The Second Week of Advent: Preparing for the peace of God

[An Advent Homily]

The second Sunday in Advent carries the theme, ‘preparation for the peace of God’.  That peace comes with the birth of Christ our Saviour, and it is always and only through Christ that God’s peace comes.

Of course, we associate Christmas with an exciting and happy time—family, gifts, celebration, and services commemorating the birth of Jesus.  The image of Christmas is warmed with pictures of cosy fires in the fireplace, children playing on the floor with trainsets and dolls around a lighted and decorated conifer, and a gentle snow falling outside—even if you do not live in the northern states of America or England and are sitting in the summer heat in South Africa!—so powerful is the marketed version of Christmas.

The coming season of Christmas is intended to be joyful and peaceful, but it can also be stressful, hectic, and even hurtful.  Rushing around to complete Christmas shopping, the financial stress this entails, travelling somewhere in a car that needs service, hospitality to others without enough beds, meal preparations with every other relative allergic to something or other these days, and even making it to the services with hungry, sleepy children or grandchildren—all this can be and often is very stressful.  Many of us also seem to have someone in the family who is an agitated curmudgeon for all the wrong reasons, and yet Christmas expects us to bring him together with everyone else for a peaceful and joyful time. 

On top of all this, Christmas is a very confused holiday on the Church calendar.  Our secular world either hates it with the greatest animosity as it does any Christian light intruding into its darkness, or it reforms it into a romantic Hallmark and shopping holiday.  We need to separate all this from a truly Christian holy-day.

Some years ago, I wrote an essay recommending that we join the Orthodox Christian world by moving the day that we celebrate Christmas from 25 December to the 6^th of January.[1]  These dates are the beginning and end of the Christmas season, so why focus on the 25^th when it has become a worldly holiday?  The 6^th of January could be a completely religious holiday, with a service and traditions we might rediscover or even invent to focus on Jesus, as we should.  I suggest it would become a day of peaceful celebration, as it should be.

Well, there is little chance that my suggestion will convert many.  Christmas is as Christmas has been.  But somehow we need to make Christmas what it is supposed to be in our Christian calendar, and this applies to Advent as well, the season preparing for Christmas.  We just celebrated the Second Sunday of Advent.  The purple Bethlehem Candle was lit, representing peace.  This week focusses on preparation for the coming of God’s peace.  What many are focussed on is Christmas shopping, working out who is travelling where and how we can host them, preparing a fancy meal, and the like.  Preparing for the coming of peace seems a long stretch, and remembering that Jesus is the Prince of Peace is a challenge.  Isaiah foretold His coming:

    For to us a child is born,
                        to us a son is given;
             and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
                        and his name shall be called
             Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
                        Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9.6).

Paul confirmed this, saying of Jesus, ‘He is our peace’ (Ephesians 2.14).  Every day of the year, we celebrate the present reality of the peace of Jesus Christ.  As Paul says,

The Lord is at hand; ⁶ do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4.5b-7).             

In our services, we have often passed the peace of Christ after confession and forgiveness of sins.  Having been forgiven, we have peace with God and peace with one another.  Having received peace from God and from each other, we boldly celebrate at the Lord’s Table, partaking the wine and eating the bread that remember Jesus’ body and blood given for us. 

My favourite part of a morning service is when people file forward to the front of the Church to receive the cup and eat the bread.  I see that moment in the service as a moment remembering the peace we have with God and with each other.  I am reminded that the Church is itself the body of Christ, we are all necessary, all together, all in need of God’s grace, all welcome to receive it, all in a state of ‘peace’.  The service is an enactment of the Gospel message itself.  What we do first is prepare ourselves for peace, just as this week of Advent is the week of preparation for peace.  Another word for peace is reconciliation: we are reconciled to God and to one another.  Armed with this peace, we step out into the world in mission to the world to proclaim God’s peace to the world.  As the angels said to the shepherds, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests’ (Luke 2.14).

As Christians, we really do not have to say when someone dies, ‘May she rest in peace.’  Someone who dies in Christ is with Christ (2 Corinthians 5.8; Philippians 1.23).  She knows God’s peace so much greater than we do now.  But we also know God’s peace now—it is not a wish.  Paul says,

For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. ⁴ But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, ⁵ he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, ⁶ whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, ⁷ so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life (Titus 3.3-7).

In our own circles of family and relationships, we have some with whom we share God’s peace and have sweet fellowship together.  Yet there are also some who are thorns, and it is hard to think about anything peaceful with them around.  We can, as God’s people of peace, do two things in regard to them.  We can pray for them.  Jesus told us to pray for our enemies (Matthew 5.44).  What should we pray?  That they might find God’s peace through Jesus Christ and, in so doing, come into a place of peace with others in Christ, including ourselves, our families, and our church.  We can also demonstrate to them aspects of the peace we have found in Christ: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Those are the fruit of the Spirit that Paul mentions, a fruit that is growing within us by God’s Spirit.  Can we give those thorns in our relationships a picture of God’s peace in our lives?

I close with an invitation to each one to prepare your hearts for peace with God, not just for Christmas but every day.  Receive Jesus into your life and live in peace.  To those already reconciled to God and who know the King of Peace, live in that peace and extend it to others.  Here, finally, is a lovely blessing with which to finish, sung by Kristyn Getty:

May the Peace of God - Kristyn Getty, Margaret Becker, Joanne Hogg

---

[1] Rollin G. Grams, ‘The Church 5: Western Christians in a Post-Christian Culture—Merry Christmas!,’ Bible and Mission Blog (8 December, 2014); online: Bible and Mission: The Church 5: Western Christians in a Post-Christian Culture—Merry Christmas!.

