1st Corinthians Series (Part 8) People of a New Age - Dr Gordon Fee

All right, now we're talking about the church in Paul's view as the eschatological people of God. And if you'll think back now to a lot of other things that we've been saying up to this point, you can see how everything really is conditioned by this.

Remember, in chapter three, "all things are yours: life, the present, the future, all things are yours." Why? Well, because we're already the eschatological people of God. God has already come in and taken possession and begun his rule. And precisely because of this, death is ours. Death has already been conquered. You know, we've all, we've already died, you see. We're already people of the resurrection. So even though we live out in this present existence, we live out in this present existence totally conditioned by the future, by the new age that has dawned with the coming of Jesus.

Now, back to the text, then, in chapter six. And to show how this is so essential to our understanding of what Paul is saying here, he begins to ask them questions. "Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases?" That is, since the future is to condition the present, and since we are people of the future, and in the future we are going to, in fact, judge the world, which includes whom? Well, includes the people who are doing the judging, it includes the, uh, the unjust. Since we are, himself, going to someday sit in judgment upon that judge, he says, "What in the world are you doing sitting before him?"

So, first of all, he, he, he tries with this rhetorical kind of question to help them to see that these present cases are trivial, and that the future is to condition the present for us. And therefore, it's impossible for us to go before this pagan judge, because the church is going to judge the world, and including that pagan judge.

Now, secondly, by the second set of questions, he does, in fact, minimize the pagan court. "Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more matters pertaining to this life?" If then we have such cases, why do you lay them before those who are least esteemed by the church? And again, that sounds as if he's demeaning the pagan court, but what he means is the least esteemed, meaning that, you see, they are, in fact, going to be involved in the process of being judged. So everything, because of the eschatological reversal, the present courts count as nothing.

And then, finally, he, he finally speaks to them in an indicative. And in the process of doing this, he really uses sarcasm. This is what I call inspired sarcasm. Since the scripture is inspired, and since this is sarcasm, we'll simply have to allow that there's inspired sarcasm. Listen to what he says here. He says, "I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no man among you wise enough?" Now, remember, what's the Corinthians' big thing? Wisdom. I mean, we are praying sophia. We are so wise. We even know how to choose between our leaders. We know which ones are best for us. We are of Paul, and we are of Apollos. We are so wise. Paul says, "Can it really be true that there is no one among you who is wise enough to decide between members of the brotherhood, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers?"

Now, with that, he turns to verses seven and eight. That is, our verses seven and eight. He doesn't know that that's what they are, but it's okay. He turns in verses seven and eight to a second indicative. And the second indicative is a new way of addressing the problem. Now, you'll notice that the first six verses address whom? That is, who has been, who is being spoken to? In the first, in the first six verses, who was being spoken to? Yeah, the saints, the whole congregation. In other words, the whole community, you see, is being given the business for the fact that this is happening in their midst. Can it possibly be that the community doesn't know what it is, the eschatological community of God, that is going to be involved in the judgment in the future? He says, "Can it possibly be that you're letting this happen in your midst?"

But now, in verses seven and eight, he turns to address the two men involved. And in the process of addressing the two men involved, first of all, he says that the church is suffering defeat. Now, the church is suffering defeat, you understand, by both actions. Paul, in fact, does not minimize the action of man A. He turns his guns on man B, but he doesn't minimize the action of man A. And the reason this doesn't come out very clear in the English text, and in fact, it seems to me that there are an awful lot of people who miss this in the Greek text, it's something that I, that I, that I think is easily missed, but I think is not to be missed. The word that Paul has used, and the word that he does use repeatedly, is in verse seven: "Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?"

Now, there are two Greek words there: suffer wrong, be dealt with unjustly, and to be defrauded. And then in verse eight, it says, "But you yourselves wrong and defraud." Now, that is addressed, obviously, to man A, you see. You are the ones doing, or you are doing wrong and defraud. Now, the word for wronging is exactly the same word that occurred as a noun in verse one, "before the unjust." Ah, dikos, or ah, decao. Now, what happens is, in verse nine, our English translations do us in, because verse nine picks up exactly the same word and says, "Do you not know," and then the RSV says, "the unrighteous." Well, okay, in some contexts, in fact, that's how we would ordinarily translate articles, unrighteous. But here, it is precisely the word that has been used in the verb to wrong, or to, you know, to do wrong to a brother. And he's saying, "Don't you know that the oddicos, meaning including this man who is doing this to his brother, are not going to inherit?"

