Day: October 15, 2023

“Be ye kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another,
even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”

Paul’s strong and powerful words are complemented and illustrated wonderfully in the Gospel. The teaching of both is, perhaps, best concentrated for us in the Collect: “forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee: Mercifully grant that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts.” For the readings all turn on the question about what is moving in our hearts. In short, the emphasis is upon the qualities of Christ present or absent in us and in ways that challenge our thinking.

Have we learned Christ? Have we heard him? Have we been taught by him, “as the truth is in Jesus”? The question is put to us directly, not as external rebuke but as the strong reminder of our new creation in Christ, having put off “the old manhood” – the term is inclusive, our old sinful humanity (τον παλαιον ανθρωπον) – and putting on “the new manhood” (τον καιον ανθρωπον), our humanity as made new in Christ. How? By being “renewed in the spirit of your mind.” This is altogether about our sanctification, literally, “the holiness of truth,” the complete counter to our current intellectual and spiritual despair of truth in a world of lies and deceit.

This has to do with the quality of our lives together in the body of Christ. We are bidden to put away lying and speak truth to each other because “we are members one of another.” We are not isolated, autonomous beings; we have our life and being with one another in the body of Christ. Paul’s words unpack the whole meaning of our life in Christ in thoughtful but shocking ways. “Be ye angry,” he says! What! Isn’t our world angry enough and way too angry? Yes. But there is a place for righteous anger about things which should disturb us because they diminish and destroy what belongs to the truth of our humanity. Such is the righteous wrath of Christ in the cleansing of the temple, to take but one example. “Be ye angry but sin not.” Don’t let your wrath possess you. “Let not the sun go down on your wrath: neither give place to the devil.”

There is nothing here that is mere ‘feel goody-goodism’ or obsessive self-righteousness. It is really about a kind of critical self-appraisal but without wallowing in self-pity. He goes on to consider the forms of our relationship with one another; not stealing but labouring, “working with [our] hands the thing which is good” but doing so for the good of others as well, “that [we] may have to give to him that needeth.” Once again, the emphasis is on the ethical, upon our being together as “members one of another.” So too with our speech which is not about evil talk but about what edifies and builds up and “ministers grace to the hearers.” All of these exhortations belong to the Holy Spirit moving in us without which we risk grieving the Holy Spirit, in effect denying the Spirit of Truth in self-contradiction, and negating our being in God. The Epistle sums up in a magisterial fashion what we are to put away from ourselves and what we are to do: “Be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”

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