A Life Shaped and Re-shaped by Prayer

Monday, Week 3 - Philippians 3: 1-4a: Resisting Legalism

Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is not troublesome to me, and for you it is a safeguard.  Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh! For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh— even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh.

Christianity always has some potentially divisive issue to deal with; one of the first was the issue of circumcision.  The earliest Christians were Jewish, as was Jesus, and in that tradition male babies are circumcised as a matter of course, receiving this physical sign that they are to be numbered among God’s chosen people.  Then, however, Christianity began spreading among non-Jewish peoples, and the issue of circumcision became hotly debated.  Some said that in order to become a “real” Christian, a male would have to be circumcised first; Paul and others insisted that what was decisive for Christianity was not something we do (like circumcision), but what God has done in the death and resurrection of Christ.  

What must one do to be considered a “real” Christian?   When I occasionally tune into a so called “Christian” TV station or “Christian” radio program this seems to be the urgent question raised by the impassioned preacher.  Are you good enough, holy enough, worthy enough to be considered a “real” Christian?  Is your purity, worship, prayer, believing, giving, serving, resisting evil, (and the list could go on), solid enough that you know you will get to heaven after you die?  

I loathe these programs, not so much because I am personally offended, but because I ache for those troubled souls - so hungry and thirsty for life, for meaning, for community, for God – who get drawn into this argument rooted in legalism, an argument that leaves some fearful about the underlying image of a terrible God who consigns to hell those who are not pure enough.  Paul writes, “Beware those who mutilate the flesh!” a reference to those insisting on circumcision.  I will add, beware those who turn the attention away from the Good News what God has done for humanity, onto one’s own personal purity.

Paul begins this segment inviting us to rejoice, to once again rejoice.  You are God’s beloved, right now.   Are you good enough, holy enough, worthy enough?  It’s the wrong question.  God is good enough, God is holy enough, God is worthy enough – and through our baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ we are clothed in God’s righteousness and defined by God’s belovedness.

In our prayer, we return again to that place of belovedness.  Breathe in God’s belovedness, breathe out your own failings, anxieties, and fears. Take a moment of quiet to rejoice in the truth that you belong to God; and may that moment be a little slice of heaven on earth.