Galatians: A Study of Christian Freedom--Why the Law

Galatians: A Study of Christian Freedom

This passage is too lengthy to cover in one Sunday.  Therefore, I am posting only that portion of the study I plan to cover this Sunday.

Lesson 9:    Why the Law or Who Are We.  Galatians 3:19-29

Over the past few years Americans have seen severals court cases involving irate defenders of the separation of church and state challenging the display of the Ten Commandments on public property.  Perhaps the best known was the 2003 challenge to the display of the Commandments on a 2.5 ton monument at the Alabama Judicial Building.  When Chief Justice Roy Moore refused to remove the monument after being ordered to do so by a Federal Judge, he was dismissed as a justice.  

Many Americans supported Moore, believing his efforts both honored God and pointed to a fix for what was wrong with the country.  

While Moore may have been honoring God, I think Paul would look at the situation and say, “If you think the Ten Commandments will fix what’s wrong with your culture, think again.”

Of course, it’s common to think that a system of rules will correct society’s problems.     Even science fiction promotes that notion.  An episode of the classic series Star Trek has an attorney, speaking before an alien court, commend “Moses…, the Code of Hammurabi and of Justinian, Magna Carta…,  Fundamental Declarations of the Martian colonies,  [and] the Statutes of Alpha III.”

The notion that all we need is the right set of rules ignores the reality that the problem is not with our rules but with us.  

Paul addresses this matter when he discusses the purpose of the Law.

¹⁹ Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions… 

If the Law can’t save us, what good is it?  Why do we have it?  On the one hand, Paul says the Law “added because of transgressions.”  The God’s Word translation renders that as the law was “added to identify what wrongdoing is.”  It may be a little more complex than that.  A little reflection on the Law allows us to “identify” what right-doing is—at least to a degree.  The Law, at once, allows us to surmise what we ought to be doing and tells us how far we are from doing it.  The Law presents a picture of how we ought to relate to God and to one another.  

Think about those commandments that speak of our human relationships.  They are so basic that they are repeated in some form in almost every culture.  Even in cultures where polygamy is practiced, adultery is considered to be wrong.  The commandments present the basics of how we ought to live. In this, the Judge Moores are correct in commending them.  

But the Law is also a measuring stick that shows how we don’t measure up.  It is a  mirror that shows how our lives fail to reflect its ideals.  It is a target that we so often miss.  Almost two hundred years ago, Adam Clarke wrote, “[The law] was given that we  may know our sinfulness, and the need we stood in of the mercy of God.  The law is the right line, the straight edge, that determines the obliquity of our conduct.”  Two hundred years ago you could get away with a line like that because most of your readers would know “obliquity” meant a deviation from what should be.  

So, while the vision of a society guided by the Ten Commandments might have prompted judges, teachers, and even churches to post copies of the commandments, it is naive to believe society will ever be conformed to those ideals by its own power.  The notion that we get to heaven by knuckling down and adhering to the law is contrary to the gospel.  Stott quotes Andrew Jukes on this point, “Satan would have us to prove ourselves holy by the law, which God gave to prove us sinners.”

until the offspring would come to whom the promise had been made; 

But the Law was not the end of God’s dealing with humankind.  Hindsight allowed  Paul to see that from the beginning the Law wasn’t God’s final Word on dealing with us sinners.  The coming of Christ would make a difference.  How it would make a difference Paul would explain after saying more about the Law’s origins.

and it was ordained through angels by a mediator. ²⁰ Now a mediator involves more than one party; 

These are among the most debated and argued about verses in Paul’s letters.  Dozens of interpretations exist for these verses.  I going to offer my perspective while encouraging you to examine others if you’re interested.

While the Old Testament does not say so, Jewish tradition said the Law was given to Moses by angels.   Stephen confirmed that tradition in his defense before the Sanhedrin when he charged, “Angels gave you God’s Law, but you still don’t obey it.”

The key point Paul is making is that Moses was the mediator between God and the people.  In the nature of things “a mediator involves more than one party,” so we may think of the Law coming from God (via the angels) through Moses to the  people.  It would be different with Christ.

Paul makes this clear when he says…

but God is one. 

No mediator was involved in giving the promise to Abraham.  Here Paul is arguing for the relative superiority of the promise given to directly to Abraham to the Law mediated through angels and Moses.  Paul is by no means disparaging the Law; he is showing that the choice the Judaizers were placing before the Galatians was a choice that would involve taking a step backwards.  It would be a little like choosing to take aspirin for a raging fever when penicillin was available.

