Talking about righteous living sometimes can get one into trouble in the Lutheran Church. We have so emphasized grace alone that we almost think it heresy to talk about the demands of discipleship fearing that we might be supporting a works righteousness theology of salvation. So let me preface my message for today by saying in no way am I asserting that we are saved by our works; indeed St. Paul tells us that all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags. If that’s the case, then why bother? We bother because once forgiven and cleansed from our sin we are freed to do those good works that God has already planned for us to do, as Eph. 2:10 states, "For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life."Righteousness is to be a way of life not just something we do occasionally for brownie points. This is in grave contrast to the people Paul was crying out against in Philippians. They were living as enemies of the cross of Christ. In other words they were not puting their faith into action; they were doing as they pleased. In order to understand this passage we must look at those people about whom Paul was writing. They were gnostic dualists. Gnostics are people who think you need some special knowledge to be saved. Their knowledge, or at least what they claimed to be knowledge was that the soul was important following dualist philosophy, but what you did with your body was not, since at death we cast off the body.
Therefore they were doing as they pleased, which is the meaning of the phrase, "their god is the belly." In modern language it would say that their god is their own feelings, much like Scripture tells us during the time of the judges everyone did what was right in their own eyes. The exoression comes from the ancient peoples feeeling that all emotion emanated from the belly area. We retain some of this thinking when we talk about getting a knot in our stomachs or not having the guts to do something. The Philippian heretical teachers were living like pagans and being proud of it. It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same.
But what does Paul say is the result of this kind of thinking? "Their end is destruction." (3:19) We are not to live like that. We are to be different, and why is that? Because we are resident aliens. This is not our real country. Our citizenship is in heaven, so we live according to the mores of heaven. To be recognized as a citizen of heaven is to be seen modeling Christ.
We can’t do that on our own power, but we can accomplish this seemingly impossible task because Jesus himself, "...will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself." (vs. 21) So we have seen that we were designed to do good works.
All right, now we know we are supposed to live righteously and do good works, so how do we live out our heavenly citizenship, especially since we live in a society that values tolerance rather than righteousness. Many think that if God were being reasonable a little sin should be tolerated, much as we tolerate a little variance in our production lines at work and we tolerate people’s difference of opinions.
But sin is an insidious thing; a little sin leads to a little more and a little more and pretty soon we wonder how we ended up where we did. Dr. David Jeremiah suggests no one sets out to become a drug addict or big-time sinner, but that we end up where we do by all the little choices we make along the way. So the first thing we as heavenly citizens must do is watch the decisions we make every day. We must make wise, Scripturally based, divinely guided choices. We can choose good over evil; we can choose the loving thing to do. We can choose to go against the crowd when we know the crowd is going against God.
The ancient saint John Chrysostom reminds us that we deal with a crafty enemy, "If we were suddenly aware of a serpent nestling in our bed, we would go to great lengths to kill it. But when the devil nestles in our souls, we tell ourselves we are in no danger, and thus we lie at ease. Why? Because we do not see him and his intent with our mortal eyes.
This is why we must rouse ourselves and be more sober. Fighting an enemy we can see makes it easy to be on guard, but one that cannot be seen we will not easily escape. Also, know that the devil has no desire for open combat (for he would surely be defeated), but rather, under the appearance of friendship, intends to insinuate the venom of his malice." [50-Day Adventure Journal, p. B.95]
So we want to build up a hedge around ourselves to keep us from falling into sin or being deceived by Satan. We do that to protect the image of God within us for when we sin, the image of God within us fades. To ensure we make right choices, we need to look at those places in our lives where we often slip up and develop strategies to overcome them. If for example we always act in a less than godly manner around certain people, we may want to stay away from those people, or if we sin more when we allow ourselves to become tired we may make sure we don’t overschedule ourselves so we become fatigued. We also want to make sure we are accountable to someone. For some reason we think we can fool God because we can’t see him, but to have a flesh and blood person checking up on us makes it a little more difficult to hide our failings from ourselves.
So how do we discern what is right? First we want to daily seek what it is God wants of us, so we schedule time for devotions and Scripture reading. We worship each Sunday to keep focused on God. Next we know that Jesus’s new command was the command to love. If we are ever confused about what to do in a given situation we can ask ourselves, "What is the most loving thing to do?" Note, I didn’t say the easiest thing or the thing that would appear loving on the surface. Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is to speak the hard word that the path someone is following is leading to destruction and they must repent.
Next we maintain a healthy prayer life. A life devoted to prayer is an empowered life. God is more than willing to keep us from temptation if we ask him to do so, so let’s remember to ask. We are never too young or too old to be tempted or to get help from God in resisting temptation. Gigi Graham Tchvidian tells of a time her daughter was taking her piano lesson in the living room and her young son came in for his bath with his head in his hands. Gigi asked him what he was doing, if anything was wrong. The boy replied, "Oh, I was just praying." When she asked him what he was praying about he said that every time he passed the living room he would see his piano teacher and his tongue would stick out and he was asking God to help it not to do that. Gigi wrote that she tried to keep a straight face as she assured the boy that God would indeed help him in that regard. She also prayed for God to give her more the mind of her little boy and to correct her problem with her tongue as well. [50-Day Adventure Journal, pp. B.93-4]
Finally we live in ways that encourage others to be holy as well. This may be difficult in a society that says one can’t legislate morality, but if we don’t legislate morality then are we able to have any society at all, for what is morality but a code of how we live in community? An elderly woman found out how difficult living like this can be when she tried to endow a scholarship to encourage young women to remain virgins. The school declined the scholarship offer because they didn’t feel it was right for the university to dictate morals. How sad. So many young women who are pure have been denied the benefit of that money because the university was afraid to hint that there might be some value in remaining sexually pure. Concerning this Bowen wrote, "Jesus grieved over the condition that Jerusalem had fallen into. We likewise have reason to grieve over the state of our own society. [Emphasis/March/April /1998, p. 21]
We need to grieve over our corporate and individual sin, but there is hope. Jesus Christ gave his life to pay the penalty for that sin and to restore us to a right relationship with God and rose to give us the power to live new lives--lives the way God originally intended his creation to live. Know that there is no sin too big for God to forgive and no sin that can’t be conquered with the power of the Holy Spirit, so remember to do those things that will help us lead holy lives: Read Scripture, worship, ask what is the loving thing to do in situations where we must make choices, repent of our sins, pray to be saved from temptation and given power to overcome anything evil that might come our way, avoid those people and situations that might lead us into sin, and try to live in ways that encourage others to be holy as well. May God grant us grace to do what we have willed.