Now, it's a very strong judgment, therefore, on man A. He says, "By what you've done, you see, you've put yourself in the category of all the others who are going to come under the judgment of God." Now, of course, notice in Paul's typical fashion, some things that we mentioned last night about the indicative and the imperative. Notice how Paul says, "Do you not know that the unrighteous, that though, that is, those who exercise oddicas, who do the unjust thing, who wrong somebody, are not going to inherit the kingdom? Do not be deceived. Neither the immoral, idolaters, etc., etc., will inherit the kingdom. But such were some of you." But now, he says, "You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified." In other words, since the indicative has already taken place in your life, get with the imperative. He's saying to this man, but of course, he's obviously also, you know, bringing the threat of judgment. "Do you not know that those who exercise this, who are artichoy out there in the world, and who are immoral out there in the world, that they're under the judgment of God? Well, you're acting just like this worldly man. But some such were some of you," he says.

Now, so he is always giving the Christian that, what I call, the benefit of the doubt. You are one of God's children. Now, hear the imperative and get with it. So that's what he says to man A. I've got to get that in, because you read the text and you think that man A gets off scot-free, and a poor man B is the one who gets the business. Well, man B does get the business. Now, I defy you to read verse seven and try to answer those rhetorical questions without answering with the word "but" at the start of your answer. "Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?" I can think of all kinds of reasons why not to be defrauded. It ain't right. Oh, brother, I don't know about you. I'm so American. When I read that text, what do you mean, you know, the Lord has to save me from being an American? I mean, at some point, he's got to make a Christian out of this poor American. "Why not rather suffer wrong?" I mean, you know, we read that text and just go on our merry way.

I want to, we're going to stop at this text for a while, because the Christian ethic comes right full force in our face right here. Why? This is a Christian thinking. Now, why not rather suffer wrong? But you don't know what he did to me. You mean to tell me that this guy does me in for ten thousand dollars, and I just take it? You've got to be kidding. And what am I doing? I'm thinking like a man of this age again. See, I'm no longer being conditioned as an eschatological person. I am being conditioned by the fact that it's not right. It's not right. It's just not right.

Well, we're going to get down to verses twelve and thirteen in a few moments, and we're going to see that that's not a very, that's not a very good question anyway, whether it's right or not. In fact, you have to put up with some of the way I say things and some of my language. And, of course, hopefully, by the grace of God, you learn with all those who come and teach that you've got to let it go through the filter of the Holy Spirit into your own life. I reserve the right to be wrong. I've changed my mind enough times that I'd hate to think that everything I've said to you is absolute truth. You understand? I think I'm right. I think I'm right on, and I'm convinced that most places that I'm hearing the biblical texts. But you have to put up with some of the flip. Boy, I say things and take me for what I mean, not always for what I say. When I'm in, when I'm in youth groups, weekend retreat kinds of things, college campuses, and almost always when I'm with a group of Christians, there's somebody that begins to ask a question like, "Well, is it all right to do this? Is this all right?" My standard answer is, "Well, why don't you become a Christian and quit asking a Jewish question?" Now, you understand that no Christian ever asks, "Is it all right?" You can't be Christian and ask that question. As you, you've got to get saved, because if you're still asking that question, you're still living under law. See, you're asking, "Where's the law? Where's the law that conditions my conduct? Is it all right for me to do that?"

Well, the Christian doesn't ask that question. He asks, "Is it good? Is it helpful? Is it loving? Is it beneficial? Is it going to create better relationships?" He's not asking, "Is it all right?" He's asking, "Is it good?" That's the point. In verse twelve, "All things are lawful for me." Sure, everything's all right. "But not all things are helpful." And that's the Christian perspective.

Now, this is precisely the point of the Christian ethic that we've got to get at here in this text. "Why not rather suffer wrong?" And the answer is that anytime you try to answer that question, you have caught yourselves on the horns of the dilemma of trying to think like a person who belongs to this age rather than to the future. Because every answer you're going to give to that question is going to be an answer that is conditioned by the old way of looking at things. It's going to be conditioned by a worldly point of view. There is no possible answer to that question, an answer to that question that is not in some way conditioned by the present way of looking at things.

We live this new life, this resurrection life Paul talks about in Second Corinthians. We have died and have been raised, and therefore we don't belong to ourselves. We belong to the one who died for us and has now gained possession of our lives. We live under his rule, and precisely because we live under his rule, everything else has changed. You see, some more New Testament theology, and then we'll get back to all of this and put it together in terms of the Christian ethic.