Each medication has value but the one deals with symptoms—which might be harmful in themselves—while the other goes to the root of the problem.

²¹ Is the law then opposed to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could make alive, then righteousness would indeed come through the law. 

Paul is returning his focus to the purpose of the Law.  Keeping that purpose in mind will help us understand how the Law relates to the gospel.   If the Law had been intended to save us, to bring us into a right-relationship with God, the Law-way of salvation and the Gospel-way of salvation would have been in contradiction.   But that was not the purpose of the Law.  We have to ask how God could have given such a law with such a purpose; ask how it would have worked.  We have to ask that because it’s already been made clear, the problem was not with the Law but with us.  In any case, bringing us into a right relationship with God was not the intent of the Law.  

Now Paul turns to the intent of the Law.  In so doing, as Alan Cole explains, he shows how the Law and the gospel of grace “must be complementary rather than contradictory in the overall plan of God.”

²² But the scripture has imprisoned all things under the power of sin, so that what was promised through faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. 

The Law does something negative that, in God’s providence, is positive.  It shows that we are all sinners.  It is the same conclusion he would reach in Romans:  “… all have sinned and fall short of God’s glorious ideal.”

Though the Jews should be thanked for giving the moral law to the world, they are in the same boat as the rest of us.  Cole explains:  

Paul's emphasis on the universality of human sin (v. 22) and the universality of God's judgment on all sinners (v. 10) reduces Jews to the same status as Gentiles—the whole world is a prisoner of sin. So identification with the Jewish people by circumcision and observance of the Mosaic law does not remove one from the circle of "Gentile sinners" (2:15) and bring one into the sphere of righteousness, blessing and life. Rather, it leaves one imprisoned under sin.

When the law allows us to see the prison bars surrounding us, we are finally ready to accept that our only salvation—literally—must come from another.  The awful fact that we are all sinners leads to the conclusion, as one translation puts it, that “the only way for people to get what God promised would be through faith in Jesus Christ.”

²³ Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. 

Now, Paul presents a secondary purpose for the law.  Again, this is would have been a new way to look at the Law.  He tells us the Law provided a kind of protective custody for us.  The NIV points to this meaning:  “Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed.”

Some scholars believe verse 22 refers to the whole world and shows how the law indicts the whole world, while this verse (23) is addressed to Paul’s Jewish readers.  If that’s so, Paul is attempting to show those readers that the Law with all its ceremonial demands was a kind of prison for the Jews.  Keeping its regulations controlled every aspect of their lives.  To show you what I mean let me cite a contemporary example.  

Well, it’s not exactly contemporary.  It comes from when Pat and I lived in Houston in the mid-seventies.  We lived in an apartment complex where many Jewish people lived. In fact, we in our section of the complex there were only two Christian couples—Pat and I and the Roman Catholic couple next door.  Anyway, we had an older neighbor named Francis Finkelstein (I’m not making this up).  Francis and Pat became friends; Pat occasionally took her shopping and Francis would sometimes visit at our apartment.  She was an observant Jew but didn’t seem be worried about having some young Gentile friends.  One day she confided that she didn’t much care for doing dishes; the hot, soapy water bothered her hands.  Pat asked if her apartment didn’t have a dishwasher.  She said it did but she couldn’t use it because she didn’t know if the former tenants kept kosher or not.  If they didn’t, the plastic lining of the dishwasher was contaminated.  Her rabbi told her that she would have to have the entire interior of the dishwasher replaced to be sure.  She couldn't afford to do that so she washed her dishes by hand.

Now, multiply that by dozens of other laws about diet, observing the Sabbath, and rules about other aspects of life.  Just trying to observe them could be imprisoning.

Of course, the law’s effect is not entirely negative.  On one level, the law both restrains and protects us.  It keeps us from doing harm to others or ourselves.  And it protects things that are valuable.  The Mosaic laws about worship, property, and sexual morality, had they been strictly observed, would have preserved Israel from the moral chaos that marked their neighbor’s lives.  But, overall, the law was a burden.  As Matthew Henry put it:  “they were shut up, held under the terror and discipline of it, as prisoners in a state of confinement.”

 But there was a goal to this.  It was to make them more eager to accept what Christ offered when he came.

