Works righteousness: Salvation through good karma.

WORKS RIGHTEOUSNESS 'wərks raɪ.tʃəs.nəs noun. A right standing (with God or others) achieved through good deeds.

Works righteousness is how the world works. We tend to call it karma: If we want people to think of us as good, upstanding, deserving, even holy, we’ve gotta publicly do good deeds. Like doing charity work, making big donations, rescuing needy people, doing stuff for the public good. Not just the stuff ordinary citizens do, and should do, like follow the laws and not be jerks. It’s gotta be actions which go above and beyond.

Or (and this is the much harder way, although many people prefer it ’cause it’s quicker and passive) we’ve gotta suffer a catastrophic loss. One which totally doesn’t seem to fit our circumstances. Like getting a deadly disease, surviving a disaster, losing all your stuff in that disaster, losing all your family in that disaster… basically, Job’s story. He was a really good guy, yet lost all his kids and stuff in a single day. Jb 1 Stuff that’ll make people sympathetic, or even cry.

See, people presume the universe oughta balance things out. Good things should happen to good people, right?—and bad things to bad. When circumstances expose the truth—that the universe is random and meaningless—people are outraged at this illusion getting shattered, feel things are just wrong… and frequently take it upon themselves to fix things. (Then claim, “See? The universe balanced things out.” Yeah, not without human help.) People pour out support to the needy… and y’notice it’s sometimes entirely out of proportion. More than once I’ve seen a news story in which someone’s in need, and the public donated so much money, 100 other people could’ve been helped by it. Sometimes the needy people pass some of that generosity along; sometimes they don’t, but that seldom makes the news.

But as you can see, the world runs on works righteousness. On karma.

The kingdom of God, by contrast, runs on grace. God’s people don’t get what we deserve, much less what people think we merit. Instead we get what God wants to give us, and that’s a lot. Way more than we can ever ask or think. Ep 3.20 He wants to give us his kingdom.

For a whole lot of Christians this idea hasn’t entirely sunk in. When we come to Jesus, we bring our existing ideas, including our existing wrong ideas, with us. One of ’em is the idea we owe God big-time. After all, look how much he’s done for us! But we often conclude we gotta pay him back. You’ll even hear Christians claim this is why we’ve gotta do good deeds: We owe God. We’ll never ever be able to make it up to him; not even after a trillion years of good deeds… but we should try.

Which is simply nuts. And goes against everything God’s trying to teach us about grace. We’re supposed to give without expecting anything back, Lk 6.35 because that’s how our Father gives.

But karma is so pervasive in every human culture, even those of us who know God does grace instead of karma, try to make it up to him in big or small ways. We don’t always do stuff for God out of pure gratitude. We’re still trying to balance out our infinite karmic debt to an infinite God. Good luck with all that.

Nah. The reason we Christians are to be holy and good is because it’s what God instructs us to do. It’s not to earn anything, not to pay anything back, not for any other reason than love. If you love God, do as he says. Jn 14.15 If you don’t really, you won’t really. But forget about earning his love; you already have it. Forget about earning his favor; you already have it. That karma stuff only works on humans. Not God.

Holiness… versus goodness.

SANCTIFY 'sæŋ(k).tə.faɪ verb. Set apart as holy.

2. Have blessed, made legitimate through a religious sanction, or made to seem legitimate through custom and tradition.

3. Purify from sin.

[Sanctification sæŋ(k).tə.fə'keɪ.ʃən noun, sanctifier 'sæŋ(k).tə.faɪ(.ə)r noun.]

I bring up the popular definition of sanctify because I wanna point out what we English-speakers mean by sanctification, is not what the scriptures mean.

I’ve read loads of Christian books about sanctification. One in particular, which I read five years ago: The author went on and on and on about sin, how it taints humanity, and how Christians ought not do it. (And, well, duh.) But the more he wrote on the subject, the more obvious it became he was addressing his own particular hangups. Certain sins he found really nasty, so he spent a lot of time really pounding away at those sins like a carpenter trying to put thin nails into thick wood: Stop doing those things! You’re making baby Jesus cry.

Thing is, he wasn’t actually writing about sanctification. He was writing about goodness.

Christians mix the two ideas up all the time. Seriously, all the time. I challenge you to find a writing where the author recognizes there’s any difference between the two. And there is a difference. Holiness is about being set apart for God’s purposes. Holy means we’re not like anything else. That definition of sanctify I started this article with?—it’s definition #1, and only definition #1. The other definitions are the product of Christian popular culture. Christians are perfectly happy to settle for mere goodness.

