19 Live a life worthy of the calling

[stephen]

“I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to live a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called” (Ephesians ch4 v1).

The message of the New Testament centres upon what Christ has achieved.
That is, he died on the Cross, was raised from the dead, and was established as Lord and future judge.
We are included in what Christ has done, because we belong to him, and we are therefore “washed, sanctified, and justified”.
In the absence of the old barrier of sin, we have entered into a new relationship with
God.

In this new relationship, we have begun a new life, which ought to be a different kind of life.
But there is a paradox in the Christian life, best expressed in the words of John.
On the one hand, we are free from sin in the eyes of God; “If we walk in the light… the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John ch1 v7)and “We know that any one born of God does not sin” (1 John ch5v18).
On the other hand, we are still engaged with sin in our daily lives; “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John ch1v8)
So our task is to endeavour to bridge that gap, to bring our earthly lives up to speed with our status in the presence of God.

It is a matter of conducting our lives in accordance with God’s will; “We must make it our aim to please him; for we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians ch5 vv9-10).
So Paul encourages his followers not to take it for granted that they have “attained” the resurrection from the dead; “I press on toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians ch3 v14)

The point of continuity with ”salvation by faith” is that God is doing most of the work.
“We always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his call…” (1 Thessalonians ch1 v11)
“He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion” (Philippians ch1 v6).
So the task is really a joint enterprise; “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians ch2v13).

As might have been expected, this work is to be done “in Christ”.
“If any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians ch5v17). In other words, he receives a fresh start.
It is in Christ, in the first place, that he has ”died to sin”.
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians ch2 v20).
“Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh, with its passions and desires” (Galatians ch5 v24).

The death of the old life requires the beginning of a new life.
“For he who has died is freed from sin… So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin… Do not yield your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but yield yourselves to God” (Romans ch6 vv7-13).
“Put to death what is earthly in you” (Colossians ch3 v5).
In this way, we will be fulfilling to injunction to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God”(Romans ch12 v1).
That self-offering in obedience is the only kind of sacrifice that God really wanted from us.

The change of direction will not be achieved by personal endeavour alone.
“Our inner nature is being renewed every day” (2 Corinthians ch4 v16).
We are being changed into the likeness of Christ, for “this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians ch3 v18).
Thus we are to “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Ephesians ch4 v16).
This transformation in Christ is the work of the Spirit of Christ.
For the old life is life “according to the flesh”; but we are no longer “in the flesh” if the Spirit of God, who is also called the Spirit of Christ, dwells within us.

But the transformation, at the same time, is a joint enterprise between God and man, and we need to be willing to work together with the Spirit.
“Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit” (Romans ch8 vv5-9)
The sons of God are led by the Spirit, and by the Spirit we may put to death the deeds of the body (vv13-14).
We may have been liberated from “the old written code”, but that does not mean that we have been released into lawlessness. It means that we are following a different kind of guidance; we serve “in the new life of the Spirit” (Romans ch7 v6).

“If we live by the Sprit, let us also walk by the Spirit” (Galatians ch5 v25).
The best way to understand this injunction is to remember that the Hebrew language uses the same word for ”Spirit” and ”breath”. Then we can see the metaphor about the difference between the old life and the new life.
The old life began, according to Genesis, when Adam received “the breath of life”. Our life begins with breathing, and we spend the rest of our lives continuing to breathe. In other words, we “live by” this breath, and we also “walk by” this breath.
In the same way, our new life begins when we receive the Holy Spirit. We “live by the Spirit”.
But our first physical breath does not last the rest of our lives, and our relationship with the Holy Spirit, by analogy, should not end with that first experience.
We need to “walk by the Spirit” also, living by means of his power, and acting under his guidance.

Our ideal goal would be that the sanctity of our earthly lives would “catch up with” our achieved status of sanctity in the eyes of God. Then we would indeed be living a “life worthy of the calling”.
“Not that I have achieved this [righteousness] or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Philippians ch3v12).
But there is no reason to expect this process to be made complete before the final transformation which we are expecting at the return of Christ and the redemption of our bodies” (Romans ch8 v23)

“May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He who calls you is faithful, and he will do it” (1 Thessaloniansch5 vv23-4).

