TOMS: Ephesians 6

For an introduction to this series, click here.

September 22, 2007

Paul wraps up this book with several general warnings and admonishments. The first is to parents and children: 
"Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 'Honor your father and mother' (this is the first commandment with a promise), 'that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.' Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." (6:1-4) 

This passage is pretty self-explanatory, but I do wonder how many Christian parents make a conscious effort to bring up their children in the "discipline and instruction of the Lord." Raising children is serious business, but so many just think it happens.

"Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free. Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him." (6:5-9)

Some use this passage and others to say that Paul approved of slavery, and doubtless some Southerners 150 years ago used passages like this to try to justify slavery. But we must take these passages in their historical context. Slavery was a fact of life in the Roman Empire. In fact, there were probably more slaves than free people in the entire Empire. If not at this point in the first century, then certainly 150 years or so later that would have been the case. The main point Paul was making is that these believers not to try to lead a social revolution. The church is to be characterized by love and acceptance, not militarism. Somehow the church has lost that vision, and now we are a cog in the political machine. The Lord never intended for us to be that.

The next passage falls into the category of those passages, like the Beatitudes and the Fruit of the Spirit, that are beat to death by shallow hacks pretending to be deep thinkers: 
"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak." (6:10-20)

Paul is simply using the imagery of a soldier, something everyone was familiar with, to explain the warfare that we are in as believers. I don't think, if you would have asked him, that Paul had in mind that we are to wake up each morning and pray as we put on each piece of spiritual armor, as I have heard this passage taught. Now maybe I am wrong, but I don't think we can put that much significance in this passage. He would have expounded on this more if he had wanted so much emphasis placed on it. As I have written before, Paul's lists should be taken as exemplary of the topic at hand, not an exhaustive treatment of it. At least one other time, Paul used this imagery: "But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation." (I Thessalonians 5:8, ESV) I have never heard any sermons on that passage, at least not that I can think of. 

Of course this passage is good to study, as all scripture is, but this is another example of well-meaning Christians yanking scripture that sounds interesting out of its context and telling us they have found something really important. I'm not going to pretend I have everything figured out, because I don't. And maybe my emphasis on trying to understand a passage in the context of the entire epistle is misplaced or unbalanced. Feel free to correct me if you feel that it is. But honestly, I don't feel that it is fair to the writer or to us to interpret the epistles by emphasizing a brief passage that seems to make an interesting point. The epistles should be studied as a whole, not broken down into passages. The Gospels, for example, are quite episodic and it is OK to interpret them that way. But the epistles are personal letters written by a leader of the church to a group of people. They should be interpreted as such.

ListMania: Not Even Paul Believes This Stuff

This is the fifth in a series. For the introduction to the series, click here.

Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit… (Ephesians 6:13-18)

This is a very familiar passage. If you have been involved in churches for any length of time, you will have heard sermons on this text. If you went to church as a child you no doubt saw posters with a picture of a soldier with these various armor pieces on. Your church might have even had a kid-sized set of “armor” that one lucky kid got to wear in class when the teacher taught on the Christian’s armor.

The funny thing is, I don’t ever remember a Sunday School lesson from this verse:

But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation. (I Thessalonians 5:8, NKJV)

So what’s the deal? Was Paul shortchanging the Thessalonians, telling them they only needed a breastplate and a helmet? (If you read the rest of Chapter 5, there are no other armor pieces mentioned.) Since most scholars agree Thessalonians was written first, maybe Paul learned about some new pieces between the time he wrote Thessalonians and Ephesians. Why did he write that faith is our breastplate when everyone knows faith is our shield? And what does love have to do with any discussion of armor?

These questions are silly, but if you listen to some pastors and teachers, they obviously haven’t thought of them. I have heard sermons about waking up each morning and taking time to “put on” each of the pieces listed in the Ephesians passage. You can find books about how righteousness protects our hearts, salvation protects our heads (minds), and so forth. Such a hyper-literalistic approach to the text of Scripture does little more than confuse people, especially those who read I Thessalonians and learn that love and faith protect our hearts, not righteousness.

Let’s get back to a simple reading of the text. Paul in these two passages is obviously using a military metaphor for the Christian life. Overall, his point is not so much the pieces or the particular traits associated with them but the traits generally. When our lives are characterized by faith, love, righteousness, truth, knowledge of the Scripture and so on, we will be prepared both positively to do good for God and others and negatively to defeat temptation.

But that’s too simple for some people. They would rather delve into the minutiae of Paul’s metaphor rather than let the text speak to them. That’s been the whole point of this series: God did not give us a mystery book that we have to work and stretch our minds to be able to understand. Of course there are plenty of passages that are difficult to understand, even passages on which brethren of good will may disagree. But most of the Scriptures, and certainly all the vital portions for belief and practice, are really quite simple. God doesn’t keep secrets from His children.

So am I saying you need to get rid of the toy armor from the Sunday School closet? No, let the kids play with it. But don’t focus solely on the individual pieces. Instead, take the opportunity to remind them that they need to have salvation, faith, truth, and everything else in their lives in order to please God. If your young people learn that you will have done them some good.

