of thanks for a gift,

it's kind of an odd one.

I think this emphasis is deliberate. Something we can discern about Paul is that he took the words of Jesus on money and wealth very seriously. Paul agreed that money is the "root of all evil," and I think he always wanted churches to keep the focus off finances and on serving one another. If he asked them to send money to another church, or to support the leaders in Jerusalem, it was about spreading and nurturing the Christian faith.

Paul is shifting the emphasis of his church at Philippi with his letter. They have sent him a large sum of money, and while they probably wouldn't come out and say they expect it, they surely believed that Paul would write a gushing thank you letter, talking about how generous they are.

But Paul doesn't want them becoming about the money; he doesn't want them to make their fundraising prowess their chief gift to the world. Instead, he moves the focus to the things that are important for the church.

Thinking of others, especially those in distress.

Living with the humility that Christ showed.

Becoming a light to the world.

Keeping their eyes on the cross.

In 4:8 he makes this point most explicitly,

"Finally, beloved, 

whatever is true, 

whatever is honorable,

whatever is just,

whatever is pure,

whatever is pleasing, 

whatever is commendable,

if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise,

think about these things."

That's what Paul wants their focus to be.

Live in the example of Christ.

    Be humble.

        Love justice.

            Find purity.

                Serve, and be served.

Be generous, not for the praise it engenders, but because it brings the Kingdom a little

bit

closer

everytime.

Don't lose sight of the big picture.

Paul had a purpose in writing to Philippians. But I don't think it was the purpose they expected.

Next: Philippians 3:1b-4:3

For a PDF of the 30 Days of Paul reading plan, click here.

For more info on 30 Days of Paul, click here for my intro, or here for Cassandra Farrin's explanation.

Click Here for Cassandra Farrin's take on today's reading.

Philippians 1-2:18: Paul's Unquenchable Joy #30daysofPaul

If there is one thing I think we can understand about Paul, it is the fact that he had a perpetually sunny outlook. Despite numerous imprisonments, shipwrecks, trials, betrayals and tests, Paul consistently exudes a spirit of joy in his writings.

That spirit is abundant in Philippians. Five times in this short letter he uses the word "joy," and eleven times he says "Rejoice" and "be glad." His tone overall is one of rejoicing and positivity towards the church at Philippi, despite the fact that he was in prison at the time of his writing.

This section of Paul's letter is basically one of continued praise and thanks and joy for the Philippians. He exhorts them to "live in humility", and "be a light to the world", but the Paul we see here is a happy, positive Paul we haven't seen since probably 1 Corinthians.

Paul seems most joyous here because of the spread of the Christian faith that he has seen. In 1:15-18, he recounts how this spread has been both from sincerity and from those who are insincere, but it is a spread nonetheless in his eyes, and he is almost ecstatic to see that. It seems to ease the ache of being imprisoned, and he displays an indifference to his ultimate fate, an attitude that would be impossible for Paul if he felt there was still substantial amounts of work for him to do. Instead, he seems content with the growth of the church, and assured of it's continuance.

It's easy to imagine the pre-Christian Saul as a dour kind of person, considering his mission in life. But the apostle Paul is a man continually filled with the joy of God, embodying a spirit of love and compassion consistent with his assurance in the Message he was spreading. I think the common perception of Paul in the popular mind is a dry, academic, boring personality. But through out this study of his works, I have found an engaging, relatable, intensely human Paul, a man who is happy and driven and sometimes defensive or a braggart, but always compassionate.

Paul suffered persecution and hardship many of us can never imagine, yet never wavered in his positive outlook or caring attitude towards his churches. His is an example to emulate in our comfortable Christian lives in 2015 America. A persecution complex is an unseemly thing to carry about, considering the place of the Christian as that of the dominant cultural, social and political mindset in the modern world. Instead, we should be joyous, humble and compassionate at all times. We have no excuse to live otherwise.

I want to end by highlighting one section, verses 6-11 from chapter 2. This section is likely an early Christian hymn, and Paul recites it in full in the section about humility. This is another wonderful window into the early church, one we are lucky to have. I want to quote it in full here; as you read, just think about the fact that the earliest Christians, those who lived two thousand years ago, those who got direct personal guidance from the apostle Paul, also read and sang these very words of worship. It's an exercise in the ultimate form of Christian communion, a chance to be in community with those who pioneered our faith.

who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name

that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bend,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

Next: Philippians 2:19-3:1a, 4:4-9, 4:21-23

For a PDF of the 30 Days of Paul reading plan, click here.

For more info on 30 Days of Paul, click here for my intro, or here for Cassandra Farrin's explanation.

Click Here for Cassandra Farrin's take on today's reading.