²⁴ Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. 

Paul changes the imagery now, from the Law as “jailer” to the Law as “guardian.”  The word “disciplinarian,” used in the NRSV, is misleading and even “guardian” doesn’t tell the whole story.  The word Paul uses refers to “a child-minder…an attendant slave who watched over a child in a wealthy Greco-Roman household.” (From The Expanded Bible)  This slave who looked after a child until he was about sixteen wasn’t a teacher but guided the child to the school, making sure the child arrived safely, prepared to learn.  The Message paraphrases it this way:  “The law was like those Greek tutors, which which you are familiar, who escort children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure thee children will really get to the place they set out for.”

You can say that the whole Jewish experience with the Law was to bring them to Christ, to make them ready to accept justification by faith.  

So, even though the Law is not the gospel, it may become a tool of the gospel.  If we were to reduce the Law to just the Ten Commandments we would have a noble moral ideal.  We would also have a constant reminder of how often we fail.  And the fact of that failure reminds us of our need for the gospel.  

W T Conner taught theology at Southwestern Seminary in the 1930s.  It’s said a student once asked him, “Dr Conner don’t you think that if a man lives up to the light he has he will be saved?”  Dr Conner replied, “Yes I do.”  Then he added, “Now, trot that man out.”

The Law does not provide the cure for our problem, it provides the diagnosis.  Christ is the cure.

God gave the Jews the great gift of the moral law.  But he also gave them the greater gift of the Promise of a Messiah, of a heaven-sent Change-Agent, One who would deal with the problem we could not deal with on our own.

Galatians: A Study of Christian Freedom Lesson 8 Where There's A Will

     I chose to preach the last posted sermon over two Sundays instead of just one.  This Sunday I returned to the ongoing study of Galatians.

Galatians: A Study of Christian Freedom

Lesson 8:    Where There’s A Will.  Galatians 3:15-18

As I began considering this passage, I recalled an event that took place shortly before we moved to Ohio from Texas.  Concerned about the direction some state conventions had been taking, the trustees of Baylor University tried to assure the control of the school would not fall into the hands of those who had an agenda running contrary to academic freedom and the broad evangelicalism that marked the school.  The trustees concluded it would be better if the university could become independent of the state convention.  

Texas Baptists have several wonderful schools but, without doubt, Baylor is the jewel.  Texans might know Wayland, Hardin-Simmons, and Howard Payne, but the world knows Baylor. As you might imagine, the debate was heated; both sides brought out the lawyers.  

One of the legal arguments made reflected Texas’ special history.  Baylor was founded during the days of the Republic of Texas, when Texas was an independent nation.  The state convention was not created until after statehood.  Consequently, Baylor’s charter was older than the convention’s charter.

Baylor’s trustees argued that the school’s charter had precedent, so the school should be independent from the state convention.  In the end, messengers to the state convention—which happened to meet in Waco that year—voted to give the university its independence.  The school is free from state convention control, though it maintains a good relationship with Texas Baptists.

Keep that story in mind as we read about Abraham.

¹⁵ Brothers and sisters, I give an example from daily life: once a person’s will has been ratified, no one adds to it or annuls it. 

In using “an example from daily life” Paul was making an a point his readers—both slave and free—would be likely to understand.  While not everyone in the Galatian congregations would have had an estate that required a will, most would have probably known the basics of how wills worked.  Even the slaves would have known that a will defined the will-maker’s wishes.

Some suggest that a more modern example would be an irrevocable trust but I think the notion of a will is sufficient to get Paul’s point across.

As every reader of cozy mysteries knows, modern wills can be changed to add or remove beneficiaries.  Under Greek law this wasn’t possible; once the will was sealed and deposited with the authorities it could not be changed.  In certain cases, Jewish wills could not be changed.  While Roman law allowed wills to be changed, Paul seems to have had the older policy in mind.

¹⁶ Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring; it does not say, “And to offsprings,” as of many; but it says, “And to your offspring,” that is, to one person, who is Christ. 

What is Paul saying?  At first glance he might seem to be playing verbal tricks, seizing on a minor grammatical matter to make his argument.  After all, “offspring” or “seed” can refer to either many or to just one.  Though it might seem strange to us, Paul’s argument would have been familiar to this Jewish readers and the Judaizers among them.

