Life In Christ

"We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, 'The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.' For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragment grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. For I telly ou that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy." (Romans 15:1-8)

In his instructions to the First Century Christians, Paul made some powerful statements about ethics and holy living. The ethics of Paul is deeply christological--that is, it is not based merely on reasoned arguments or quarrels about logic, nor is it merely a list of rules. Human reason has failed ethically for milennia. And time and again, Jesus showed the Pharisees how they had manipulated holy rules in unholy ways. This does not mean that Christ wanted us to abandon reason or God's commandments for living, either. Paul says here that we need instruction in what was written in the former days--that is, the Biblical writings available to the early church. It is these Scriptures that give us encouragement and hope. What does he mean?

What was the ethical landscape like in the Roman Empire of the 1st Century? Not terribly different from what we have today. Life was cheap, people bought and sold each other on slave markets, tax farmers--or publicani--exploited the populace in much the same way that banks and creditors exploit people today, powerful families called negotii bid for government and military contracts to increase their capital and overseas holdings, the Roman Army opened up new markets and made more countries dependent on the imperium, local leaders competed for power in political blood sport, revolutionaries died by the hundreds in failed attempts to glorify themselves or replace Roman imperium with their own tyranny. War, romanized urbanization and other causes wrecked the environment in some places. Abortion, murder, theft, wrongful lawsuits, adultery, infanticide, forced prostitution, alcohol and drug abuse, arms dealing--all of these existed in supreme degree in the empire that crucified our Lord Jesus. In other words, the situation seemed as hopeless then as it does today. The Roman writers Juvenal, Petronius, Martial, Catullus, and Ovid give quite a lurid picture of Roman life. And despite certain historical differences, it can be like looking into a mirror of our times.

Despite the seemingly hopeless situation, however, Paul writes that through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. Why? Is Paul merely talking about the family values, virtues, or social teachings in the Gospels that give us our ethics? I do not think so. I think that the Scriptures have rich wisdom in terms of ethics, but trying to read Scripture as a textbook on ethics won't help us at all. Paul is hinting at something much more scary, something much more challenging. Paul says that Christ is our ethics, because Christ became a servant to humanity, to take away our reproaches, to show God's truthfulness, and to teach us to be servants, too. When we are clothed in Christ, we are clothed as servants--all of our ethics must be about the Cross and cross-bearing. Since Christ did not live to please himself, but to please others, we too are called to live in a same manner of self-sacrifice and love of others.

What will be the benefits of such an ethics? What are we actually doing? It means to build our neighbors up, whoever they are; to show God's truthfulness, to live by drawing hope from the Scripture, to have one voice, and to welcome each other into the glory of God that Christ has welcomed us into. Paul's ethics is thus not merely a christology that leads us into glorification, but it is one that is unmistakably about relinquishing self and power, taking on the role of servants and carrying our crosses in love for God and for all people that God created.