Once we come to recognize the kingdom of God is a totally eschatological term, that we are conditioned by the future, that we are eschatological people living out in this present existence, waiting for the final consummation of the end, once we begin to think like that, then the question that has to arise, that is the logical question that follows the fact that the kingdom of God has come, is, "Well, how do I get in?" You know, "How does one enter the kingdom?"

Now, the answer that Mark gives, that is, Mark says that is Jesus' teaching, is "Repent and believe the good news." You know, the good news is that the kingdom has come. That's good news. A lot of people hear it as bad news, but it's good news. Now, it is, in fact, bad news with regard to the old way of thinking. It's bad news because it's going to bring death to that. But it's good news because that's the best thing that can happen to you is for death to come to the old way of thinking, the old life, the old, you know, living *kata sarka* to use Paul's term.

But how do you get to the believing that good news? Well, repent. Now, there's a perfectly innocuous word. It simply means, "Tell God you're sorry for being a bad guy, promise you'll be a good guy, and get up and go your way." No, it doesn't. I mean, it involves some of that, please. I won't make that just, you know. But, but no, it means far, far more than repent. That's the kind of, what I call, that's the kind of basic word that means total change of, of one's whole way of thinking. In fact, the Greek word is *metanoia*, which means change your mind. It means a total, radical, complete reversal of one's way of thinking about things. It means an absolute overhaul of your life. Absolute overhaul.

In fact, in one of the passages in Luke 16:16, Jesus says, "The law and the prophets were until John the Baptist; from John the Baptist until now the kingdom of God is being preached, and men are entering it violently." I don't know what all that means. It's very hard to translate. Some of the translations say, "men are pressing into it." You know, they're being squeezed all to bits as they come in. I think what this means is that to enter the kingdom of God means a violent, radical overthrow of the kingdom of Gordon Fee. That is what has to take place. Is repentance. I have to repent and become as a child. I have to lose my rights and my securities and my own securing, my own life in the presence of God. I have to be set free from my own self-securing life and way of life and trust God to secure me. And that's not easy, you see.

As long as I'm, as long as I'm in the driver's seat, I've got certain pathways of setting up my securities. I can secure my own identity, my own being, by arranging the world around me in a certain way so that nobody can come in and, you know, destroy my own little existence in my being. A thousand, thousand securities. One of them is the law. The law was a great security to the Pharisees. And when Jesus came and began to take away their blue blanket and bury it, it was like Linus coming unglued, you know, when Snoopy took, you know, just he was totally a shattered human being until that pup dog dug up that blue blanket and brought it back. Because either, either Jesus is right and you're wrong, and if he's right, he has destroyed your foundation of being. You see, their whole relationship to God had been predicated on this law. And if Jesus is right, that means their entire reason for being and their existence and relationship to God has been shattered. And they've got to trust God. That's an awful hard thing to do.

If you don't think it's hard to trust God, you just try it. Now, I'm serious. The worst of all man's sins is that we don't think God is trustworthy. We don't think he's trustworthy. That's why man, in always, keeps going back to the law. That's why grace, for most people, isn't sufficient grace plus my gifts, my offerings, my something. To trust that God just sheerly graciously, freely, with no strings attached, unconditionally, on his own, accepts me. That's pretty hard to handle. And really, the reason it's pretty hard to handle is that I don't accept myself that way. I, I know myself better than to know that anybody would freely and unconditionally accept me the way I am. And so do you. And if you're not going to accept yourself that way, it's a sure sign you're not going to accept, you're not going to trust God to accept you that way.

Most people have what I call trump card religion. I know that's not a very good terminology in some circles, but you know, bear with me. A trump card religion is that after God has played his last card, we want the final trump. Now, God has played his cards. He's got the cross and resurrection. That's all he's going to do. That's the end. You know, that's the last thing God's got going. But I've got an ace in my pocket. I'm a good guy. And just in case, you know, I wasn't, I was kind of a just-in-case approach to theology. Just in case God can't be trusted to accept me freely and unconditionally, here I am, Lord, look at me. I'm a pretty nice guy. And really, you're kind of lucky to have me on your side, on your side anyway. Oh, no, no, we never say that. We just go around living like that and acting like it.

Trusting God, that's tough. But that's what one has to do, you see. And that's where Jesus comes and shatters all of our securities and just leaves us. He leaves us naked in the presence of God with nothing to hold on to, nothing. And then he says, "Trust me." And you say, "Really, God? Can I really trust you? Can't believe that you can be trusted? And besides, I'm a sinner, and I know you don't accept sinners because you're holy." We've got all these reasons. But that's what it's got to be. It's got to be trust. We've got to trust God.