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John Wesley’s sermon on “Christian Perfection” is the thirty-fifth out of the standard “Forty-four Sermons”.
He rightly explains that Christians are not perfect in the sense of being perfect in knowledge. Nor are they free from mistakes, infirmities, or temptations. “Perfection” is only another term for “holiness”.
So the question is when, and how, and in what sense, the believer achieves holiness.

I offered my own view on these questions on a previous occasion.
The New Testament presents a paradox on the subject of holiness.
On the one hand, we are already freed from sin, cleansed and sanctified.
On the other hand, there is an ongoing task of living up to that status, eradicating sin from our daily lives, living lives “worthy of our calling”.
I thought that conventional theology confused the subject a little by confining the term “sanctification” to the ongoing process.

Wesley deals with the paradox by leaning heavily on the side of “completed holiness”.
He quotes a succession of passages asserting the Christian’s liberation from sin.
However, I don’t think he pays enough attention to the way that these statements occur in the context of exhortation. In other words they are addressed to Christians who are still struggling to free themselves from sin in their daily lives.
He declares that “all real Christians, or believers in Christ, are made free from outward sin.”
He quotes John’s epistle in support of that claim; “Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin” (ch3 v9). He notes the balancing statement in the first chapter; “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves” (ch1v8). But he explains that as a reference to our state before coming to Christ.

I believe that Wesley got caught up in the confusion between the two New Testament senses of “sanctified”. He was taking the statements about “accomplished” sanctity, and applying them to the on-going process of sanctification, leading him to maintain that full sanctity or perfection in this earthly life was not only possible but also necessary, strictly speaking, to meet his definition of being a Christian.
In my view, that conclusion gives rise to unrealistic expectations.

[stephen]

In Galatians, Paul illustrates the meaning of “walking in the Spirit” by outlining the practical differences between “the fruit of the Spirit” and “the works of the flesh” (ch5 vv16-23)
There’s a passage in James (ch3 vv13-18) which offers a parallel contrast, except that James does not use (and I think he deliberately avoids) the terminology which Paul has made familiar. Paul’s contrast is between “the Spirit” and “the flesh”, whereas the contrast in James is between “the Wisdom from above” and “the earthly wisdom”. Apart from that difference, the description of the different effects of the two kinds of wisdom is intriguingly similar to the passage in Galatians.

So the teaching in Paul is that the Christian life begins with faith, but does not end there.
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians ch2 v10).
We learn the same thing from James. James does indeed give priority to faith, making that theme the beginning and the end of his letter. But it is not enough simply to say that we have faith.
Good works are to be desired as the evidence that the alleged faith is genuine. ”I will show you my faith by my works” (ch2 v18).
So the common judgement found in both Paul and James (and in the message of Jesus and the rest of the New Testament) is this;
God expects both faith and obedience from us, but faith comes first in order of time.

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The attitude of the Christian church to the laws of the Pentateuch is based on the teaching of Paul;
“But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit”- Romans ch7 v6
In other words, this law belongs to the past, and not to the present time.

Paul says that the purpose of the Law was to be our “schoolmaster” (AV), our “custodian” (RSV), “like a slave serving us” (Jerusalem Bible) until Christ came.- Galatians ch3 v24
These various translations are rendering the Greek word PAIDAGOGOS.
The PAIDAGOGOS was a family slave entrusted with the daily guardianship and education of a child.
He was a male version of Mary Poppins, except that he had a lower social status (even lower than the status of a real Victorian governess, who would normally be paid less than a good cook).
His disciplinary methods might be very harsh, because a slave might not otherwise find it easy to hold the attention of the free-born son of the household.
But the child was released from the slave’s charge, of course, once he came of age.

So Paul’s meaning is that the Law was a system of discipline which held God’s people in a kind of servitude.
It had a necessary but temporary function, preparing them for adulthood, but once they had reached adulthood they were released from its control.
The moment of adulthood is to be identified with the arrival of Faith, which replaces the Law, and their “adoption” in Christ (ch4 vv1-5).

