Be careful about your own righteousness. Do not perform a show in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward with your Father in the heavens. ~ JESUS (Matthew 6:1)
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SUMMARY: Read this and skip the rest (if you want)
We are now entering a new section of the Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus warns of developing a performance based religious expression that is just done for show.
Disciples of Jesus should practice secret spirituality, just between them and God, to increase that bond.
Jesus will use three examples: secret giving, secret praying, and secret fasting.
Jesus does not shy away from the idea of us obtaining a "reward" for right living. But his idea of a reward is purely relational, purely intrinsic.
An intrinsic reward is a benefit that is tied into the action naturally, like better health is a reward for regularly exercising. An extrinsic reward is an artificially created gift, like receiving a cash prize for winning a sporting event. In Jesus' spiritual economy, all reward is intrinsic.
Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative is a rationale for morality based on pure reason, whereas Jesus' Golden Rule is a rationale for morality based on empathy and intuition.
Ultimately, Jesus moves beyond the Golden Rule to the Platinum Rule: To let God fill us with his love and then, out of the overflow, offer that love to others.
Spiritual gifts are not given to individuals by God as rewards for good behaviour, but are given unconditionally. One implication of this is that it is possible for a person with strong spiritual gifts to veer off course morally and yet still exercise their gifts. This reality should not surprise us; rather it is a caution not to put our leaders on moral pedestals. We see this throughout Scripture. A strongly gifted believer is still just a fellow struggler.
Developing a secret spirituality will take practice, as well as learning through instruction, modeling, accountability, and encouragement. While we need to spend time in private, personal, secretive encounters with God's presence, we will also need the benefits of belonging to a loving, gracious, family-style Christian community.
CORE
(The heart of the message)
At the heart of Christian spirituality is a secret life of communion with God.
CONTEXT
(What’s going on before and after this passage)
The vast majority of Jesus' teaching is thoroughly relational - about our relationship with God, with our neighbours, with spiritual sisters and brothers, and even with our enemies. Unlike some spiritual teachers, Jesus does not place primary emphasis on pure private inwardness, but instead puts his focus on communal togetherness. Jesus is not producing detached disciples, super saints, or enlightened individuals, but a unified "church", a singular "body", a "temple" of the Holy Spirit where we come together communally to experience more of God.
Here in Matthew chapter 6 we discover one of the few extended passages in Jesus' teaching that takes the emphasis off "we" and puts it more on "me". Who we are when we are by ourselves matters to God.
Jesus has already laid out his main thesis or central theme for the Sermon on the Mount, in long form and short form. The Sermon on the Mount is an invitation to cultivate a relational righteousness rooted in love rather than a religious righteousness rooted in law.
Sermon thesis in long form:
For I tell you that unless your righteousness goes above and beyond that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of the heavens. ~ JESUS (Matthew 5:20)
Sermon thesis in short form:
Therefore, you shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. ~ JESUS (Matthew 5:48)
As we learned in our last study, Jesus calls us to this perfection in the context of making God's unconditional love - a love for all flawed faltering failures and even for persecutors - our goal and our guide for how to relate to others. Jesus is calling us to perfect mercy, not perfect morality (Luke 6:36). Or we could say that, for Jesus, mercy is the highest morality.
Now Jesus is beginning a new section of his sermon. This new section is about experiencing and expressing this more perfect righteousness through secret spiritual practice (Matthew 6:1-21). He will use three examples:
secret giving (right-relatedness toward others)
secret prayer (right-relatedness toward God)
secret fasting (right-relatedness toward ourselves)
In each case, Jesus stresses the importance of cultivating a secret spiritual life that protects us from seeking our value and meaning from anyone other than God.
In this study we will look at Jesus' introductory statement about secret spirituality, then in future studies we will look at the three examples of giving, prayer, and fasting.
First, let's address what seems like a contradiction in Jesus' teaching. Earlier Jesus told his disciples to let their good deeds be seen, to shine like light even, so others may come to glorify God (Matthew 5:16). Yet now Jesus begins a section telling his followers to do their giving, praying, and fasting in private and secretive ways so that no one sees. What gives Jesus? Should we hide our light under a basket or not?
Before reading on, maybe this is a good time to think through your own explanation for this apparent contradiction.
We address this apparent contradiction in this previous study here. By way of brief repetition...