Return to Eden

 [A short story.]

‘Eve!  Wow!  Wonderful to see you after so long!  My badness, look at you!  How the hell did you get back in here?’  The snake slithered up his favourite tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, so that he could be eye to eye with his protégé.

‘I’m surprised myself!’ replied Eve.  ‘It seems that the cherubim is really guarding the path to the Tree of Life.  Anyway, here I am, and it is good to see you again!’

‘Likewise,’ smiled the snake.  ‘How have you been?’

‘Oh, you know, I’m sure.  Having babies—lots of them.  All painful.  Sure, Adam tills the land by the sweat of his brow, but what is that to having your hips structurally rearranged and soft tissue torn?’

‘Ah, that.  Pain.  God wants you to believe that He is good, but then there is pain.  Why would a good God let you suffer pain?’

‘Yes.  Yes, that is why some these days do not believe in God at all.  Of course, I used to walk with Him in this garden, so there is no denying His existence.’

‘But you can doubt His goodness, can’t you?’

‘Only if I doubt His justice.  Adam and I really did reject His Word.  If we sinned, His punishment is just.’

‘Let’s say you sinned—just for argument’s sake.  But was His punishment equitable or excessive?  You, Adam, your children, generations afterwards.  Wars, diseases, earthquakes, death....  And what’s with creating mosquitos in the first place?’

‘Lots of questions.  We didn’t think we would have them after eating the fruit of this tree.  But what really happened is that, when we took on the role of God by making choices of good and evil for ourselves, we only had more and more questions without anyone to answer them.’

The snake twisted itself around a branch.  He was more comfortable that way.  Eve wasn’t so easy to mislead as before now that she thought for herself.  She had become more godlike, thinking and choosing for herself.  Yet she also realised that she wasn’t like God after all, even though the snake had promised her that the fruit would make her so.  She had come to see him again, though, he told himself, and did she not say that she was glad to see him?

‘Yet you have been coming up with answers, haven’t you?’ he said.  ‘Your own answers to your own questions.’

‘Yes, we’ve been playing the role of God for thousands of years.  It has been quite a..., quite a.....’

‘Thrill?’ offered the snake.

‘Mess,’ said Eve.  ‘Quite a mess.’

The snake frowned.  ‘Don’t beat yourself up,’ he said.  ‘Life doesn’t have to be about the right answers but about trying answers out to see if they fit.’

‘To see if they fit?’

‘Well, when my skin gets too tight, I shed it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Truth is not some ‘out there’ thing, unchangeable, absolute.  It is about what fits.  What fits you, what fits me, what fits someone else.’

‘Oh, I see.  Yes.  We’ve tried that.  God created the world, but we made some of our own gods.  God created us male and female, but we’ve disconnected gender from biology and come up with 72, or maybe 81, or....  What does it matter?  Why can’t a biological man be a woman if he—er, she—wants to be?  God instituted marriage between a man and a woman, but why?  If two people love each other, why not marry no matter what gender they are?  God said to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth—that takes me back to our conversation earlier.  Why have painful births at all?  Why spend your hard-earned money on little brats driving you crazy with ‘Mommy this’ and ‘Mommy that’?  Why not enjoy sex without children and abort them if by some mistake you become pregnant?  Why should marriage be about becoming ‘one flesh’, as though you have to stay with a man your whole, agonizing life?’

‘I see you have wriggled out of your skin once or twice, too,’ said the snake.  ‘Feeling more comfortable, then?’

‘That’s the thing,’ said Eve.  ‘I thought so.  We thought so.  But we’re not so sure anymore.’

The snake narrowed his eyes.  He moved into the shadows, tightening his scales and giving off a different colour.  Eve noticed.  ‘Why, you are more orange than red now!’ she exclaimed.

‘Colour is in the eye of the beholder, you know,’ said the snake.  ‘I grant you we might have some limitations and can’t be anything we want to be.  I can’t turn myself into a dog, for instance.  But I have a lot of freedom to take on different colours, positions, roles, and so on.  And with a mind thinking outside bodily limitations, we can be ever so many things if we want to be.  I never lie, mind you, I just give words new meanings, put a spin on things, suggest alternatives.’

‘Oh, yes.  We are pretty good at that by now, too.  And we have also invented our own virtues.  I mean, by cancelling God and His claim that “truth is what I say it is”, we redefine everything.’

‘How so?’ said the snake, with a smile.  He was truly proud of Eve.

‘So, an easy one, ‘love’ does not relate to some objective truth so that it moves someone in a certain direction.  It let’s them move in whatever direction that they want to go and then loves them by affirming them in their choice.  Or take ‘mercy’.  We had to get rid of this altogether.  You can only have ‘mercy’ if you have standards that are unchangeable and then forgive someone if they break them.  We now have ‘tolerance’ and ‘inclusion’ instead.  We recently rejected the idea that ‘justice’ is equal for all and came up with ‘equity’ instead.’

‘Equity?’

‘It means...well, now it means, that, since some people are more privileged that others, you have to put your hand on the scales of justice to favour the victims of oppression and injustice.  Some people have to have less and others more if you are to have equal outcomes.  We even ‘cancel’ some people.  Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others, if you get my meaning.’

‘Yes, I read that book.  Marvelous stuff.’

‘For a while, we wanted to open up the playing field to everyone.  Equality, liberty, fraternity.  But then we realised that we needed to lop off heads—lots of them.’

‘Literally?’

