Ancient Promises: Life
The Rev. Dr. John Judson
June 26, 2011
Ancient Promises: Life
Genesis 3:1-7
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that theLord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God say, “You shall not eat from any tree in the garden”?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.” ’ But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
Romans 6:15-23
What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.
When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
They were everywhere. You could not turn a corner without bumping into one of them. You could not go to the market without rubbing shoulders with them. You could not go to someone’s house without being served by them. Slaves were everywhere. As Paul was penning these words to the Roman church, slavery was one of the most pervasive realities of the Empire’s capitol. Estimates are that one out of every three persons in the city was a slave. Some of the slaves had been captured as prisoners of war. Others had been kidnapped by slavers in remote provinces or on the sea by pirates. A few had been born as slaves of slave parents. Many of the female slaves had been left as newborns to die on the streets but were picked up by those who rear them to be slaves or prostitutes. And then there were a few who had sold themselves into slavery to pay family debts. Regardless of how they had become slaves they were considered less than human. They were often treated brutally and lived short desperate lives. Needless to say then when Paul refers to his readers as slaves, it was like a hard slap to the face.
The vast majority of his readers would have first resented the fact that Paul claims they had been slaves to sin…which he does three times. They were free people. They had minds with which to make decisions. They were nobody’s slave. Second they would have probably resented Paul’s claim that they were supposed to continue to be slaves…even if they were to be slaves of God. None of the other gods had asked for slaves. Why would this Jesus who supposedly set them free want them to be slaves to the God of Israel? Paul understands their problem and even nominally apologizes for his language, yet he will not back down. Chances are that many of us here this morning have the exact some problem with Paul. The thought of seeing ourselves as slaves to anyone, including God is not appealing. And not only is it not appealing but it makes no sense if we believe that Jesus has set us free. Instead of seeing ourselves as slaves we see ourselves as independent agents capable of making appropriate decisions about right and wrong. We are neither slaves of sin nor of God, but rather stand in a neutral middle ground from where we decide what we ought to do. No we are free people and we want to keep it that way.
Unfortunately the belief that we can stand in some neutral middle ground not being a slave to either God or sin, while being a hallmark of modernity and authors like Ayn Rand, doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because it fails both the Biblical and the reality tests. It fails the Biblical test because the primordial sin of humanity was believing that human beings were in and of themselves capable of judging the difference between right and wrong, good and evil. This is the story of Genesis chapter three, which we call the fall. Many of us grew up believing that the story was simply about obedience. God made a rule. Adam and Eve broke it. That understanding of the story misses however the more profound message; that God commanded Adam Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because God knew that as human beings their ability to discern right from wrong would always be limited. It was limited by their inability to discern their own motives and to see the outcome of their choices. They discovered this when upon eating they not only did not learn the difference between good and evil, but they become ashamed of themselves, even though they were children of God. By believing that they could be the arbiters of good and evil they became slaves of the snake and its message, not of the God who had given them life. Thus it fails the Bible test.
Our belief that somehow we can stand in this neutral position and make the right choices which lead to the fullness of life fails the reality test as well. What I mean by this is that the study of humanity by everyone from evolutionary biologists, to psychologists to social scientists has made it clear that there is no neutral position from which any human being can make free choices. Our choices are impacted by our culture. We would make different choices than someone in Afghanistan. Our choices are impacted by our socio-economic status. People in the middle class often make very different choices from people reared in generational poverty. Our choices are impacted by our brains. Our brains tell us that we need sugar, fat and salt even when our bodies don’t actually need them because our ancestors never got enough of them. And if that is not enough all we have to do is remember the last words of a Red-neck…”Watch this Bubba.” While some of the choices we make are good, most of us will probably acknowledge that we often make ones that aren’t.
So we are back to Paul’s original and still rather offensive point…that the choice we need to make is between being a slave to sin, meaning being guided by those powers that lead us away from the fullness of life and into a constricted view of humanity, or a slave of God, meaning being guided by the one who will lead us into life.
Assuming that we do choose to become a slave of God then the question becomes what does this actually mean for us? The answer for the Romans was abundantly clear. They were to move away from a style of life that was almost 180 degrees opposite of that as a follower of Jesus Christ. They were to give up everything worshipping other gods, to participating in the sexually oriented Roman festivals, to treating their slaves like property. The difference was clear. For you and I however the answer is not nearly as clear. It is not as clear for a couple of reasons. First we live in a society that has adopted many of the virtues of the Christian faith. We live in a society in which compassion, sacrifice, love, forgiveness and generosity are part of our cultural language and shared faith traditions. The second reason is that there is no consensus among Christians about what being a slave of God looks like. Christians on the right and on the left have very different views. So what does it look like in 2011 to be a slave of God?
I wish I could give you a laundry list of dos and don’ts that you could carry in your pocket that would insure that you are being a slave to Jesus. Unfortunately life does not work like that. What might be the right choice for me in one situation might not be the right one for you even in the same situation. So what then are we to do? I have to say I really wrestled with this but then it came to me…read the Gospels; read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. As you do listen to Jesus, watch Jesus, discover what it is like to follow Jesus; for to be a slave of God means to follow in the way of Jesus, the one who was completely obedient to God.
The choice then is ours. Will we be willing to accept God’s leadership in our lives in order that we live into the fullness of life God offers? If so, then the challenge is to be intentional about making that relationship a reality. So here is my challenge for the week…actually for the summer…to read the Gospels…cover to cover…and then in the fall, get together with me and anyone who else who so desires to talk about how that reading has shaped your understanding of being a slave to God.