Jesus’ "let your light shine before others" teaching in Matthew 5 is different to our current text in at least two ways:
First, the warnings against public piety here in Matthew 6 are for individuals, and the encouragement to let our good deeds be seen in Matthew 5 is for the Church as a whole. When Jesus talks about "you" being the light of the world, the "you" is plural even though the "light" is singular. We are to shine out to the world together, as one bright light of loving community. Then he shifts to singular in Matthew 6 when talking about our personal and private piety. Individually, we should avoid displaying our spiritual practices for show in ways that inflate our egos, but collectively as the Church we should display our good deeds through the grace we give each other and the love we extend to outsiders. This helps the glory go to God and not to any one individual.
Second, and more importantly, here in Matthew 6, Jesus is talking about pious practices like charitable giving, prayer, and fasting. These kinds of behaviours are common among most religions and shine no new light out to the world around us.
Jews practice almsgiving.
Muslims pray in public in demonstrative ways.
And Hindus have us all beat in the fasting department.
So Jesus says, keep these behaviours private and personal. Make them a secret you keep between you and God. By contrast, the public facing good deeds of Matthew 5 refer back to the Beatitudes and forward to the enemy love Jesus goes on to discuss. Our public, light-shining good deeds are those beatific qualities that make the Jesus Movement unique: limitless grace, radical restorative mercy, peacemaking in the face of persecution, and unconditional extravagant love. These uniquely Christian qualities are meant to be seen to be believed.
Unfortunately, the Church today often gets this reversed. Sometimes Christians think that public prayer or worship events are a great way to shine their light (something Jesus says to keep secret), but we stay relatively quiet about our practice of radical grace, mercy, forgiveness, and restoration (something Jesus wants the world to see). Public prayer, praise, political pontificating, or finger wagging at the world around us for its many sins is not the righteousness Jesus has in mind for his Church. Instead, when we want to be loud and proud, let us boast about God’s grace in response to our weakness (Romans 5:3; 2 Corinthians 10:17; 12:9-10; Galatians 6:14) and let us always show the world how much we gently and mercifully work for peace.
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ~ The apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 12:9)
(The "Confession" section of each of these studies draws inspiration from these words of Paul.)
There is one more contradiction, or perhaps better labeled a connondrom, between what Jesus teaches in Matthew 6 and other New Testament teaching. How can we learn spiritual practices from one another if we are supposed to keep them hidden?
The disciples observed Jesus praying. Jesus used the giving of a widow as a teaching moment for his disciples. And the apostle Paul said things like:
Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ. ~ The apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 11:1)
Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. ~ The apostle Paul (Philippians 4:9)
The very idea of disciple-making, of apprenticing in the way of Jesus, assumes that we will teach one another by word and by example. So, while we should heed Jesus' words on the importance of secret spirituality, we should also make exceptions for the important work of learning from one another's examples.
Once again, this is another good lesson in not interpreting any one of Jesus' teachings as a detached law, but always as part of a larger relational context.
CONSIDER
(Observations about the passage)
Be careful. The Greek word here is prosechó. (Think bruschetta or prosciutto and that will help you... No, actually, that doesn't help at all. I just naturally relate all ancient Greek words to food I like. Let's move along.) This word is a present imperative and means to keep constantly vigilant, to always be watchful, to pay close attention. Jesus is drawing our attention to something important. He is alerting us to a way of living out our spirituality that is going to take intentionality, consistency, and ongoing practice.
Your own Righteousness. Jesus is continuing to teach on his central theme of a righteousness (right-relatedness) that goes above and beyond the righteousness of the religious leaders (Matthew 5:20). This higher righteousness is relational not religious, and it is internal and secretive, not external and showy. This phrase also reminds us that our own righteousness, and not someone else's, should be our focus. Earlier Jesus shifted our emphasis from judging societal righteousness to desiring our own righteousness by saying: "Blessed are those hungering and thirsting for righteousness, for they will be filled" (Matthew 5:6). For they will be filled. Our starting point for hungering and thirsting for righteousness is our own righteousness, for us being filled with right-relatedness in our lives. (For more on this, see here.) And later Jesus will directly tell his followers not to judge others (Matthew 7:1-2). This teaching on minding our own righteousness prepares us to be non-judgemental disciples. So: disciples of Jesus care enough to confront, yes, but to not judge. Huh. That will take some skill, and we will discuss this when we get to Matthew 7.)
