But rare is the driver that
adheres to practicing those lessons and who converts them into good habits, regardless
of what the rest of the driving community is doing. After a while, expediency
works against good habits, especially when no consequences are apparent. Rare
is the driver who consistently practices obeying those laws when they
constantly witness with their own eyes people successfully exploiting them
(i.e., no accident occurs and no police officer happens by). By and large,
drivers behave as though such rules are in place, not to be obeyed to the
letter, but to be circumvented by any means they can escape with, in the most
expedient manner to suit that driver’s desires, most of the time at the expense
of everyone else sharing that stretch of road.
I am reasonably sure we have
all seen this in different forms result badly over the years, from someone
having a very bad day to someone having their very *last* day.
The question is, what tends
to happen to those drivers who experience discourtesy, and outright violation
of law, on a regular basis? When people routinely rubberneck the person in
front of them to the point where they might as well be riding in their trunk,
or change lanes without signaling as though the road were theirs alone, or roll
through stop signs because, well, that involves actually stopping and who has
time for that?... What does the average person in the world end up doing when
everyone on the road is *supposed* to be in agreement with one another about
how they will conduct themselves, but there is no immediate, visible
consequence of violation of the law?
The average person takes
hold of that moral hazard, and begins to exploit it, *just like everyone else
around them*. Why should I obey the law if no one else needs to? No one else
signals, why should I? No one else is doing the speed limit, why should I?
Everyone else is rolling through that intersection when the red octagonal sign
on the corner means nothing else but STOP, why shouldn’t I do it, too?—I’m
entitled to the same thing everyone else gets, so excuse me while I roll on
through here just like the car in front…
Good habits must be
maintained despite the presence of moral hazard in the actions we commit.
I have not at this point
said anything that we do not already know… so what does this example of good
and bad habits have to do with Ephesians 4?
Ephesians 4: 1-6
The speaker, Paul, has been
speaking to the Gentiles in the previous 3 chapters of the blessings of God
upon all who both *heard* and *believed* the message of the Gospel, how He
chose us in Him, before the world was founded, through the blood of His Son;
the riches of God’s grace, given according to *His* choice and purpose. He
spoke in the *past tense* in chapter 2, how we *were* dead in our sin, how we
*previously* walked according to the ways of this world, how we *previously*
walked in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our thoughts.
Those attributes were described in the past tense, even when he said, “we were all by nature children under wrath as the others were also. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, made us alive with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses. You were saved by grace!”
Those attributes were described in the past tense, even when he said, “we were all by nature children under wrath as the others were also. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, made us alive with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses. You were saved by grace!”
After saying all of that, he
now establishes who he knows himself to be in the eyes of God. Having already
called himself “the least of all the
saints”, he does not indentify himself by anything he has accomplished under
the name Saul of Tarsus. He does not say “therefore I, Pharisee of Pharisees”
or, “Therefore I, who mastered the law at the feet of Gamaliel the Elder.” He
had no credentials to identify himself to these members of Christ’s body except
“the prisoner for the Lord”.
Despite all of his great
accomplishments, he was given to know his place. And it is not a pleasant one
to any flesh.
Prisoner for the Lord.
Literally, the words translate from the Greek as “a captive in bonds, for the
Lord. I saw that and at first it brought to mind a man bound at the ankles and
wrists in contemporary terms, before I remembered what happened to Saul of
Tarsus.
He was on his way to
Damascus as a man with great authority and wielding fear and persecution,
suddenly knocked onto his back and blinded, and had to be led in that blind
state by the hand the rest of the way to Damascus. He then had to wait in
complete darkness for three days, eating nothing, drinking nothing. A slave of
God, named Ananias, is dispatched by the Lord and given charge to (first)
overcome his fear of Saul’s well known actions of seeing slaves like himself
killed, and (second) see Saul’s sight restored, baptize him, and see him
receive the Holy Spirit. Saul is seized, thoroughly subjected to a Will
stronger than his own, and God says to Ananias in Acts Chapter 9 that “I will
show him how much he must suffer for My name!” While the Bible does not reveal
why or how his name was changed from Saul to the Romanized “Paul”, it is clear
that the man known as Saul of Tarsus, after encountering Jesus and
being made His prisoner, became Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ.
Where have we heard of
details of changes like that forced upon a human life?
That looks a lot less like a
contemporary prisoner in an orange jumpsuit, and more like a captive slave.
There are no rights assigned to this man in his new status, no promise of fair
treatment. No established ending in this life to the term of his imprisonment.
This is freedom revoked. This is a man identifying himself as the property of
the Lord.
