How to Give God a Good Name

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35 ESV)

Last week we saw how both Jesus and Paul condemned the religiousness of the Jews of their day. Their religion consisted of a difficult regimen of observing minute regulations in order to avoid breaking any of the 613 stipulations contained in the Mosaic Law. It was thought that by doing so they could keep the covenant and ensure God’s continued benevolence. The problem was not in their pursuit of righteousness; it was that their practice had become a pattern of empty rituals. Further, as barren as their practice was, they arrogantly assumed it set them apart from their contemporaries and gained for them God’s favor. At the same time, though they painstakingly observed the stipulations of the law, their conduct in the world was no better than those who didn’t have the law. Their moral failure was heightened by hypocrisy that in their arrogance they could not even perceive.

I think it was then successfully demonstrated that many of us who profess to be Christians have fallen into the same trap as those first century Jews. We believe our religious observances set us apart from the world and guarantee our salvation. But at the same time our lives are materially indistinguishable from our non-Christian contemporaries. We fail to fulfill the mission of the holy race we are called to be, which is to “proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9) We are instead what our critics accuse us of being: hypocritical, judgmental, and effectively irrelevant.

These observations are more than just interesting. They are crucial to us who publicly claim to be followers of Jesus. What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus? Let’s consider further the plight of the Jews of Paul’s day.

There is a common misperception that the God of the Old Testament was angry and punishing, but that the God of the New Testament is characterized by love. In fact, God is a God of love from the beginning. The Old Testament narrative is a long story of God’s passionate love for his creation, the Israelites’ disobedience, and God’s forbearance and continued love and care. It is true that the Israelites were punished over and over again in the Old Testament, but it was their willful disobedience that punished them. Even though the Israelites violated the covenant over and over, God never abandoned his love for them.

What was the nature of their disobedience? The common perception imagines a God who says in effect, “Love and obey ME or I will crush you!” The truth is that God insists on being the focus of humanity’s affection because that is the only way humans can be happy, joyous, and free. Though the distractions of this world persuade otherwise, there is no contentment apart from God. The sin of man, going all the way back to Adam, was trying to achieve fulfillment through worship of created things rather than the Creator. Yet in spite of humanity’s crazy disobedience God never ceased to love his creation or his creatures. God did not allow his beloved creatures to fall without devising a plan for restoration.

Let’s look a little closer at this dynamic. God created a perfect world that reflected his nature. It was world of life, joy, and plenty. It was a world of complete happiness and absolute justice. Through disobedience, i.e., through the worship of creation rather than the Creator, mankind marred the world, introducing suffering, injustice, and death. Though humans abandoned God, he did not abandon them. He set in motion a plan to re-create the world. His covenant with the Israelites at Sinai, where the Mosaic Law was given, was the means by which the plan was to be implemented. This was the same covenant the Jews of Paul’s time believed they had inherited, that gave them their identity and sense of being “chosen.”

But look how they had screwed it up. They were supposed to be a “light for the nations,” so that God’s “salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (Is. 49:6) How were they to be that light? By demonstrating the nature of God in the world. That was the purpose of the law: to make a holy community who would bless the world. To be a people who would make God’s nature so irresistible that all would be drawn to him. But the Jews had turned God’s purpose into a list of dos and don’ts that mocked his nature and thwarted his plan of salvation. Instead of being a light for the nations they turned their covenant identity into hypocritical, judgmental religion that few who were not born into it wanted to be any part of.

Jews believed then (and many still do) that the servant referenced in Isaiah 49 is the Jewish people with whom God made the Sinai covenant. Christians believe the servant is Christ, and that through Christ a new covenant has been given that creates a new Israel consisting of all who profess him. Yet though there is a new covenant the purpose of the covenant is the same: to create a holy people who will demonstrate God’s nature in the world and draw all people to him.

God’s fervent love for his creation can be traced throughout the Old Testament and the New: from Genesis to Revelation, from the first page of the Bible to the last. It is best demonstrated by Jesus. On the night of his arrest, when he knew he would be tortured and later crucified, Jesus gave instructions to his disciples: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35) This, I believe, is the essense of the new covenant, and its stipulation is both simple and terrifying. We are to love “just as I have loved you.” How did he love us? He gave up everything for the sake of those he knew would revile and spit on him. His love was not a feeling of affection; it was an act of complete self-sacrifice. And he commands his disciples to conform to this model.

Are we his disciples? If we are, then here we have the instructions for how to give God a good name.

