This week i got to Tim Keller's sermons on the Prodigal Son and the concept of brotherhood came up. Some threads that have popped up in my mind recently have been:
-Matt Maher's song "Hold us together"
-The first brothers of history-Cain and Abel
-Valor
-Galatians 6
-The Law of Christ
BTW: To the readers of the female influence, Keller makes the point that woman are just as much brothers in Christ as men are the brides of Christ; that the point of using the concept of brotherhood is not to point out gender differences, but to focus on the implications unique to that type of relationship. But by no means is the concept of brotherhood completely inaccessible to women.
What really gripped me about Matt Maher's song was the line in the chorus: "And i'll be my brother's keeper." That was particularly interesting in the light of the first two brothers in existence: Cain and Abel when Cain inquires of God: "Am i my brother's keeper?" Looking at Paul's letters where he affectionately refers to the people of those churches he wrote to as brothers or the bretheren, his special concern for believers watching out for other believers in the case of the Corinthians and calling believers to bear one another's burdens in Galatians, it seems like the answer to Cain's question is a rhetorical: "Yes, you are your brother's keeper." Or at least you should be.
Of course whenever anyone uses the S-word, you kind of know that a guilt trip is somewhere on the road map. Which, it kind of is, but Keller and Piper make great points about guilt. Piper says that guilt is the glorious awareness of our failings. He said that pain to the body is the same as guilt to the soul. And just like how pain lets us know that our body is in trouble or is being hurt, guilt lets our souls know that something isn't quite right. The trouble comes when guilt becomes the sole motivation and basis of change in your life because guilt is A) largely self-focused, and B) as Keller points out, it fades.
Sure, we may get super convicted about something like brotherhood for a while, because man, that Matt Maher's got it right! We SHOULD be our brother's keeper! But if conviction is only based on guilt, it'll probably only last a couple of weeks or months maybe because although your perception of brotherhood might be shifted, it seems to me from the Bible (Moses and the burning bush, Paul on the Damascus road for examples) that real, lasting change only comes from paradigms being shifted. "Paradigms power perception. Perception powers emotions" (The Shack), and i might add: emotions power action.
The other issue of special concern about guilt based conviction is that it leads to Pharisaical (sp?) religion. One of the most clearly seen symptoms of legalism and religion is condescension. If my conviction is strictly guilt-based, saying to myself: "i'm going to do this because i should," it won't be long at all before i start looking to other believers saying: "man, they say they're believers, THEY should be doing this!" Which doesn't really follow with the Gospel at all. Now if reading THAT makes you feel guilty because you totally do and/or have done that, then you're in good company because Martin Luther says that the default mode of the human heart is to go back to religion and try and base our justification on our sanctification. Which means that if you've been a Christian for a while, expect to fall back into legalism and trying to twist God's arm with your good deeds a couple times in your life.
The Grace:
The Gospel is not the opposite of religion, or irreligion for the matter, as Keller puts it. It's simply on a whole different dimension. In terms of brotherhood, Cain's question becomes plainly rhetorical. Yes of course i am to be my brother's keeper, because Christ sacrificed his life and broke his unbreakable relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit at the cross for me and for those Jesus says i should consider my brother, then exactly how arrogant can i be in thinking that i can pick and choose who to be a keeper of? No one chooses their brother. No child ever says: Hey mom and dad, could you give me a brother that won't be annoying and will be willing to clean my room for me? Or could you adopt my brother from Africa instead of China? If God is the father of the household, he decides who my siblings are, regardless of whether i like them or not. Spurgeon says that to be "poor in spirit" means to recognize your spiritual depravity and those are the people that Jesus is calling into the Gospel. So really, we should kind of expect that Christians be pretty messed up people. i find it super weird that Christians in America have been understood as people morally superior to everyone else, because i don't see in the Bible that God calls us to be that way and everyone that feels morally superior to people get rebuked (Paul rebuking Peter in Galatians and Jesus rebuking the crap out of the Pharisees).
The truth is that the lives of the people we come in contact with were bought by Jesus' blood and given to us by God's mercy. According to Luke 13 (i think) Jesus says we should not be amazed at the suffering that surrounds us, but we should be amazed that the blessings we receive. If i've offended God to the degree of Ezekiel 16, then it becomes clear that i really didn't deserve to wake up alive this morning, or not die in a horrible car wreck on my way to this coffee shop. Because the only thing that i really do deserve is death, for deeply offending a person of infinite dignity. Therefore the only reason that i haven't died a horrible death yet is grace.
