An Acceptable Offering

I contributed today’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship.

Romans 12:1

I have written to you quite boldly on some points to remind you of them again, because of the grace God gave me to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles. He gave me the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

Romans 15:15-16

As Paul moves beyond what we know as chapter 12 of his letter to the Christians at Rome, he continues to write about their relationships with others – in submitting to the governing authorities (13:1-7) and in loving neighbours (13:8-14). Such submission and love is forged in the community of faith where Jews and Gentiles learn – in spite of ethnic and cultural differences – to ‘accept one another... in order to bring praise to God’ (15:7).

Then, as he moves towards the end of the letter, Paul discloses something of his own role as ‘a minister of Christ Jesus’. Even without the phrase ‘priestly duty’, he uses several words which carry priestly associations – ‘minister’, ‘offering’, ‘acceptable’, ‘sanctified’ – taking us back to the ‘living sacrifice’ of 12:1. Paul pictures himself as a priest presiding over the offering of the Gentiles. Through his proclamation of the gospel, he seeks to ensure they are ‘acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit’.

The language might remind us of the constitution of Israel as God’s covenant people in Exodus 19:4-6. It’s there that Israel’s identity as ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ is established. Amazingly, Gentiles too can now be included as members of God’s people – through the preaching of the gospel and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. It would be an unusual mixture of people gathering together in first-century Rome – Jews and Gentiles, men and women, elites and non-elites, children and slaves. Yet, strange though it would seem to anyone looking in, these are the ones in whom God’s age-old purpose for all things has come to pass.

But their existence, like that of Israel, is for the sake of others.

That mandate remains ours today. As Paul lays it out in Romans 12, sacrifice is now relocated in offered bodies and renewed minds which bear witness to the transforming work of the Spirit. Our life together and our love for each other testify to God’s desire to reconcile all people in Christ. How we’re shaped in our relationships within the community of faith then spills out in our interactions with others – in counter-cultural ways, in love which overcomes evil with good.

In all these ways, we are not merely passive recipients of the gospel but those who embody it and proclaim it, extending to others the mercies of our great God.

Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible (44/50) – The New Israel

‘Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible’, from London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, is a series of fifty emails designed to look at the main milestones of the biblical story, seeking to show how whole-life discipleship is woven through Scripture as a whole, from beginning to end. Here is the forty-fourth of the fifty emails, this one written by Margaret Killingray.

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces… You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
1 Peter 1:1; 2:9-10

The Lord called to (Moses) from the mountain and said… ‘Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’
Exodus 19:3-6

Peter wrote to the churches of Asia Minor, small fellowships of Jews and Gentiles and gave them a new and powerful identity, using the titles given by God to the newly formed nation of Israel at Sinai.

As we read the New Testament documents, we can see how the writers are being led by the Holy Spirit into a new understanding of what it means to be the people of God; that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus have taken them into a new dispensation, a new age. Now Jew and Gentile together are the church, the redeemed people of God. But this did not mean simply that Gentiles should become Jews, grafted in to all that Judaism entailed, law and regulations for living, temple and sacrifices, land and ethnic identity. Nor did it mean that these were swept away and forgotten as a new faith sprang into life.

Now all the great symbolic identity markers of Israel are pulled into focus, finding their true and final meaning through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is our sacrifice (Hebrews 9:11-14), his body the temple destroyed and rebuilt in three days (John 2:19). Now we, as Christians, are also identified as temples of the Holy Spirit, both individually and together (2 Corinthians 6:16, Ephesians 2:21). Now there is no longer one ethnic group in one geographically outlined land, but new communities of ‘saints from every tribe and language and people and nation, a kingdom and priests serving our God’ (Revelation 5:9). As Stephen Sizer (Christian Zionism, IVP, 2004) notes: ‘The church is Israel renewed and restored in Christ, but now enlarged to embrace people of all nations.’ All the heritage of Israel, from Abraham through David to John the Baptist, has been transformed into the heritage of his redeemed and chosen people throughout the earth.

And Israel’s call – their identity and role with respect to the world – is now taken up by the church, by all followers of Christ. God’s mission to bless all nations continues to be worked out through us, his people – wherever we may find ourselves ‘scattered’ – placed in the world for the sake of the world.

Margaret Killingray

For further reflection and action:

1. There is a group in the United States who have started a fund to rebuild the temple. Some Christians believe God has a special plan for Israel and that the return of Jews to Palestine in the 20th century is part of that plan. Interpretations of some of the prophecies in the Old Testament lie behind much of the complexities and tragedies of Middle East politics. If you want to think further about this, read Colin Chapman, Whose Promised Land? (Lion, 2002) and Stephen Sizer, Christian Zionism (IVP, 2004).

2. If there are no chosen nations, no ethnicities special to God, no land with a particular and unique blessing, but all barriers are broken down and Christians are all one in Christ, what are the implications for our churches? Are there divisions that still affect our lives together?

3. In his book, The Radical Disciple (IVP, 2010), John Stott writes: ‘I doubt if there is any New Testament text which gives a more varied and balanced account of what it means to be a disciple than 1 Peter 2:1-17.’ Read the passage, and reflect on his assessment of its ‘varied and balanced account’.

Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible (11/50) – Covenant Commitment

‘Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible’, from London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, is a series of fifty emails designed to look at the main milestones of the biblical story, seeking to show how whole-life discipleship is woven through Scripture as a whole, from beginning to end. Here is the eleventh of the fifty emails, written this week by Margaret Killingray.

Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.
Exodus 19:3-6

Three months out of Egypt, this rag bag collection of ex-slaves in the desert of Sinai faced the awesome point in their history when the Lord began the process of forming a nation, fulfilling the promise he had made to Abraham and making a covenant with his people that resounds through the Bible. ‘You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people’, Peter told the scattered churches of East Asia (1 Peter 2:9).

This moment of life-changing commitment, like marriage or adult baptism, involved preparation, formal promises before kin and community, and the knowledge that breaking the promises would have far-reaching consequences. So the people of Israel washed, refrained from sex, and the Lord came to them with thunder, lightning and thick cloud.

Then he said, ‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me’ – the beginning of the Ten Commandments. Commandments that restore to them all that slavery in Egypt had damaged and destroyed – freedom from pagan gods, freedom to work with dignity and take time off, freedom to maintain proper family relationships, freedom to construct a framework of law and order, freedom to own houses and livestock and honour others’ ownership. Commandments addressed in the singular to individuals in community – each one having the responsibility to maintain the conditions for all to flourish. Commandments that are the walk of the redeemed, not the means of redemption.

But the calling to be a priestly kingdom, a holy nation, was a calling to be actively righteous, demonstrating the character of God to the world. The whole world is his and his people were to be a light to the nations, serving only him. Yet none of the people standing before the mountain in Sinai would enter the land promised to them; they would fail and the rest of the Bible shows how much failure there would be, until God sent his son to be the Saviour of the world, beginning a new covenant.

The calling to be a priestly kingdom, a holy nation, was a calling to be actively righteous, demonstrating God’s character to the world.

Margaret Killingray

For further reflection and action:

1. Read Hebrews 12:18-29 for a further reflection on the crucial significance of Sinai and for the glory the new covenant.

2. Reflect on your covenant commitments to spouse, children, family, fellow Christians and, perhaps, repair some of the cracks.

3. The Ten Commandments have a pretty bad reputation in today’s society, although few can remember more than one or two. All about ‘don’ts’, they say. Reflect on their positive encouragement to create societies of mutual support and flourishing.