But God tells us kids, “Be holy because I’m holy.” Lv 11.44-45, 1Pe 1.16 God’s different from everything else, and if we’re following him, the natural consequence is we would be different from everything else. And when the LORD said “be holy” in the scriptures, he wasn’t talking about goodness! Check out the context:

Leviticus 11.41-47 NASB

41 “Now every swarming thing that swarms on the earth is detestable, not to be eaten. 42 Whatever crawls on its belly, and whatever walks on all fours, whatever has many feet, in regard to every swarming thing that swarms on the earth, you shall not eat them, because they are detestable. 43 Do not make yourselves detestable through any of the swarming things that swarm; and you shall not make yourselves unclean with them so that you become unclean. 44 For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, because I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean with any of the swarming things that swarm on the earth. 45 For I am the LORD who brought you up from the land of Egypt, to be your God; so you shall be holy, because I am holy.”

46 This is the law regarding the animal and the bird, and every living thing that moves in the waters and everything that swarms on the earth, 47 to make a distinction between the unclean and the clean, and between the edible creature and the creature which is not to be eaten.

Yeah: God was talking about the kosher rules; about ritual cleanliness. Not goodness, not sins: Animals the Hebrews can eat, versus animals they can’t—because people of other nations eat any animals they please, with no thought to anything but their taste buds, and God didn’t want these particular Hebrews to be like any other nation. He wanted ’em unique.

He still wants us unique. Holy.

Christians who teach on sanctification, zero in on being good. That’s not nothing! We oughta be good. God is good, so we should be good like he is. When we’re not, we’re clearly not following him. I’m certainly not saying God’s okay with evil. But goodness is only a product of sanctification. It’s not the same thing.

So if we’re gonna be holy, we have to be more than merely good. We gotta be different.

What, you thought there were only 10 commandments?

Most Christians are familiar with the fact there are 10 commandments. Not so familiar with the actual 10 commands, Ex 20.1-17, Dt 5.6-21 but we do tend to know there are 10 of them, and it wouldn’t hurt to live by them. In fact the Christian nationalists among us think it’d be a good idea for the whole of the United States to live by them… although it’s a bit of a puzzler how we might simultaneously enforce “You’ll have no other gods before me” Ex 20.3 and “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Amendment 1

Some of us have also heard the idea there are 12 commandments. Where’d the extra two come from? Well, someone once asked Jesus his opinion on the greatest command.

Mark 12.28-31 CSB

28 One of the scribes approached. When he heard them debating and saw that Jesus answered them well, he asked him, “Which command is the most important of all?”

29 Jesus answered, “The most important is Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Dt 6.4 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. Dt 6.4-5, Js 22.5 31 The second is, Love your neighbor as yourself. Lv 19.18 There is no other command greater than these.”

Since these two commands aren’t among the 10, certain Christians tack ’em on at the end.

But there’s far from just 12 commands. There’s 613.

Technically there are even more than 613. But when you combine redundant commands—namely all the commands repeated in Deuteronomy, like the 10 commandments Dt 5.1-21 —you get 613 of them. Or at least that was the conclusion of Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon of Spain (1135-1204, also called Maimonides by westerners, Rambam by Jews). Moshe listed them in his book Sefer Hamitzvot/“Book of Good Deeds.” He had slightly different priorities than Jesus, which is why he put loving God at 3 and 4 in his list, and loving neighbors at 13.

These commands are mostly for everyone. There are many Levite- and priest-specific commands, which don’t apply to the general population. (Although Pharisees customarily practiced ’em anyway, figuring all Jews oughta be as ritually clean as priests.) There are also many gender-specific commands, which apply to men and not women, or women and not men.

And let’s be honest: There is a double standard in the Law. Women and men may be equal in Christ, Ga 3.28 but not under Law. Fr’instance there’s a test for a wife’s faithfulness, Nu 5.11-30 but no such thing for husbands. ’Cause patriarchy. Under that system, men could have sex with any woman in their household. The Law abolished many of patriarchy’s customs—no they couldn’t have sex with just anyone they wished. But though abolishing patriarchy was God’s ultimate goal, with only monogamous people in leadership, 1Ti 3.2, 12 with men loving their wives like Christ loves his church, Ep 5.25 he didn’t do this outright in his Law. Though certainly the test of a wife’s faithfulness under the Law was considerably better than the previous patriarchal custom… which was to kill her without a trial. Ge 38.24

The Prodigal Son Story, part 1.

Luke 15.11-20A.

Our English word prodigal means “wasteful.” But over time—after generations of average people never bothering to look up “prodigal” in a dictionary—people presumed prodigal has to do with the son in this story leaving his family. Hence prodigal has taken on a second definition, “a person who leaves home with the intent to be dissolute.” A prodigal son isn’t just a trust fund baby who recklessly wastes money; he’s fleeing his family so he can go to the big city and sin himself raw. Because that’s kinda what the prodigal son in Jesus’s story did.