And once we begin to learn to trust God, then the whole relationship to the law is radically changed. The whole concept of living under law is totally gone, not because there's not an imperative, but because the imperative is not an expression of a law. It is not an expression of something I have to do in order to be on God's good ground or in his terms.

Now, a few words then about this Christian imperative and this Christian ethic. You see, the whole problem goes back to the garden, doesn't it? What was the great sin in the garden? Rebellion, right? Disobedience, right? Sort of right. Satan came to Eve and said, "If you eat of this tree, thou shalt be as God." It is what tree? It is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is the tree to be desired to make one wise, because it allows one to have the divine prerogative of establishing right and wrong. "I now make my own choices about right and wrong." And who's not going to bite on that apple? The reason I know we're going to bite on that apple is that we've all done it. That's the nature of our sinfulness. We have usurped God's rule over our lives. That's the nature of sin. That's what pride means. It means to stand in the center of one's self and rule one's own being and secure one's own life. And in the process, one might have a haughty spirit about that, too. But that's a secondary nature of pride. Pride means to stand in the center of one's own existence, securing his own being, and living in his own self-sufficiency, and of course, making his own choices about right and wrong.

Several years ago, the president of General Motors in the United States made that out, absolutely outlandish but outstanding statement: "What's good for General Motors is good for America." And that's the way most of us live out our lives. "What's good is what's good for me, and what's evil is what's evil to me, and I determine right and wrong. I make the choices." Good is good for me, evil is what's evil from my point of view.

Now, the great problem of human sin, and the great problem with all of us being our own deities, is that we end up with worlds in collision. We don't have that kind of absolute authority to make it work out. So we're all running around in our own little monarchies. But my good becomes your evil, and your good becomes my evil, and therefore we've got kingdoms in collision, and we're in the process of securing our own kingdoms, and when they clash, we've got to somehow adjust that kingdom.

These two boys that have this magnificent love-hate relationship, you know, of mine. Bless them. We decided one year at Christmas, we had solved the problem. We were going to buy them identical toys, not a red one for Brian and a blue one for Craig, but two blue ones, and we'd write Brian's name on the top of one and Craig's name on the top of the other. And then the only difference is the name on the top. They've got their own. One day, not many weeks after, when I was studying, and this was when we were in Southern California, I was studying at home, and the boys were out in the backyard playing in a sandbox, about five and four years old. The cry of bloody murder, the kind of cry that said, "Boy, you better come quick, because it's going to be bad out here in a moment." And I went out quick. And as I came on the scene, I sized it up, you know, in about those few minutes that it takes. And what had happened was the older one had said, "What's mine is mine, and I'm going to keep it. And what's yours is mine, and I'm going to get it." He was busy building the empire of Craig Fee, a trucking empire in this case. And the other one, slight of build but sharp of tongue and quick of mind, and what he couldn't get away with with his fists and clawing and scratching, he was getting away with his tongue. His kingdom had been encroached, and his life was at stake, and his own person was being destroyed by his brother. And he couldn't let it happen because his own life was at stake.

Now, don't you laugh at those boys, because that's exactly what you and I have done all of our lives. That is precisely what it means for us to be sinners. God intended a universe, and in the center of the universe is God. And out here, extending from himself in a beautiful arrangement of a single universe, he has created expressions of himself, all of whom are to fit in perfect orbit around a single center, because God has the single will and runs the whole thing. And because everybody is in single orbit doing the will of God, everybody is in perfect relationship, going around. And then we queered it up. We destroyed this magnificent thing that God had intended. You know what we did? You know what we did to the diagram?

Well, there's Eve out here, and there's Adam, and there's Cain, Abel, there's Gordon Fee, there's Steve. Put your own name in there. What did you do to the diagram? What did she do to the diagram? She tried to change the center, but not by moving herself into the center. She tried to change the center by making herself the new center. And what does that mean to all the rest? It means all the rest have to now function in her orbit. Adam is the center. Well, he's the center, and she's the center, and they're going to become, sometimes along the way, when those two worlds are going to collide. You know how it is. They're having a big dinner, and Eve has spent the whole day making sure that the company is going to be impressed by how nice the home looks, and she has made that home spit and polish, and she is tired. She has worked hard, and she has got to put on the dog. I mean, it's just. And Adam is out in the fields doing his hard work. He comes in in the middle of the afternoon, and he wants some attention, and he's got mud on his feet, and he walks over across her floor and plops himself down on the couch. And she says, "Oh, my poor, tired husband. He probably needs some water." She doesn't do that, huh? You braggingly bright so and so, what's the idea? You're coming in. And of course, he likes being talked to like that. And so he says, "Oh, my poor wife, I, you know, what do you mean yelling at me? I'm tired. Get me some coffee. I was doing this one time in a situation." I said, "And here is here is Eve raising Cain." The nature of human sin is that we're standing in the center of our own existence, and we cannot tolerate our kingdoms to be encroached.