‘Literally, figuratively—whatever.  You can’t give people freedom if they aren’t going to do what you want them to do.  Take free speech.  You let someone get up on stage, and then they say the wrong thing, something like, “We should do what God says!”  “There are only two genders!”  “Men should not participate in women’s sports!”  That simply won’t do.  You have to shut them up.’

‘Very good,’ said the snake.  ‘It is one thing to say, “Don’t follow God’s Laws but make up your own.”  But if someone makes up a law like, “Follow God’s Laws”, they ruin the game.  The only rule that counts is that there are no rules.’

‘Well, that’s why I’m back here,’ said Eve.  ‘I’m not sure it is so simple.’

‘Really?’ said the snake.  He knew the irony of the word ‘really’ and liked to use it whenever he could.  Eve missed the irony, though.

‘Yes.  You see, if everyone has their own truth or justice or whatever, they keep bumping uncomfortably into each other.  Independent systems of virtue really only work if you live all alone, but most of the virtues require someone else.  If I call an egg a snake and someone asks me for an egg and I give him a snake and he says it isn’t an egg....’

The snake winced.  He himself did not want to be thought of as an egg.

Eve continued, ‘If Adam wants to identify as a woman and walk into a woman’s locker room and take a shower with other women, and they tell him to get out because he’s a man, we find ourselves in a vicious circle of argument.  If he says, “If you don’t accept me as what I say I am, you are bullying me,” and they reply, “If you demand us to say you are a woman, you are bullying us to accept your own fantasy.”  They say to him, “Not only are you making your private truth an objective truth and telling us we cannot have our own truth let alone an objective truth, you are also in our space.  You say you want to be tolerated, but you are intolerant of us.  You say you want to be loved and accepted, but you do not love and accept us.  You set up your own standard on the ground that people can pick and choose their own standards, and then you insist that your standard is the only standard.”’

The snake really had no answer to this, so he said, ‘You said that you came back here for some reason.’

‘Yes,’ said Eve.  ‘I came back to look at creation again.  God made things the way they are and said that everything He made was good.  The things we have invented and called good are like the spider webs in space.’

‘Spider webs in space?’ asked the snake.

‘Oh, some time ago, some astronauts took some spiders up into space to see what sort of web they would construct outside gravity.  They made webs, as before, but the webs were not symmetrical.  And they did not work that well.’

‘And your point is?’ asked the snake.

‘Don’t you see?  Without a standard of some sort, like the law of gravity, things are skew and you know that they are skew.  They don’t work well, even if they work a little.  They are not better but substandard.  Yet you are not supposed to say so.  You congratulate the spider.  But this Garden of Eden is where the world is as it was meant to be, not as we have created it.’

The snake was not as proud of his protégé now as he had been earlier.  Things were taking an awkward turn.  She had used her own reasoning—good—but to reason her way back to Eden, to God’s standards—not good.  He had one other line of enquiry to try.

‘Eve,’ he said, lowering his voice.  ‘Do you really think it is about making symmetrical webs?  What if it is about your choosing and not about your choices, even if they do not work out so well?  That is, what if it is about power?  The fruit of this tree gives you the right to choose good and evil, not a knowledge of good and evil.  That is up to you.  I might have misspoken about shedding an old skin and finding a more comfortable one.  What if you choose an uncomfortable skin, or one too loose, for that matter?  What if the point is to choose rather than someone else—like God—choosing for you?  It really comes down to power.’

‘Being a god is being the one to choose?’ said Eve.

‘Yesssss,’ said the snake, letting his true character show momentarily.

‘And if I choose God’s good rather than my own—no difference?’ asked Eve.

The snake squirmed.  He was hoping she would not come to this question.  He eventually said, ‘Choosing, that’s the thing, and that means you have to choose all the time.’

Eve thought a minute.  ‘What if it is not about either choosing or choices in the first place?’

‘Eh?’

‘What if truth is something deeper?  What if truth is truth because it rests on something else?  It is unmalleable not because it is objective in itself but the product of something deeper, higher, and wider?’

‘I need you to explain this idea more.’

‘Well, if we say truth is subjective because there are many subjects—many people with their own truths—then shouldn’t we say that truth is objective if there is One Subject, God?  And if I don’t so much as choose truth as something objective but choose God and His truth, this means that truth is somehow caught up in my relationship with God.  And if truth depends on that relationship—not any relationship, but that particular relationship—it is objective in the sense of being unchanging, because God is unchanging.  And if I access God’s truth through my relationship with Him, then truth is not about reason accessing truth as much as it is about love—love of God, not any love, not anybody.  I access unchanging truth through love of God.  And there is one more thing—the beginning of it all, actually.  I access love of God not by choice so much as by God’s love for me.  My love of God is a response to His overwhelming love for me.’

The snake hissed.  It tried to speak, but it was a snake, after all.  It only hissed, and then it slithered down the tree and off into the long grass.

Eve looked over in the direction of the Tree of Life in the middle of the garden.  She looked around for the cherubim and the flaming sword but still could not see them.  She stepped away from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and towards the path that would take her to the Tree of Life.  As she proceeded, she came upon a rock on which was written, ‘In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins’ (1 John 4.10).  Turning a corner, she remembered that this is where the sword had been. Instead, right in the middle of the path, stood a large sign.  Approaching it, she saw written upon it, ‘I came that they may have life and have it abundantly’ (John 10.10).  The message was signed, ‘Love, Jesus.’  An exciting thought came to her, ‘Perhaps I can now get to the Tree of Life’. 

Eve also remembered where the Tree of Life stood in the middle of the garden.  It was located in a gorgeous meadow, beside a deep stream of clear, cool, flowing water.  As she crossed the meadow, she realized that the tree was different from so many years before.  It had been hewn into the shape of a cross.  On the cross were written the words,

‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life’ (John 3.16).

