The Moral Vision of the New Testament: The Inclusive Exclusive Paul

Romans 1:1-7 The Moral Vision of the NT The Inclusive Exclusive Paul Introduction: If it is your first time joining us - Welcome! We have dedicated this year to Biblical Literacy; meaning we as a church are reading the Bible for ourselves to know first hand what it teaches and in order to be shaped by the story of God. And along with that we are teaching through the Bible on Sunday mornings - the main themes, message and characters. This morning we come to our last series - The Moral Vision of the New Testament. The Moral Vision of the NT. When we think about the Bible and especially the commands written in the Bible we can often think of the Bible as simply that - a set of various commands, a religious rule book. You’ll remember though that at the beginning of the year we discussed this very thing - The Bible is first of all a story. We believe that is is THE ONE AND ONLY TRUE STORY FROM GOD - containing Laws, commands, statutes, principles, and wisdom, etc - that show us how life works best - It is a bout God’s way, his kingdom way. It tells us the story of the world from God’s point of view - what went wrong with it and how it will finally be put right through God’s anointed king and rescuer - Jesus. So the Moral vision of the NT is about how we now live in light of that story, or lives that are consistent with this story - or more specifically how our lives continue to tell the story of God. Now in talking about the Moral vision of the NT - we must deal with Paul the Apostle. Why? A few reasons. First, Paul wrote a large part of what we call the NT. Paul wrote 13 of the 26 documents making up the NT - that’s 25%. Besides possibly Luke - Paul is the greatest contributor, in terms of quantity, to the New Testament. Secondly, we have to deal with Paul because he is simultaneously beloved and hated, honored and reviled - readily received and vehemently opposed. Some of you might not be privy to these conversations - But people love to hate Paul! In fact one author, Karen Armstrong, wrote a book called - St. Paul, The Apostle we love to hate. Or another, written by J.R. Daniel Kirk - Jesus have I loved, but Paul? Maybe you also feel the tension when you read Paul’s writings - On one hand you are deeply inspired, and deeply challenged, and on another you are probably deeply bothered by what he says - Jesus announces the Kingdom of God to the poor - he hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors. Jesus says, "Love your neighbor as your self," and His whole mission was to include people in these celebrations of the Kingdom. Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God is here.” We Love Jesus. Some accuse Paul of totally making up what we call Christianity today Jesus and the early Jesus movement was this wonderful thing of love and inclusion and freedom BUT then Paul came along, and systematized, sterilized and ruined everything… Paul said, "The wrath of God is revealed against the godless.” Paul said, "Expel, excommunicate the immoral man from your church.” Pauls says, “wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God… Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men.. nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God…” Then there is Paul’s view of women and slaves.. What is with Paul’s view of Women’s roles in the church? (and the different interpretations surrounding that) Or when he addresses slaves and says nothing negative about their slavery? Karen Armstrong says, “Paul is an Apostle people love to hate; he has been castigated as a misogynist, a supporter of slavery, a virulent authoritarian, and bitterly hostile to Jews and Judaism…” Some consider Paul a misogynistic, homophobic, bigoted, oppressive, perverter of all of western society… As I said people love to hate Paul. 1. What was Paul all about? 1. 9 out of 10 times the problems that people have with Paul - are simply misunderstanding or not knowing the context of the letter or the 1st century culture that Paul wrote in… the others know exactly what Paul is saying and they just don’t like it. 2. Think of how many of us have problems communicating with people in our own language and our own culture in our own times.. We are reading documents that are 2,000 years old, from a man that spoke a totally different language explaining things even more ancient and nuanced.. maybe we should cut Paul a little slack? It’s funny because so many people critique Paul and what he says about women or slaves - But who was Paul?? Paul was a Jew, who was professionally trained in the Hebrew scriptures who went around the known world creating communities of house churches from all different cultures, languages and backgrounds, gathering them around the table, eating a meal together and gathering under the name of Jesus Christ. He unified the world like no one had ever done before - How is America doing on that kind of unity and community? I don’t think our country gives women or people of color half the respect and value that Paul the apostle called the church to - so why is he so under attack? What incredible hubris.. not surprising from American culture though..