Now, you understand what happens in salvation is the reversal and the redoing and putting it back right. The time of the kingdom of God means the time when God has his absolute sovereignty, and that time has entered into the present. That is, in the now that is now existing, and our whole present being is conditioned by that existence. And what that does, of course, is radicalizes us with regard to our ethic. Instead of our standing in the center of our own life over here and arranging the world, we now have a new center. We have come under new management. We don't belong to ourselves. And the one thing you've got to hear is that you don't have any rights. None whatsoever. None. You don't even have rights to breathe. You're dead. God has already pronounced his judgment of death upon you. You don't have a single solitary thing that you can say, "I have, I own, this is mine, I have a right." I belong to someone else totally. And that's what it means to get saved. And nothing short of that does it mean to get saved. This kind of tomfoolery that we've done in the evangelical world for so many years. We talk about people, "You've accepted Christ as your savior, but you have not taken him yet as your Lord." That's just sheer nonsense. The only possible way you can take Christ is as Lord. There is no such thing as savior without Lord. To get saved means to come under the rule of God. Nothing less than that. And therefore, it can't be anything more than that. That's the whole caboodle. It means to come under the rule of God. And therefore, our whole way of looking at the world is different.

Now, this is why I've been keeping saying along, that's why we've been set free to die too, you see. Doesn't matter anymore. We've been set free. We are simply free people. And we are free people because we can trust God with our lives, because he is now in the business of securing us. And we've been set free to live out this new life recklessly, with abandon, in the world, going around being a bunch of crazy Christians, loving the world to death for Jesus' sake. And if they spit on us, it doesn't matter. If they run over us, it doesn't matter. If they take our ten thousand dollars, it doesn't matter. We have been set free. We don't belong to this age, to this existence. We have been conditioned by the new age totally.

Now, what that's going to do is that's going to so radically change your ethic and your way of looking at the world that it's going to make a Christian out of you. God's still working on us. The great question, you say, the great thing that's going to happen now is that we're going to come under grace instead of law. Instead of asking, "Is it lawful?" because we're still trying to secure our own existence under law, we've simply been set free and are asking, "Is it, is it helpful? Is it beneficial?"

This is why the ethic of Jesus is so intolerable. Now, here, come on. If you don't think Jesus' ethic is intolerable, you're not even reading the same New Testament I am. Oh, I know some of those things are pretty nice, especially when it says, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." I think I'm meek, so I'm going to make it. You know, the guy that thinks he is, ain't you ever heard Matthew 5:20? That's a kind of an intolerable text, isn't it? "Except your righteousness exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, you can't even get into the kingdom." And I say, "Wait a minute. The scribes and the Pharisees spent all day long being righteous. They had finally transformed the law into a law of something like 299, 399, 200 and whatever it is, 200 plus 99, I think it is, laws under which they had some thousands of other ways of making sure that you obeyed those laws." I mean, they lived, ate, breathed, everything was conditioned by righteousness. And here he is talking to a bunch of sinners like ourselves who don't even have enough time in the day to be righteous, and we've got to work for a living. Jesus says, "Except your righteousness, go beyond theirs, exceed theirs. You're not even in the kingdom."

Now, I'll tell you, that text used to really disturb me. I used to turn the page real quick on that one because I didn't know what to do with that saying of Jesus until finally it came through my thick head that Jesus is not talking about quantity at all. He's talking about quality, a radical different kind. "Except your righteousness, go beyond the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. Accept it. Be of a radically different kind than theirs." What kind was theirs? Theirs was conditioned by law. The law said, "Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not kill." So as long as I stay on this side of the fence, I'm okay. You know, it's like the guy says, "I'm a good guy. I don't beat my wife." Well, bully for you. You know, I, so what?

