So now vision is turning into passion, into action! In these chapters we watch Paul embodying the transformation he’s been enthusing about in at least six practical areas. And they’re things we should make a deliberate point of praying for ourselves. Here goes…
Fourthly, then, we’re confronted by Paul’s passion for other brothers and sisters. `You have such a place in our hearts that we would live or die with you!’, he says (7:3).
This passion motivates the tremendous urgency (and relief) with which we sense him repairing endangered relationships throughout ch.7. There is Christlike depth (`Christ’s love compels us’?) about a mind that could feel no peace until Titus confirmed that Paul’s relations with his brothers were back in shape (7:5-7; cf 2:13). The same passion marks the following chapters too. Here we sense Paul’s deep concern for his financial aid project for Jerusalem, that would bind the churches together across the historic ethnic divide. (And it did. That the Macedonians `urgently pleaded with us’ for the chance to be involved in the giving (8:4) is particularly remarkable; the Greeks viewed the Jews as barbarians.)
Such love is a mark of spiritual reality. We’ve seen it in the evangelical student groups worldwide. In the white-supremacist era in Zimbabwe, the university Christian Union was the only effectively multi-racial group on campus, with a presidency sometimes black, sometimes white. At one tense phase during the ethnic turmoil in Sri Lanka, the student movement’s national camp was described as `the first time since the upheavals that people from both sides had met and studied (let alone lived!) together anywhere in the country.’ In Burundi, believers were severely beaten or even murdered during the tragic Hutu/Tutsi genocide, because they cared for fellow-Christians who belonged to the `others’.
Of course the record isn’t always so positive. Critics may remind us of roles played by some (but very, very definitely not all) `Christians’ in Ulster or South Africa. But such incidents say nothing about true faith; they merely show how tribal hatred can clothe itself in twisted religious ideology. Similar links between virulent nationalism and nominal religion have been evident throughout eastern Europe; indeed, the flag can creep surprisingly close to the pulpit in the west too. Religions identified with the bulk of a community, and that blur the line between nominal and true believers, are particularly vulnerable. It was tragic, in former Yugoslavia for example, to watch how little was done by church hierarchies (from the Pope downwards) to restrain ethnic hate by clear church discipline. It’s hard to see how someone can claim to be a true Catholic, or Protestant, or Orthodox, if they don’t implement such central commands of Christ as `Love your enemy’. A pastor once took me through a militantly Unionist part of Belfast, with pavements painted red, white and blue, and described it as `100% “Protestant”, utterly pagan. Everybody here’s “Protestant”, nobody goes to church.’ Such tribalism has nothing to do with spiritual reality.
Thankyou, Lord, that you died because you cared enormously for `all people everywhere’. Please help me grasp what that means for me. Jesus-, or Paul-, style passion for fellow-believers of all ethnicities, and their needs, must have practical consequences. Most obviously in what we do with our money when other sisters and brothers are suffering so very much (as, for example, https://www.barnabasaid.org/gb/news/ can keep us practically aware). Another contemporary parallel would have implications for our politics; for choices to vote for parties who see that a small percent loss in our economic growth matters less than policies draining huge sums from destitute lands, causing malnutrition or crippling illness for children of – yes – our brothers and sisters. (When I wrote an earlier version of this, the Christian-inspired Jubilee Campaign was making an increasing impact with its call for cancellation of the poorest countries’ debts. These debts meant that, every year, those nations were sending to the west millions of pounds that should be spent on health and education. (Some ten million children die each year from preventable diseases or famine, for example.) The campaign’s inspiration was the `jubilee year’ of Leviticus 25, a key passage where God puts a careful time-limit on the worst that can happen if someone falls into poverty. Paul Handley, writing in the Independent, observed, `We feel that we’ve been duped… While we were congratulating ourselves on how much we raised for charity, somebody somewhere was siphoning back nine times as much, in our names… We find ourselves in need of forgiveness; and as our Lord taught us, our own forgiveness is linked (chained) to our readiness to forgive our debtors.’ See also debtjustice.org.uk .)