Perform a show to be seen. Two Greek words are used in this sentence to address the bad habit of playacting our righteous deeds for an audience of onlookers. One word means to be in front of someone's face and the other (theáomai) is the root of théatron, which in turn is the root of the English word... (drum roll)... "theatre". Like a fine wine, these words "pair well" with the important topic of hypocrisy (from the Greek word for "actor"), which Jesus addresses in the verses that follow (see our next study). About the Pharisees, Jesus says "Everything they do is done for people to see" (Matthew 23:5). Notice: there is nothing wrong with being seen doing good; Jesus is not addressing being seen, but doing good in order to be seen. The New Covenant is all about inside-out righteousness, about internal issues, motivations, and attitudes. Which means humans judging other humans about spiritual things is nigh to impossible. As it should be. Only God sees the heart. The rest of us should sit down, be quiet, and focus on our own righteousness. (More about this below.)
"If you do something good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start showing off. And then you're not as good anymore."
~ J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)
"What you are in private is what you really are." ~ N.T. Wright (Matthew for Everyone)
Reward. Jesus has already mentioned the idea of "reward" in 5:12 and 5:46 and will again multiple times. The Greek word could be used for any earned consequence, like a worker's salary, a criminal's punishment, or a reward for doing a good deed. But by placing the idea of "reward" or "payment" in the context of a loving relationship with our heavenly Father, Jesus decommercializes it. Our reward is relational. Apparently, the Christian life is not supposed to be so selfless that we feel the need to say "I get nothing out of it", but rather our focus is on getting the right benefit in the right way from the right Source. (More about the idea of reward in our Commentary section below.)
With your Father in the heavens. Jesus literally says our reward is "with" the Father, not "from" the Father, as it is often translated. This should give us our first clue as to how Jesus thinks about spiritual rewards, benefits, and negative consequences. Being with God is the ultimate reward. When we get a taste of this experience in this life we realize that everything else is secondary and transitory. Our Father is "in the heavens" (plural) which can refer to the celestial place we go to when we die, but also refers to the sky and the atmosphere all around us. God is closer than we think; we just need to tune in.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. ~ JESUS (John 14:3)
COMMENTARY
(Thoughts about meaning and application)
Sometimes Christians are uncomfortable with the idea of "reward" in our spirituality. Aren't we supposed to do all that we do out of complete disinterested virtue and other-centred altruism?
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher who is known for, among other things, his categorical imperative: we have a duty to act in such a way as we would wish everyone else to act. He argued that for something to be truly moral, we should perform it as a duty, regardless of the presence or absence of reward or personal benefit. Only true "disinterested virtue" - that is, absolute altruism - is right, noble, and good.
Yet God has created us to seek and find our satisfaction in him, and this satisfaction is a kind of benefit, blessing, and reward. This idea is evident throughout Jesus' teaching: like in the Beatitudes, when he blesses those who show mercy and the peacemakers (Matthew 5:3-10), or when he tells us to ask, seek, knock so we can receive more of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 7:7-8; Luke 11:9-10), or when he says we will receive a reward for even giving a cup of cold water in his name (Matthew 10:41-42), or when Jesus tells us to come to him to find the rest our weary souls are looking for (Matthew 11:28-30). Experiencing more and more of God's presence, love, compassion, mercy, and rest is our reward.
So we are made to be reward seekers, as long as we are seeking after the right reward from the right Source. From our earliest days, we as children call out to our parents, "Look at me! Look what I can do!" and our reward is to be noticed, to be treated as meaningful.
"We are made to notice and to be noticed by God."
~ Frederick Dale Bruner (The Christbook)
How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? ~ JESUS (John 5:44)
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)
Even Jesus went to the cross with a reward in mind:
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)
What was "the joy set before him" that motivated Jesus to endure the cross? Us! Bringing us with him to the Father and expanding his loving family was Jesus' "reward". And although Jesus is now at the right hand of the Father, Jesus is with us here and now by the power of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 18:20; Acts 16:7; Romans 8:9-10; Galatians 2:20-21; 4:6; Philippians 1:19). When our reward is relationship, when our reward is loving intimacy in the heavenly family of God, we are being and becoming perfect, reaching our telos.
C.S. Lewis, a Christian philosopher, talked about two kinds of rewards that motivate us: extrinsic and intrinsic.
An extrinsic reward or punishment comes from the outside and is separate from the activity that earned it: like being paid money for work (or conversely, having to pay a fine for speeding). The money received (or lost) is not directly a part of the activity that preceded its coming or going. For instance, if you are a carpenter, hammering a nail or sawing wood does not naturally produce money in our pocket. There is nothing about woodworking in and of itself that magically makes money. The pay comes later and is an artificially added reward for your work.
