Christians have a talent for reshaping the Gospel.  Paul warns against this.  The reshaping is always the result of good intentions.  Christians worry about the growth of the Church, which we typically equate with the spread of the Gospel.  These aren’t the same.  Why is the Church—or at least, why is our version of it, not growing?  Several of you remember when this sanctuary was much fuller.  Every PC(USA) church that has been around for longer than thirty years has similar stories.  A common conclusion among mainline churches, which have seen the biggest decreases, is that people don’t find the Gospel attractive, don’t see that following Jesus faithfully would add anything they need or want.

So, the faithful, with the best of intentions—making the Gospel attractive—begin to reshape the Gospel.  What would make the message attractive?  Let’s make that the message, so long as it is consistent with what Jesus says, or some part of what he says, or some part of what he could be saying, seen in the right way.  This isn’t a new phenomenon, it’s as old as the church, old as Paul’s letters, it’s as old as temptation and fall.

The other side of it is that the Gospel is just too simple: believe in Jesus and you will be saved?  There has to be more.  Jesus plus.  Jesus plus obedience.  Obedience is not an obligation.  If you’re obeying Jesus because of obligation, you’re not obeying him for the right reason.  Being the kind of beings we are, we inevitably get the order turned around—we start out with Jesus, then we go to Jesus plus, plus obedience; then we switch it around, obedience plus Jesus—that’s the Catholic way, or obedience without Jesus, that’s Judaism.  There’s also Jesus without obedience (let me soften that and say Jesus with selective obedience), which describes a large range of Christians, probably including me.

For us truly to claim Jesus, he first must claim us.  When we realize he has claimed us, we are transformed and we understand, though we never cease to be amazed by it, that Jesus is truly enough: only he can be enough.  Then, all we do as disciples comes from Jesus: yearning for holy living, loathing of sin, especially our own, our growing desire to do as Christ taught, not for the sake of the doing, or the merit, not even for the sake of others, but all for the sake of Christ.  Apart from him, we can do nothing (Jn 15:5); in him, we can do all things (Phil 4:13).

Paul writes to a church becoming legendary for its love and faith that is also becoming susceptible to the human way of thinking that Christian living is Jesus plus.  Paul insists, consistently and continually insists, that Christian living is Christ, and that’s all.

How do we best serve God?  By seeking to get our lives right with Him, in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.  We want the church to grow, of course.  Grow in the Spirit.  We want the Gospel to be attractive, of course.  Feeding people, clothing them, visiting them when they are sick or in prison, does not make the Gospel attractive.  Jesus makes the Gospel attractive.  Our redeemed lives, aglow with Christ in the Spirit, makes the Gospel attractive: if we are not demonstrating a truly redeemed life, if Jesus is not shining in our lives, we are providing no food for thought among the unsaved, no reason for them to consider whether there might really be something to what we say.

We say, I hope, that Jesus “is the key that opens all the hidden treasures of God’s wisdom and knowledge” (2:3).  This wisdom is the way to life, abundant, eternal life, the way to live life here to have life hereafter.  The way to share this life, with fellow believers and with those who do not believe.  Wisdom promotes life, holiness, and flourishing, spiritual flourishing: wisdom our guide and guard.

Paul tells us this treasure is hidden.  Why?  How?   It is hidden in Christ.  Talk with people about Christ: you’ll soon discover this for yourself.  Some will look at you with barely concealed disdain and impatience.  Some will listen politely without hearing anything.  Some will nod with affirmation, but without great interest or joy.  Then, there are some, a few, who receive and rejoice.  Jesus told a parable about all that, I believe.  Many cannot get past the impossibility of Christ, the impossibility of the Cross.  Born of a virgin?  Foolishness.  Fully God and fully human?  Foolishness.  Atoning death?  Foolishness.  Raised from the dead?  Foolishness.  Irrelevance for today’s people and today’s problems.  We don’t need a faith for the ages, we need a faith for today!