She sat below the cross a long while, washing her feet in the stream.  Then she got into the stream, weeping in repentance for her arrogance and sins.  She found it cleansing and life-giving.  She sensed God’s love and found a love well up in her own heart for Him.  In that love, she desired to live by His commandments and no longer her own choices of good and evil.  She was repulsed at the thought of the world of her own making and wanted to live in God’s good creation.  She loved God with all of her heart, soul, and might.  She desired to walk in His ways, to walk with Him in the cool of the evening.  Into her head came words as though the Son of God who died on the cross for her sins was saying, ‘Eve, I am the way, and the truth, and the life’ (John 14.6). 

She came up from the water onto the opposite bank, praying aloud, ‘Father God, May I know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge’ (Ephesians 3.19).  Not only did she know that her sins were forgiven, but she realised that she was also transformed by the renewing of her mind so that she once again knew the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12.2). 

She sensed someone else was present as she came upon dry ground.  It was Adam.  ‘It was a journey to take alone,’ he said to her, ‘and yet here we are now together.’  They spoke together for a while, with tears turning from sorrow to joy. 

And as they walked, a third person joined them.  He asked, ‘Why are you weeping?’  Eve replied, ‘Are you the gardener?’  He replied, ‘Eve!’  And in hearing her name spoken as it was by Him, she knew herself more truly than ever before, not only who she was but also who she was now in Him.  She knew Him, too.  She saw in Adam’s eyes that he did, too.  Then Jesus said, ‘Come, let us walk together in the cool of the day.’

A Review of the Seoul Statement of the Fourth Lausanne Congress (2024), Part Six (The Family of Nations)

The sixth section of the Lausanne Statement in Seoul, Korea addresses a concern for peace in a world of violent conflict.  Just how are Christians to advocate peace in the world?  The statement does not call for peaceful ‘coexistence’.  Instead, the Church’s universalism is stated in terms of ‘God’s saving rule over all peoples’ (6.77).  Thus, peace comes not by opposing evangelism but by nations permitting Christians to proclaim the Gospel.  Peace and reconciliation come through Christ and the transformation and love that flows from Christian faith.  This thoroughly Biblical and Christian understanding is hardly that touted by others (including universalists in the broader ‘Church’) that all faiths are equal ways to God, and therefore peace is by affirming everyone and even celebrating whatever they contribute to the smorgasbord of multi-faith multi-culturalism.  (This appears to be Pope Francis’s view and one that has been articulated in contemporary Roman Catholicism.)[1]

Noting that some areas of the world have found greater peace and harmony (6.78), the Statement also notes that this is not the case in other regions (6.79).  It condemns those who stoke war (6.80) while calling on Christians to care for the vulnerable and serve as peacemakers (6.81).  Quoting from the previous Lausanne Congress in Cape Town of past Christian complicity in violence, the Statement laments such moral failures of Christians (6.82) and calls for repentance (6.83).  This last paragraph expands on the notion of a ‘nation state’ as a state with multiple, culturally distinct groups.  I suppose the reason for repeating the concern already stated a decade ago must be the divisions between people resulting in the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.  Indeed, 6.84 states explicitly that God fulfills His promises to the Biblical people of the Middle East through Jesus Christ.  Thus, Christians should oppose theological errors that stoke current violence.  This all too general comment seems to be a warning not to read the identities and politics of Biblical times onto the current political situation in the Middle East.  If so, a more direct challenge to such theological anachronisms and exegetical errors would be worthwhile, without, however, turning Lausanne into a political entity when this is not its purpose.  Indeed, the Statement rightly distinguishes politics from God’s mission: ‘We lament that some Christians have looked to the state rather than the gospel as the key means for bringing about God’s intentions for the world’ (6.85). 

However, this Statement makes a crucial error in weighing into a socio-political perspective that befits current, cultural trends beyond Lausanne’s missional purposes.  Thus, it says that it opposes the ‘great evil’ of nationalism in the sense of a state aiming to have a single, national culture (only one possible meaning of ‘nationalism’, note).  This political perspective appears to swallow the pill of identity politics in the West, which holds that multiculturalism is an intrinsic good rather than a highly problematic commitment that has led to and is leading to increasing violence.  It seems, despite statements to the contrary, to affirm religious plurality as not only acceptable but beneficial—a large part of ‘culture’ is religion.  Fundamentally, this view maintains that all cultures are equal, static, and valuable such that a multicultural state is—without further specification—to be valuable.  It removes the prophetic role of the Church to speak to the nations and all cultures the truth that they are not the Kingdom of God.  Far better would have been a statement that Christian faith transforms cultures and is called upon to develop a superior culture in the Church.  Otherwise, ‘the Kingdom of God’ language is rendered nonsense.  As Paul says, ‘But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Philippians 3.20).

Paragraph 6.86 notes the Korean situation in particular, since the document was written in Seoul.  Christians are called on to pray for unity between the north and south and the open proclamation of the Gospel in the north.  I see no reason to pray for unity, which is, after all, a political agenda, but praying for the open proclamation of the Gospel everywhere is, indeed, a Christian prayer.  The concluding paragraph to this section (6.87) further calls on Christians everywhere to intercede for the persecuted and labour for peace, build Christian communities, promote a culture of peace, and proclaim the Gospel.

