Scripture ReadingRomans 7:15-25aI do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!Scripture ReflectionCould you imagine Paul’s testimony here flying in a court of law? It almost sounds like an insanity plea. No doubt such language might call our own sanity into doubt if we use it as a moral defense when we steal the cookies from the cookie jar, or worse. As a plea of innocence, it would be slime-ball territory. “The devil made me do it.” But this is not a plea or defense of innocence — it is, in fact, a guilty plea. Paul wants to do good, and even delights in virtue when he thinks about it; but no such good dwells in him — “nothing good” at all. “Wretched man that I am!” Paul writes these words to the Christian community in Rome as its former would-be persecutor. He had been tightly entangled with the murder of protomartyr Stephen, a deacon of the Jerusalem church. Saul had set out gleefully for Damascus to spread his reign of terror abroad. Before Paul’s zeal drove him to Rome as a Christian apostle, Saul’s zeal might very well have taken his crusade there as an antichrist if the Lord had not intervened on the Road to Damascus and re-centered his zeal on Christ. Surely this crossed the minds of those in the Roman church. Paul doesn’t apologize to them for his former life. An apology — in the proper sense of the word, making an explanation of one’s actions — is a form of moral self-justification, or self-righteousness. Paul doesn’t do this. The world surely demanded it of him, just as our world surely makes such demands on us left and right. But he doesn’t engage with this type of thinking. Nor does Paul owe his life and ministry as a moral debt to those whom he wronged in the past; he considers that debt paid by God’s grace in Christ, by whom all debtors to divine justice are released from their debts. However, the Jewish religious authorities certainly wished to exact such debts from Paul because they were scandalized by his message of Grace’s triumph over Law. According to the book of Acts, Paul was pressured to circumcise his mentee Timothy, and to sponsor Nazirite monks, in order to show his debt of fealty to the Law. This Paul carried out, but defiantly — not in the name of the Law, but to “turn the other cheek” as Christ taught, and to demonstrate Christ’s willingness in him to be humiliated and abused for the sake of God’s grace. “To the Jews I became like a Jew to win the Jews…I became everything to everyone..for the sake of the Gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.” (1 Cor. 9:20-23). And so he made a mockery of those who put him to this, and their so-called “moral” priorities — to share and glorify the Gospel in the scandal of the Cross. All of this is far from capitulation or apology. Paul does not justify himself in these actions; nor does he present himself as having any capacity to pay back any moral debts, whether to man or God. For Paul, man has no such capacity in either case, having “nothing good” in him at all, and to pretend otherwise is not only a stumbling block to the Gospel, it is the heart of man’s fallen condition — his love of the forbidden fruit of judgment. “Why do you call me good? Only God is good.” (Mk. 10:18). If sinless Christ spoke these words, how much more so sinful Paul, who as a Christian refused to concede that he himself could render any good, whether for reparation or charity. He had “nothing good” in himself. His material riches were as dross; his religious and moral accomplishments were a net loss. All that mattered to Paul was whether his deeds would magnify the grace of Christ and bring it into crisp, revelatory focus for those whom he encountered; thereby not he but the Spirit of God in him might glorify Christ and reconcile the world to his love. For “only God is good.” And yet we are often ensnared by the temptation to consider ourselves moral agents capable of, and even responsible for, such good. This is the poison of the poorly-chosen forbidden fruit of Eden: goaded on by the serpentine Accuser, we presume the moral authority of good and evil and we appoint ourselves, rather than the Holy Spirit, to be our own Advocate. We become debt-collectors, bargaining for virtue with the sacrificial bribery of shame and blame, compounding the interest of condemnation. Where is God in all this, who judges no one in these terms; who hates sacrifice; who so loved the world that he sent his Son to be a propitiation for the sins that we have turned into tradable assets in an usurious economy of moral debt? The Cross reveals that this game of usurious moral “Monopoly” is not God’s justice. All are equally captive and humiliated under the law of sin, and should we hypocritically appeal to it, we truly have no right to apologize or demand apology — for there is “nothing good” in us that may be traded in this farcical moral economy. Such is the Catch-22 paradox of morality: “For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” (Mt. 7:2). But the Cruciform spectacle of the failure of morality does not mean that Jesus left us without a clear social teaching. Of course, one cannot read Paul’s passionate privileging of Grace over the Law without at least considering, if not conceding, that the Gospel might very well be antinomian; but the Social Teaching of Christ is not lawlessness, it is, precisely, Grace, which fulfills all reasonable laws and transcends them. The usurious moral economy’s courts are the center stage where we make our appeal to Grace in Satan’s strongholds — and these courts take many forms in our lives. We all recognize them in our hearts when the hour of trial comes upon us. When we are so tried, let us testify with Paul that good cannot be found in ourselves, and instead preach the goodness of God in his love for all people — whether they be lovable or unlovable by the Accuser’s measure — and his desire that all be saved in the knowledge of this truth (1 Tim. 2:4). Put plainly in the Gospel, forgiveness is the knowledge of salvation, reaching out to all, which is taken in hand by all who abandon the Satanic morality for merciful non-judgment. It cannot be known otherwise. “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Amen.
Song Meditation: “Whether We’re Awake or Asleep”
Inspiration has struck!This Holy Week I found myself writing and recording companion songs for the journey, from the Triumphal Entry to the Resurrection. You can find all these brand new songs here:
ICYMI: New Album “Hymns & Homilies” Out NowI invite you to download and listen to my album, out now: “Hymns & Homilies” — an eclectic collection of songs for worship and musical sermons. This is not your grandaddy’s Christian music. Name your price — your support for my work of music ministry is a blessing!
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