In Paul’s first letter to Corinth
1
Corinthians 6:19-20
19 Don’t
you know
that your body is a
sanctuary of the Holy
Spirit
who is in you, whom you
have
from God? You
are not
your own,
Do we live as though we do
not belong to ourselves? Do we live as though we know our place as mercifully
purchased property? Do we recognize that to belong to our selves is to be dead?
If the Master has not purchased us, we are dead in our own propensity to
violate the law to serve our flesh. Do we walk this life as people aware of
this fact, let alone worthy of His calling upon our lives?
We see the difference
spelled out in the life of Paul. In the Book of Acts, we read that all of the
followers of The Way, as followers of Jesus were called before the derogatory
term “little Christs” or Christians, became the norm in the Roman
Empire , were terrified of Saul of Tarsus. When he came to Jerusalem Jerusalem
Back to Ephesians 4… He is now
urging those who have heard and believed the message of the Gospel “to walk
worthy of the calling you have received”. He is personally admonishing and
exhorting them, as a man who was put in his place, to do what the redemption of
Christ’s blood allows the recipients of God’s grace to do, to walk worthy, to
literally conduct their lives in a manner becoming of the divine call made by
the Lord Jesus. Walk worthy. You were dead. You once walked as the world walks,
breaking the law because it was expedient, because you obeyed yourself and held
yourself in higher esteem than what God called you to, as the rest of the world
does. But God, great in mercy, chose to save you. Walk worthy of His calling as
adopted sons and daughters. That is an action to be done continuously and
faithfully, as Paul wrote to Corinth
2 Corinthians 13:5
5 Test
yourselves to see if
you are
in
the faith. Examine yourselves.
Or do
you yourselves not recognize that
Jesus Christ is in you? — unless you
fail the test.
The verse there has two polar opposite terms in
Greek at both ends of it. Literally, Paul was saying to the church in Corinth
So despite the moral hazard of living and breathing
on Earth among the walking dead, among those who are completely unconcerned
with any notion of obeying any god but the god of self, we who are set free
from slavery to sin but mercifully bound captive to the Living God by His
grace, must walk worthy of the calling.
In verse 2 Paul describes what that walk looks like.
The attributes of the one who walks worthy eliminate the ability of moral
hazard to exist, because they strip all focus from the individual and his or
her wants, and focus instead entirely upon the mandate of Christ to love one
another.
We then walk in humility because we are always
aware of the fact that we were given such grace despite our wretched
unworthiness, and truly know our place and harbor no vestige of ourselves.
We are gentle because we have been broken by the
truth and are being reshaped into the image of the Lamb, the Only One deserving
of praise and glory who walked upon this earth as the Son of Man, but Who
became sin so that we might be given pardon when we only deserve death.
We walk with patience, accepting one another in
love, because we recognize Jesus Christ in one another, just as the disciples
saw Him in Saul when he spoke, and we recognize that apart from Christ we are
made of the same materials as they are, and the only difference between those
whom God loves and those whom God hates, is God and His purposes, and not
anything about us separate from the work of His Holy Spirit. I don’t want to be
accepted for who I am; I want to be accepted because our Lord and Master is
visible in me despite who I am, despite this cracked, unworthy vessel He has
purchased and made use of for His glory.
We walk diligently keeping the unity of the Spirit
with the peace that binds us because, knowing our place as His bought property,
knowing that we are saved from wrath so terrible that God’s Son was crushed so
we would not be, we don’t want the false peace that the world offers any
longer.
The Greek word for peace used here, eiréné (i-ray'-nay), is a beautiful
word. Its root is from eirō, "to join, tie together into a
whole") – properly, wholeness, i.e. when all essential parts
are joined together; peace (God's gift of wholeness). This is the
peace that bonds us together in Him. The
“unity of the Spirit” means the harmony from sharing likeness of nature with
the Lord. Compare that with the completely opposing attributes of what Paul
says about the nature of children under wrath in Ephesians 2 that I have been
speaking about, and you get what the world calls peace; living in fleshly desire,
and carrying out the inclinations of flesh and thoughts.
We as
followers of Jesus are to diligently keep the harmony from sharing likeness of
nature with the Lord, given to us by the Holy Spirit, with the peace that bonds
us together in Him. Through his
death on the cross, he took our nature as children under wrath and received all
of God’s wrath for our sin when He was without any sin, never broke a single
command from His Father, and giving us instead not what we deserve, but
likeness of nature with *Him* through the Holy Spirit.
That is the
most beautiful thing I have ever read. The world does not even pretend to offer
anything close when it speaks of peace. It doesn’t know the meaning of the
word.
