Romans 13:8-14
Putting on Jesus
James Sledge September
10, 2023
If you watch television at all, you likely
have encountered advertisements for the supplement Prevagen. The ads typically
feature someone talking about how they noticed they weren’t as sharp as they
once were, but after they began taking Prevagen, they saw a marked improvement
in their memory and mental acuity.
The ads also tout that such results are
clinically proven. What they don’t tell you is that this clinical study was
just 10 individuals, that the study was done by the company that owns Prevagen.
They’ve also been sued by the FTC over the claims and agreed to put in a small
disclaimer.
Numerous scientific and medical
authorities have stated categorically that there is no way for Prevagen to work
as it’s advertised. Apparently the active ingredient has to make it into the
brain intact to have any effect, but this ingredient is easily digested and
broken down by the body and so never reaches the brain.
I’ve noticed in some of the more recent
commercials that they’ve added the phrase, “available without a prescription.”
This clearly implies some sort of significant medical value to the product,
despite the fact that this disclaimer is on the package. “These statements have
not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not
intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.”
The advertising for Prevagen borders on
deceptive, and no doubt the company has an army of lawyers who research just
how far the company can go without actually breaking the law.
I have little doubt that some of these
lawyers, and certainly some of the people who work for the company, are church
goers who think of themselves as good and faithful people. If anyone were to
challenge them on that they would surely say they weren’t doing anything
illegal, and besides, faith is a private thing between them and God.
Donald Trump used this last defense when
Pope Francis publicly stated that some of Trump’s inklings were not Christian.
Said Trump, “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is
disgraceful. I am proud to be a Christian. No leader, especially a religious
leader, should have the right to question another man’s religion or faith,”[1]
I have a feeling that both the Apostle
Paul, as well as Jesus, would disagree with that statement. In our gospel
reading today Jesus speaks of the church correcting members who sin, and Paul
is clear that his understanding of the faith calls for people to love one
another. He even says that love is the fulfillment of the law because Love
does no wrong to a neighbor.
For Paul, to be in Christ transforms one
from conforming to the ways of the world, what Paul typically labels “the
flesh,” to the way of Jesus. This is above all the way of love. The person who
has put on the Lord Jesus Christ, as Paul exhorts his readers to
do, will no longer measure their actions by whether or not they can say they
are legal. Instead they will only do what does no wrong to a neighbor.
It is most unfortunate that Paul’s words
on being saved by grace through faith have been distorted to mean that it only
matters what you believe, not what you do. Despite his insistence that we are
saved by God’s grace and not our works, Paul nonetheless, in all of his
letters, exhorts people to very specific sorts of behavior, just as he does in
our reading today.
To be in Christ is
to become a new creation who acts out the grace and love received from God. I
think Paul would agree with Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount that
says, “Thus you will know them by their fruits.”
There has been a quote bouncing around on
Facebook of late which I also shared on my page. It’s from Kurt Struckmeyer’s
book A Conspiracy of Love, and it says this.
At the heart of Christianity is a powerful
ethic. It is what the first followers of Jesus call The Way – a way of
living based on love and compassion, reconciliation and forgiveness, inclusion
and acceptance, generosity and justice. This ethic is what makes Christianity
good. Without it, Christians can become rigid and intolerant, self-righteous
and condemning, hate filled and violent, selfish and unjust. In other words,
without the ethic of Jesus, Christians can represent the worst humanity has to
offer.[2]
That’s a rather stunning statement.
Christians can represent the worst humanity has to offer if they are not guided
by the way of Jesus. Believing in Jesus does not necessitate following the way
of Jesus. Even having a relationship with Jesus does not necessarily mean
walking in the way of Jesus, and I think Paul is speaking of the way of Jesus
when he calls his readers to put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
To be honest, I do not understand why so
many people who are adamant in their declarations of Christian faith seem to
have missed the part about putting on Christ. To put on Jesus, to wear Jesus
like clothing, is to manifest Jesus with one’s life. Wearing Jesus means that
other people will see Jesus when they look at you, and that means they will see
love. They will see a pattern of behavior that does no wrong to a neighbor.
I wonder what would happen if those
working at the advertising agency creating commercials for Prevagen put on
Christ and so asked themselves whether or not what they were doing did any
wrong to a neighbor. I wonder the same about all sorts of companies that make
their money off a tricking people into signing up for paid membership that they
thought was free. I wonder about legal advice that helps a company skirt the
law. What would happen if all these people cared and asked, does this injure my
neighbor?
It seems to me that there are occupations
that would be off limits for those who are in Christ, who put on Christ. But
the question of whether something harms my neighbor is bigger than just jobs.
Does how I spend or invest my money harm my neighbor? Does how I vote harm my
neighbor? Does how I live my life harm my neighbor. Paul says that for the
Christian, the answer needs to be, ‘No,” for Love does no wrong to a
neighbor.
Of course it’s a pipe dream to think that
people who run deceptive businesses, who worry about profits above all else,
who care only for themselves, will suddenly start to worry about whether their
actions harm their neighbor. And when the Apostle Paul writes to the church in Rome,
he has no expectation that the world will suddenly be motivated and guided
primarily by love, but he does fully expect that to be the way things are in
the church.
In the Presbyterian Book of Order there
is a hundred-year-old statement labeled “The Great Ends of the Church.” Ends here
refers to the church’s primary reasons for existing. The last in the list of
six reads, “the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.”[3]
In other words, it is our job as the church to show the world what things look
like when we put on the Lord Jesus Christ, when we wear Jesus and
so are guided by love of God and neighbor.
But Paul doesn’t expect this to happen
just because we are trying hard to please God. Rather Paul expects this to flow
naturally from encountering the incredible love, the amazing grace, the
unexpected embrace of God in Jesus that would go so far as a cross to reach out
to us.
A famous theologian, when asked to sum up
his life’s work in a single sentence, supposedly replied with the words of a
song he learned as a child. “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me
so.”[4]
To know that fully, to realize that God’s love in Christ is there for us with
no ifs, ands, or buts, is to be held securely in something that frees us to
live differently, to live out the way of Jesus. And oh, how the world needs
more people, and especially needs more Christians, whose lives show Christ to
the world.
[1]
“Pope Francis Questions Donald Trump’s Christianity,” BBC.com, February 16,
2016
[2]
Kurt Struckmeyer, A Conspiracy of Love: Following Jesus in a Postmodern
World (p. 202). (Eugene OR: Resource Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and
Stock Publishers, 2016), Kindle Edition, p. 202
[3] Book
of Order, F-1.0304
[4]
Attributed to Karl Barth, see www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/01/did-karl-barth-really-say-jesus-loves-me-this-i-know/