The typical mainline response has been to reshape the Gospel.  We focus on Jesus the teacher, Jesus the moral exemplar.  We call him Savior and we blur just how he saves: something to do mainly with the way he teaches us to live with others, to live here on earth.  To live with others as he lived with others is to have the salvation about which he spoke; you save your life through his example.

When we focus our living on the pattern of what Jesus did—that is, the things that make sense to us, that we ourselves can do—we inevitably begin to focus on our actions rather than on our Savior.  We end up saying, “See how much I’ve done, God?”  I haven’t bought things that the righteous people told me were bad to buy.  I haven’t eaten things the righteous people told me were bad to eat.  I’ve thought the right thoughts, bought the right things, and had the right biases.  They were no biases at all, really, but obviously true because obviously righteous.

Abortion seems to be in the news these days.  Last week, I mentioned a fellow PC(USA) pastor who wasn’t interested in salvation but in a just society.  This came in an interview about her book, in which she makes a Christian argument for abortion; she might rather say for supporting abortion rights, or the right to choose, but the rights and the choice she’s talking about lead to one thing: abortion.  The connection is this: where our focus is on the ethical acts of Jesus, our focus shifts to our own acts, and we come to presume that righteousness comes to us not through some mysterious connection with Christ but through doing what Christ did (well, some of the things he did, the non-miraculous stuff).  When the focus shifts in this way, support for abortion becomes a no-brainer: the fetus hasn’t done anything yet, so it has no claim to life.

Support for euthanasia is growing in some quarters—hey, they do it in Europe!  As though that were the paragon of advanced Christianity!  No wonder support is growing, even among the faithful: the sick and elderly can no longer do anything—anything that counts, that is.  Those who have not done or cannot do have no claim to life.  Life is for doing, doing righteousness, that is to say, justice.  Righteousness and salvation become a matter of works.

The orthodox, apostolic version of the faith, the oldest teaching, asks a lot of us: we are asked to believe, expected to believe, somehow, many things that seem strange, irrational, illogical, and, from an earthly, fleshly perspective, just impossible.  Maybe you are an advocate for abortion—I’ll put it more gently, the right to choose.  The sentence never gets finished: right to choose what?  Right to choose abortion: choosing to have the baby isn’t the issue and never has been.  You are an advocate for abortion because the arguments for it seem plausible and, after all, Jesus nowhere in the Bible prohibits abortion.  There was a time when I thought along such lines.

The underlying point has nothing to do with abortion and everything to do with the faithful reshaping the faith to make it more palatable, more acceptable, more attractive to those who have not received Jesus as Lord and Savior.  Paul warns us against “plausible arguments,” “false arguments, no matter how good they seem to be” (2:4), what William Barclay calls “seductive teaching.”[1]

For contemporary Christians, even for those who identify as Evangelical Christians—the scores of nondenominational Christians—the argument is becoming more and more plausible that our primary concern is not salvation but social transformation: the two become conflated.  A just society is compelling evidence of our justification.  A just society will justify people.  Our Savior then ceases to be Jesus and becomes a just society.  But salvation is no longer our primary concern.  So, does anyone here want an unjust society?  What is an unjust society?  There are as many answers as people worshiping here this morning.

Let’s say that we can identify an unjust society by things like poverty and racism: if there is poverty, there is injustice.  Sounds plausible.  How long have we been combatting poverty?  Why does Jesus say the poor will always be with us (Mk 14:7)?  To listen to the talk around society and church, you’d think nothing has ever been done or even tried.  Or that it was all tainted and only now, in our own times, is something really about to be done.  I invite you to compare what it was to be poor a hundred years ago with what it is to be poor in these times.  I invite you to consider racism one hundred years ago with what gets pointed to as racism today.  Who here is for poverty?  Who here is for racism?

Why are we to believe that any group, including the church, could create what everyone would regard as a just society?  We’re told to put our faith in political parties—the new American religion.  Yet, so far as I can see, too many elected officials in national office, and even a fair number in state office, demonstrate abundantly a much greater interest in getting and keeping power than in improving the lot of our lives.  Is that cynical?  I think of it as being Calvinist, the most realistic outlook I know.