When our oldest, Mark, was three years old, and Cherith was one and a half, I was pastor of a church, and I have a thing about being on time. Typical American hang-up. I'm still hung up on it, but I'm not so uptight about it. But I was pastor, at least I had to be there on time. And those two twerps were sitting at the table, and they were they were taking their bully good time. I mean, they just weren't in our, they weren't going to hurry for anybody. Cake and milk, sitting at the table. And boy, I finally descended. My kingdom was at stake, you know. And I gave it to her. I said, "You get to drinking that milk." You know, I don't know, it's all I said, but I said it in such a way that she heard the message. She reached out to grab her milk, and it went all over the table and all over the floor. And boy, was I ever hot. Then out of the mouth of babes, I was in the process of giving her all the business, and boy, I was really ready to preach that night. You can understand. That's the time I better lay the law on them. Mark pipes up and says, "Daddy, I'm a good boy, aren't I? I didn't spill my milk." It's like he put a knife in my. I had taught that three-year-old boy to define goodness in terms of not spilling milk. What am I doing to this kid? "I'm a good boy. I didn't spill milk."

Listen to the rich young ruler. "What lack I yet?" "Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not bear false witness." "All these I have kept from my youth up." He would have been the Christ ambassador's president, any assembly of God church on the face of the earth, the young people's president. He's coming to the right person, asking the right question. He's got money. He's, you know, he's good. He's good. You can't fault this chap. He is absolutely without fault. He's never killed anybody. Jesus says, "Except your righteousness, go beyond that." His came to the line and stopped. He never killed his neighbor, but he never loved his neighbor.

Now, you hear what I'm saying? Jesus isn't saying you can leave him passively alone. It isn't a matter of not killing that neighbor. If you have this world's goods and you shut up your heart, then you are as good as condemning your neighbor, and you are as good as killing your neighbor, and therefore you are condemned. Now, that's pretty harsh words, but that's the way it is. Jesus looked at him and said, "If you'll be perfect, go and sell what you have and come and follow me, and give to the poor and come and follow me." And he says, "Man, if that's what it takes, count me out." And I want you to know that it says Jesus loved him and said that to him. How is it love that speaks like that to a person? Because he would have loved him less that he said anything less. He would have soaked his way to hell because he had defined righteousness in terms of not killing. And Jesus says, "Except your righteousness, go beyond that."

And therefore, he begins to talk ethically in chapter six of Matthew. Chapter five of Matthew, you have heard it said, "Thou shalt not kill." But I say to you, "No anger." And you say, "He's got to be kidding. No anger?" I mean, look, I'm not going to kill the so-and-so, but surely he's not going to take the privilege of my hating him. "No anger." And the reason, "no anger," is precisely because that person with whom you are angry happens to be one whom God has loved to death through his Son. And you don't have any right to be angry with somebody whom God loves. It's not a prerogative. It's not an option. It's an absolute. "No anger." "No anger," precisely because anger is an expression of selfishness. Why are you angry? You're angry because there's a situation out there you can't handle. And as long as you can't handle it, you've got to get angry at it.

Well, all of that is essential to this text because they're finally in that passage, Jesus, among other things, he says, "By the way, no divorce." Now, you know why Jesus said no divorce? Because in the same series of texts, he said, "Love your enemies." It's all right. You can laugh, but that's only half facetious. Divorce is predicated on selfishness. Even those who say, "I've got rights to divorce because I've got a right to make a new life for myself." No, you don't. The only right you have is to give your life in love for the sake of this one who is trying to do you in. You don't belong to yourself. And it doesn't matter anymore, anyway. See, you've been set free to love this your enemy who lives in your own home. But it's an intolerable situation.

"Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?" And the reason one can say that is precisely because you've been set free. God has come and established his rule over you. And this person who is making life intolerable for you is a person whom God loves. And your relationship to that person is a relationship of giving your own life. Now, I know that's not very easy teaching, but that's Jesus. It gets worse. It says, "You have heard it said, 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.'" And that's a pretty good law for sinners. Who can fault that? You know what that says is that if you take my eye, I don't get two of yours. Says I only get one of yours. It's a pretty good law for sinners. But Jesus said, "If a man strikes you on one cheek, you turn the other cheek." No retaliation. No retaliation. That's the one where that's the one where I have my difficulties. You know, "What do you mean, no retaliation?"

I was teaching one time at Southern Cal College in the chapel. I can remember this because this was one of those happy moments when you say the wrong thing and it becomes the right thing. They had they had a clock on the wall, and 120 people. This is a class. In fact, I think when Joan Stevens was in this class, she might remember this because it was one of those sort of what I call riotous moments. I was in, I was doing teaching about Jesus at that time, and we were going through this, and I was saying that, "Now look, this is not, this is not a law that you have to abide by, you understand." And I'm saying that to you now. "This is not a law that you have to abide by in order to be." This is a description of what you're going to be like once you are, you know, finally. It says at the end, "Be perfect as the Father." That isn't talking about Christian perfection. That's talking about our becoming what we are, namely, being like the Father. He has, in fact, made us his children. He has given the Spirit of his Son in our lives so that he might reproduce that very thing in us. And what does God look like? Well, he looks like the Son. And what does the Son look like? He looks exactly like Matthew chapter five. No anger. No retaliation. You know, love. Perfect honesty.

