Daily Liturgy and Scripture

Short passage from Philippians today, but there's a really important theological nugget right in front of us: God is at work. If God is at work, we can always be confident that the work is good, and that it will complete in God's time. We, like Paul, can look beyond our immediate circumstances to the bigger picture of what our Lord is doing.

Paul has been working in ideas, but now he works with real people. In the closing of this letter, we see Jews, Greeks, and Romans who made up the early church. Women and men. The Kingdom of Jesus was formed of all types, and that remains true today.

This little section of Romans establishes one thing: Paul has not been to the Roman church. This makes the letter to the Romans pretty unique, because it is written to a group of people he had not met before, to a church that he did not start. (They were not all strangers, no doubt he knew someone in the church, because the letter had to go to someone.) This is a good indication of the growth of the early church: they were at least connected enough to have some familiarity with believers outside their own city.

Bound together in Christ: that is what the Kingdom is. As the Old Testament scripture finds fulfillment in him, so does the love shown among his people.

Paul has been building the picture of the body of Christ, diverse in all its parts. Now he talks about grace. Having a little patience and allowing difference in practice was perhaps best summed up in a quote that has been attributed to several theologians: "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity." Whoever said this definitely had Paul's vision in mind.

When Paul talks about the new Kingdom under Jesus, he doesn't talk about one that exists outside the current world. The people of the Spirit are in the world, bringing Jesus into the places where they are, not outside that system. Given that angle, we are still subject to worldly rulers and expected to do things like pay taxes.

Paul has spent a lot of Romans talking about how to bring together believers from different backgrounds (such as Jew and non-Jew), and now he turns to unify those believers in a single purpose: to form the body of Christ. Serving one another and showing love is not a rule, but a way of life. There is room for grace, and the Spirit is our guide.

Paul keeps drawing the unifying trait that brings Jews and Gentiles together in the Kingdom of Jesus, and here he seems to be a little playful, talking about how God made the Jews jealous by including the Gentiles. That may have actually been a sensitive topic in Rome, where Jews and Gentiles made up the church together. Whatever the tone, the end result is the same: God makes his church from all peoples.

"Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes." This passage lands right on the fusion of the two testaments of the Bible. What the law did in the old, Jesus completes and continues in the new. Now there is new life through the creator and give of life itself.

Paul is using a lot of Biblical connections in this passage, but central to the theme is the sovereignty of God in making his people, without regard to birthright. What God started with a promise to Abraham, he made complete with Jesus. Faith is the key, and Jesus is the way.