This talk of a just society can be traced back to what was called the Social Gospel: plausible arguments, human wisdom.  “The belief was, and is, that Christianity will attract followers when it demonstrates its love for mankind.  This could be best accomplished by helping to alleviate the suffering of humanity caused by poverty, disease, oppressive work conditions, society’s injustices, civil rights abuses, etc.”[2]  It’s not that alleviating suffering is bad—hardly!  It’s the motivation, and what happens to the Message as a result.  People just aren’t flocking to the faith.  What can we do to draw them in?  Let them see our love for humanity in action.  So, we love so that others can see, in order for others to see.  Jesus said something about those who do things for others to see what they are doing.  Jesus wasn’t impressed.

So, should we not love humanity?  Jesus said our first and highest love must be for God, and the second command is like it, but is not the same as the first.  Beloved, the basic question is sound: how will the church grow?  Hasn’t Jesus shown us the way, told us?  It’s not through being concerned primarily with his ethical teaching; it’s through loving God above all, through living lives that evidence this highest, best love.  When other people see that we take our love for God seriously, it will make an impression upon them, which is to say, the Holy Spirit will make an impression upon them.  What attracts is a faithful life: a faithful life is a life directing love to God.  Everything else follows from that.

So, are all our actions on behalf of the poor and needy, the hungry, the forgotten and ignored, are all our actions for them worthless?  Yes, if by those actions we expect people to flock to church, if by these actions we expect to impress God or earn salvation, earn what Jesus gives, show that we deserve it.  See how many people I’ve fed, how many I have clothed.  See how many people I have inoculated, how many to whom I’ve given clean drinking water.  See how many people whose bail I have paid.  God asks, how many of them did you love?  See all my loving actions, Lord!  But how many of those people, with names, faces, and souls, did you love?  We, as ever, focus on quantity.  God, as ever, focuses on quality.  We say I when, as faithful disciples, we ought to know enough to say You, God.  By all means, see the need around you.  By all means, do what you can—you, personally, you faithfully, you sacrificially.  Maybe this is what Jesus had in mind when he teaches us to love our neighbors.  The point isn’t really taking care of their material needs, which is what social justice comes down to, its sum and end, so far as I can see.  Material needs are not unimportant, and they are incidental.  The point is establishing a relationship for praising God together.

Paul reminds us that the church abounding in love and faith is a church that is strong enough to resist the attacks of seductive teaching.  He commends the Colossians for their “good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ,” the “resolute firmness with which you stand together” (2:5).  It’s William Barclay who points out the military sense of the Greek words Paul uses here: he is depicting a strong defensive posture.[3]

We know Jesus has compassion, and we know it is good for us, in imitation of Christ, to have compassion.  This is blessing.  Compassion is not a substitute for Jesus.  Learn and practice compassion according to Christ, who came to call sinners to repentance, to announce the arrival of the kingdom of God, who came to die that those who had faith in him should live.  Foolishness, blessed, holy foolishness: the wisdom of God.

The Church has always been subject to and always will be subjected to the seductions of human wisdom, human teaching, ways that seem right but that in the end do not lead to God (Pr 16:25).  The biblical pattern is to pray for the Spirit to get our thinking and values in line with God; the human pattern is to get God in line with our thinking and values.

                In Christ, we are called to a new way of living, not according to the wisdom, even the best wisdom, of the world, or of society, or of the righteous people, but a new way of living according to God, who has freed and who is freeing us from the power of the sinful self, the self-righteous self, relying on righteous acts to establish the claim to worthiness and honor.

It is God’s Word only that makes alive, the powerful Word, the Word of creation, the Word that speaks light, the eternal Word, come among us in Jesus.  “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us [. . . .] This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (2:13-14).  Apart from Christ, that record of debt is not canceled.  Christ our Savior, Christ our life; Christ our righteousness, Christ our Lord.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

                [1] William Barclay.  Letters to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians.  Daily Study Bible.  Philadelphia: Westminster P, 1975. 131.

                [2] T. A. McMahon, https://www.thebereancall.org/content/shameful-social-gospel

                [3] Barclay, 131.