"Put on the Lord Jesus Christ"

by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

"But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires."

-- Romans 13:14

In this part of the Letter to the Romans (chapters 12-15) Paul is doing what all preachers have to do, showing how the Gospel applies to daily life. To do this he gives, in ascending order of importance, specific commands, a general principle, and a description of God’s action that makes these two things possible. Some specific commands are, “use your spiritual gifts conscientiously, be genuine in love, patient in tribulation, humble, and peaceable, forswear vengeance, support the duly constituted government, and avoid drunkenness and the revels that take place in the dark.” The general principle is, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:8 &10). The action of God that makes it possible for Paul to say these two things is God’s saving act through the life of Christ, focused on the Cross and Resurrection.

It is important to understand and underline that I have stated these three items in an ascending order of importance. The act of God in the life of Christ is far and away more important than the reduction of all moral obligations to the one principle of love for the neighbor, and the specific commands are merely examples of what in some circumstances a life guided by the principle of love might be like. The absolutely important thing is the work of God in the Cross of Christ.

Why is it important to emphasize this order of priority? Because so many of us regard our religion as a moral striving aided by faith rather than a faith expressed in moral striving. Paul faced constant opposition from fellow Christians who believed the former, so if that is your position you are by no means alone and have not been from the beginning of the church. These opponents of Paul are the Jewish Christians we read of in Paul’s letters and in the Acts of the Apostles, who believed that the death of Christ was a perfect atoning sacrifice for the transgressions of the Mosaic Law committed by members of the Covenant community, and furthermore that because of that perfect sacrifice Gentiles have been given the opportunity to become members of the covenant and subject to the Law of Moses.  For these Jewish Christians the work of God in Christ means that everyone who believes in Jesus can become a Jew.

For Paul, on the contrary, this great work means that everyone can become a human being. God does his great work in Christ not to benefit Judaism but to recreate the whole human world. The beneficiary of the Cross is not the “Jew” but the “Human.” Christ died for all human beings equally; no one religion or culture or nation is privileged before God. Indeed, “old things have passed away, behold all has become new (2 Corinthians 5:17-19), “ which means that the accepted distinctions of the world have become problematic. If you think that in order to be united with Christ you have to submit to a particular religion, ritual, or culture, you are not yet free with the freedom of Christ from bondage to this world. Paul’s frame of reference is not competing religions or cultures in this world but rather the contrast between this world and the world of Christ, which we enter when we humbly accept the gift of grace. Our faith is simply to accept as true the message that the work of God in Christ has opened for us the opportunity not of a new religion, nor a righteous culture, but a new and transcendent world. Paul calls this action God’s “grace” and the free acceptance of it “faith.”

This Apostolic vision of the contrasting old and new worlds is evident everywhere in his writings, and in many places more clearly that in our passage, nevertheless, let us look for its signs in the passage before us (13:11-14). Paul warns us that the night is almost over and the day is at hand, and so we should “…cast off the works of darkness…and put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” The metaphor is one of changing clothes. Just as one wears one kind of outfit for golfing and another for dining (not just eating), one kind for outdoors and another for indoors, so one wears one self in this world -the works of darkness, also called “the flesh” – and another in the new world – one wears Christ. The day that is dawning is the Kingdom of God, the coming of this new world finally and in fact. We might recall that at the beginning of this ethical part of the letter, in 12:3, Paul speaks of renewing the mind so that we may not be “conformed to this world” any longer, but “ transformed” into the life of the new world, which is “we in Christ and Christ in us.”

This way of thinking, in terms of new and old worlds instead of the more modest new and old attitudes, was in Paul’s time it called “apocalyptic” thinking, and is still with us today. It can be dangerous, but need not be. It is dangerous if we use it to divide the present world into camps of cosmic good and evil, into righteous and evil nations, into peaceful and violent religions, into valuable and less valuable people. (I have been reading recently about President Andrew Jackson, the Indian wars and the expulsion of the Cherokee and other nations beyond the Mississippi, because settlers kept settling on their land and then when they attacked these illegal settlers, the US government punished them with draconian measures rather than punish the settlers for breaking treaties, and eventually decided to transfer them out of their ancestral lands to the Western Plains, where they were again deprived of this new land by settlers backed by the armies of the US. Jackson always referred to them as “savages” or “barbarians”). We have heard a lot of dangerous apocalyptic analysis of the world lately, and I fear we shall hear too much of it again this week. We shall hear of those “evil doers” and our virtue, of their ingratitude and our generosity, of their guilt and our innocence.

I hear there is a TV show called “American Idol.” I know nothing about it, but could easily assume that it is a political talk show, because all this bad apocalyptic thinking is idolatry in action, divinizing ourselves and demonizing the other. Religions are particularly good at this. The latest Atlantic Monthly includes a full page cartoon by Edward Sorel titled “Viewing with Alarm.” A couple watches the TV news: the items are, new violence between Protestants and Catholics in Belfast, increased attendance at church in Ukraine blamed for outbreak of vandalism directed against Jews, two mosques bombed in Algeria by rival sects, suicide bombing answered by air strikes in Israel, Muslims and Hindus battle to the death in India, and the final item: “President Bush met with prominent church leaders in the White House today where he told them that only religion holds the key to world peace.” The characters reach for the whiskey bottle, and one says, “Better make mine a double.”  This is the kind of religion from which Paul calls us away, the religion he calls “the works of darkness,” or “the works of the flesh,” the religion that is of the essence of “the present sinful age,” because it forms us into competing, exclusive groups.

How does he know this about religion? Paul was himself a super-agent of the violence of religion, a persecutor and enforcer, who jealously guarded the boundaries of his sacred group. He knew the violence of piety from within; he knew that he would have crucified Jesus if he had had the opportunity, and believed that he was doing God’s good work.  As a result of an encounter with the living Christ Paul left this all behind, all that world of rivalry in the dark, where the so-called best people, the religious and political leaders do the most harm, where the distinguished authorities not the bandits and embezzlers crucified the Lord of Glory.

I know that this Pauline faith is almost incomprehensibly radical, especially in its demand for confidence in what God has already done in Christ to begin a new world. It is radical but it is also very simple and accessible. In uses the apocalyptic mode of thought, but in a good not a dangerous way. The dangerous apocalyptic idolizes great things in this world, - nations, religions etc. - while the good apocalyptic is anti-idolatrous. It says that since all our hope and self-worth are laid up with Christ in the new creation everything in this world is more or less relative. Christ is the only absolute. For this reason we do not have to maintain that our way is the only way, that our religion is the best, that our culture is the exception, the only virtuous and generous one. All we have to maintain is our confession and conviction that Christ is the saving act of God.

The key to this truth is the apocalyptic title that Jesus bears in the gospels, the “Son of Man.” That is Semitic idiom for “a human being.” Paul uses the Greek equivalent, “Anthropos” and the Hebrew, “Adam,” (Christ is the last Adam) to make the point that God’s act of salvation in Christ takes effect at the level that is above every culture, race, status, or religion at the level of “the human as such.” Consequently, Christian faith is radically contingent with reference to this world. Its motto is “Here we have no abiding city.”  Our true lives are hidden with Christ in God.