Is that title click bait or what! Most people in our secular age live life in epistemological quandaries. As I was praying one morning this week I told God I was so grateful I didn’t have to live that way. I think the phrase came to me because of a movie I was watching the other night with my wife and soon to be 18 year-old son on Netflix called Marriage Story (more like Unmarriage Story). It was apologetics fodder! Much like a Woody Allen movie, all puzzle pieces and no big picture into which any of the pieces fit. Thus the quandaries, as defined, a state of perplexity or uncertainty over what to do in a difficult situation. It’s so pathetic to watch people try to figure out life without God, and his revelation to us in creation, Scripture, and Christ. That’s the epistemological part, the ability to know or not, only comes through the revelation of God.
I think the movie also affected me because I had been writing through the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans, and came to the first two verses of chapter 12. Paul writes, after explaining the entirety of redemptive history, that we can therefore, “test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” All it takes to get to this point where life is no longer a series of quandaries, is to “offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” You mean, life isn’t all about me? And what I want? My desires? My fulfillment? Well, only if you want to lead a miserable existence, but sinful people are really good at it.
One of the things I love about Christianity, other than that it’s the Truth, is how counter intuitively intuitive it is! It goes against our natural inclinations because those are natural (i.e., sinful), and shows us how to overcome those inclinations in the gospel. For instance, what does this strange phrase “offer our bodies as living sacrifices” mean? Basically, we are to be walking dead people, that’s what! Kind of negative, don’t you think? Not actually, when you realize how destructive self-centeredness really is.
Read Paul’s exhortations in the rest of chapter 12 and you’ll see why Christianity was so revolutionary in the ancient world, still is in the 21st century, and in our lives. Try these on for size:
- Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment . . .
- Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.
- Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.
- Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
- Do not repay anyone evil for evil.
- If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
- Do not take revenge, but leave room for God’s wrath . . .
- Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Talk about radical! But what is more important than the specific exhortations, is that they are rooted in Paul’s “Therefore.” He spent 11 chapters laying out what the whole of redemptive history means in Christ, and we are to live in light of that reality. The fulcrum of history, the point on which everything turned, is the life, sacrificial death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We can do these things, love in this way, because God in Christ loved us first, and when we were yet sinners! When we were his enemies! God is not telling us through Paul to do anything he hasn’t already done. Think about that.
The skeptics, and admit it, sometimes that is us too, say God can’t relate, nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, least of all God up in his lofty heavenly perch. But he came down from that perch, became one of us(!), and unjustly suffered horrifically, for us. Oh yes, we can love, we can be walking dead people to our own desires for others, and in the end that is loving God even as it is loving ourselves. If you want a recipe for a successful marriage, or any relationship, it is to be found in Christ!
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