ListMania: Body, Soul and Spirit

This is the fourth of a series. For the introduction to the series, click here.

For most of my life I was taught that man is a three-part being – body, soul and spirit. When I went to college, I was exposed to the other main viewpoint, that man is a two-part being – flesh and spirit. I took hold of the second one because it made more sense than the first, but now I am not so sure. I think both are lacking. My main purpose today is not to outline a different explanation but to show how a wrong view of Paul’s lists leads people astray in this area, as we have discussed in the previous posts.

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (I Thessalonians 5:23)

Did you know that this one verse is the only place in the Bible where the words “body,” “soul” and “spirit” are found together in the Bible? I was never taught that either when I was growing up. Compare this verse with I Corinthians 6:20: “For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” Is Paul telling us we don’t have to glorify God in our souls because he leaves it out? Hardly. Once again, in both of these verses Paul is just giving us examples, not a be-all, end-all list.

Man is a spiritual being.  The Bible is very clear on that. Genesis tells us that God breathed the breath of life into man, and he became a living soul. We are made in God’s image and will one day stand before Him in judgment. That has to be our starting point when we discuss the nature of man.

The trichotomist (three-part) view of man (or at least the way I learned it) is flawed, mainly because of the terminology involved, which is forced upon the view because most of its adherents (that I have heard teach) base it on that one verse. The idea that the body is evil is a false idea that arises from Gnosticism, an ancient lie that the apostles Paul and John address at length in their epistles. When we sin, it is not our body that sins, it is our rebellious spiritual nature that is against God. Let me illustrate. God made our bodies to desire food and drink in order to live. It is man’s wicked nature that causes him to commit the sins of gluttony and drunkenness to ostensibly meet those needs. God created man with a desire to reproduce. It is not the body but the sinful spiritual part of man that chooses to meet those desires with adultery, prostitution and other sexual sins. It is more helpful and more Biblically correct to think of the physical body as a morally neutral casing through which spiritual deeds, either good or bad, are carried out.

It is fair to point out, however, that Paul does frequently use the word “flesh” to describe our sinful nature. We as believers know from the Scriptures and from experience that not all of our being is made new when we are born again. We have to understand there are two senses of the word “flesh.” It’s the same word both in English and Greek, but it is clearly describing two different concepts. Let’s look at a couple of passages from Romans 8: “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (verses 3-4) Let’s compare that with verse 8: “So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” (NKJV)

There's a lot in verses 3 and 4, and I don't pretend to understand it all, but there's one thing that's clear: God was pleased with Christ's birth, life and death. Christ took on a physical body like ours, lived on earth, died in our place, then rose to life again. He had a physical body, but He was not a sinner. Gnosticism is a direct attack on Christ's substitutionary redemption, and we as believers should be very careful in our terminology to keep such ideas out of our teaching.

Like I said at the beginning, I’m not really sure what to believe about the different parts of the nature of man. I’m OK with that. I don’t pretend to have everything figured out. The main problem I have is when people take the one verse in Thessalonians listed above and build a theology around that, especially when they include the gnostic concepts of man’s physical body being the source of his evil nature. That’s a teaching we need to avoid.

ListMania: Fruit of the Spirit

Third in a series. For the introduction to this series, click here.

Anybody who has been a Christian for any length of time has heard about the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. That’s one of the most common topics for sermons, Bible studies, and Sunday School lessons in all of Christianity. It’s also a popular theme for bulletin boards, children’s activities and the like. I even remember singing a song in church about the fruit of the Spirit when I was a kid.

My problem is not with the list itself but with the way people apply it. If your focus is on the individual characteristics Paul lists in that passage then you are missing the whole thrust of Paul’s message to the Galatians. You have fallen into the trap of treating Paul’s lists as exhaustive rather than exemplary.

First of all, let’s look at Paul’s list. It’s a great list. All of us would love to have our lives exhibit those traits all the time. But are these the only things the Spirit produces in our lives? What about honesty or integrity? It’s hard to say that the Spirit will not bring about those in our lives. The list could go on forever, and that’s my point. To limit the work of the Spirit to nine things is to severely limit God’s work in our life. It’s not that Paul’s list is incomplete – he never intended the list to be any more than some helpful examples of how God’s work in our lives is revealed.

More importantly, though, let’s look at the whole passage in context. Then we will hopefully see what Paul is really telling the Galatians, and of course, us as well:

I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 

Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. (Galatians 5:16-25, NKJV)

The book of Galatians is all about the work of the Spirit versus the work of the flesh. The churches in Galatia had fallen into a serious error: that God wanted them to follow the Jewish law in order to grow. They saw justification (coming to faith in Christ) and glorification (being brought to heaven) as the work of God but they saw sanctification (our progress as a Christian in this life) as their work. Paul utterly destroys this line of thinking in the letter he sent to them. In Chapter 3 he flat-out tells them that growth for the Christian is just as much a work of God as justification and glorification are.

