The Purity Spiral

 "I marvel that you are soon turned to another gospel".

The Apostle Paul.

I often wonder how Paul managed to remain 'less'.

The Lord clearly provided means to assist with this (the implementing of a 'thorn in the flesh'), but it's interesting to see how many of the congregations he ministered to (the Corinthians, the Galatians and the Colossians) essentially sought to write-off his vital service to them, even when he was seeking to convey the wisdom of God to their situations.

How would we react to this array of circumstances?

Paul laboriously seeks to correct the misconstrued notions of the numerous cleeks in these communities so they can find unity around the glorious marvel of the Gospel, but they clearly have serious issues accepting even his authority to do so.

There's a very telling lesson here for the present.

Pietism - a mark of numerous "purity" activities and movements, can so easily and readily replace actual genuine piety amongst us.

When the focus becomes 'deeds' (what are you doing?), not 'creeds' (the vital giving of the liberating truth, which is the focus of Paul's work), then we can rapidly slip into the 'purity' trap - where "service" becomes viewed as the saving grace (especially when it is defined by us), thereby overtaking our vital refreshment and genuine delight in the singular goodness and care of God towards each of us.

The problem so often with pietism is that it sounds so right (abstaining from all manner of things whilst being 'spiritual' in how we behave), but in truth it actually tarnishes and can even destroy our vital confidence in and witness to the faith.

What is defined as "church", as Paul's epistles shows, can so readily embrace a piety that elevates all the wrong things, often leading to a carnal partisanship in congregations (the how by which we define ourselves), rather than singularly extolling the saving work of God in Christ.

The spectrum of issues Paul has to address in his various letters reveals just how readily all manner of pseudo or super-spiritual contrivances rise up amongst the saints, leaving them amidst all of their frantic activity bereft of what God actually wants to say and vitally establish amongst them - the healing saving word of Christ crucified.

We so spiritually impair the faith when this touchstone of genuine redemption becomes relegated to a secondary (or worse) issue in our theology and life, because without the vision of God manifest in the saving death of Christ placarded perpetually before us, our own stupefied agenda of distractive religiosity will hurriedly rush in to return us to the waters we entirely prefer - our own virtue and the 'goodness' we believe this fosters.

Paul endures with his stiff-nicked readers not because he is seeking to 'modify' their pietism, whatever its particular form, but because he is wanting them to re-gain what was truly theirs - the full rescue already provided in what had rescued them. There, and there alone, at the Cross, is where they absolutely must return, as must we, if we wish to know true life and health and peace in our faith and mutual fellowship.

May God's great grace aid us to rest there, in the same riches of His unmerited love, today.