When the world extends peace through conformity and
friendship with it, the world lies, because how can something that is all for
self offer anything which requires loving sacrifice? The world can at rare
moments offer acts of benevolence, but it is always for a selfish reason; ultimately
to look after one’s own objectives, to feel better about one’s self, to appear
benevolent for the sake of fickle appearance, are the most altruistic motives
the world can muster for whatever “good” it manages to put forth in the name of
peace. Even in war, a man might lay down his life for his country, but why was
his country at war in the first place? James answered that question in Chapter
4 of his epistle.
2 You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. You do not have because you do not ask.
3 You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your evil desires.
4 Adulteresses! Don’t you know that friendship with the •world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the world’s friend becomes God’s enemy.
5 Or do you think it’s without reason the Scripture says that the Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously?
8 Draw
near to God, and
He will draw near to you. Cleanse your
hands, sinners, and
purify your hearts, double-minded
people!
There is the crux. There is
the source of why we experience any reluctance to walk worthy of the calling we
have received, why we don’t want to live as bought slaves, why we even dare
want heaven as long as God leaves us alone to be ourselves. We are not content
to keep the harmony from sharing likeness of nature
with the Lord, given to us by the Holy Spirit, with the peace that bonds us
together in Him. Our flesh is in direct opposition to it. Every single
war has started because someone wanted something he didn’t have and decided he
was entitled to it. We heed the cravings that are inside us, we still want to
live in our fleshly desires with the rest of the world. We still want to carry
out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, when we are told in Galatians 5:24 that “those who belong to Christ Jesus have
crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” That is extremely important. When we belong to Christ, our passions and
desires have been crucified with Him. If when we look at our passions and
desires, we treat it like a national flag and upraise it, we need to repent and
ask God for forgiveness, because we are behaving as though we don’t belong to
Him.
We desire, and do not have. We
have convinced ourselves that we are entitled to have what we desire. The
country’s foundation is on that principle; the pursuit of that which makes *us*
happy is a documented, inalienable right. With that sense of entitlement in our
fists, we will pursue what we desire, but because we desire and do not have,
and we want our desire more than we want to obey God, we will, by the nature of
our flesh, transgress God’s law to obtain our desire, seeing no immediate
consequence for doing so.
Consider it for a moment.
There are desires we hold in our chests and have clung to them for years,
yearning for something we don’t have and have reasoned that we are entitled to
have. We have carried them in our hearts for so long that we do not realize
that we have placed that desire upon the throne of our hearts, which is
idolatry, and God has commanded that we are never to supplant His rightful
place as the sole occupant of that throne. We are to love the LORD our God with
*all* our heart, mind, soul and strength. But now our long held desire has
taken the throne. When we are made aware of this fact--*that* is the time to
examine ourselves to prove that we are in the faith. Do we then prove ourselves
faithful by repenting of our idolatry and obeying God, or counterfeit by obeying
our desire and hoping God does not hold us accountable for our decision to
disobey Him?
Every instance in the Bible
where God chooses to allow His people to have things which do not honor Him has
been cause for those people to fall upon their faces and cry out to Him for
mercy when all is said and done.
When we have the gall to ask
God for these things and do not receive it, it is because our motives are
wrong. God’s glory and honor, pleasing Him and Him alone, are not are goals.
Pleasing ourselves, making our *selves* happy, is.
James calls those of us who
do this faith-LESS. The Greek word translated as “adulterers” in English, pronounced
“moichalis” is defined this way;
“As the intimate alliance of
God with the people of Israel was likened to a marriage, those who relapse into
idolatry are said to commit adultery or play the harlot; hence, moichalis is
figuratively equivalent to faithless to God, unclean, apostate: (James 4:4)”
James is saying in clear
language that to espouse the world’s way of doing things, pursuing the selfish
desires of our own hearts instead of pursuing that which glorifies God, is
harlotry. It is filthy, and nothing filthy will be touched by God. It is betrayal
of God in the way a wife betrays a husband and a husband betrays a wife. That
is the heart of the matter. To be the world’s friend, to walk according to the
ways of this world, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, is
to be God’s enemy. It is to prove oneself unworthy in the test. And the tests
of faith will come, sometimes by the minute. Every trial and test is designed
to prove ourselves in the faith.
Seeing the sin upon
examination is not enough. Awareness of our sin is but the first mercy of God
upon a soul. Repentance, the act of rejecting the sin we are now aware of and
turning 180 degrees away from it and toward God with consistency, in faithful
obedience, is the second.
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