Much of this Section lays out hope for peace in the world, primarily through the Church and Christians working toward that end.  At such an altitude, the particulars on the ground that need to drive any serious efforts are almost imperceptible.  One wonders what such a Statement has to offer Christians facing regular persecution and death from Islamists, such as in northern Nigeria.  Given the nature of this Statement, avoidance of particular issues is only to be expected, but this raises the question whether Lausanne conferences would do better to produce a different type of document in future meetings, one that focusses on a few issues facing the Church at the time rather than a sort of systematic theological restatement covering many theological topics. 

One specific issue that really needs to be addressed throughout the world and that is a major threat to peace is Islam.  The multiculturalism of Western nations has provided an open door to radicals.  This Lausanne Statement affirms multiculturalism but makes no mention of such a threat.  It appears to understand culture in terms of cuisine, dress, and some traditional customs rather than as something deeply shaped by religion and something the Church as its own culture (the Kingdom of God) challenges.  The Church often stands against culture and always seeks to transform culture.

Previous Section Review: A Review of the Seoul Statement of the Fourth Lausanne Congress (2024), Part Five (Discipleship, Local Church)

---

[1] Cf. Rollin G. Grams, ‘Is the Pope Catholic?  A Response to the Universalism of Pope Francis,’ Bible and Mission Blog (15 September, 2024); online: Bible and Mission: 'Is the Pope Catholic?' A Response to the Universalism of Pope Francis.

Healing Grace

Introduction

 In this article, I intend to argue that the New Testament and Christian understanding of God’s grace is not simply ‘mercy’ for sinners but also ‘healing’ for the morally infirm who are dying and need new life.  The imagery of healing grace is primarily post-New Testament, and later Christian authors like Augustine or John Colet, who will be discussed, depend for it more on Greek and Roman philosophy than on the New Testament.  That said, links can be made to the Old and New Testaments, and the theological value of ‘healing grace’ captures the Bible’s theology of salvation.  While the Reformation’s focus on justification by grace through faith can, in some expressions, be faulted for underemphasising the very Biblical (Old Testament and New Testament) teaching on God’s empowering work of righteousness through Christ and the Spirit in our lives, we might note that John Calvin did place his discussion of justification within the larger section of ‘Regeneration’ in his Institutes of the Christian Religion.  Calvin, too, recognised the ‘new creation’ theology of the Church that I am here calling ‘healing grace’, whatever one makes of his description of justification.

 That said, we are at a point in Christian circles today where we need to hear less of ‘hyper-grace’ (in the sense of forgiveness and justification alone) and more of ‘healing grace’ (in the sense of God’s salvation as a power at work within us to restore life and righteousness).  The full theology is that of forgiving and healing (transforming) grace.  The error in our day is expressed vividly in teaching around homosexuality in some Evangelical churches.  While rejecting same sex acts, some believe that same sex affections or desires are not sinful.  Some say that wrongful desires or orientations are not sinful, only acts, while others even elevate same-sex attraction as an intrinsic good—a sort of ‘spiritual’ or deep friendship—as long as one does not perform sexual acts outside of heterosexual marriage.  The present discussion relates to this deeply mistaken understanding of God’s marvellous grace.[1]

 Augustine

 In his reply to Coelestius’ teaching for his fellow bishops, Eutropius and Paulus, Augustine addresses the problem of besetting sin and Christian righteousness ('On Man's Perfection in Righteousness', ch. 2).  He says that sin is an act and can, therefore, be avoided.  Yet, underlying actions are what we might call (not Augustine) ‘capacities’, for Augustine likens humanity’s sinful condition to that of a lame man, unable to walk.  We can hardly ask a person who is lame to walk.  Now, those today arguing that homosexuals are ‘born that way’, that their orientations are ‘natural’ to them, may say that they are hardly to be blamed for their condition and, therefore, it is not a sin.  They may also dress up this lameness as a value, as people sometimes do when finding goodness in an infirmity.  Indeed, some have suggested that being ‘gay’ brings a depth of male (or female) friendship—apart from any physical contact.

 Yet this is not at all Augustine’s point.  His analogy of lameness points to the need for healing, a healing that can only come by God’s grace.  He distinguishes the soul, the seat of one’s emotions or desires, from acts that result from these.  As a person may have a defect, lameness, so a person may have a defect of the soul.  For example, a person’s soul may have the defect of avarice that leads to the action of the theft.  Moreover, even when the soul ‘does nothing in gratification of its avarice’, it is said to be evil. 

 So, what is the Christian answer to the conundrum of besetting sin?  What is needed is neither an acceptance that one acts acceptably because of one’s infirmity nor a mere prohibition against actions without addressing the condition of the soul.  The metaphor of an infirmity helps us articulate a right theology.  Augustine says, ‘the man cannot avoid the lameness, unless his foot be cured’.[2]  He continues, ‘The same change may take place in the inward man, but it is by God's grace, through our Lord Jesus Christ.’  And again, ‘By faith, however, it receives renovation; in other words, it is healed day by day—yet only by God's grace through our Lord Jesus Christ.'  In this second quotation, Augustine contrasts faith with the law in the example of the tenth commandment not to covet (Exodus 20.17).  The sick soul is incapable of right action and needs healing, and such healing comes by faith in the daily healing by God’s grace through Christ Jesus our Lord.  Augustine accepts the view that sin is not sin when one can do nothing about it, like being lame, but the man is culpable if he does not agree to the remedy when there is one (ch. 3).  That remedy is the work of Christ, our great physician.  Alister McGrath says,

The idea of Christus medicus—Christ as the authentic healer of the human soul—was used extensively by Ambrose [Augustine’s teacher]: ‘We have found shelter with the Physician, who has healed our former wounds. We have received the great medicine of His grace; for great takes away great sins’.[3]

 Augustine’s language alludes to 2 Corinthians 4.  Paul does not use the analogy of illness or sickness but of actually dying and being made alive, which is language that more adequately relates to the grace of God in Christ Jesus.  Paul says that we carry in the body the death of Jesus that ‘the life of Jesus may be manifest in our bodies’ (4.10).  Paul begins this comment with reference to his ministry as a ministry of being ‘afflicted in every way’ (4.8), but the theological background extends to the Christian life more generally: ‘For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh’ (4.11).  Paul’s ministry, then, involves an outward wasting away but an inward renewal day by day (4.16), just as this is true generally of all believers.  This is Augustine’s justifiable interpretation of the text, even if its first application is to Paul’s ministry.  The believer, by faith (not works) is healed day by day, a sick (even dying) soul needing the daily healing by God’s grace through Christ Jesus. 