Philippians 4:10-20: The Interconnected Church #30daysofPaul

We are on to a new letter here, the last one before Paul's surviving "magnum opus", the Epitstle to the Romans. Writing to the church at Philippi from prison, we hear Paul tonight writing in thanks to one of the few churches he accepts financial support from.

It's widely shared that Paul comes from a family of tent-makers, and that he was also part of the Jewish religious authorities, so the assumption is often made that he was probably wealthy at best, or well-off at worst. But we forget that for at least the last twenty years of his life, Paul worked full time traveling to plant and support churches.

Needless to say, that is not a highly profitable field.

So, Paul was surely dependent upon the generosity of others to sustain himself and his fellow workers (such as Titus and Barnabas and Timothy) and his ministry. He makes a point in some letters to acknowledge that he has never accepted compensation from them (specifically in 2 Corinthians, where he makes a point in his polemic to highlight this fact.)

Paul wants to highlight here that he certainly doesn't expect or require the Philippians to support him, but that he greatly appreciates it. He also points out that they were one of the first and only to do so.

We get a good picture into the interconnected, generous nature of the early church. Early traveling apostles could not exist without support from the congregations they planted and nurtured. Additionally, as we saw in 2 Corinthians as well, it was crucial that the better-endowed churches supported the less fortunate churches to assure their continued survival, and thus the continued spread of the Gospel.

It's still true today: all the established churches are a web, interconnected and interdependent, as are all of us. We cannot survive without the touch and support of others, whether we find agreement with them on most things or not. All people, and all churches, are interrelated and propped up on all sides by one another. It is the only way to be, and the only way to continue to be. As much as some of us may try to pull away, may try to assert their individuality, their independence and ability to exist on their own, in the end, we are all drawn together, inevitably and assuredly.

In community we find support and strength and love.

Next: Philippians 1-2:18

For a PDF of the 30 Days of Paul reading plan, click here.

For more info on 30 Days of Paul, click here for my intro, or here for Cassandra Farrin's explanation.

Click Here for Cassandra Farrin's take on today's reading.

Philemon: A Window Into Paul's World #30daysofPaul

The Epistle to Philemon is one book that makes you think, "What in the world was the early church thinking when they put this in the Bible?"

Philemon is very short -25 verses, 445 words, one chapter- and very, very light on theology. And by light, I mean there is none at all. Philemon is simply a letter from Paul to his acquaintance Philemon, asking for the slave Onesimus to be welcomed back with love and care, after an apparent falling out between the slave and his master.

And that's it. It's basically a note.

So what can we pull from it?

Well, it;s another good example of the personal Paul we've been encountering over the last couple of days. If you want to know Paul, if you want to get a feel for who he was and what he like and how he communicated to friends and loved ones on a personal level, then this is a great book for that.

In Philemon, we see Paul as we very rarely see him: humble, deferential, brown-nosing a bit, trying to praise and flatter Philemon as much as possible, so he will do what Paul is asking.

Martin Luther very accurately called this letter "holy flattery."

We don't know why Onesimus left Philemon-or if perhaps he was cast out. We don't know where they were from. We can infer from verse 2 that Philemon was highly regarded enough to host a church in home. We don't know the outcome of this letter, whether Philemon accepted Onesimus, whether he freed him or not, whether he punished him and sold him or what. All we know is what we read here, which is not much.

We can infer a bit of Paul's theology tangentially here, since we have a good idea of his ideas overall. Paul was always interested in reconciliation. Here, he writes specifically to implore Philemon to practice reconciliation, and forgiveness, to live the Christian example in relation to Onesimus.

We also know Paul had an eschatology of immanence, so he likely believed it wouldn't be long before the return of Christ and the breaking down of social barriers, meaning soon Onesimus and Philemon would truly be brothers and equals, thus Philemon should practice that Kingdom outlook here.

We know Paul was a product of his times, and something like slavery was so commonplace that if never occurred to Paul to advocate for abolition or manumission of slaves. It was just the natural order of things. As one commentary notes, for Paul to be an “abolitionist would have been at the same time an insurrectionist, and the political effects of such a movement would have been unthinkable."

Paul's eschatology prevented him from being one to rock the boat much, as he believed all this world was passing away soon anyways. He wasn't out for political and social revolution; he was working to reconcile people and to make followers of Christ. Those who once used Philemon as justification for the continuance of slavery were not only morally and ethically compromised, but also dismissive of historical context for Scripture.

There isn't much to work with in Philemon, but that doesn't meaning there's nothing. Getting to know Paul, getting a glimpse into his world and live and relationships-what a great opportunity from such a short work.

Next: Philippians 4:10-20

For a PDF of the 30 Days of Paul reading plan, click here.

For more info on 30 Days of Paul, click here for my intro, or here for Cassandra Farrin's explanation.

Click Here for Cassandra Farrin's take on today's reading.