Pineda
Presbyterian Church
November
27, 2016
Romans
13:11-14
“An
Uncomfortable Fit”
“Let us
then lay aside the works of darkness and put
on the armor of light;”
“Let us
live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in
debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ....”
Living a
Christian life is not about the Ten Commandments. It’s not about legalistic or ritualistic
performance. It’s not about reveling and
drunkenness, or debauchery and licentiousness.
Actually in modern English debauchery and licentiousness are
synonyms. They both refer to extravagant
wastefulness and depravity and are essentially self-destructive.
I
wouldn’t say that there are no people that we might know who are subject to
those 4 issues: reveling, drunkenness,
debauchery and licentiousness. But I
don’t think that those 4 are the issues that we face in most congregations
these days. It’s the other two that I’m
worried about: quarreling and jealousy.
Those are the two that destroy other people; that destroy congregations.
Paul
says to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Misinterpretations of Paul have probably done more damage to the faith
than almost any other issue within the faith.
We like it when Paul talks about being saved by grace through faith, and
then stop there.
“By the
grace of God I have faith, so leave me alone.
Don’t tell me how to live my life!”
We love
convenience, and that gross misinterpretation of Paul’s theology allows what we
call “faith” to exist conveniently in our lives, never challenging the way we
choose to live. That’s not the faith
that Paul talks about.
The
society has moved toward less and less formality in clothing and attire. There once was a notion about dressing for
the occasion and if the occasion was going to church we had our “Sunday best”
to wear to church. For some people their Sunday best was clothing that
specifically set aside for special times, and going to church was one of those
special times. My father was a working
man who didn’t wear a suit to work, but on Sunday morning he would put on a
suit and tie and head off to church.
Even in
social gatherings, we used to talk about and dress to the occasion. One of my favorite movies is “Young
Frankenstein” and one of my favorite scenes is when Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle
do a song and dance number dressed in formal tails. Even the name of the song talks about putting
on special clothes: “Puttin’ on the
Ritz.”
In our
scripture this morning Paul says “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul uses that metaphor of putting on
something several times in his letters. In I Corinthians he talks about putting on
imperishability and immortality. In
Ephesians he talks about putting on the whole armor of God. He uses that image
additional times as well.
“Put on”
is a concept from the Hebrew scriptures.
It’s found throughout their scriptures in the books of Moses and in the
prophets. Isaiah uses it frequently. It’s found in Job, and perhaps the passage
that best makes my point is found in Ezekiel where he talks about the use of
priestly garments.
Ezekiel 44
17When they enter the gates of the inner court,
they shall wear linen vestments; they shall have nothing of wool on them, while
they minister at the gates of the inner court, and within. 18They shall have linen turbans on their heads,
and linen undergarments on their loins; they shall not bind themselves with
anything that causes sweat. 19When they go out into the outer court to the
people, they shall remove the vestments in which they have been ministering,
and lay them in the holy chambers; and they shall put on other garments, so
that they may not communicate holiness to the people with their vestments.
When the priests were
carrying out their priestly duties in the holy of holies they were to be
dressed in a special way. When they
finished that work and came out to be with the other people they were supposed
to change their garments so that their garments didn’t mark them out as special
and holy.
We don’t generally give that
much thought any more to what our clothing may communicate to other
people. To Paul the garments you wore
communicated all sorts of things. Within
the Roman Empire even the color of your clothing communicated special status. So when Paul says “put on the Lord Jesus
Christ” Paul means let the whole world know that you belong to Jesus. Let your overt behavior show the world that
you have taken on the life of Christ as your own.
Now taking on the life of
Jesus certainly would exclude a life of reveling,
drunkenness, debauchery and licentiousness.
Acting like that would certainly not be living out the life of
Christ. Jesus cautioned against
self-destruction and the self-hatred that is at its root. In Matthew 22: 37-40 Jesus tells us: “’You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This
is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall
love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the
law and the prophets.”
I don’t want to perpetuate another misleading belief
here. This doesn’t say that loving your
neighbor sums up all the commandments.
Jesus says: “This is the greatest and first commandment.” “You shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your mind.” Expressing our love of
God in all that we do is the first and greatest commandment. But there is a second one that is similar in
expression to the first one: “You shall
love your neighbor as yourself.”
Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ is to live
your life with these TWO commandments as the paramount guidelines in your
life. Like putting on special garments
for special occasions, putting on the Lord Jesus Christ means living your life
so that people clearly see the Lord in the way you live. That brings us back to those other two sins
that Paul lists: quarreling and
jealousy.
As far
as Paul is concerned there is no hierarchy of sins: a sin is a sin is a sin. We want to establish a hierarchy. At the very least we want a quantified
hierarchy: it’s worse to kill 37 times
than to kill just once. Maybe. I’m sure psychologists could explain to us
why we need to impose scale as a qualifier when looking at sin.
Putting
scale aside, please pay attention to this.
Paul lists quarreling and jealousy in the same list as reveling and
drunkenness, debauchery and licentiousness.
In Galatians 5 Paul has an even longer list that includes fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry,
sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy,
drunkenness, and carousing.
Do you begin to understand what he’s saying? How we mistreat one another is every bit as
sinful as all of the “shall not’s” in the Ten Commandments. Everything that divides us one from the
other, everything that causes a break in the congregation (the body of Christ)
is as serious a sin as fornication, idolatry, and drunkenness.
Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ means living as Christ lived
… and as Christ died. It’s not putting
on the Ritz or even your Sunday best.
It’s certainly not putting on a costume meant to make people think that
you are the most righteous person around.
It’s putting on this body. It’s
putting on the body of Him who died for our sakes. Don’t kid yourself. Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ is an
uncomfortable fit. It means denying our own needs and desires,
not just the ones that we usually condemn in others, but also the ones that we
are likely to fall into every day ourselves:
quarreling, jealousy, envy, anger.
That’s who we are called to be. That’s how we express our faith. That’s how we put on the Lord Jesus
Christ. And it may surprise you to find
that we can’t do it on our own, but the more we live as God has commanded the
more we will draw our strength from the Spirit and the more the fit will feel
less uncomfortable.
When we follow God’s commands because God has commanded it,
the Spirit of the Lord will enter into your heart and your body and provide you
with the strength and the humility that is required.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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