I’ve used the “teacher” analogy myself, but in a different way.
In my version, God himself is the teacher (more in the style of a modern professional educator), and the Law is part of the teaching material which he’s using.
But this version of the analogy leads to the same conclusion, because the teaching material used in the modern classroom varies according to the age and circumstances of the pupils.
The books used in the infants’ class are not the books used in the university lecture hall.
I’ve heard a physics graduate complaining that he had to re-learn the laws of physics at every stage in his education.
In the same way, the guidance which God gives to his people might be expected to change according to the level of their spiritual growth as well as the condition of their society.
The pupils move on from the elementary material to the more advanced material.
That is, in Paul’s terms, they move on from the Law to Faith.

The Law which Paul is rejecting is the written code, published in the name of Moses.
Other parts of the New Testament show greater respect for the law, but on closer examination it’s not clear that the law they want to keep is the same law which Paul is rejecting.

Thus James, for example, tells his readers about the need to keep “the whole law”.
However, he seems to understand this law in terms of the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, which sits in the background of everything he says.
He’s quoting the commandment which Jesus quoted, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”.
He calls this “the royal law”, in most translations, though I’ve argued elsewhere that the Greek really means “the law which belongs to the Kingdom”.
He also uses the very suggestive phrase “the law of liberty”.
Paul says that we have been “made free” from the law, and I’m inclined to think that James has coined this semi-Pauline term to mean much the same thing. “The law of liberty” is not the written law (which is not liberty), but a substitute for the written law, to be found perhaps in the teaching of Jesus. (James ch2 vv8-12)

Jesus himself appears to take a firm stand when he declares that the law will never pass away.
At the same time, though, there are details in the written law which he’s unwilling to endorse.
He asserts that the permission to divorce was in conflict with God’s real will, and only allowed because of their “hardness of heart”.
He’s also very reluctant to enforce the death-penalty for adultery.
So perhaps he, too, is thinking in terms of “the spirit of the law”, as expressed in his own teaching, rather than “the letter of the law” which had been given by Moses.

There’s an obvious danger in the idea that the law has been made obsolete, which explains why religious teachers might be reluctant to take that route.
The problem is that people are only too ready to understand “freedom from law” as “freedom from all restraint”, and live accordingly.
That is not what Paul means at all.
In his teaching, our “service” has not been abolished but simply transferred; we are serving under “the new life of the Spirit”, which is a different kind of restraint.

I can explain the difference by use of analogy.
When I was a child, the school taught us how to cross the road safely.
I still remember watching the misadventures of “little Dolly Daydream” (in those days, a projected silent filmstrip, manually controlled with live teacher commentary).
We were expected to cross by following a set of rules;
“Look right,
Look left,
Look right again;
When all is clear, then cross”.
That could be called “the letter of the law”.
Obviously the important point here is the basic principle of not running out into traffic.
That could be called “the spirit of the law”.
Now that I’m grown up, I don’t follow those rules religiously (“freed from the law”), but I don’t take that as permission to rush out and get myself killed.
Instead, I live under “the spirit of the law”, by keeping my wits about me enough to make sure there aren’t any vehicles coming.
There is still restraint, but a different kind of restraint.

Paul seems to assume that the Christian will be receiving moral guidance direct from the Holy Spirit.
However, the later church has never been able to live up to that standard.
Individual Christians did not feel confident enough to rely on this direct contact, and the church leadership was reluctant to risk leaving them to their own devices.
So the church, in practice, has evolved the compromise theory that the “ritual law” has been abolished while the “moral law” content of the Law of Moses remains valid, especially in the Ten Commandments.
This works well enough as a practical rule of thumb, but it’s not really what Paul means.
He does agree that we should not be committing theft and murder and adultery.
But his point is that we now avoid these things because the Holy Spirit tells us to avoid them, and not because the Law of Moses tells us to avoid them.

We are discharged from the Law of Moses, in every detail, and living a new life serving in the Spirit.