… 1. Romans intro - Listen again to Paul’s introduction in Romans 2. “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” -Romans 1:1-7 3. Paul’s backstory - Remember Paul had once been a Pharisee - and a radical persecutor of the church. Paul said he had been zealous for the traditions of his Fathers, and in other places he speaks of this zeal. - Many believe that this refers to the zeal of Phineas Remember Phineas, was the grandson of Aaron the high priest, Moses’ brother. Phineas was the one that stopped the judgment of God on the people of Israel by killing an apostate man and the woman he was having sex with. When this took place - God comments - “Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy. Therefore say, ‘Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace, and it shall be to him and to his descendants after him the covenant of a perpetual priesthood, because he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the people of Israel.” (Numbers 25:11-13) This guy was Paul’s role model and a huge role model for the Pharisees. They saw themselves as those following in the way of Phineas. See, in Paul’s understanding Jesus was a false prophet and false Messiah, (specifically because Jesus was crucified), he was leading God’s people astray - this would bring the judgment of God, and prolong the exile - the solution - kill and imprison anyone who follows the false messiah - protect and preserve the people of God from sin and evil at all cost.. but what happened is that while Paul was on his way to arrest some Jesus followers he met the risen, glorified Jesus on the road to Damascus and it changed everything - If Jesus is not dead, but is risen and glorified - shinning brighter than the noon day sun, then it means Jesus really was messiah, and his shinning glory is proof that he was the son of Man, who now rules at the right hand of YHWH.. and that all the promises of what God intended for Israel had come true in him - he was the king, he is the savior - he is the one who redeems Israel! - God had done it!! God is king again, through Jesus Messiah. 1. Remember God’s promise to Abraham back in Genesis 12? Through Abraham God would bless all people, and bless all nations… Paul through the revelation of Jesus on the road to Damascus, came to believe and understand that all the promises of God - to bless his people and to bless the whole world through them had been fulfilled in Jesus - In Jesus the new age has dawned - which means that the time has come to call all nations to allegiance to the true king of the world Jesus the Messiah - Announce the good news of God’s reign! 2. Paul’s Vision and Mission 1. This was Paul’s vision and greatest passion - because of his understanding of the greatness of God’s love and what God had accomplished through Jesus: 1. To Invite everyone to respond to the Gospel (Inclusive Paul) - this is what he did - traveled all over the world, and told anyone and everyone… 2. In faithful obedience to Jesus the Messiah (exclusive Paul) - Paul planted local churches that practiced a common life, by the power of the Holy Spirit, under the reign of Jesus. 1. Paul’s vision was to unify all humanity with Jesus as the center and focus of all humanity. Only the Gospel - the victory and rescue of the world through the one true God, was big enough and great enough to include all people. 1. I think if you make this your center of gravity when reading through Paul, it will make much more sense... 2. Again, Paul saw this vision happening through local communities gathering and living life under this new ethic centered around the person of Jesus Christ.. Paul’s one great passion was to unite all of humanity - male, female, Jew, Gentile, slave or free - under King Jesus. 1. He says these kinds of things again and again in his letters - “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.” - Ephesians 2:13-22 2. “Paul made sure that the earliest Christian churches were made up of people from all over the social map, and they formed a fellowship of differents..." – typo intended – "...full of people who certainly did not agree on very much except, perhaps, that life in Roman cities was really dirty and difficult. That's about the only thing they would agree on. And this was the heart of Paul's mission, to create a fellowship of differents and difference, a mixture of people from all across the spectrum.” - Scot McKnight, A Fellowship of Differents 3. Paul believed that the Church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing different people together to the same table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. Christianity was the great equalizer: 1. Baptism was one of the key symbols because the rich Jewish landowner got baptized and the Gentile slave got baptized. The houseless person got baptized, the rich got baptized - Everybody got baptized. Everybody had sins that needed to be forgiven. 2. Everybody was given the same gift of life. And when they gathered to sing to Jesus and to eat at the table together, all of the things that make them different outside of the family of Jesus, all of the boundary lines, socioeconomic or ethnic, that create power, relationships and differences of privilege and so on, outside the church community all of that gets erased. When we walk into this gathering, we are one family in the Messiah, Jesus. 