I pulled N.T. Wright’s Reflecting The Glory off the shelf to find one of his meditations for the blog as the Lenten season continues.  Lent is the multiple-weeks leading up to Easter in the liturgical calendar, weeks when Christians focus on repentance, confessing, and turning away from sins.  Wright is considering a passage in the New Testament from 1 Peter 2:1-6, and he’s helping me remember my own “subtle” sins.

The temple in Jerusalem was the very centre of the Jewish world view.  It was the place where heaven and earth met, and the Jews didn’t mean that meaphorically; they meant it quite literally.  For them, heaven and earth were the two basic dimensions of God’s creation, which co-existed unseen to one another.  The place where they actually intersected and where you could virtually pass from one to the other was in the temple in Jerusalem.  Once we appreciate this, we can see the significance of the way in which many New Testament writers, including Peter in this passage, pick up the image of the temple and apply it to the church.  So here in verses 4-6 Peter talks about the church as a collection of stones being built into a spiritual house, a temple, where sacrifices are offered in fulfillment of the prophecy of scripture.  And they are built on the foundation stone, which is Jesus himself.

As Peter wants to work up to that idea in verses 4-6 he begins the chapter with a warning, because any Jew coming up to the temple had to purify himself or herself so that they could enter joyfully into the service of God and offer the sacrifices gladly.  So he says, there are certain things you have got to set aside as you approach the temple.  “Rid yourself of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy and all slander.”  It is interesting that within the church we often focus on gross sins, on immorality or greed or whatever.  But here we find things which are more subtle.  Unfortunately, there are all too many churches where sexual immorality would be unthinkable but where these vices flourish and abound.  And just as Paul in 2 Corinthians was insistent that the way of being a Christian is the way of being open-hearted, of speaking the truth frankly, of being quite clear before God and one another about our motives, so within the church it is vital that we lay aside all trickery, all deceit, if we are to be part of the living temple, offering spiritual sacrifices.

…Ultimately, of course, this means offering the whole of ourselves to God.  It doesn’t mean bribing God or twisting his arm.  It means a glad self-offering, in response to God’s grace, which is then made acceptable through Jesus Christ.