Transformed Attitudes (1)

TRANSFORMED ATTITUDES - 1

The Gospel has taught us that because we are united to Christ by grace and through faith we ourselves are no longer the centre of attention.

We now see ourselves in quite a different way than how we saw ourselves before we knew the Gospel. In the old way, the ‘according to flesh’ way, we thought that everything depended on us. We were busy seeking to defend ourselves, promote ourselves, justify ourselves, excuse ourselves.

In the new way, the Gospel perspective, the ‘according to Spirit’ way of seeing ourselves, we have learned:

Not to think of ourselves as deserving, meriting, anything. The Gospel has taught us that what we actually ‘deserve’ is not God’s favour but God’s wrath and God’s condemnation.

To see what we used to call ‘our rights’ in a different perspective. The Gospel has told us that Jesus Christ put his rights aside, and on the cross bore both our sins and the judgement that God could have rightly exacted from us. And we, his followers, are to imitate him in his life of submission, in his self-denying commitment to the glory of God and to the well-being of the other.

That we can commit ourselves safely into the keeping of a God who has clearly demonstrated that he is for us. No suffering, no injustice, no inconvenience that comes our way can separate us from his love. Nor can anything undo the redemption, acquittal and reconciliation that God has given to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Transformed attitudes to the government
With this Gospel perspective in mind Paul, in Romans 13:1 – 7, outlaws for Christians any thinking which would put them above and beyond the law of the land.

Our relationship to God and knowledge of God as the King of all the earth does not give us the freedom to disobey or disregard the laws formulated by the various governments under whose authority we live. Rather, our knowledge of God should increase our commitment to obey the law of our land: for God is the one who has put all governments in place for the preservation of life on earth.

We must realize that this is true even of godless governments. At the time when Paul wrote the government was an emperor-worshipping, Christian-despising body. Paul's instruction here reflects the command of Christ in Mark 12:17 'Give to Caesar what is Cesar's and to God what is God's.'

This humility and obedience is an expression of the Gospel mindset.

Transformed attitudes to our neighbour
Paul prefaces his instructions about loving one another with the direction 'Let no debt remain outstanding.' This seems at first to have little connection with the verses that follow, and we find ourselves asking 'why did Paul put that there at the beginning of a direction about loving?' And ‘What has it got to do with his reference to the commandments?’ The normal response to this instruction is to think that Paul is prohibiting financial debt - and Paul has certainly just spoken about our financial obligations to government bodies (13:7). It would seem that the mention of financial obligations turned his mind to the obligation of love, and to the way in which we, in our disobedience to the commandments, put ourselves under obligation to our neighbours.

Whenever we commit adultery, whenever we murder, whenever we steal or covet, we put ourselves in a state of moral indebtedness, and also, where applicable, legal accountability and liability, towards our neighbour. After a motivational reference to the immanence of the day of the Lord (13:11 – 12), Paul gives a further list of 'deeds of darkness': orgies, drunkenness, sexual immorality and debauchery, dissension and jealousy.

Each of these also, while not normally incurring legal liability, do harm the neighbour, and do therefore put us under a moral indebtedness to that neighbour. By engaging in these deeds of darkness we are responsible and accountable for harm done to the neighbour. In other words, we have involved ourselves in on-going indebtedness towards our neighbour.

Such indebtedness, resulting from our gratification of our own human desires (13:14) is contrary to the God-centred, other-centred love revealed in the Gospel. So much so that Paul instructs us to not even think about how we might gratify such desires. Rather, he commands us: 'put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime ... clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ' (13:12 – 14).

This transformed attitude to our neighbour, like the transformed attitude to governments, is an expression of the Gospel mindset:

Because, in Christ, we know that God is for us, we are free to be for God and for our neighbour, to desire God's glory and our neighbour's well-being, rather than being trapped in the perceived necessity of seeking our own glory and expressing and pursuing our own self-centred desires.