Rev. Dr. Jared Michelson—Year C Proper 19

Anthony: Let’s transition to the next pericope of the month. It is 1 Timothy 1:12-17. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 19 in Ordinary Time, which is September 14. Jared, would you read it for us, please?

Jared: Yeah.

I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he considered me faithful and appointed me to his service, ¹³ even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, ¹⁴ and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵ The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance: that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost. ¹⁶ But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience as an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life. ¹⁷ To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

Anthony: So, you’re a researcher that focuses on the doctrine of God. So, tell us about this God revealed in Jesus Christ through this text.

Jared: Yeah, it tells us a great deal about this God, doesn’t it? One of the things that really jumps out to me, and I think this does get to the character of God, maybe it’s getting there in a roundabout way, is that Paul seems to say something that is very implausible. Is it the case, that Paul is actually the worst of all sinners?

The fact that God enjoins us sometimes to enact what we might call moral fictions to counteract the ways we can go wrong by living as if something were the case. So, think of Philippians, I think it is, when he says, consider others more significant than yourself.

Does that mean that literally you are less valuable and other people are more valuable? I don’t think so. The way I sometimes describe it when I’m doing a wedding with people is saying, one of the things I had to learn for myself is that I have a remarkable capacity to keep meticulous detail of all of the chores I have done around the house, and to just so happen to not see all the ways, all the things that my wife has done. And I’m not doing that deliberately. It’s my kind of blindness. And so actually, if I just try to keep things 50/50, they won’t be 50/50 at all. I need to try to treat her as more significant than myself.

And I think that’s part of what Paul is saying here. This isn’t a kind of worm theology where Paul is saying, “I’m so bad” and he’s whipping himself. Instead, to your point, he is I think overwhelmed by the grace of God, the mercy that he has received. And that is him choosing to live a life that is continually aware of that. And that’s his motivating sensor.

One of the words that really jumps out to me is in verse 16 where it says, Jesus has showed patience with me. And this actually becomes a really important word in the Christian tradition. And funnily enough, it’s one of the words that helps create our modern idea of tolerance.

We sometimes think that tolerance just means being a relativist or being indifferent, but it doesn’t mean that at all. Tolerance means bearing with something that you find objectionable for the sake of maintaining communion or relationship or community with the others. And with the other. And this is what God does with us — that despite our brokenness, despite our sinfulness, God is continually bearing with that so that he can maintain union with us and communion with us and drawing us into deeper union with him.

So, to me that’s a part of the kind of beautiful vision of God’s character that Paul is talking about here. He’s not emphasizing his sin to beat himself down, but he’s overwhelmed by the fact that though he can look back and see all of his many missteps, that God has been walking with him through that all the time. He’s that kind of good shepherd, walking with us through the valley of death and being patient with us in countless ways we don’t know. So yeah, to me that patience is a wonderful kind of exemplification of God’s character and love.

Anthony: Yeah, my eyes are drawn to verse 14, “the grace of our Lord overflowed.” Andrew Purvis talks about this super overflowing abundance in God. It overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Overflowing good. Yes … including the patience that you mentioned.

It seems odd to me that people would interpret the text this way, but I have seen some react to this interpretation that God is conditional, that Paul was strengthened by the Lord because he was considered faithful. Verse 12, he received mercy because he acted out of ignorance, not willfully. In verse 13. So, Jared, is God’s kindness based on conditions?

Jared: No, but I think it goes back to a bit of what we spoke about before. There are conditions and there are conditions. Let me put it this way …

Anthony: Tell me more.

Jared: This is an analogy I’ve used before, where we can go back to this kind of idea of slaveholding. I’m not an expert on these things, but apparently this kind of situation actually did happen in the American South. You had the legal declaration that slavery as an institution was ended. And so, you had men and women that were held slaves, that lived in terrible conditions, that were forced to do backbreaking labor, that had very little agency and very little prospects in life.

Slavery was abolished, and then they went to live in the exact same houses. They worked in the exact same fields. They had the exact same limited prospects in life doing the exact same back-breaking labor, but they received a very small amount of money at the end of the week, which they had to use to pay for those very terrible houses they used to live in. Would we say that person is free?

Formally, perhaps their official condition is free, but if nothing has materially changed about the facts of their life, they’re not actually living as free people. They’re functionally still in bondage. And so, part of what the gospel … and I think sometimes we view the gospel that way when we say, is there no conditions? What is there isn’t is any standard you need to meet in order to be forgiven. Part of the kind of amazing discovery of the reformation is that Jesus has he has paid the penalty for sin. And that being united with him allows you to have in a sense all of the conditions met, but it necessarily will lead you into a new life.

And you are not actually being freed. You are not actually being saved. You are not actually living in Christ unless you are living a renewed, transformed, different life. Not so that you can earn God’s favor, but so that you can actually experience salvation. You can live as a free person and this too is not somehow something you earn off on your own.

It’s living into your union with Christ. It is grace upon grace. It is, as Paul said, working out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who is at work in you.

Anthony: Yeah, that brings some great insight in terms of just the way that we experience salvation. And thanks be to God that salvation is not a one and done act. But it’s the ongoing perpetual reality of God that he is saving us, that he is delivering us from bondage each and every day. Hallelujah. Praise God for that. And so that makes sense. It almost puts a subjective reading on scripture like, yes, this is objectively true what God has done — forgiving me, but it’s there is this act of living into the salvation that he has so graciously given to us. I think that’s what you’re saying, right?

Jared: That’s exactly what I’m saying. I think you’ve put it as, as often happens with me, I think you’ve put it far better than I have, so thanks for doing that. But exactly the New Testament speaks of salvation as something that is being completed and as something that is completed. It is both of those. And sometimes we can have this very unhelpful view that being saved is just simply a question of, am I going to heaven or not? And that is not at all how the New Testament uses this very multifaceted language of being saved. You are always in danger when you try to summarize the richness of the gospel.

But for me, the gospel is about the renewal, the restoration of our entire person. Indeed, it is about forgiveness. It is about eternal life, but it is just as much about living this abundant life in Christ now, being restored and renewed into his image, and then making this entire cosmos new.

Anthony: That reminds me of a quote from Eugene Peterson where he said, resurrection is not exclusively what happens after we’re buried. It has to do with the way we live right now. The kingdom is near; the kingdom is here. Let’s be about the Father’s business.

Jared: Absolutely. That is the meaning of that word.