An intrinsic reward is a natural consequence that comes out of the activity itself: like the joy of being more fit after eating better and exercising routinely (or conversely, think about the pain that comes from touching something too hot). If you are a carpenter, the intrinsic reward of your work could be your inner sense of satisfaction at a job well done; or if you just finished crafting a new dining room table for your home, the intrinsic reward would be dining together as a family at that new table.
Jesus takes the word "reward" or "payment", a classically extrinsic idea, and shifts our focus toward that which is internal, eternal, and relational. For Jesus, our reward for secret spirituality is intrinsic: the reward of a deeper relationship with the One who loves us most in the entire universe. Who can beat that for a reward?! Yes, this intrinsic reward of a deeper spiritual connection with God might also lead to better relationships with others and general success in life, but not necessarily. Persecution and hardship may be the extrinsic result, and if that happens, we will need to find our satisfaction in the intrinsic rewards Jesus offers us all the more.
We saw this in his approach of an internal focus in the six antitheses (e.g., anger vs murder, lust vs adultery), and now Jesus returns to his characteristic heart emphasis. For Jesus, the heart of the matter is always the matter of the heart.
But isn't doing good so we get a reward ultimately selfish? Not when we apply this idea to a love relationship. Imagine if your spouse, partner, lover, or best friend said to you: "Just so you know, I don't actually get anything out of our relationship. Not. One. Thing. I'm doing all this just to bless you because I want to practice unselfish altruism." How would that make you feel? Part of the joy of any meaningful relationship is knowing how the other person enjoys the relationship too.
We want those we love to be "rewarded" by being with us. We want them to find joy, peace, pleasure, and/or security because of our relationship.
In a healthy and whole love relationship, both parties become blessings to each other, and acknowledging this is itself a kind of blessing.
"You have made us for yourself, O Lord,
and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
~ Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD)
Elsewhere, Jesus even points to human relationships forged in this life as part of our eternal reward. Flourishing, joyful, and gracious relationship is always the best good we could hope to experience.
I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. ~ JESUS (Luke 16:9)
“If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
~ C.S. Lewis (The Weight of Glory)
CONFESSION
(Personal reflection)
I confess that I have struggled unsuccessfully for most of my adult life with cultivating a secret spirituality. And this is likely one of the root causes of my moral failure, including my hypocrisy.
According to Jesus, a weak inner spiritual life leaves someone like me more prone to look for my "reward" from humans around me. I respond too readily to flattery, fawning, and even financial incentive. My psychological payoff becomes too easily extrinsic rather than intrinsic. And worse, my weak secret spiritual life also diminishes my sensitivity to the voice of God and my own conscience when I get off course.
During my young adult years, I seemed to get by through reasoning my way toward my moral resolve. In university I studied Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, and for a long time I tried to live by the maxim: Live by duty, not desire. I thought this was the answer to all my ethical questions. I became infatuated with Kant's "Categorical Imperative" (act in ways you would want the whole world to act). I could use this principle to reason my way to making right choices, and I joked with my friends: "You Kant touch this!" (Ya. A philosophy nerd AND a cheeseball. Lord have mercy.)
This approach served me well for a while, but over time my morals became stoic and emotionless "have to's". Prioritizing duty above desire works in some arenas, but when it comes to relationships, no one around us is truly blessed when they become our obligation rather than our delight. And over time, living by sheer willpower alone became tiresome, not to mention a setup. I thought I was morally strong... until I found out that I wasn't. And then, the shame set in.
Kant believed his categorical imperative (act in ways you would want the whole world to act) was an improvement on Jesus' Golden Rule (treat others the way you would want to be treated in their place). Notice that the categorical imperative helps us arrive at ethical choices through calculating reason, while the Golden Rule helps us arrive at ethical choices through heartfelt intuition and other-centred empathy.
Most debates about which is superior miss this important point: even Jesus moved on from teaching the Golden Rule to teaching his utterly unprecedented and unparalleled Platinum Rule: Receive my love and then let that love overflow to others around you (John 13:34-35; also see Romans 15:7; Ephesians 4:32-5:2; Colossians 3:13; 1 John 3:14-16; 4:10-11, 19). This approach to living lives of overflowing love - including our approach to ethics, to moral decision making, to serving the community, and to being human - is completely unique to Jesus.