Rabbis often used such arguments.  Keener gives another example when he says that rabbis sometimes interpreted the term “sons of Israel” to mean “sons and daughters” and sometimes interpreted it to mean just “sons,” depending on the case they were making.

Here Paul argues that the promise was made to Abraham’s most significant Offspring, Jesus Christ.  

As Paul will stress elsewhere, it is very important we have a spiritual relationship with that Offspring.                                                     

¹⁷ My point is this: the law, which came four hundred thirty years later, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise. 

The Law was very important to the Judaizers; in fact, it was important to all the Jews.  they rightfully saw it as one of their great gifts to humankind.  But Paul wants to be clear:  the giving of the Law did not trump the covenant made with Abraham, the principle that righteousness comes by faith prevails.

The 430 years to which Paul refers appears to be from the time of the renewal of the Abrahamic covenant with Jacob.  So, even though five centuries intervened from the time God originally made the promise to Abraham, the giving of the Law did not invalidate that promise.

¹⁸ For if the inheritance comes from the law, it no longer comes from the promise; but God granted it to Abraham through the promise. 

Paul is echoing a point he has already made about how God has chosen to deal with sinners.  It’s the same principle he recalled in his confrontation with Peter, the principle that says, “we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law [that is, keeping the minutiae of the Law] but through faith in Jesus Christ.”  And this principle reflects God’s dealings with Abraham.  This is clear in some alternative renderings of this verse:

The Voice:  “You see, if the law became the sole basis for the inheritance, then it would put God in the position of breaking a covenant because He had promised it to Abraham.”

J B Phillips: “For if the receiving of the promised blessing were now made to depend on the Law, that would amount to a cancellation of the original “contract” which God made with Abraham as a promise.”

I think it’s possible to say Paul is making the case that God’s integrity is at stake here.  

God didn’t change the rules in mid-game.  We can be ever grateful for this.  We still can’t win God’s favor with our own efforts, our own rule-keeping; we still need grace.

Of course, this raises the question, What is the purpose of the law?

We are going to consider that question bur for now I want to look at some implications of what Paul is saying.

 The gospel’s message of grace does not represent a new way for God to deal with sinners.  God always intended to deal with sinners (us, in other words) on the basis of faith.  As Paul has already pointed out, we cannot keep the law with all its demands.  Just as Martin Luther realized he needed to “find a gracious God,” we need to find a gracious God.  And gracious is what God has been all along.  

    W. T. Dayton writes, “The promise, with its method of faith was never changed   or abrogated. It is [legalism, not the gospel of grace] that has deviated from Old Testament revelation” 

Christ has always been at the center of God’s plan for dealing with fallen humanity.

  John Stott comment on verse 16 shows this.

                      … Paul's interpretation [of “seed”] is based on his conviction that Christ is the sole heir and channel of God's promised         blessing. So while he uses common Jewish methods of exegesis, Paul's messianic interpretation of seed restricts the reference to Christ and negates the common nationalistic interpretation [that one must be a Jew to receive God’s blessing]. It is no longer necessary to be in the Jewish nation to be a recipient of the promises; it is necessary to be in Christ.

For the Galatians, this meant the Judaizers claim that one must become a Jew before one could become a Christian was false.  As Paul had stressed before, what was important was not adherence to the minutia of the law (circumcision, diet, holy days) but a relationship with God through faith in Christ.   

We are not facing the same situation the Galatians faced we still face those who would tell us that our relationship with God is based on Christ plus something else.  Remember how at the beginning of this study we defined such legalism.  We said it was that outlook that says spirituality may be achieved by strictly following a code of conduct that may, at times, exceed any behavior required in the scripture and observing certain taboos that may find little support in the Scripture.  In extreme cases, legalists believe their way of life actually contributes to their earning God’s favor.

This constant threat means we have to be especially careful about the message we present.  We must be clear about the gospel.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the church at its best has been Christocentricity.  That is, the message of Christ has been at the heart of the church’s preaching and teaching. Forget that and though the church might manage to make the community and the culture better for a while, it will make no eternal impact.

Putting God’s grace as manifested in sending Christ at the center of our message doesn’t mean the church has no moral message.  But, if you’ll forgive the cliche, it does mean we need to be careful that in pressing our moral message we don’t become guilty of placing the cart before the horse.  

Resolving to be a Better You

I John 3:2

Let me tell you about Dolores.  Her family members always had to tread on eggshells around her.  Actually, they were probably nervous about doing that lest she complain about the waste of good eggs.  