As it turns out, it's this same grace that enables me to be my brother's keeper, not to simply make myself feel better or convince myself that i'm holier, but for their sake-because of my love for them and the Body. If i really understand at a heart, paradigm-shaking level, then the notion of looking out for myself over my brother doesn't just become distasteful, it becomes non-existant-it never even enters my mind or heart. The grace that Jesus gives me forces the conclusion that i be my brother's keeper and bear their burdens because if i call myself a believer in Jesus and i understand the cost of the grace given to me in light of my lack of worth and the impossibility of it all, then it should be no problem for the desires of Jesus to become the desires of my own heart (especially if Jesus lives in me, i bet that helps too). And it is quite plain that Jesus is passionate about His body and the brotherhood of believers. In fact, he built his new commandment on that passion.
In Galatians 6, Paul urges us to bear one another's burdens and says that this fulfills the Law of Christ. i'm not that good of a Christian so i had to ask the obvious question: what is the law of Christ? Answer that most fits in my mind: John 13: 31-35. i honestly don't understand how 31-33 really fit into the context, it almost sounds like he injects this new commandment. Thankfully, the command itself is very clear and uber amazing. Jesus says love one another as I've loved you. Again, obvious question? How did Jesus love us? Miracles? Water to wine? Lots of fish and bread? Fighting racism? Good teaching? etc? i don't think so. 1 John 3:16 says: "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers." One might say that we know Ghandi loved because he pioneered social reform, or that Mother Theresa lived because she brought aid to those in need. Interesting that the Bible says the primary mode of Jesus love was in the laying down of his life for us and how this understanding should result in the laying down of our lives for one another.
This is what i heard Scott Grissom define as valor. What distinguishes valor from bravery is that valor always comes in someone else's sake. To tight-rope walk across Niagra falls is bravery. Running into no-man's land to pull your fellow soldier back to the trenches is valor. Jesus calls us not just to bravery, but to valor because the Cross is the single greatest example and act of valor in existence. And if we call ourselves His followers, it really doesn't make sense that we not follow Him in this way.
Jesus made a point of this immediately before giving this new commandment when he washes his disciples' feet. He says:
You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.
In other words, if i call myself a believer and a follower of Christ but don't actually follow Him, i'm either a liar, or i think i'm better than Jesus.
This causes trouble in my heart because i feel like i do this sometimes, but all the time? Probably not. So am i really a believer or am i just a poser? According to Martin Luther, i'm Simul Iustus et Peccator! Awesome! The end.
i guess i can't really end this post there. But the latin phrase in a nutshell is this: that i am simultaneously a sinner and a saint. Paul describes it as the new and old self or the flesh and the new creation. Both conditions, hearts and desires existing in the same reality. While the truth is that the real me, the new creation, is awesome and looks a lot like Jesus, the reality is that there is still the selfish, self-serving, self-abasing notions of the flesh in my life. So depending on when you catch me, i can be a self-serving jerk or a selflessly loving guy. But it can and i think most often is a mixture of both, yet Paul makes it clear these two things are separate. This is one of the great mysteries of the Bible and life, and i apologize to any unchurched people reading, i realize this sounds like crazy talk. But for anyone who understands what it feels like to have real hope in the midst of intense suffering, you would probably understand this. Because most people consider sorrow and joy to be two mutually exclusive things. Either you're a joyful person or a sorrowful person, or you're joyful one day and sorrowful the next, or you're bi-polar. But joy and sorrow CAN and does exist in the same heart-space for some people. It did in Jesus' heart and it does in the hearts of believers who have really come in contact with suffering while clinging on to the Gospel.
What this says to me is that i'm in process. Honestly, i don't treat some believers like they were my brothers, but some of them i do and i notice that tends to change with the seasons. And honestly, i tend to see more of the former in churches and/or religious groups/clubs. But maybe that's just me. In any case, to those that feel they're understanding me, we need to be preaching the Gospel to our hearts daily, making new the reality of who Jesus is and how He wants to show us more of who we were made to be.