A new command I give you: Love one another as I have loved you. This is how you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. ~ JESUS (John 13:34-35)
The Platinum Rule approach to life begins with receiving, with cultivating a secret spiritual life that takes time to tune into God's abundant and unconditional love for us. (For us!) And then, from that place of fullness, we turn our attention to the needs of others around us.
I am learning that Jesus doesn't want to extinguish our desires; he wants to direct them, refine them, and fulfill them. Jesus wants us to have the same relationship with God the Father, his Father, our Father, that he had. In the gospels it becomes clear that Jesus lives off the love of his Father (e.g., John 3:34-35; 5:19-20, 30; 14:24), and so can we. We too can live to hear our Father say "This is my son whom I love and with whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17; Ephesians 1:3-6). I need more of this Godward focus in my life. I want to be a Christian, not just a Kantian.
Over the last almost three years, I have spent extended time with a handful of quality therapists, spiritual directors, and wise sisters and brothers helping me strengthen my inner life and find my rewards there. And with their help I am moving beyond just asserting, declaring, and believing in the Father's love to actually experiencing it. The love of God poured into us through times of secret spiritual communion with the Father, I realize, is the only lasting solution for our love-hungry hearts. Everything else is temporary distraction.
I may or may not ever experience the rapturous emotional intensity of God's love that some sisters and brothers have described throughout Church history, but I can take baby steps toward a more holistic experience of God. I can become a better version of myself while still being fully myself, with my own strengths and limitations.
Still, I do wonder: why is the secret spiritual life harder for some than others?
I can think of two reasons:
psychological wiring
spiritual gifting
First, some of us are just hardwired to process things more intellectually, academically, or even skeptically. Whether we come by it through nature or nurture, it doesn't matter, this is how our adult brains work. (Guilty as charged.)
When I was a child, my favourite Star Trek character was Mr. Spock. He made decisions through logic, unlike Dr. McCoy, who was a bubbling cauldron of human emotion. I wanted to be like Spock. I wanted to be Vulcan. But the Bible tells the story of God's creation of, redemption of, and love for humans, not vulcans. This means God wants to redeem rather than reject our emotions.
I remember a choice I once had to make as a pastor regarding a direction our church should take on a particular issue, and another pastor said to me: "What is your heart telling you?" I thanked that pastor for his input, but I confess that secretly I looked down on his idea. We shouldn't listen to our hearts, I thought. After all, the heart is deceptive, as the Old Testament tells us (Jeremiah 17:9). I had forgotten this fundamental New Covenant truth: God has given each of us a new heart, a new spirit, and poured God's own Spirit into us. I was making excuses for not listening to my heart, or my gut, or my intuition. I need to practice the secret spirituality of Jesus.
Second, another reason some of us have a harder time listening to the Spirit speaking within us is that our externally visible gifts can also pull us away from relying on our own secret spirituality. (Guilty again as charged.)
Some spiritual gifts, like faith or spiritual discernment or helping, are by nature more private. Other spiritual gifts, like teaching or evangelism or prophecy, are by nature more visible. Those of us with the more visible gifts will need to be extra care-full to cultivate a secret spirituality, otherwise, like me, we may find our sense of satisfaction in hearing "well done thou good and faithful servant" coming from other people rather than God.
I have spent most of my adult life involved in some sort of public ministry, beginning with street evangelism in my teens and continuing with pastoring starting in my twenties. All of this comes with public criticism and public reward. Over time it has become easy for me to rely on feeding my psychological needs through external rewards from others, like words of encouragement, positive attention, and meaningful feedback. And so, in many ways, these days I feel like a newborn in the world of the New Covenant, needing to learn all over again how to feed on the milk of the word that comes to us most powerfully in our alone times with God.
Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. ~ The apostle Peter (1 Peter 2:2-3)
This is important for the Church to keep in mind: public ministry gifts are not given by God as a reward for being a more spiritual, more mature, or more pure person than others. Our more visible church leaders may have a public oriented gift, and it is right that they find ways to use their gift, BUT they are not better Christians because they are great teachers, preachers, prophets, or miracle workers. They are just fellow believers who are differently gifted.
On this point, I think of Peter who was so gifted he healed people with just his shadow (Acts 5:15-16)! And yet Peter was so needy for approval from his religious contemporaries, he compromised what he knew to be true about the Gospel in order to be accepted with the "in" crowd, causing others to stumble in their faith, and requiring the apostle Paul to strongly and publicly rebuke him (Galatians 2:11-21).