3. When we think of what is excluded in the NT and especially by Paul it is always what does harm to others - Paul was all about following in the footsteps of Jesus he was all about what built up others, what helped, what would bless - In fact Paul would lay out this standard and principle for all the churches - the Law of Christ which is to bear one another’s burdens; to owe no one anything except to love - for whoever loves has fulfilled the law. 4. When Paul forbids sexual practices he forbids things that make humans into objects that can be used by others and then discarded; he forbids what fosters social break down and injustice - for it does not follow in the steadfast way of God’s love for us in Christ 5. We give Paul a hard time because he called wives to be submissive to their husbands but he also called husbands to be both self sacrificial in their love and faithful to their wives and says that husbands bodies belong exclusively to their wives - This was unheard of in Greco-Roman society… Again Paul used the Gospel and the way of Jesus as the great equalizer 6. Though Paul does call slaves to be obedient to their masters he also reminds masters and slaves that they are no different in God’s eyes - they are equals and need to treat one another first and foremost as brothers in a family…. (Ephesians 6:5-9) 7. (How about Galatians where Paul claims that everyone who is in Christ has the status of a first born son of God?!) 8. But Paul is not trying to create homogenous communities (This is not how Paul is exclusive) - we have gotten this wrong so many times - especially in missions.. many missionaries in the past were guilty of colonialism, but Paul never practiced this - He actually insist that every culture stay in their culture yet embrace Jesus as the the true king and savior of the world and scripture as the true story of the world in order to shape their lives accordingly - the Jew is to remain a Jew and to worship God, through Jesus in their Jewishness, Gentiles are to worship God in their Gentile-ness, through allegiance to Jesus…. Has there ever been an nation on earth that has done this successfully? - I mean not just that you have people from other countries and culture living in the same general vicinity but all centered around and united around one common goal and way of life - loving and serving one another and yet still distinctly holding to their particular culture?? This is unheard of outside of Christianity 9. Rodney Stark, an amazing historian and sociologist of early Christianity, says, "Early Christianity served as a revitalization movement in Greco-Roman cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social bonds that were able to cope with many urgent urban problems. To cities filled with homeless and impoverished, the Christians offered charity and hope when there were no other social institutions that existed to help the poor.” 10. The Roman empire didn't have any social systems to help people. It was the churches that innovated these system. 11. "To cities filled with strangers and newcomers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for social attachment.” And now you can see why, because it had nothing to do with your gender, with your class, with your income, with your place in society or with your ethnicity. It only had to do with you coming to see the love of Jesus that He showed you in His life and death and resurrection. That was what drew these people together. 12. “To cities filled with orphans and widows, the Christians offered new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by ethnic divisions, the Christian communities offered a new basis for social solidarity.” 13. This wasn't simply a new urban movement; it was a new culture. It was a new way of being human beings here on Planet Earth. It was capable of making life in GrecoRoman cities more tolerable. 4. You really can’t get more inclusive than the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Gospel that Paul proclaimed - Everyone is invited to join God’s kingdom, and yet it is exclusive - Even as Jesus said, unless you take up your cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple. - It is the kingdom of Jesus Christ, we must submit to his rule - and that is the exclusive piece that people, and even we ourselves often resist. 1. I don’t know if you feel like this but sometimes it seems that the Church, that we ourselves, are almost waiting for God to do something more… Paul saw what God did in and through Jesus as the climax of the story of the world - the defeat of sin, evil and death at the cross, the resurrection from the dead, the ascension of the son of man to the right hand of God, the pouring out of the holy Spirit - God’s presence here on earth with individual people, the gathering together of the people of God in one family - the church and the breaking in of the new age and the rule of God’s kingdom - What are we waiting for? Go tell everyone, live this life of the kingdom of the heavens in every nook and cranny of the world today! I’m not even saying that there isn’t more to come - when God returns to judge the living and the dead, when God makes all things new, new heaven new earth, or that there sin’t break in from the spirit of God to revive his church and save and rescue people.. but I am saying I think we have come to minimize what God has already done! The story is just about over… 1. “God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realize what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else - something it never entered your head to conceive - comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing; it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it.” - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity 2. Paul traveled the known world implementing the reign of God, through Jesus Christ, in local communities gathered around the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ - these communities were living out God’s kingdom reign where everyone - every tribe, tongue, nation and people were welcome to join this community of honoring Jesus as their King, and following his way of life - until he returns. Paul invites us to do likewise. To Be a colony of heaven in the country of death, to be a community of the Spirit, to proclaim and implement the reign of Jesus, until the Lord returns.