So I was, but I was in a hurry, and I had to get, you know, finished with my notes. And I said, "A Christian may be described as one in whom there is no anger. A Christian may be described as a person for whom there is for absolute honesty. A Christian may be described as a person for whom there's no divorce. A Christian may be described as a person who, when struck in one face, turns the other face." And the place he erupted. Then we went over time for just a couple minutes. Serendipity. Absolutely beautiful mistake. That's the way most of us are. That's the way most of us are. We've got a lot of faces.

A couple of hours ago, we were singing, and "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." And piety was written on your faces. That's good. That's what I call my Sunday face. But on Monday, the neighbor's dog came over and dug up my tulips, and off goes my Sunday face, and on comes my Monday face, and goes and knocks on that neighbor's door and said, "You keep that dog out of my yard, or I'm going to set poison out for it." A really loving thing to do, you know. And Wednesday, I'm in a hurry to get to school, and the freeways, the autobahns in Los Angeles are pretty good, you know, style four lanes broad, 55, 65 miles an hour, 80, 90 kilometers an hour. There's some dear little old lady in the inside lane, 35 miles an hour. You finally worked your way around her. Get off that old lady. But on Sunday, see, Jesus said, "A Christian may be described as a person's got one face and a thousand sides to it." And it seems to me that too many of us have too many faces, a face for every occasion.

The Apostle Peter finally gets the point, doesn't he? He says, "Lord, how many times must I forgive?" Now, I trust that you observe that. That's a Jewish question, you observe that. "How many times must I forgive? Where are the limits?" You know, "Where's the law? The fence?" Can you imagine forgiving somebody seven times? You gotta have, you gotta have some comic relief when you come to the ethic of the Christian, because otherwise, uh, it'll do you in. It's supposed to do you in anyway. But that's the point. Something, you know, you know, there's only one of two reasons why somebody hits you in the face. Either you've got it coming, or you don't. If you've got it coming, what's her to say? But if you don't have it coming, and you hit back, what do you do? Well, you increase the evil, see. But if you take it, you absorb the evil. It dies right there. But if you hit back, you simply increase the evil. You become like he is.

So Peter gets hit in the face, and he says, "I'm finally learning my Christian lessons. I forgive you." The guy hits him in the face a second time. He says, "Man, I forgive you for that." And he hits him a third time, and he says, "I forgive you." Then he took a fourth time, and he says, "That's four." And then he says, "Five, six, seven. One more time." How many times is he forgiven? None, right? Because you can't keep track. You can't keep count and forgive at the same time. Those are mutually exclusive options. If you're counting the number of times you've forgiven, you've never forgiven once. You know how many times you have to forgive? Well, try the number Jesus gave, which means a number of infinity. Or put it this way, you have to forgive as many times as God has forgiven you.

And somebody says, "Oh, that's easy for God. He's God." You know, it's easy for God to forgive. You think it's easy for God to forgive? If you think it's easy for God to forgive, because somehow God has a different kind of a forgiving system than you and I have, then I want you to go sit in front of the cross and just stay there for a while. And if you think it's easy for God to forgive, the cross is the thing that tells us that God takes our sin far more seriously than you do and I do. He takes it so seriously that he's allowing and ready for the disruption of the very Trinity, for the death of his Son.

I had a missionary friend one time in West Africa who finally caught me. He says, "Okay, Gordon, I hear you. But I want to know one thing. What would you do if you came into your home and you found that somebody had killed your daughter and was raping your wife?" What would you do then? I stopped for a moment, and then I had to answer in honesty. I don't know what I would do. I think I know myself well enough to know that I don't know what I would do. That scares me to death, you understand. I don't know what I would do. I fear what I might do. And I told him, "I'll tell you what I would want to do." You know what I would want to do in that moment? I would want to treat that man the way God treated me when I killed his Son. And my word to you is, if I'm going to respond like that in a moment like that, then God's going to have to give me grace to start responding like that before that big crisis comes, because I'm going to respond in the big crisis the way I'm responding in the little ones right along the way.