Or how about that Elijah who was so gifted by God he could call fire down from heaven (1 Kings 18:20-40). Yet Elijah later used that very gift to kill people who came to him sincerely. It is so revealing that God didn't take the gift away, but instead sent an angel to tell Elijah to stop doing that (2 Kings 1:9-15)!
Apparently, those people to whom God chooses to give more public and demonstrative spiritual gifts are not given those gifts because they are more spiritually mature or worthy. As a believer with a public oriented gift of teaching, I have never been under this delusion of my spiritual superiority (though I think others have been on my behalf). I know I was not granted this gift by God because I achieved a more pure or mature spiritual status. Teaching is just my gift. Others may have placed me on a pedestal, but I have always known better. My identity has never been that of spiritual guru who "has arrived", but of a fellow struggling and bumbling believer trying to plod along like the rest of us, while also stewarding my gifts.
Some Christians get this, and when my moral failure became public, they found it easier to forgive me like they would any other stumbling Christian. Others seemed to have subconsciously embraced the myth that a good teacher must be a better Christian, and a really good teacher must be a super saint. It is as though somehow my successful spiritual life became part of their apologetic for faith, a reason to believe. So when my severe sin was exposed, their faith went into crisis mode. "How can God be real or Jesus be the Way or Church be a good idea if even that guy screws up?"
I am learning to free myself from the burden of being anyone's Shroud-of-Turin-esque evidence for believing. By this I mean, whenever we put our faith in God based on one specific apparently amazing piece of evidence, our faith is in danger of crumbling too easily if ever that item of evidence is found to be inauthentic.
Rather, our faith in God should be based on the merciful, miraculous person and teachings of Jesus. And as we're learning in this study series, those teachings will never lose their power.
Other church folk went into a different kind of crisis, doubling down on performative moral outrage as though I had personally betrayed them. Their sense of personal offense and reactionary anger rather than deep sorrow mixed with compassion tells me that they were reacting to something personal, and perhaps I had already been playing a wrong role in their lives. These hyper-condemnatory Christians don't tend to lose their faith, they just swap out grace and put in justice as the centre of their Gospel.
The leaders of the early Jesus movement called the Gospel “the good news of God’s grace” and “the word of his grace” (Acts 20:24, 32). And as we learned in our previous study, a common way of greeting or saying goodbye for first century Christians was "Grace, Mercy, and Peace" (1 Timothy 1:2; 2 Timothy 1:2; 2 John 1:3).
Grace: getting what we don't deserve.
Mercy: not getting what we do deserve.
Peace: the reconciliation, restoration, and wholeness that results when a community practices the first two.
Justice is good. But justice is not gospel. Grace is gospel.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. .... Out of his fullness we have all received grace piled on top of grace. For the law [i.e., justice] was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ~ The apostle John (John 1:14-17)
I am, in the end, so sorry for my sin. And with the help of the body of Christ, I am learning so much through my own humiliation and pain, as well as the pain I have caused others. And I don't want to let any of that pain go to waste. I want to learn everything God has for me to learn, since I have this front row seat to it all.
CONCLUSION
(One last thought)
If we are going to battle our own tendency toward hypocrisy, our tendency to wear a mask (social media anyone?), to play pretend ("I'm fine, thanks, and how are you?" "I'm fine too thanks."), and to be play-actors ("I'm shocked, offended, and outraged at everyone else's failure!"), we will need a place of grace to practice being our true selves in front of others. This is where real loving, accepting, mercy-full community comes in. This is where healing begins.
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. ~ James the brother of Jesus (James 5:16)
Now catch this: the Greek verb "you will be healed" in this passage is plural. Let that sink in! Confession met with merciful prayer (rather than judgemental pontificating, punishment, or parading self-righteousness) heals the whole community. Living in an honest, confessional, merciful, prayerful community is healing for everyone.
Please be in touch if you want to experience more conversation, connection, and compassion with others on this same 1820 journey toward grace, mercy, and peace.
CONTEMPLATE
(Scripture passages that relate to and deepen our understanding of this topic)
2 Corinthians 12:1-10 (also see John 13:34-35; Romans 15:7; Ephesians 5:2; 1 John 3:16; 4:10-11)
CONVERSATION
(Talk together, learn together, grow together)
What is God revealing to you about himself through this passage?
What is God showing you about yourself through this passage?
How is your secret spiritual life with God going?
What is one thing you can think, believe, or do differently in light of what you are learning?
What questions are you still processing about this topic?