But no, it’s not precisely what he did.

I’m gonna analyze half the story now, and the other half later. Lots of Christians have unpacked this story, and mostly (and rightly) just focused on the moral of the story: The father is overjoyed that his son came home, and welcomes him unconditionally, as will our heavenly Father when we repent. And sometimes they focus on the elder son’s bad attitude. And sometimes they spend way too much time speculating on what the prodigal’s various big-city sins were… kinda like the elder son. Funny how a lot of those sins have nothing to do with the text of Jesus’s parable; they’re pure speculation based on pure projection. They say an awful lot about what the preacher might do with a big pile of cash.

Well anyway. Off to the story. Which is usually called “the Prodigal Son,” or by people who wanna avoid the ambiguity of what prodigal means, either “the Wasteful Son” or “the Lost Son.” Or if they wanna focus on the happy ending, “the Loving Father” or “the Forgiving Father”—or if the focus is on the disgruntled brother, “the Two Brothers” or “the Prodigal Son and the Unforgiving Brother.” Clearly I don’t have a problem with the original popular title.

Luke 15.11-20 KWL

11 Jesus says, “A certain person has two sons,

12 and the younger of them tells his father,

‘Father, give me the part of the property coming to me.’

So the father divides his living between them.

13 After not many days, gathering everything,

the younger son journeys to a distant land,

and there he squanders his property in excessive living.

14 Once he’s spent everything, a severe recession hits that land,

and he begins to be in need.

15 Going to stay with a citizen of that land,

the citizen sends him into his fields to feed swine.

16 He longs to gorge himself on the husks the swine eat,

and no one gives him anything.

 

17 “Coming to his senses, he says,

‘How many of my father’s employees abound in bread

while I’m being destroyed by this recession?

18 I will get up and go to my father.

I will tell him, ‘Father, I sinned against heaven and before you.

19 I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.

Make me like one of your employees.’

20A And getting up, he goes to his father.”

How elders must encourage fellow Christians to behave.

Titus 2.1-10.

Throughout ancient literature, sages would put together a list of rules for how every person’s meant to fulfill their role in a family. Husbands act like this, wives act like that. Sons do this, daughters do that. Male slaves do this, female slaves do that. Scholars call them household codes. We find a few of them in the bible too. Like today’s passage.

The list in Titus likewise includes slaves, because slavery was legal in the Roman Empire. But God forbade people from treating slaves like animals instead of people, and Greco-Romans generally shared that attitude about their slaves: They’d become slaves because they lost a war, or were dirt poor and sold themselves (or were sold by family members) into it, or they were criminals and slavery was the punishment. American slavery was entirely different, regularly ignored scripture (as Americans do, ’cause we love to imagine we’re exceptions to the rules), and was rightly abolished. But if we were to port these household codes into the present day, the instructions to slaves would sorta apply to household employees—housekeepers, groundskeepers, nannies, maids, butlers, contractors. With the obvious caveat that employees can quit or be fired. Slaves didn’t have those freedoms.

Popular American culture has their own household codes. Most of ’em have to do with authoritarian men trying to establish their own little despotic patriarchies—they want their wives and children to submit to them, instead of mutually loving one another as is taught in the scriptures. A lot of toxic masculinity is mixed into today’s household codes, as men try to insist “only real men” behave certain ways. (And men who reject these ideas somehow aren’t real men. Yet this doesn’t mean they get to identify as women!) There’s a lot of sexism, vulgarity, and inconsistency in the way they teach it. It’s all very fleshly and graceless. Denounce it wherever you see it, and stick with the bible.

Titus 2.1-10 KWL

1 Speak out, Titus, about whatever comes up,

with healthy teaching.

2 Elders ought to be in their right minds.

Well respected. Self-controlled.

They should have healthy faith,

healthy love, healthy consistency.

3 Women elders likewise with devout behavior.

Not backstabbing.

Not enslaved to heavy drinking.

Teachers of good things,

4 so they might train the new Christians

to love their men, to love their children.

5 Self-disciplined. Clean.

Good at running a household.

Submitting to their own men,

so God’s word won’t be slandered.

6 Teenagers likewise:

Help them in self-discipline.

7 In everything present yourself,

as an example of good works.

In teaching, integrity and honesty,

8 a healthy, irrefutable word,

so those from the opposition might respect it,

having nothing evil to say about us.

9 Slaves are to obey their own wardens

in every acceptable way.

Not to argue.

