Philippians 3:1-11
Acts 6:8-7:60
Do you have any strange habits that you fall into when you are around your family? I now live back on the farm where I grew up, about two-tenths of a mile from my mother. My husband and children tell me that whenever I walk into her house my dialect changes. I’ve wondered why that happens. Is it because I think she will understand me better? It shouldn’t be that—my mother is well read and quite intelligent. Is it because I feel like a child? I don’t think so—I’m over fifty now and pretty secure in my role as daughter, wife, and mother myself. Maybe it’s that I want to fit in, conform, avoid ridicule and be accused of becoming uppity, or citified in my speech—too good for the farm. Ahh, maybe I’m getting a little closer to the truth.
Since I was on vacation last week, I struggled a bit with the lesson. It was difficult to concentrate for long periods of time, or to hog the computer, or to get up super early the way I do at home. I also struggled because when Paul used the word “dogs” to describe a group of people, all of my commentaries point to the Judaizers as the culprits. That may be so. As I continued to study, I saw all of us in that category. I see all of us in danger of adding things to the gospel to help guarantee our salvation, and refusing to examine the motives or the attachment to the advancement of the gospel in those actions. Let me explain.
I’m sure that in Paul’s day the Jewish Christians could have felt that they had one up on the Gentile Christians. They were children of the promise! They could trace their ancestry all the way back to Jacob! They were the chosen people of God. They had the Law, the Scriptures, and the Prophets. They had been through the years of the great Kings and they had been through the years of exile and famine. I am sure to own all of that and Christ, too, would be an amazing amount of spiritual wealth. Paul put into perspective, though, when he called it crap. That is pretty much what he did. Even today when I meet a Jewish Christian I think how neat it must be to have all that heritage and Christ, too. But Christ is all that matters.
We need to be very careful about our earthly identifications. We all have them. I knew a friend once who told me she was a Democrat and a Methodist and she could never change—as long as her parents were alive she was going to follow the family pattern and not make waves. Some of us are proud to be Baptists, Presbyterians, Joneses, or Rosencrantzes, but it doesn’t bring us one step closer to eternity. Who do we want to be found partnering with upon Christ’s return? The Spirit of the living God, or the Methodists, Baptists, or Rosencrantzes?
It seems that every generation has its “dogs.” We all succumb to the fleshly need to belong to some kind of group, to identify ourselves with people who are like us. There are major problems with this. Do you realize that the protestant church today remains divided by race, socioeconomic class and age more than any other religion? What is wrong with this picture? Do we constantly feed this monster by dividing ourselves up into programs and groups in our churches that cause age separation? Do we provide opportunities for men and women to be separate? Adults and children? Young people and older people? Do we provide activities that only the wealthier can afford to participate in? Do we invite our neighbors to church in spite of their color, distance from church, programs we lack that we think they need?
Oh how we need to go back to our need for Christ and Him alone. Examining our motivations and our need for His all-consuming grace. We need to remember that Paul was Saul the day that Stephen shared the whole gospel before him and was stoned to death, but that was not the day Christ chose to reveal Himself to Saul. If we are obedient to do what we are asked to do for Christ, He will be faithful to do what He has promised—to draw people unto Himself. It is not up to us to ask anyone to conform to a specific church or standard, but to look to the One who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He will provide the answers they need to follow Him, without jumping through external hoops that mean nothing.
But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.
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