Occasionally, someone would confront Dolores regarding her volatile temper and her negative attitude.  She’d respond, “That’s just the way I am.”  

Most of us would see Dolores as serving a kind of life sentence locking her into a condition that continually caused her to hurt those she should have loved the most.  

I mention her because it was Dolores who told me that New Year’s Day is nothing special.  It was just like any other day.  (I think she was complaining that some people had the day off.)  If only Dolores had seen the New Year as an opportunity to become better.  

For all the jokes about New Year’s resolutions, I think most of these resolutions express a wish to become better.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

It’s a tragedy to never be able to harbor the hope of being better.  When you and I have no hope of breaking free from those behaviors that cause hurt to other or ourselves, no hope of escaping those qualities that continually make us self-disappointed, we lose any sense that life will ever be different.  We may even begin to wonder if we should march into some church, find the pastor, and say, “I’m returning this gospel.  It didn’t perform the way you said it would.”

Is it realistic to cling to the hope of a better you?  I hope so.  As I look at the Bible, I find some materials that speak to the question.  Some of what I’m about to say won’t be new, some might surprise you.   I’m going to cluster what I say around two headings.

Should you resolve to be better keep in mind that….

A Better You Involves Letting God Do Some Things That God is Best At Doing.

[Before I move ahead, I want to be clear that what I am about to say assumes that at some time you have recognized the need for Christ in your life.  You have raised the white flag, admitted you’ve rebelled against God, and humbly invited him to do whatever is necessary to transform you from an enemy to a friend or from an indifferent observer to a committed participant in God’s Kingdom.]

1.  As you resolve to be a better you, listen especially to God’s correctives.

I admit I was a little concerned about how to express this thought.  You see as you move through this life, you’ll meet a lot of people who would like to tweak you just a bit.  Not all of them speak for God or even have your best interest in mind.  Now, this doesn’t mean if someone suggests you should quit smoking or lose weight and their counsel isn’t accompanied by rumbling thunder, you can afford to ignore it.  It means you should carefully consider what people are saying to you.

One place to hear God’s voice is the Bible.  Of course, even there you need to be on guard against approaching the Bible with preconceived notions.  That can interfere with what God is saying.  At the same time, you have to bring some interpretive principles to the Bible.  You don’t have to go to seminary to learn these.  Most of them are rules you would apply to any kind of material.  

That means you’ll try to determine a statement’s context.  You’ll ask about its intended audience and the author’s purpose.  You’ll ask if it’s to be taken literally or figuratively.  You’ll interpret it in light of the entire Bible.

Shortly after my father’s conversion, someone gave him some books that claimed to present a biblical way of living.  In particular, they taught that he couldn’t eat certain foods if he wanted to be a Christian.  Only after a long talk with his pastor did he learn that these books were wrong.

Once you’ve taken these precautions, you’ll discover that the Bible has plenty to say about us becoming a better people.  You’ll discover, as Paul says, that “Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way.”

Let me go on to say that you may hear God’s corrective voice through other believers.  Usually, this will be a believer who knows you and cares for you, a believer whose own life is balanced.  He or she won’t  be perfect—none of us are—but will have an attitude which says, “You and I are on this pilgrim road together;   here’s something I’ve learned.”

Your hope for a better you, stands on the fact that God will give you directions along that road.

2.  As you resolve to be a better you, open yourself to God’s transforming grace.

None of the members of the Corinthian church had been raised in Sunday school.  They had come from the worst backgrounds.  Then they were encountered by God’s transforming grace.  Paul helps them recall their past and their debt to that grace.

⁹ Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, ¹⁰ nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹ And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. 

They had touched the moral bottom but God had changed them.  Though they were by no means all they should have been, Paul could call them “saints.”  As one translation puts it, they were “Christians cleaned up by Jesus and set apart for a God-filled life.”  Paul would rejoice that “There’s no end to what has happened in you—it’s beyond speech, beyond knowledge. ⁶The evidence of Christ has been clearly verified in your lives.”

All that, was because of God’s transforming power that had worked in their lives and would continue to work in their lives.  He could promise them, “God himself is right alongside to keep you steady and on track until things are all wrapped up by Jesus. ⁹God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of his Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you. Never forget that.”

Your hope for a better you, stands on the fact that the God of grace “will never give up on you.”