How to Give God a Bad Name

You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” (Romans 2:23-24 ESV)

With what seems to me an amazing degree of chutzpah the Apostle Paul wrote to a church he had never visited and cut directly to the chase by laying out a case for God’s righteous condemnation of all humanity. It goes something like this: “Dear Church at Rome, You don’t know me. My name is Paul and I’m writing to introduce myself and seek support for evangelizing the western part of the Roman Empire. To begin with, let me just point out that you are all sinners and deserve eternal damnation.” In our day we would hardly consider this an effective way to “win friends and influence people,” even if our accusations were true.

In the first three chapters of the letter to the Romans Paul lays out the basic tenets of Christianity. In chapter one he describes the spiritual condition of the Gentiles. They act as if God does not exist. Though they do not have the law or the covenant (more on this in a minute), God has revealed himself and his character to them through nature, and therefore they are without excuse in refusing to acknowledge God’s sovereignty. They deserve God’s wrath. In chapter two Paul takes aim at the Jews. They have the law and the covenant but do not keep it and therefore they, too, are without excuse.

The beginning of chapter three summarizes the arguments of the first two and famously concludes “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Rom. 3:23) There is good news here as Paul goes on to show that our salvation is a free gift and not merited by any action on our part. But at this point in the argument, if we divide the world into two groups as Paul does: Gentile and Jew, then we can see that by rights everyone is pretty much toast.

Curiously Paul’s seems to imply that the sins of the Jews are worse than those of the Gentiles. In the passage Romans 2:17-24 Paul chastens the Jews for “boasting” about their special relationship with God while at the same time not living up to the requirements of the law and the covenant. One of the most fundamental aspects of Jewish self-identification at that time was knowledge that as Jews they were specially chosen by God. God had delivered them out of bondage in Egypt and turned them exclusively into “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Ex. 19:6) I think the audacity of publically affirming this belief alone was enough to sow the seeds of the anti-Semitism that was rampant in the Roman world.

But what made it worse was what Paul alludes to here. The covenant entered into by Yahweh with the Jewish people is summarized in the previous verse in Exodus: “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples.” (Ex. 19:5) Paul tells us in Romans 2:17-24 that the Jews loved the last part of the covenant (“treasured possession and holy people”) but weren’t too keen about the first part (“obey my voice and keep my covenant”). In all of their long history the Jews had never obeyed the law or kept the covenant. They had always denied God’s sovereignty and chased after idols. And though in Paul’s day the Jews generally adhered more strictly to the Mosaic Law than they ever had before, both Jesus and Paul condemn their religious practice. Why?

The answer is obvious: they were hypocrites. One can picture a Jewish Christian reading Paul’s condemnation of the Gentiles in chapter one with a smug sense of satisfaction. Secure in the knowledge of their covenant relationship they cast scorn upon the unrighteous pagans and their filthy habits. They could not imagine that they were equally guilty. They trusted in the law and thought it made them safe from condemnation, but because they could not fulfill the requirements of the law their trust was misplaced. And, going even further, the misplaced self-satisfied confidence that allowed them to condemn their pagan neighbors produced an affront to God because they too were guilty. So God was blasphemed by their hypocrisy.

One of the reasons I think this concept would have been difficult to grasp by Jews of Paul’s time is that many of them really were very pious. Paul himself was a member of the Pharisees, the most devout and respected Jewish religious group of the time. They kept the letter of the law meticulously, and because of this they were absolutely certain of God’s favor. But in chapter 23 of Matthew Jesus demolishes their illusions and calls them “blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!” (Mt 23:24) The allusion here is of punctiliousness in the letter of the law but blindness to the spirit of the law.

Thank God we are not like them! Oh, but we are! How many of us rely on “election” as our ticket to righteousness? How many of us believe that by going to church and writing checks, and watching the right TV shows and movies and listening to the right music and supporting and condemning the right politicians and causes we are somehow set apart from our neighbors who are not “chosen” like us? But at the same time we pursue with zeal the idols of our age: material prosperity, emotional security, and sensual pleasure, all with full knowledge that our brothers and sisters throughout the world and right in our midst are crying out; suffering and dying from hunger, poverty, oppression, violence, and persecution.

It’s not that the way Christians act is fundamentally different or worse than the way non-Christians do. But because we profess to be followers of Jesus we bring ourselves greater condemnation. For as the Apostle Peter tells us we have inherited the covenant and therefore the stipulation of the covenant to be a light to the nations: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9)

We have allowed ourselves to be defined by things we are against but we are not able to articulate let alone demonstrate what we are for. In fact, many of us lead lives indistinguishable from our non-Christian neighbors, except perhaps in our religious fastidiousness. This is exactly the sin of the Jews that both Paul and Jesus condemn. Jesus pointed out to his listeners that they had “neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness.” (Mt. 23:23) And so have we. And that, Paul tells us, gives God a bad name.

Next week we will consider what gives God a good name.