25 May 2023
We come to two more Prison Letters from Paul, written while in Rome.
In his letter to the church at Philippi, there's a lot of personal stuff. The first invocation of Christ's Law -- to love each other as He loves -- is in Chapter 2. Most people take this as an admonition, but I take it as a covenant boundary: We must learn to be selfless. And Paul offers the example of Jesus, who obeyed His Father to the point of dying on the Cross. The New Covenant Law is to love as Christ loved.
It naturally follows that it is law for us to avoid grumbling about the imposition of having to deal with each other's human foibles. In the third chapter Paul talks about how much he has set aside in the flesh in order to serve the glory of the Lord. He says it was no big loss by comparison. The people are the mission.
I also believe that it's a covenant boundary in Chapter 4 when Paul tells us to rejoice in the Lord at all times. Our witness is how we put up with unexpected trouble. Turn everything over the Lord and let Him do His work in your life.
The letter to the Colossians has a little less personal stuff, since the church was planted by someone named Epaphras who apparently heard the message from Paul somewhere else and brought it home to Colosse. In Chapter 2, Paul makes it sound like a command that we steel ourselves against human reason whenever it contradicts the gospel.
But it's not the Gnotic stuff he's talking about. He goes on to paint this warning in the context of what appears to be a peculiar kind of Judaizer campaign. Part of it we recognize: the scolding about kosher and keeping the Old Testament ritual calendar. Paul says all of that Mosaic Law was just establishing a pattern so the Messiah could be recognized. He came and taught, the Son of God Himself, so it doesn't matter if someone cites a lesser authority, such as angels or visions. God does not send contradictory messages against His own Son.
Paul refers to the Talmudic Hellenized logic as "elementary principles" -- childish nonsense that bogs you down from hearing the voice of God in your own heart. This legalistic asceticism sounds noble, but it's a waste of time and energy.
In Chapter 3 he opens with prodding his readers to be more otherworldly. That should be a fundamental covenant boundary. Don't be worldly. This is how we gain the power to tolerate human foibles, so that we can focus on loving our fellow believers in spite of themselves. People will fail, and so do we all, but staying focused on spiritual things can cover a lot of sin. Be patient with each other.
He briefly outlines the feudal home structure again that we've seen elsewhere. It's a law for Christians. And in the next chapter Paul suggests that we rehearse how we will answer outsiders, so that we never get pulled off message.
Then Paul closes out the letter with the usual personal stuff.
By now it should be obvious that a major element in what churches do is just learning how to be a blessing to each other. There's very little about dealing with the outside world, aside from just a little about making sure you don't act the way they do. That's a witness, but it's secondary to the single strongest element of our witness: how we deal with each other. Again: The people are the mission. The whole mission of a church is learning how to grow in the love of Christ, and develop a thick skin against each other, as a covering over our softhearted warmth.
In modern parlance, I dare say the most important thing a church does is make its members less whiny about the routine imperfections of this world, and in particular, when those imperfections show up in your fellow believers' lives. The unity is the whole thing. Not uniformity, as of human leaders organizing an orthodoxy and orthopraxy, but unity in focusing on spiritual things. Churches are not supposed to accomplish anything by worldly standards; they are supposed to incubate spiritual relationships among fallen humans.
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