Now, friends, this is the ethic of the Christian. We have been called to this imperative. It is a joyous life, you understand. It is a joyous life because we are free. It is only a free man who can love like this. It is only a free person who can respond with love when he's being done in. That is why Paul says in First Corinthians 9, and that was a text we were going to look at today. He says in 9:1, "Am I not free?" And then 9:19, he says, "For though I myself am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win the more." That is the heart of the Christian ethic. "I am free from all men." There is not a single human being who has hold on my life. I am under nobody. No one can dictate my life and my responses. I am free.

Now, hear me well. If there is a single person on the face of this earth whose feet you would be unwilling to wash, or to whom you would be unwilling to submit in service in some way or another, you are not free to the degree that that person has that kind of hold on your life that will not allow you to freely serve him. Do you understand me? If it's parents, if it's somebody back home, if it's somebody in this community, if it's somebody who has taken his authority to his head, and it galls you to the very depth of your being that you have to obey that knucklehead who's up above you, if you are not free to serve, then you are not free. Because true freedom means freedom to become enslaved to every human being. That's the nature of freedom.

You are an absolutely free person in Christ Jesus. He has set you free from the law and its demands. He has set you free from the law of sin and the flesh. You have been set free by the Spirit to live out this brand new life. And it's a life of service. It's a life of giving oneself. It's a life of dying, of simply living out in the world freely, with abandon. And that's why it is also such a life of joy. They can't touch you. They can't get at you. And it's going to make them angry, and they're going to hit you harder, but they can't get you. They can't touch you. And they know it, and it drives them. You know, it's like that sign I saw one time. It says, "Love your enemies. It'll drive them nuts." It's true. It'll drive them nuts. And the reason it does is because they can't control you. And it makes them infuriated because they can't control you.

Now, I've got myself so far off base, and we're not going to finish that second part of First Corinthians, but it's all right. It all has to do with this first part of First Corinthians, and it's an important part of the New Testament. "Why not rather suffer wrong?" And you know that we finally come along in, in the, in the place where we simply recognize ourselves, those who are being conditioned by the future, totally free. The best illustration of this in the New Testament is Philippians. Philippians. The Apostle Paul is in jail in Rome. And watch out for this guy, because this guy's going to get you one way or the other. He's going to get you. You let him loose, and he's going to turn the world upside down. You put him in prison, and he's going to turn your prison upside down. He concludes the letter to the Philippians with this nice little note, and "all the saints greet you, including those of Caesar's household." Once came the saints from Caesar's household. Pray tell me. And so Paul says, "I want you to know how it is with me. I'm in prison." Oh, boy. Say, this guy's a nut. Yeah, he's a gloriously free Christian nut. "I'm in prison." Oh, boy. What do you mean, old boy? Says, "Well, he said, my imprisonment has fallen out for the furtherance of the gospel." Says, "Even my enemies are getting stirred up and going around preaching Christ." And I'm going to rejoice in that too, because I don't count, but the gospel does, and the gospel is being preached. And so I rejoice. And I want you to rejoice. "Rejoice, and again I say, rejoice." Sixteen times, joy. Rejoice in prison. You know what I'd have done in that prison? I'd have sat down and told God that he didn't know what he was about. Hey, I'm the Apostle of the Gentiles. How can you get the job done out of the world with me in this prison? I mean, I'm so important to your cause that the thing's not going to happen. Come on, Lord, where's the deliverance? Deliverance, that's the name of the Christian glory game. Get me out of here. He says, "Well, he says, I'll tell you how it's like. I don't really know that I'm going to make it or not. I might get out." In fact, he says, "I probably gonna make it." You know, "Shucks." He says, "But he says, it doesn't matter. For me to live is Christ, to die is gain." So I win. When I win, I win. When I live, and I win when I die. I win all the time. There's no way you can beat him. No way. The reason you can't beat him is because he's a free man in Christ Jesus. If the trial turns out to his death, he wins. If the trial turns out to his deliverance, he wins. He wins when he wins. He wins when he loses. He wins. He wins because he's Christ's free man. That's what we've been called to. Life in Christ is a life of joy. Joy precisely because we are the free children of God. And when Paul asks the great Christian question, "Why not suffer wrong? Why not rather suffer wrong?" Then the word penetrates into our hearts and say, "Ah, yeah, that's the way it is." And we go to a brother and ask forgiveness, or tell him that we forgive him, and try to make it right and get the thing going again. It's a great life. I commend it to you not because I'm the paragon of it, but because the Lord at least has given me the urgency to want to be getting there. It's so beautifully attractive to me that I want the Lord to start working in me better and better, because that's the Christian life.