Likewise, such a passion implies huge questions about our ability to work for companies profiting by aggressive arms marketing, massively worsening the injuries and bereavements to our brothers caught in African ethnic strife. And it implies perceptive, deliberate holiness when we catch ethnic scorn surfacing back home in our own thoughts: `purifying ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit; perfecting holiness out of reverence for God'(7:1). (I say `perceptive’, because these issues can arise when we might not expect them; for example, the racist attitude most acceptable to many right-on believers is anti-Americanism!) Paul knew how venomous ethnic feelings could be (eg Acts 18:2,19:34,21:28-30,22:21-22). His dream for this collection from the Gentile churches, with its tangible proof of love across the divide, is set out in 9:13-14. `People’ (the Jewish recipients) `will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ; and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. And’ – the Body is bound together, ethnic hostility is shattered – `in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you!’
It’s logical, then, that in this section we see both Paul’s passion for others, and his passion for stewardship and giving. In ch.6 we saw the transformation of sexuality; we’ve seen here how the cross can challenge ethnic loyalties; now we watch it touching another of our deepest drives. If the pocket has truly been liberated, the heart is surely liberated too! `Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in generosity’, writes Paul of the Macedonians (8:2). Our culture expects riches to lead to joy; once we’ve learnt that joy comes from elsewhere, we can put riches to their proper use. Like prayer, giving is a channel by which God’s blessing can be passed on into one area after another. The challenge, as in 4:18, is to `fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen’. And the question is how to do that; how to learn the joy of generous giving by breaking the addiction to material things. These are big issues for parents bringing up children, and couples embarking on or reviewing their marriage. Lord, please help me hear your voice about your next steps for me in this…
Here too, transformation comes as nothing less than a direct gift from God (8:1). Again, this is the `day of salvation’, and Paul urges the Corinthians to be consistently obedient to impulses about this from heaven (8:7), to carefully set up ways of seeing it through when an initial excitement has subsided (8:11, 1 Cor 16:2). Faith is meaningless (cf James 2:20) unless it bears real fruit in action; hence Paul’s emphasis on proving the reality of their faith (7:12,8:8,24,9:13). In this gospel of transformation, giving is not one or more isolated, charitable acts, after which we have `done our bit’. Rather, it flows from a far deeper, longterm `giving ourselves first to the Lord’ (8:5). Probably this `giving ourselves’ is something each of us should pray, explicitly, once or more each day. If we truly grasp the insight that `we are not our own’ (1 Cor 6:19), then the issue is no longer how much of God’s money we give `away’, but how much we allocate to ourselves. Again the cross is the heart of the matter: `For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich’ – we can consider in what sense Christ was `rich’, if we want to understand true wealth – `yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might be rich’ (8:9). (Lord, I worship…) Liberation and transformation come as we grasp the cross, and grow like Jesus…
Then at the section’s close we glimpse a sixth passion: Paul’s passion for stimulating praise. His concern for giving acts out one of God’s `great commandments’, loving our neighbour as ourselves; it’s not surprising that we find the other here too – loving the Lord with all our heart, the centre of Christian life. `Your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of God’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, people will praise God!’ (9:11-13). It seems that Paul plans, preaches, contrives to set people praising God, all round the Mediterranean!- to be a `helper of your joy’, in short (1:24 AV). And a key aspect of praise here is one believer glorifying God for the particular `grace’ he has revealed in other believers (9:14). Indeed, a central part of Paul’s own prayer life seems to have been thanking God for other sisters and brothers (1 Cor 1:4-5, Eph 1:15-16, Phil 1:3-5, 1 Thes 1:2-3, 3:9, 2 Thes 1:3-4). (Lord, I don’t do very much of this, I need to plan to.) It’s a fruitful part of worship.
Again we may recall the chief purpose of life, according to the Westminster catechism: to glorify God like this, and enjoy him forever. Paul’s passion here shows us his heart; he would want these to be far more than empty words for us! Lord, in your mercy, please forgive my carelessness; please help me plan; please keep reminding me of these things!
