In a discussion with friends this morning about the implications and application of Colossians 3:1-15, we pondered how to live out of the reality of who we are now as new creations in Christ,  how to “seek the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God,”  and “set our minds that are above, not on things that are on the earth.  For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”  How do we do take that to the office?

It’s not a new question, but it is a good heart-check.

One of our trio regularly reminds us that our “new creatureliness” is truest thing about  those who belong to Christ.   I shouldn’t be surprised, then, when I realize that I actually show compassion (e.g. while driving in Atlanta traffic) when circumstances would typically trigger impatience.  “Spiritual formation,” “discipleship,” “growing in Christ,” and “Christian thinking” should evidence increasing love — for Christ and for others.   The end result, or rather the continuing result, of learning theology should be a changed mind, a changed heart, and a changed life marked by the love of Christ.  That was a goal of early Christian thinker-writers . . .

Robert Wilken writes, “The intellectual effort of the early church was at the service of a much loftier goal than giving conceptual form to Christian belief. Its mission was to win the hearts and minds of men and women and to change their lives.”  [The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. pp xiv]

The early Christian writers who wrestled through the facts, meaning and implications of the Incarnation did not set out to honor a hero, but to collectively explain (among other things) the new reality of “God with us”…

“The church gave men and women a new love, Jesus Christ, a person who inspired their actions and held their affections. This was a love unlike others. For it was not only that
Jesus was a wise teacher, or a compassionate human being who reached out to the sick and needy or even that he patiently suffered abuse and calumny and died a cruel death,
but that after his death God had raised him from the dead to a new life. He who was once dead now lives. The Resurrection of Jesus is the central fact of all Christian devotion
and the ground of all Christian thinking. The Resurrection was not a solitary occurrence, a prodigious miracle, but an event within the framework of Jewish history, and it brought
into being a new community, the church. Christianity enters history not only as a message but also as a communal life, a society or city, whose inner discipline and practices,
rituals and creeds, and institutions and traditions were the setting for Christian thinking.”  [Ibid, pp xv]

In Colossians 3 Paul exhorts us to “live according to who we are” (my term) — a new kind of human being — since we have been “raised in Christ” [Resurrection] and have “put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self [new creatureliness], which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator …. Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love ….” (vv 1, 9-10, 12-14a  ESV)

Heading to the office . . .

I am being introduced to authors with whom I was unfamiliar but now feel as if I have picked up additional guides on a journey.  (More on that later.)  Robert Wilken’s book, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought is a journey into early church history and significant thinker-writers who “constructed a new intellectual and spiritual world” that still informs us today.

I appreciate Wilken’s emphasis on the mind-and-heart and take it as a personal reminder of the importance to guard one’s heart as the mind is developed (emphasis mine):

“The distinctive marks of early Christian thinking can be set down in a few sentences.
Christians reasoned from the history of Israel and of Jesus Christ, from the experience of
Christian worship, and from the Holy Scriptures (and early interpretations of the
Scriptures), that is to say from history, from ritual, and from text.  Christian thinking is
anchored in the church’s life, sustained by such devotional practices as the daily
recitation of the psalms, and nurtured by the liturgy, in particular, the regular celebration
of the Eucharist. Theory was not an end in itself, and concepts and abstractions were
always put of a deeper immersion of the res, the thing itself, the mystery of Christ and of
the practice of the Christian life. The goal was not only understanding but love, and at
various points in the book, in discussing the knowledge of God, the Trinity, the virtues,
and especially in the final chapter on the passions, I have tried to show the
indispensability of love to Christian thinking.”

Wilken, Robert Louis. The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.  pp xvii-xviii.

“If I speak in the tongues of man and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”  “Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus….”  (1 Cor 13:1-2 ESV; Phil 2:1 KJV)

I have the privilege of reading through a booklist required for a PhD admission “field exam” on biblical spirituality.  These historical theology books relate mostly relate to evangelical Christianity. When asked about how my reading is coming along, I typically reply, “I’m like a kid in a candy store!”

I continue to evaluate the feasibility, or common sense, of pursuing a doctorate at my age, experience, and life-station, but last summer I decided to concentrate on “the process” rather than “the product.”  In the words of Dallas Willard, I cannot necessarily control
outcomes, but I can control my faithfulness to opportunities that God gives me.

Recently, a mentor helped me realize that one of my “spiritual pathways” to worship is
through study, asking what my reading does for me beyond intellectual enrichment.  I knew the answer immediately, but took a little while to articulate: I am moved
to worship as I discover new truths about God. Studying theology has always been a
doorway to adoration for me. If my heart is not moved, changed, enlarged in conformity
to Jesus Christ, there is little point to the study of theology.  Here’s an example:

Yesterday I was reading about the centrality of the Bible in evangelical tradition, and
was challenged in my personal discipline of Scripture reading:

“… Spurgeon encouraged those reading the Bible to take time over it.  ‘I am afraid,’ he
commented, ‘that this is a magazine-reading age, a newspaper-reading age, but not so
much a Bible-reading age as it ought to be.’ This exercise in serious reading involved
meditation and prayer. Above all, Spurgeon believed that Scripture should be read in the
presence of Christ. This is how he put it:

” ‘He [Christ] leans over me, he puts his finger along the lines, I can see his pierced
hand: I will read it as in his presence. I will read it, knowing that he is the substance of
it — that he is the proof of this book as well as the writer of it; the sum of this Scripture
as well as the author of it. That is the way for true students to become wise! You will
get at the soul of Scripture when you can keep Jesus with you while you are reading.’ ”

[cited in What A Friend We Have In Jesus – The Evangelical Tradition, by Ian Randall, Maryknoll, NY; Orbis Books, p. 47]

If this was true in the nineteenth century, how much more so today.

Lord, help us to see you in every page of Scripture, even the sections we’re eager to “get through.”