L. R. Tarsitano—Saint Andrew’s Church, Savannah

The Fourth Sunday in Advent—December 19, 2004

Gracious Living

“Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand” (Philippians 4:5).

These two sentences from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians are a good reminder that the Holy Scriptures require both study and meditation, engaging them simultaneously as the Word of God and as the specific words of inspired men, rather than giving them a general or cursory reading.

In modern English, for example, the word “moderation” comes across as rather bland and nondescript, suggesting mostly some sort of self-restraint, rather than an active, positive exercise of virtue. The Greek word translated here as “moderation,” however, seeks to define a vigorous life of intentional activity. A better translation of the original text would be “graciousness,” in the same sense that God himself is “gracious”: that is, God is patient, God is loving, God is merciful, God is actively good, and God is seeking eternally the welfare of other.

When this implied comparison between God and the faithful Christian is taken into consideration, St. Paul’s admonition that our “moderation be known unto all men” makes more sense. If divine and biblical “moderation” were only a passive restraint and limited to a list of things that Christians don’t do, then the only way that we could ever make others notice our moderation would be to pester them to death about it—“Look, everybody. Look at what I’m not doing. See how moderate I am.”

And we’ve all known people who act this way, preening over the list of taboos that they maintain and proving that they aren’t truly moderate in any sense of the word. On the other hand, if the people we encounter witness us imitating God’s goodness without a lot of self-dramatization, for the purpose of honoring God and not to honor ourselves, then we are properly making our “moderation” known to them.

The question remains, of course, why should we structure our lives as so radically different from “the business as usual” of the fallen world around us that we stand out in a crowd as God’s children, so that people recognize the difference without our having to say a word about it, unless they specifically ask us why we are the way we are? The first and most important reason is graciousness itself. Since God is gracious, our being gracious is an end in itself. We were created to live in the image and likeness of God.

Another reason is a whole-hearted love of God. We should love God and imitate him simply because of Who he is and the perfection of his goodness, but God in his mercy gives us other, uncountable reasons why we should love him. The chiefest of these is the gift of his Eternal Son Jesus Christ to be our Savior. Only a clod or a monster could remain ungrateful to God after receiving such a gift, or refuse to respond to God’s love by offering a gift in return of the same comprehensive sort: the gift of a gracious life in God’s honor.

A third reason is grace itself, the God-given power to be gracious and to do right in God’s Name. Moreover, as we find ourselves actively, positively imitating God’s goodness, we make an important discovery. We belong to God now. We are saved now. Only the intervention of God’s grace makes a gracious life, or even a would be gracious life, possible. As we struggle to embrace and to use the grace that God offers, we will find that we are at war with sin and weakness, but not at war with God. However often we may have to beg God’s forgiveness, God is on our side, and we are on his. And God’s side will always be the winning side.

A final reason, at least for our purposes this morning is found in the second sentence that I quoted from St. Paul: “The Lord is at hand.” St. Paul means more than “the Lord is near.” His original word means, as well, that “The Lord is coming and getting closer every moment.” The Last Day draws ever closer, and in the meantime, Jesus Christ is at work in the world in his Church, as the life of his Church demonstrates to others that the Lord Jesus, our Savior, has not ceased giving salvation through gracious lives. The graciousness of Christians is an invitation to the whole world to greet the returning Master and Judge in joy and confidence, rather than in terror.

And on what basis will Jesus Christ judge the world? He will judge us and all men on the basis of our “moderation”—by the lives that we are leading in imitation of the Heavenly Father. Our lives in God’s grace are more than our salvation. They are our best witness and preaching of the Gospel to those who must still come to believe and live.

The best public worship, the finest educational programs and charities, the most daring and self-sacrificing evangelism are all worthless, unless ordinary unsaved men and women are confronted with the example of ordinary saved men and women living the best Christian lives that they can by the grace of God. We cannot do without worship, education, charities, or evangelism, but decent, gracious Christian living worships, educates, does charity, and evangelizes best. Gracious living proclaims this message as powerfully as a great voice from heaven: “The Lord Jesus is come to give life. The Lord Jesus will return in his Body to judge all men. The Lord Jesus commands that all men live lives of patience, goodness, mercy, and love.

Christian living is not always easy. Done properly, it really will stand out enough to be noticeable to complete strangers, not all of whom will be pleased with us. Given, too, the decay of moral standards and the temptations around us, it may seem impossible to know where to start in a life of Christian witness through graciousness. But God is the God of peace that passes understanding, and not a God of despair or confusion. Thus, St. Paul explains in the verse that follows today’s Epistle the simplest way to begin living to please Christ and the Father in heaven. He writes: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Philippians 4:8).

To “think on these things” means more than to “think about them.” The Holy Ghost is telling us through Paul to consider all the ways that virtue can be used to worship God; to examine whether we are honoring God by virtuous living or not; and to plan our whole lives so that they will be honest, pure, just, lovable, and of good reputation, as befits the servants and heirs of God.

If we work on these positive virtues, we won’t have much time or energy left to get into trouble. Our lives will be gracious, moderate in every sense, and an invitation to others to share the happiness of a peace with God that passes understanding. But grace and peace begin with God’s ruling our lives, and it begins to make sense why so many of our contemporaries have attacked the ancient and changeless virtues. Too much of our society loves disorder and strife. Too many of our worldly elites are actively teaching immorality, so that when they talk of “teaching values,” they really mean the anti-values and anti-virtues of selfishness, self-rule, self-esteem, and moral relativism.

But the Lord is at hand. Right and wrong still exist, and they are absolute because the Lord himself has made them. It doesn’t matter, then, what we think of ourselves as we soldier along, but it does matter what God thinks of us, and it does matter what message we give to others by the way that we live our lives in Christ. The birth we will celebrate on Christmas is all the proof that we need that God cares that we live and that God cares how we live. And we should care, too, for the love of him.