Called to be Holy Eph.

4:1-7; 11-16

Introduction: Every letter of Paul (or those attributed to him by the early church) was addressed to communities of new believers who were trying to learn what it meant to be a Christian. We, who were born into Christian communities and cultures, need to appreciate their unique situation. They were literally starting to be Christians. We talk about new beginnings as a present task. Their struggle is the original beginning of the new Christian life. Having been used to a pre-Christian (pagan as a pejorative term) religion and morality, the early Christian converts needed a lot of guidance in demarcating Christian life from the old pagan life. In his Second Letter to the Corinthians Paul describes Christian life as radically different: if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come (5:17). The idea of a different kind of life was not entirely new to them for they had heard from philosophical schools and other religions of a kind of life beyond the earthly, material life in the realm of the eternal. But a radically new life consisting of the same old body and mind in the same old world was not easy to grasp, much more to practice. Paul gave them a basic principle: the new life is to be defined by the nature of their calling. He begged the Ephesians to lead a life worthy of the calling (4:1). Those who are called are set apart for sanctification, or to be made holy. Paul also told the Roman Christians: Just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification (Rom. 6:19). In other words, their calling dictates that they should lead righteous, holy lives. Holiness is a mark of those who have received Gods forgiveness through Christ. Earlier in the Letter, he described the old life as one that is driven by the passions of our flesh, following the desires of body and mind (2:3). In short, the Christian life is one that is driven neither by feelings and emotions nor by human wisdom but by the new calling. This motivation makes life radically different from the ordinary or normal run of things. Paul had an amazing understanding of human psychology. Modern psychology has proved that much of human behavior is but a complex process of obtaining gratification or avoiding pain and discomfort. Much of this is of course hidden or disguised in more impersonal and abstract principles. But the bottom line is personal interest and satisfaction. All that power struggle in politics, for example, has nothing to do with service to the people but for personal enrichment and glorification. For Paul, the drive for personal enrichment and glorification belongs to the old life. For Christians to continue to live that way is not worthy of the calling. For the church to conduct its affairs that way is a betrayal of the calling. Paul went on to describe the manifestations or visible signs of the new life: lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (4:2-3). But how could the early Christian converts speak of the new life when in their concrete lives and relationships they continued to manifest the ways of the old life? Their consciousness that had been molded by years of pre-Christian upbringing and education remained attached to and comfortable with the old way. It was not that easy to instantly undo and replace those habits that regulated their daily life ever since. Should their failure to change themselves radically be understood to mean that they still had not received the new life from the Spirit? Is the new life real or not? If real, how come it didnt show in their daily life? For the Apostle Paul it was a delicate theological as well as pastoral dilemma. Theologically, Paul had to remove the logical contradictions of the question in order to prove the rationality of the Christian faith to its many detractors. But even more important for Paul was to give comfort and encouragement to the new converts who were struggling with their new identity. Should Paul insist that those who had received the new life would automatically change in their mind and behavior, they would begin to question and doubt themselves and perhaps despair. On the other hand, if Paul would say that the new life in them was real even if they continued to behave like before, he would make a lie of the gospel and turn the church into merely another pagan religious sect. We wont know for sure how Paul handled the situation. His letters didnt mention pastoral details. We may have to go through the entire Pauline corpus to be able to get a clear picture, which we cannot do today. But we can