In Chapter 5 Paul gets into some more practical aspects of what it means to grow without putting forth fleshly effort. Ultimately it all boils down to walking in the Spirit, as verse 16 reads. Notice Paul’s words that follow very carefully. He describes the works of the flesh in verses 19-21. Most of us understand that this list is exemplary. We can name lots more sins. Then Paul lists fruit of the Spirit in verses 22-23.

What is fruit? That might be a dumb question, but the way Paul uses the word is very important. Fruit is something that naturally occurs because of the processes that are happening inside the tree or bush or vine or whatever. A plant doesn’t have to work to produce fruit – fruit happens when the plant is healthy and functioning properly. That’s Paul’s point. Fruit in the life of the believer is not something that we have to work up by our own effort. The fruit of the Spirit occurs naturally when we live empowered by the Spirit.

Am I saying that everybody who focuses on the things in Paul’s list is teaching false doctrine? No. Is it wrong to study the individual traits? No. But I am suggesting that focusing on the list is missing the point of the passage. Studying the nine things and teaching people to work on developing them in their lives runs completely counterintuitive to the point Paul was making. Here’s the point: we can’t develop these traits on our own. As fallen humans we do not have enough willpower, enough discipline, enough of whatever else it takes to live lives that please God. We have to have the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives in order to exhibit these traits.

ListMania: Gifts

Second in a series. For the introduction to this series, click here.

Let’s start off with a big one: spiritual gifts.

There are two primary passages in Paul’s writing that deal with gifts: I Corinthians chapters 12-14 and Romans 12:3-8. Modern evangelicals put the I Corinthians passage on the back burner since it deals with gifts of tongues, healing and other miracles, which most evangelicals believe are not manifest today. Obviously the various stripes of Pentecostals would disagree, but for our purposes we are not dealing with them. Evangelicals would point to Paul’s masterpiece on love in chapter 13 and Paul’s very strict and implicit instructions for operating the gifts in the church in chapter 14 to say that those gifts were intended for a particular time – the time of the apostles – and not for succeeding generations of the church.

The Romans 12 passage, however, lists what might be more properly called in context gifts of grace:

For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness. (Romans 12:3-8 NKJV)

These gifts are taken very seriously by many in the Evangelical world, so much so that some have developed an entire theology around them. Let me give you an illustration that outlines what I believe to be the wrong approach to this passage. When she was about 20 years old, my wife was given a “gift profile test,” basically a personality test to determine which of the seven gifts listed here she had. When her results were graded she was told that her test was invalid because she tested positive for two gifts that cannot coexist in the same person.

Who said that God’s gifts can be determined by an amateur personality test, the kind that people take to determine “Which Disney Princess are you?” and then post to Facebook? Shouldn’t a work of God in a person’s life be more obvious than that? Secondly, who determined the personality types that went along with certain gifts, and why are there some that contradict each other? Is any of that stated or even remotely implied in what Paul wrote above?

My answer is no. This passage and I Peter 4:10-11 certainly indicate that God does bring certain people into a congregation so that His work can best be done. That is a completely fair way to deal with these texts. It’s not wrong to say that God provides supernatural enablement to some people more than others to handle certain necessary jobs in the church. Peter certainly implies that in his epistle. As long as you limit your teaching to this, you are certainly within the bounds of Scripture. I know others who teach that the time for all the gifts has passed. I disagree, but I certainly respect the position, since I held it not that long ago.

But to treat the seven-part list that Paul gives us in Romans as the entire spectrum of gifts God gives to people in the church, and to build assumptions upon that treatment that cannot be justified from Scripture, is another matter altogether. I’m not saying that this view of gifts violates the cardinal doctrines of the Church. Obviously it does not. But it does represent to me a poor approach to Scripture, a lazy approach that is more interested in novel applications rather than simply proclaiming the whole counsel of God.

ListMania: Exemplary vs. Exhaustive

First in a series

If you have ever read Paul's epistles (and if you haven't, go here, start reading and don't stop) you know that Paul loves lists. He uses them in practically every epistle. Some of his lists are single words, some are phrases, some are entire verses. Some of Paul's lists are among of the most familiar passages in scripture: "Love is patient, Love is kind...;" the armor of God and the fruit of the Spirit are some examples that jump readily to mind.

But I have noticed as I have studied multiple ones that Paul rarely, if ever, intends for them to be an exhaustive treatment of the subject at hand. For example, there are many more good things one could say about love than one finds in the thirteen verses of I Corinthians 13, although you will be hard pressed to find any text that describes love more beautifully. There are plenty more works of the flesh than one finds in this passage. For most of these lists, we understand this fact.

The problem arises when folks try to make a particular list the final word on the subject. They view the things in the list as exhaustive, the only possible instances that could possibly be addressed. When this happens, they leap to conclusions that Paul never intended for his readers to arrive at. This is a potentially dangerous way to handle the Word of God, and something that we should avoid.

Over the next few days, weeks, whatever, I intend to look at some of Paul's lists I believe are mishandled in this fashion. We will come across a couple where Paul gives us two different lists to describe the same thing. Feel free to comment and ask questions. Hopefully my postings will inspire some good discussion and maybe help you (and me) look at Scripture in a new light.