10 Not to embezzle.

Instead demonstrate all good faith

so God our Savior’s teaching will decorate everything.

Now y’notice Paul’s list began with instructions to Titus about the sort of traits we oughta see in as church elders. The men are to behave thisaway; the women are to behave thataway. But then, in 2.4, as Paul’s explaining what the women elders oughta be teaching the newbies… it mutates into a household code. Verse 5 arguably applies to either the elders or the newbies; I would say both. Verses 6-8 are obviously about Christian teenagers; verses 9-10 are obviously about Christian slaves.

So yeah, this passage didn’t begin as a household code. But it became one. Because every Christian oughta become an elder. All of us should aspire to Christian maturity. Therefore every man and woman should become an elder in our churches, and contribute to its leadership and upkeep.

How the “elders” of Crete 𝘥𝘪𝘥 behave.

Titus 1.10-16.

Epimenides of Cnossos was a shepherd, living on Crete. He claimed one day he took a nap in a cave that’d been dedicated to Zeus, and woke up 57 years later with the gift of prophecy. Meh; I figure he was just an old guy who decided to finally publish his youthful poetry. Next to none of it has survived to our present day, but in Paul and Titus’s time it was still pretty famous. Paul even quotes a line from his ode to Zeus, called the Cretica:

…having built you [Zeus] a tomb, holy one, great one.

Cretans always lie, the evil beasts. Lazy stomachs.

But you aren’t dead! For you live, and live forever!

For in you we live, move, and have our being.

Yep, Paul also quoted it in Acts 17.28. Epimenides meant Zeus, but Paul repurposed it to mean the LORD. It more accurately describes the LORD anyway.

I don’t know whether the Cretica prejudiced Paul against the people of Crete when he finally met them in person. Acts doesn’t tell of him spending a lot of time there; at most a week, ’cause his ship was anchored there due to foul weather. Ac 27.7-13 Likely he visited again at another time. In any case he encountered many people among the Christians who were just awful, and the very last thing he wanted Titus to do was put such people in positions of authority. It’d ruin the church.

Titus 1.10-16 KWL

10 For many people do refuse to submit to others.

They’re all talk, and misleading.

Particularly those of the circumcision faction.

11 It’s necessary to muzzle them—

whatever teachings knock down whole houses,

which they ought not teach,

but do to gain an immoral advantage.

12 A certain one of their own—a prophet!—says,

“Cretans always lie, the evil beasts. Lazy stomachs.”

13 This witness is true.

For this reason rebuke them quickly,

so they might have a healthy faith,

14 paying no attention to Jewish myths,

and human commands which turn away from truth.

15 Everything is ritually clean to clean people.

To contaminated people, and unbelievers,

nothing is clean—

instead it contaminated them, the mind, and the conscience.

16 They claim they know God,

and their works deny it—

being disgusting and disobedient,

and worthless in every good work.

Don’t mince words Paul; how d’you really feel about Cretans?

How the elders of Crete oughta behave.

Titus 1.5-9.

Paul left Titus in Crete because its churches had a leadership vacuum. I mean, there might’ve been people the Christians imagined were leaders, but Paul considered them inadequate, as we can tell from what he had to write to Titus. They lacked spiritual maturity. Titus didn’t.

Here, Paul reminds Titus that maturity—good fruit and good character—correctly defines a person who’s considered an elder of the church. You’re not an elder without it, and ought not be a leader without it.

Titus 1.5-9 KWL

5 This is why I have you remain in Crete:

So you might organize the things we leave there.

So you might designate elders for each city,

as I commanded you.

6 If a certain person has no controversy about them,

a one-woman man,

has believing children,

has never been accused of excessive living

nor of being unsubmissive

7 —for a supervisor has to be uncontroversial,

being like God’s butler.

Not arrogant.

Not quick-tempered.

Not drunk.

Not picking fights.

Not greedy for “prosperity.”

8 Instead, loves strangers.

Loves goodness.

Sound-minded.

Fair.

Pious.

Self-disciplined.

9 Holds tight to what’s consistent

with the message of faith as taught,

so he might be able to help in the sound teaching,

and in rebuking those who contradict it.

A number of Christians claim Paul’s only describing pastors, ’cause Paul mentioned “a supervisor” in verse 7. (Greek ἐπίσκοπον/epískopon, KJV “bishop,” NIV “overseer.”) This is a word the New Testament tends to use to describe bishops and head pastors; it’s not just any church leader. Thing is, the elders of a church do supervise all sorts of things in a church, whether they have the title “pastor” or not. And really everyone in church leadership should be qualified to step up when the pastor or bishop isn’t available; everybody should meet these ground-floor qualifications, no matter what title they have. Got it?