3.  As you resolve to be a better you, keep in mind God’s goal for you.

The older writers used to speak of the believer’s “glorification.”  They meant that the time would come when every believer would be like Christ.  John puts it this way, “But we know that when Christ comes again, we will be like him.” As you and I well know, this doesn’t happen the you step out of those waters of baptism.  

Paul might call the Corinthians saints, but he knew it would be a long time before they were truly saintly.  God works through various means to bring us to that place where there’s no doubt we are Christ’s people.

Your hope for a new you, stands on the fact that God has a glorious goal for you.

Should you resolve to be better keep in mind that….

A Better You Involves Doing Some Things Only You Can Do.

Praying “God change me” is fully appropriate if we wish to become better.  Yet, there seems to be some matters God leaves in our hands, to a degree, at least.

1.  As you resolve to be a better you, guard your attitudes.

So many of us cherish negative attitudes, attitudes that tie us down, that keep us from change.  We may have faced tough times in the past and those experiences shape us for the rest of our lives.  My mother taught me that a person should always expect the worst.  That way, when the worst happens you won’t be disappointed.  It things turn out better than you expected, that’s fine but don’t expect that to happen very often.  Needless to say, she had little joy in life.  I don’t deny she had her share of grief.  She had lived through the Great Depression.  She had lost loved ones.  But how different her life would have been if she had taken different attitudes toward her experiences.  In fact, others how had tough times did emerge with very different attitudes.

Victor Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who was imprisoned in the Nazi death camps.  While he was in one camp, his family was in another.  His family died.  Somehow he survived.  Frankl, who eventually became a Christian, reflected on his experiences and wrote several influential books.  Listen to one of his key observations.

We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number; but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of his freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

William James, who died in 1910, spent years studying religious people.  He said, “People can alter their lives by altering their attitudes.”  

Some of us need to change attitudes of worry.  Jesus once asked, “Which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?”  No one can.  In fact, chronic worry may even shorten our lives.  Jesus’ antidote was to order our priorities toward strengthening our relationship with God.

Some of us need to change attitudes of bitterness.  I’ve known many people who harbor some deep-seated anger.  This bitterness shapes their attitude toward others, toward change, toward every experience.  John Homer Miller, a writer in the eighteenth century, saw the danger in this.  He wrote, “Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens. Circumstances and situations do color life, but you have been given the mind to choose what the color shall be.”

Rebecca Manley Pippert, a more contemporary writer, understood how bitter attitudes need to be kept under control if they aren’t going to spoil our lives.  “God . . . gives me the freedom,” Pippert says, “to acknowledge my negative attitudes before him but not the freedom to act them out because they are as destructive for me as they are for the other person.”

One step toward a better you, is a changed attitude.  I’m not calling you to a warmed over plate of positive thinking, but I am calling you to try to see things just a little differently.  Before I move on, I’ll leave you with one more bit of wisdom from the past.  It’s bit of doggerel from McLandburgh Wilson.

’Twixt the optimist and the pessimist

The difference is droll;

The optimist sees the doughnut

But the pessimist sees the hole.

2.  As you resolve to be a better you, feed your mind.

Toward the end of his life, perhaps only a short while before his execution, Paul wrote a couple letters to Timothy.  In the second letter, he urged his friend to come to Rome to visit him.   Anticipating that visit, Paul asked Timothy to do him a favor.  Maybe you’ve asked a similar favor from a friend.  Paul wrote, “When I was in Troas, I left my coat there with Carpus. So when you come, bring it to me, along with my books, particularly the ones written on parchment.” 

In the midst of a tough time, Paul wanted to study.  We don’t know what books Paul had in mind.  They might have included some of the Old Testament, but not necessarily.  Paul had a curiosity beyond the narrow range of religion.  He quoted non-Jewish writers at least twice in his sermons and letters.  And evidently he kept that curiosity throughout his life.

It’s said that fewer than half of Americans read a book during the year.  Now, I know that there are other ways to learn besides reading books and, of course, given the new electronic gadgets available today, you can read books without reading books.   But even if that statistic is too pessimistic, there are still too many of us who stop learning at some point in our lives.  For some it may be when they graduate from college.  For some it may be when they retire.

