Study of Colossians Part 4

28 August 2012

Colossians Ch 3:18 - 4:18

Harmony is a sign of gospel transformation.  Slaves are free to love their masters because they serve the Lord, both slave and master have the same Lord in Heaven whether the master bows to knee to Christ now or not.  Indeed, this is the true glory of the gospel's message, that having been reconciled to the Father and empowered by his Spirit, even a slave, the lowest of humanity, can set the universe in right order by exercising faith in the Lord by setting aside natural desires for eye service and bitterness, and serving God in his service to his master, and in so doing many people will give glory to God.  There is no higher calling and to the lowest among God gives the honor of achieving it through the outworking of the Gospel in our lives.

Divine Justice: Paul assumes in verses 24 and 25 that the final justice exercised by God is motivation for the slave to be sincere in his service.  An enormous amount of faith must be exercised by the slave to believe this.  The slave is at the mercy of the conscience, good or bad, of his master while on earth.  But, if he believes in the justice and power of God, and if he has felt God's mercy, then he is free to love those who oppress him, even if there is otherwise no hope of seeing justice here on earth.  Without this faith in God, the slave, indeed we, have no reason to believe we shouldn't fight for justice for ourselves.  Yes, we should promote systems of justice that treat God's image-bearers with appropriate dignity, but without belief in a final judgement, bitterness and revenge will poison our every motive.

Miroslav Volf makes the point well in his book Exclusion and Embrace:

There is a profound "injustice" about the God of the biblical traditions.  It is called grace.  As I argued... in the story of the prodigal son, it was "unjust" of the father to receive back the prodigal as son and, on top of that, to throw a party for him after the son had just squandered half of his inheritance.  But the father was not interested in "justice." He acted in accordance with a "must" that was higher than the "must" of "justice".

My thesis that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many Christians, especially theologians in the West.  To the person who is inclined to dismiss it, I suggest imagining that you are delivering a lecture in a war zone.  Among your listeners are people whos cities and villages have been first plundered, then burned and leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit.  The topic of the lecture: a Christian attitude toward violence.  The thesis: we should not retaliate since God is perfect noncoercive love.  Soon you would discover that it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God's refusal to judge.  In a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die.  And as one watches it die, one will do well to reflect about many other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind.

"Let your speech always be gracious... so that you may know how to answer each person."  My conversations with my atheist friends have become more hostile as they become more intolerant   My speech has become snide and has no gracious motivation.  I have only reasons to love them as they have no way to wrong me.  Isn't this the outworking of good philosophy in my life?  I am the evil man in chapter one running headlong into Christ's holiness and glory.  Yet he has reconciled me to the Father and my life is hid with Christ in heaven.  They are in the former condition, and yet I fear them?  I am cowardly, I must be bold; I must fear God.  Boldness and Grace.