• "What is the Logic of Holy Behavior?"
• Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent
• March 14, 2004
• The Reverend Stephen C. Scarlett

To get the Christian life right, we need to understand not only what we are supposed to do but why we are supposed to do it. Today's epistle (Ephesians 5:1-14) helps us to understand the logic of behavioral change in the Christian life.

The epistle says, "Be ye...followers of God as dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us as an offering to God." The word follow means, literally, to imitate. We are to imitate God the Father because we have become his children. We are to walk in love because we have experienced God's love-"Christ has loved us and given himself for us."

Our moral behavior, or better, our holiness, is the product of the response to our experience of God's grace. The epistle is saying, "Christ died for you freely and graciously. God has forgiven you and adopted you." The logical response to the grace of adoption is the life of holiness.

Most people get the Christian life backwards. They hear the behavioral prescriptions and prohibitions in the Bible and think, "These are all of the things I have to do to get God to accept me." But the good news that comes to us through Jesus Christ is that God has already accepted us. As Romans says, "God shows his love towards us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

We see this in the Old Testament. The Ten Commandment came after the Exodus. God saved Israel from Egypt by the blood of the Passover lamb and the parting of the Red Sea. Then God brought his redeemed people to Mt. Sinai and gave them the Torah. God declared Israel to be his people as an act of grace. Israel was to obey the Torah out of gratitude, in response to God's great act of redemption.

We see this in the sacraments. We do not bring any merits with us to the font. We come to baptism as sinners. In baptism God establishes a covenant relationship with us. He adopts us and gives us his Holy Spirit. Holy behavior is the appropriate response to the grace given to us in baptism.

We do not come to the altar of God with a list of our meritorious works. We come in repentance and faith. In the Eucharist, we experience anew the grace of forgiveness and adoption through the sacrifice of Christ. We renew the covenant privilege of boldly calling God "Our Father." We go forth to do good works in response to the grace of the sacrament.

The Christian life of holiness and obedience can never rightly be seen as anything other than a response to the great saving work of God in our lives. God does not love us because we are able to obey the commandments. We obey the commandments because God loves us.

When we understand the logic of holy behavior, it gives us wisdom concerning disobedient behavior. When people do not do the things they ought to do as Christians, the reason is usually not a mere lack of effort. The reason is that they do not understand what God has done for them. The love of God has not yet pierced their hearts. The grace of God has not yet begun to shape their experience of life.

Often Christians respond to unfaithful behavior with the attempt to make people feel guilty. Why aren't you doing what you are supposed to be doing? Why aren't you in church? Why aren't you giving what you should? Why are you doing the bad things you are doing? If you don't stop, God will punish you!

Now, at times we must be warned. We must be cognizant, even, of the reality and possibility of hell. But I don't know one person who was ever moved to a life of holiness by feelings of guilt or fear alone. Guilt must lead to repentance and repentance to the experience of forgiveness and grace. Grace, and grace alone, produces holy behavior.

The New Testament, particularly St. Paul, responds to disobedience not by heaping guilt upon people but by referring back to the grace of God: Don't you remember what God has done for you in Christ? Don't you remember the grace of your baptism? Don't you remember that you are now a child of God? Behave in a manner worthy of your calling.

All of the prohibitions of the epistle-fornication, uncleanness, covetousness-are said to be "not convenient." This means "not fitting." That is to say, it is not fitting that a child of God should be involved in fornication, uncleanness or covetousness. That behavior is the product of the old, pre- Christian nature. It is a product of life in darkness. Children of God imitate God. They walk in light. They practice what is good and right and true.

The failure to do what we ought in worship, stewardship, service and obedience is a symptom that we have either forgotten the grace of God or have never experienced it in the first place. The great error in the religious practice of many is that they have a form of religion that is not animated by the grace and love of God. Thus, it becomes cold, rote, ingrown and stifling. Religion not animated by God's love and grace can produce rules, legalism, guilt and fear, but not holiness.

This is why we must constantly remember what God has done for us in Christ. Ephesians says, "God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together in Christ-by grace you have been saved" (2:5).

We need to remember but we are forgetful people. In the rush of life, in the face of the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil, we forget that Christ shed his precious blood on the cross in order that each one of us might be forgiven and reconciled with God.

This is why Jesus said, "Do this in remembrance of me." We come to the altar to renew the experience of grace, to remember again who we are in Christ. We come to plead again the merits of the eternal sacrifice that saves us. We come to be cleansed again, to be touched again by the love and grace of God. There is nothing we can do to earn or merit this grace. All we can do is receive it and let grace have its transforming impact on our lives.

"Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us as an offering to God."