As Alister McGrath notes regarding Augustine’s allegorical interpretation of Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan, ‘‘justification is a process of transformation by which sinners are healed and renewed within the community of faith.’[4]  Augustine held together justification as an event and as a process in a Christian’s life that is worked by God.  Good works are effected in the believer by God; they are His works in the believer and in this way may be said to be ‘imputed’ (inputantur) to him or her (De civitate Dei XXII, 30).[5]

 John Colet

 On the eve of the Reformation, in 1497, the reforming priest and scholar, John Colet, wrote a commentary on Romans that focussed on God’s healing grace.[6]  Writing prior to Martin Luther, he, too, argued that God’s grace alone is the means of our salvation.  He did not, however, so articulate God’s grace as to leave it as only a justification of sinners.  Rather, he understood Paul’s argument in Romans 5-7 to be that God’s grace is a healing of the soul.  Paul’s imagery in Romans 6 is not one of healing and sickness, but what he does say is consistent with this metaphor.  As in 2 Corinthians 4, Paul’s image is of dying and rising with Christ and then of a slave serving the master of sin or the master of righteousness.  Set free from the former master, the slave may now serve righteousness from the heart (Romans 6.15-18).  The language of a changed heart shows us that Paul has in mind the new covenant righteousness wrought in us that the prophets foretold (Isaiah 59.20-21; Jeremiah 31.30-34; Ezekiel 36.24-27).  The restoration of sinners is even depicted by Ezekiel as a resurrection from the dead by the life-giving Spirit of God (37.14).

 Paul does understand the human condition as an infirmity unto death, writing, ‘Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (Romans 7.24).  Colet latches onto the image of sin as a disease only curable by Jesus.  Writing in reference to Romans 5.12ff, he says,

And so, as sin grew and gathered strength, it was needful, for the healing of mankind, that saving grace should then much more increase and abound; that men, being justified by it, might be able through Jesus Christ to attain eternal life (Chapter V).

 While the Law, instead of bringing healing, ‘exposed and aggravated the disorder’, ‘the ‘medicinal grace [of God was] ... given in the death of Christ for healing the disease of sin’ (Chapter VI).  The Law may even be said to be a good remedy even though it could not restore health to a dying patient.[7]  The more efficacious remedy is God Himself and His grace.

 Colossians

 Paul’s letter to the Colossian church might also be considered in regard to the singular reliance of believers on Jesus Christ.  Alternative powers are discounted (1.15; 2.14-15), including philosophy (2.8), since it attempts to provide humans with ways to heal themselves.  Martha Nussbaum explains how Greek and Roman philosophies believed that they provided therapies for sickly souls of unhealthy desires.[8]  She notes, for instance, that the Stoic, Chrysippus held that, as there is medicine for the body, there is medicine for the diseased soul (referenced in Galen, On the Views of Hippocrates and Plato 5.2.22).  Articulating the Stoic teaching, the Roman statesman and author, Marcus Tullius Cicero, says that philosophy is the medicinal art for the soul: ‘We must endeavor with all our resources and all our strength to become capable of doctoring ourselves’ (Tusculan Disputations 3.6). Paul’s dispute with philosophy is precisely on this point: philosophy claims to offer a humanly contrived remedy for the disease of sin.

 Christ Jesus, however, removed alternative remedies of the Law and other authorities for a soul’s ‘art (or craft) of life’, as the Stoics described it (technē biou).  Paul says, using different analogies, that Jesus cancelled

 the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him (Colossians 2.14-15).

 Thus, regulations of food, drink, religious festivals, Sabbath, and other ascetic or religious practices (like the ‘worship of angels’, what to handle, taste, or tough) provide no value for stopping the indulgence of the flesh (2.16-23).  Only the power of the cross and the rule of Christ in our lives will heal us from our disease (to use the medical metaphor to make Paul’s point).

 What is Christ’s remedy for sin?  We might comment further in Colossians 2.20-3.17, which answers this question in four ways.  First, the Christian participates in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  He or she dies with Him to all human regulations.  That is, Christ’s death accomplishes what these regulations could not (2.20-23).  He or she rises with Christ, sets his or her mind on things that are above, where Christ now is, and is assured of appearing with Him in glory, for He is now the believer’s very life (3.1-4).  Far from being a technē or skill, the victorious life is the life of Christ, in which the believer participates fully.

 The second way Paul describes this is briefly mentioned in Colossians 3.7 and is a common Old Testament notion of ethics: ‘walking’.  How and where does one walk?  The believer has turned away from how he or she once walked.  So, for example, Deuteronomy says, ‘You shall walk in all the way that the LORD your God has commanded you, that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you shall possess’ (5.33).  A third image Paul uses is that of ‘putting away’: the believer has things in his or her life to put away, such as ‘anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth,’ as well as lying (3.8-9).