get some clues from his other, especially genuine works, such as the Letter to the Romans. In chapter 6, verses 6 and 11of the Romans Paul says, We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. (I underline the word, consider.) Here we have a tension between being really dead to sin and considering ourselves dead to sin. In reality, on account of Christs death, the power of sin over us has been broken; actually, however, sin has enough power left to influence us. Whereas before, sin has absolute power over us, now through Christ we have obtained relative power to overcome it until it is completely conquered. In martial terms, the war against sin has turned to our favor. That fact should motivate us to fight against sin with even more determination. The war against sin is far from over, but we are now in a position to win it. Even if victory is yet to be actually achieved, we ought to consider ourselves victorious over it now. Paul considers sin as a living force inside us, but it is a moribund or dying force that will eventually spend itself. The new life is also a living force inside us, still tender in age but gaining strength as it struggles against the old life. Christian existence is about nurturing and strengthening the new life by engaging sin in a struggle to the death. Without engaging sin in struggle the new life would lose vitality, becomes flabby and eventually swallowed up by the old life. Regression to an older mode of existence can happen spontaneously. Paul saw a spontaneous regression happening even before the new life could take root. Christian existence is not a life of ease, of relaxation but of relentless battle against sin. Paul recognized the intensity of the struggle within himself, as he confessed, I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (Rom. 7:22-24). Every gain in the new life has to be consolidated and turned into a steppingstone to higher gains. Old sinful habits that begin to weaken should not be allowed to recover but must be destroyed. It is a ruthless battle, and the stakes are high eternal fellowship with God in glory or absolute separation from God. For in the end God will have no fellowship with the wicked but will sanctify those whom he has justified. From church history we learn that holiness as a calling was the emphasis of the so-called radical reformation led by the Anabaptists in the 16th century. Unfortunately, Luther, the most dominant figure in the Protestant Reformation easily gave up on the capacity of the new life to conquer the old, and in the end took comfort on Gods forgiveness and justification. The Anabaptists believed in the realization of a new community of saints on earth by maintaining strict discipline among its members. Believing in the presence of the Spirit in the church, they endured all kinds of persecution to demonstrate the power of the new life over the old. Such is their lasting legacy to the whole church of Jesus Christ today. In the war against sin in all its aspects and manifestations, the church must organize itself like an army. Its enemy is formidable, moribund but still powerful and well entrenched in the human soul and in society. It is characteristic of an enemy that is facing defeat to become even more ferocious. The struggle against sin both inside the human soul and out there in the world takes on many different forms and is waged on many fronts. The church must equip itself, learn the art of spiritual warfare and organize its resources for war. For the early Christians, the old life was deeply embedded in the philosophies, religions and moral culture of the Roman Empire. To be radically different was virtually equivalent to being anti-Roman in personal behavior and public conduct. Consequently, those who sought to manifest the new life became objects of violent persecution. Thus in the Book of Revelation Rome was identified as Babylon, the mother of all evil. For the early Christians, leaving the old life behind and adopting the new was not like changing clothes. It meant facing and opposing Greco-Roman civilization itself! The passage in Eph. 4:11-16 does not refer to a picnic on the beach where there is plenty of food and fun. In the context of the ancient Roman Empire, the early church was concerned about organizing itself for a protracted war against sin. Like the Roman army with a hierarchy of officers, the church needed to have a core (not hierarchy!) of leaders who were assigned specific functions. In addition, everyone had a task, each one contributing to the whole enterprise. The charismata, or gifts of the Spirit, were the members weaponry and ammunition required of the various offices and functions in the church. These were very critical resources of the church. How these were used would spell victory or defeat in the struggle. The spiritual gifts are meant to be exercised to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ

(4:12 ff). That was said two thousand years ago. How is it today with the church? Have the saints attained mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ? The answer is obvious. It appears that Luther was right after all, and the Anabaptists wrong. It may be recalled that in his controversy with the radical reformers, Luther rejected the idea of expelling from the church those who failed to live up to the moral and spiritual standards of the church because he believed that both the good and the evil would continue to co-exist in the church until the kingdom come. His stubborn opinion turned out to be prophetic. The church continues to be a community of sinnerssome of them very bad sinners--and saints, a handful of them that we know of. What happened to the war between the old life and the new life? Is the war still going on, or is it over? On the surface, the heat of the war has apparently subsided. There could be a general cease-fire of sort or a great compromise. The mainstream Protestant churches today seem to be preoccupied trying to prevent further decline in its membership and moral influence. The Roman Catholic Church, at least in the Philippines, remains fixated to the medieval struggle with the civil authorities for political supremacy. The various new religious movements are led by salesmen who are raking in money from both rich and poor by turning the gospel into a commodity. It seems that voices echoing Pauls exhortation to lead a life worthy of the calling have not been heard of late. Is the struggle for holiness no longer part of the churchs order of business? Im sorry that I have no answers to these my own questions. But whether the churches today are still interested in the calling to be holy or not does not change a tiny bit Pauls truth: that Christian existence is the arena of a deadly fight between the old life and the new life. Paul knew how hard the fight would be, but, unlike Luther, he clung to the conviction that the battle can be won in this life. Like Paul, the Anabaptist believed that, too. Paul believed that the sanctification of the faithful is a hope and a destiny, a human struggle and a gift from the Spirit. For Christians today, it makes a whole difference to keep that conviction. Keeping on with the struggle for the new life is a mark of faithfulness to the gospel. More than that, the Anabaptists considered it one of the three marks of the true church, which means that where the word is rightly preached, where the sacraments are correctly administered and, third, where the new life is made visible there indeed the church exists. The new life is tangible proof that the word is rightly preached and the sacraments correctly administered. The third mark serves to concretely validate the two other marks. Conclusion: Christians are called to be holy, that is, to perfect the new life that is given by the Spirit to those who have faith in Jesus Christ. In his time the Apostle Paul was perplexed and appalled by the wide discrepancy between the truth of the gospel and its effects on the actual life of the believers. He believed that the new life already received from the Spirit through Christ should be yielding fruit of righteousness and good works, yet he saw that many of them continued to behave like pagans just like before. We can easily sympathize with Paul. No, I think the church today deserves his sympathy even more as it is witnessing probably the same kind of situation some 2,000 years after him. How Christians ought to live before the world is determined by its calling, the calling to be holy. Even if concrete reality does not seem to show evidence of success, still it remains a truth of faith. To illustrate, Rizals lament that he was going to die before seeing the dawning of freedom did not make his death futile. In fact, Rizals failed vision only inspired many, many more young patriots to join in the struggle for national for freedom. Truth is not diminished by the contrary facts of history (from Lessing). Like Jesus, Paul died without seeing the return of the Lord in glory. But their truths continue to shine brightly like a solitary star in a darkened sky to inspire Christians to continue to pursue them. ==========================