Why is it so important to nurture the mind, to keep it active?  To begin with learning makes life more interesting.  Some of the dullest people you’ll ever  meet are those who have just stopped learning.  Then, too, learning enhances our usefulness to the Kingdom.  We have greater resources available to us to advance the gospel.  Harry Blamires has been a lifelong advocate of Christians learning to love God with the mind.  He reminds us that, “The Christian thinker challenges current prejudices . . . disturbs the complacent . . . obstructs the busy pragmatists . . . questions the very foundations of all about him and . . . is a nuisance.”

So, if you want to become a better you, put your mind to work.  Learn things.  This may be the finest time for carrying out that task.  You can stream lectures over your phone or attend classes online.  Most communities have libraries available;  some are better than others but they are a starting place.  And don’t read just those authors that agree with you.  Stretch your mind.

Feeding our minds may help us discover what is essential to our faith and what is really incidental.  It may strengthen our faith and give us vital information to answer the questions of those standing on the threshold of faith.  It may help us bolster the faith of those who have been browbeaten by the critics.  Because of my interest in history I have been especially interested in the number of new books answering the criticisms of the church’s role in history.  

A word of warning:  Feeding our minds may, indeed, challenge our prejudices.    We may discover that what we thought we knew about some people or some places, just isn’t true.

Feed your mind if you resolve to become a better you.

3.  As you resolve to be a better you, hang out with the right kind of people.

Proverbs 27:17sets this principle in imaginative language.  Using he imagery of a file shaping a piece of metal, the proverb says, “As iron sharpens iron, so people can improve each other.”   Puritan preacher Jeremy Taylor wrote, “The wise man chooses friends with the qualities he lacks.”

Being around the right people can challenge us to be better, can renew our enthusiasm, can enrich our understanding.  Of course, hanging out with the wrong people can leave us deflated and discouraged.

The writer of Hebrews understood the importance of Christian fellowship in making us better.  He told those who would neglect that fellowship, ^“ And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another….”   The right kind of Christian fellowship can make you a better person.  

As a pastor, I love it when people gather on Sunday to worship and hear preaching.  But sometimes I wonder if that’s all the writer of Hebrews had in mind.  It is enough to really “sharpen” us?

Sharpening probably only happens when you participate in some kind of small group activity and not just the “big church.”  Whenever you get together with your fellow Christian,  with an inter to focus on more than eating, there is the potential of going away a better person.

4.  As you resolve to be a better you, make yourself available to others.

I once heard someone described in words something like this, “Sally lived in a world bounded on the north, south, east, and west by Sally.”  My generation is  notorious for being self-centered.  Many of us desperately need to get outside of our narrow worlds.

Jesus said to his followers, “You are light, you are salt.  Keep your light under a  bucket and it does nothing.  Keep your salt in the shaker and it makes no difference.”  

Making yourself available to others to help them, encourage them, get them through a tough time, does them good—and does you good.

At the rise of making you feel old, let me remind you that several years ago, our church sent some of our youth off on some mission trips to Indian reservations, impoverished mining town, and a racially divided community.  They’ll tell you that giving time to help paint a rundown house, teach an unruly child of poverty, or befriend a down and outer changed them and the other young people they worked with.  Those youngsters are now responsible adults who are touching lives in many ways.  Ask them and they’ll tell you how those experiences made an impression on them.

I saw it happen in the life of a man named Ray.  Ray was a good man but he had spent his life in one tiny community and one small church.  He lived in a house about fifty yards from where he was born over half a century before.  His only time out of that community was a trip to Europe in the 1940s.  He came back from that with a bullet wound received in the Ardennes forest during the Battle of the Bulge so his perspective on the outside world was a little jaundiced.  He thought the way to do church was the way the church he had grown up in did it.  Then, Ray was inspired to spend a couple weeks on a partnership mission.  

During those weeks he did ministry for the first time with a Christian who wasn’t a Baptist.  He discovered that three songs and a sermon wasn’t the only way worship could be done.  He found that God’s Kingdom was like a diamond with many facets.  He came back changed.

If you resolve to be a better you, don’t’ plan on it happening by staying alone.

Conclusion

A Christian once testified:  “I am not what I should be, I am not what I am going to be, but thank God, I am not what I was.”

If we understand our own hearts, this testimony will resonate with us.  You know you’re not what you should be.  You may even accept the promise that you are not  what you are going to be.  

But finally, you can take comfort if you can truly say, you are not what you were.  If you are better now than you were, that reality continues to inspire the hope of a better you.