 The primary way in which Paul captures the solution for human sinfulness in Colossians 3.5-17, however, is with the imagery of removing clothing and putting on new clothing.  The believer is to ‘put off the old self with its practices’ and ‘put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator’ (3.9-10).  While the image suggests human participation in this, it equally emphasises that this is a ‘new creation’ (cf. 2 Corinthians 5.17) work of God, a restoration to the image of God (cf. 2 Corinthians 3.18).  Restoration from sickness is not a powerful enough image for Paul, who sees the seriousness of sin as a death and the divine solution as a new creation.

 Greek and Roman philosophy was framed in terms of the four cardinal virtues corresponding to the order of the body: wisdom (the head—knowledge, understanding), courage (the chest or heart—emotions and passions, like fear, pity, love, anger, grief, resentment, mourning), temperance/self-control (the stomach and sexual organs—the affections or bodily desires, such as gluttony and licentiousness), and justice (the right ordering of the self and society).  The right ordering of the self for Aristotle (in his Nichomachean Ethics) involves two things: the right balance of virtues between vices of deficiency and excess, and (as Plato already argued in the Republic) the right ordering of the head over the chest over the lower regions, so to speak.  That is, a wrong ordering of the self, for example, would be the licentious person placing his affections or bodily desires above wisdom and knowledge.

 This brief description of the framework for considering philosophical ethics is helpful in discussing Paul’s ethics in Colossians 3.5-17 (and elsewhere), even though Paul does not work directly from notions of cardinal virtues or Greek and Roman philosophy. What he says, however, may reflect the cultural context.  His thoughts are not organised in the way that moral philosophy was.  Yet, in this passage, note that Paul understands that sin affects head, heart, and practices, and the solution is a change in each area.  We might arrange his thoughts somewhat as follows:

 

	Head (Understanding)	Heart/Chest (Emotions/Passions)	Lower Areas (Bodily Desires)	Right balance (justice)
Virtues of the New Self	Renewal in knowledge after the image of the Creator ‘…teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom’	Compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another, forgiveness ‘Let the peace of Christ dwell in you richly…, singing…, with thankfulness in your hearts to God’		‘Put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony’ ‘And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.’
Vices and Practices of the Old Self		Impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness Anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk, lying	Sexual immorality

 Again, Paul does not so organise his thoughts as to reflect the framework of Greek and Roman philosophy.  Yet what philosophy covered in searching for a therapy for the ailing self is addressed by Paul: he addresses the solution for the head, heart, lower parts, and right ordering or balance in his own way.  That is, ethics covers the whole self, not some isolated part of the self or soul.  More importantly, Paul’s solution is entirely theological, not philosophical.  Instead of a craft for soul care, Paul insists on a divine solution: God at work in us, who are in Christ.  Our role is to respond to that grace—God’s saving and transforming work in our lives.

 Romans and Ephesians

 This understanding of Paul’s ethics is reflected elsewhere in his writings.  In Romans, the plight of human sinfulness is in acts of the flesh that derive from impure passions and result in a depraved mind.  The four-part problem of sin is all there in Romans 1.18-32: sinful bodily acts or practices, impure passions or emotions, the lack of wisdom and understanding, and an imbalance of the creature rejecting the Creator.  One is only half-way through Paul’s theology in Romans when one affirms that salvation is a justification by grace through faith (3.21-5.21).  Then comes Romans 6-8, which establishes that salvation is the work of God in Christ Jesus through the Holy Spirit to make us righteous.  Romans 7.7-25, often misinterpreted as a description of a Christian’s wrestling with sin, rather is part of a larger argument in Romans 6-8 contrasting life under the flesh, sin, and the Law to life in Christ and the Spirit (cf. the introductory verses to 7.7-8.17 in 7.5-6).[9]  Thus, the theological conclusion in Romans culminates in the restoring of the depraved mind that does not know the will of God:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. ² Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12.1-2).

 God’s solution to human sin is not merely forgiving grace but also transforming grace that restores the depraved mind.  It is not just a matter of Christians not sinning in bodily acts but also a transformation of passions of the heart—restoring right desire—and a transformation of the mind to know God’s will.

 Paul’s moral argument in Romans is expressed in brief in Ephesians 4.  Christians must no longer walk in the futility of their minds (4.17).  Formerly, they were darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God on account of the ignorance within them—the hardness of their hearts (4.18).[10]  We have, notice, moved from head to heart, and now Paul proceeds from heart to the body’s or flesh's affections and acts: ‘They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity’ (4.19).  This part of Ephesians parallels Colossians 3 and need not be repeated, except to say that he continues to explore God’s solution for the mind, heart, and bodily affections and activities through 5.21.

 The solution to human sinfulness is God’s forgiving and transforming grace.  It restores the mind, heart, and bodily affections and activities.  It brings right order to the new creation, the new man in Christ Jesus.

 Jesus’ Ministry and the Holy Spirit

 The Holy Spirit is not featured in a number of texts in the Synoptic Gospels as He is in Paul, such as in Romans 8.1-17 and in Paul’s ethics in general.  Yet Jesus’ ministry is the bringing of God’s cleansing and empowering Spirit.[11]  This fundamental understanding of Jesus’ ministry is expressed in terms of the difference between John the Baptist’s ministry and Jesus’ ministry—which are related, not opposed.  John’s ministry was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  Jesus’ ministry was a baptism of the Holy Spirit.

 Behind this two-fold ministry of John and Jesus lies the narrative theology of Israel’s restoration from captivity in sin.  Israel went into exile due to sin; God’s restoration of Israel was not according to Israel’s works but God’s grace.  He both forgave Israel her sins and restored her in righteousness by the work of the Holy Spirit.  This is the New Covenant promise already noted (Isaiah 59.20-21; Jeremiah 31.31-34; Ezekiel 36.24-27).  John’s baptism offered cleansing from past sin through repentance and forgiveness.  Jesus’ baptism offered the new creation life of the Holy Spirit who enables one to live righteously according to God’s Law.

 This is what Jesus means in John 3.5: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.’  To be born of water is to repent and receive forgiveness (John’s baptism).  To be born of the Spirit is to be born again (this is the passage where Nicodemus puzzles over what ‘born again’ means—the Greek equally means ‘born from above’).  What Jesus brings differently from John is the empowering Spirit of God that transforms sinful lives.  As God says in Ezekiel 36.27: ‘And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.’

Not only is the Holy Spirit active in healing grace, but the Servant of God is through the cross as well.  Theologically stated, healing grace is linked to both pneumatology and Christology.  The Old Testament text mentioning a 'healing' from sin is in Isaiah 53.4-5: 

 

Surely he has borne our griefs

                        and carried our sorrows;

             yet we esteemed him stricken,

                        smitten by God, and afflicted.

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions;

                        he was crushed for our iniquities;

             upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

                        and with his wounds we are healed.

Jesus applies this to His healing ministry prior to the cross in Matthew 8.17.  Peter applies it to Jesus’ removal of our sin on the cross:

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. ²⁵ For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls (1 Peter 2.24-25).

This analogy of sin to sickness and the theology of grace including healing is already introduced in the Old Testament.  Jesus’ application of the text from Isaiah to His healing ministry shows us the link between this literal ministry of healing to the theology of healing grace: it foreshadows Jesus’ healing through suffering of our deadly disease of sin.

 Conclusion

 This study began with a claim by Augustine that God’s grace is a healing grace.  This notion was then examined in John Colet’s commentary on Romans, and along the way the notion of a therapy to treat the infirmity of the human condition was discussed in Greek and Roman philosophy.  What the ancients saw as a task for philosophy, Christians insisted was only resolvable by the grace of God.  That grace was both a forgiving and a transforming grace.  To examine this theological solution, I noted places in Paul where he works this theology out and also compared and contrasted his teaching to Greek and Roman ethics.  I also noted that this teaching about forgiving grace and transforming grace is consistent with an understanding of the Old Testament’s hope of a New Covenant and with Jesus’ addition to John the Baptist’s ministry—an addition of the baptism of the Spirit to the baptism of water.  This discussion could be expanded considerably.  The New Testament, however, supports the teaching of Augustine.  In all this, we see that an understanding of sin as just acts and not also a disease of sinful affections and desires and of God’s salvation as just forgiving grace and not also transforming or healing grace is incomplete. 

 The error of a partial theology has played out in our day in regard to sexual immorality.  Some have wanted to limit it to acts—the affections and acts of the body.  Some have wanted to understand grace as merely a matter of achieving the status of justification and not the transformation God brings by making us righteous.  Some fail to link the baptism of John to the baptism of the Spirit that Jesus brings.  Some so emphasise the sacrificial work of Jesus—His removal of our sin by His shed blood—that the further work of Jesus and the Spirit is underemphasised.  As Paul says in 1 Corinthians: ‘But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified [a better translation would be ‘made righteous’][12] in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God’ (6.11).

---

[1] I have elsewhere addressed the issue of ordaining same-sex attracted, celibate ministers.  See Rollin G. Grams, ‘Evangelicals and the Question of Same Sex Attracted, Celibate Ministers,’ Bible and Mission Blog (27 June, 2024); online: Bible and Mission: The Conversion of the Heart: Christian Theology, Ethics, and Ordination.  Also, Rollin G. Grams, ‘The Conversion of the Heart: Christian Theology, Ethics, and Ordination,’ Bible and Mission Blog (8 July, 2024); online: Bible and Mission: The Conversion of the Heart: Christian Theology, Ethics, and Ordination.

[2] The translation used is from https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1504.htm.

[3] Ibid., p. 48.  See Ambrose, De Helia et ieiunio xx.75, CSEL 32.2.257-8.

[4] Alister McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 4^th ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020), p.48.

[5] Ibid., p. 49.

[6] John Colet, Dean Colet’s Lectures on the Romans, trans. J. H. Lupton (London: Bell and Daldy, 1873); available online at: https://www.google.com/books/edition/An_Exposition_of_St_Paul_s_Epistle_to_th/cZlJAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover.

[7] Colet affirmed a threefold purpose of the Law: to point out sin, to define boundaries, and to threaten transgressors (Chapter IV).

[8] Martha C. Nussbaum, Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).

[9] See Rollin G. Grams, ‘The Struggle to Do What is Right: Interpreting Romans 5.12 and 7.7-25,’ Bible and Mission Blog (1 October, 2024); online: Bible and Mission: The Struggle to Do What is Right: Interpreting Romans 5.12 and 7.7-25.

[10] The ESV translation is inadequate here—I have rendered the meaning of the verse as I understand the Greek.

[11] See Rollin G. Grams, ‘Divine Grace and Moral Empowerment in Matthew’s Gospel,’ Bible and Mission Blog (1 October, 2024); online: Bible and Mission: Divine Grace and Moral Empowerment in Matthew's Gospel.

[12] The Greek word can either mean ‘justified’ or ‘made righteous’.  Given the other terms and the context—following a sin list—and Paul’s point that Christians are no longer characterised by sin—not that they are forgiven and viewed as justified—‘made righteous’ is the better translation, despite the popularity of the ‘justified’ translation.