Title Song Song of the Early Church
Paul's Confession
No one at the time, not just Paul, who wrote this letter, would have known that a personal letter to his disciple Timothy would become such canon of Christianity. We must approach these Bibles with great caution, especially when we read them today, especially the correspondence between individuals. It is similar to the case of a third person reading a love letter shared between loved ones after many years have passed. If we are to understand this personal epistle as accurately as possible, we must read it from the religious foundations of early Christianity, not just the text itself. Furthermore, subsequent Christian history is also important in reading the Bible. In other words, the epistles that dealt with partial passages of the Christian faith are read within the entire Christian thought. Efforts to objectively grasp this overall Christian thought is the role of theology.
The words we read today are also very simple, depending on how we look, and we can receive them very graciously. However, if we cling to only a few parts, we will not be able to keep up with the religious plot of early Christianity as a whole, and thus we will not be able to fully understand the text. In today's text, the personal experience of faith of the Apostle Paul and the theology of early Christianity as a whole are intertwined, so we have to approach it more carefully.
From verse 12, Paul is reflecting on his past deeds. As we already know from the book of Acts and other epistles, Paul, a Pharisee who lived strictly according to the law, took the lead in persecuting the early Christian community. The point Paul is saying was that it was God's grace that someone who was opposed to the Christian community has now turned into an active advocate. In other passages that mention his conversion, he always mentions the encounter with the resurrected Lord based on the Damascus event, but that story is omitted here. Maybe it was because Timothy knew it all too well. He confesses the significance of this religious event that happened to him: “I am the greatest of sinners. Still, God had mercy on me. Christ Jesus first showed me boundless generosity in order to set me as an example for those who will come to believe in him and gain everlasting life” (verses 15, 16).
The story so far is something we often hear. I've heard it from Paul, but I've also heard it from many other Christians. The existential experience of faith approaching an individual is repeated today as well. Its basic pattern is similar. A person who used to be a sinner now believes in Jesus and becomes a new person, gaining salvation and life. However, the sin in Paul’s statement that he is “the greatest sinner among sinners” has nothing to do with any morality or positive law. It refers to something that is not life, that is, to live by being bound by the law. He found the root of sin in the fact that by absolutizing the law he eventually failed to recognize Jesus as the Christ. So, after entering the world of the gospel through Jesus, Paul constantly struggled with the legalists. In verses 3-11, which is the front part of today's text, we also criticized the legalists of the Ephesian church. They were “who taught false doctrines, or were preoccupied with fanciful stories or endless genealogical stories.”
absolutization of doctrine
Paul's recognition that ultimately failing to recognize the life of God by absolutizing the law is a sin, teaches us something very valuable. In other words, we are still trying to settle in by making certain doctrines absolute. No matter how precious the law is, even though it is not God itself, legalism, which distanced itself from the life of God by thinking like God, works very strongly for us today. We call it ‘dogma’. Because the dogma of the church, which is only a vessel containing a certain life, surrounds the spiritual life of believers, they cannot enter the path of life in the end. He feels a kind of comfort and lives by completely reliant on a life he is accustomed to and such a way of thinking. Let me say it again. For Paul, sin is being bound by laws, frameworks, and stereotypes and not seeing God.
God's attributes
In the end, Paul escaped the absolute world of the law and came to recognize the fundamental world. I confess the experience of such recognition as the 'Songyeong' of the Early Church. “To the eternal King, the one and only, immortal, invisible God, be honored and glorified forever and ever. Amen” (v. 17). Paul goes back to this song and repeats it again. “There is only one God, the blessed Sovereign, the King of kings, and the Prince of lords. He alone is immortal, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or seen. To him be honor and power forever. Amen.” (6:15,16).
Why does Paul sing this hymn? Those who experience the world of God that is opened again by breaking free from the limits of the law and experiencing the gospel of Jesus, have no choice but to sing like this. It is an experience that goes back to the source. The source is God. The hymn offered by the church at every worship service should be our most fundamental confession of faith in this respect. It means that the hymn that is the center of God is the true hymn. Gospel hymns such as “You were born to be loved”, often sung in Korean churches, are not actually hymns. Because it is about a person's psychology and emotions and emotions. The song of the early church, which Paul is presenting today, sings of God like this.
God is the eternal King. The meaning of king is 'reign'. Is this hymn that God rules the world possible in this age of capital, consumption, and play? Is the hymn that only God reigns in the Korean church, where church growth is the highest value, valid? Those who can truly sing these hymns must be able to perceive the rule of this world from a different perspective. We must be able to see the very reign of life that Paul and the early Christians recognized.
There is only one God, the King. If God is one, this world is also one. We cannot think of this world as one. To be able to see this world as one, you must open your eyes to the secrets and mysteries of this world. It would be hypocrisy to sing the hymn that there is only one God and the world is one when even the churches are not united.
One God is beyond our vision. Being invisible doesn't just mean not being sensible, it means being in a way we can't expect. Those who absolutize the order of this world do not wait for a completely different kingdom of God, the New Jerusalem, the New Earth, and the New Aeon. However, the early Christians lived by waiting for such a world. That is Advent faith.
God, who is eternal, one, and exists in an invisible way, is immortal. What the hell is immortality? We do not yet know its actual meaning. We can only confirm the fact that everything in this world is finite. The meaning of this hymn sung by the early church is not a clear explanation of the term immortality, but rather the transcendence of God. It is simply to sing the transcendence immortality Sometimes we hear that we do not die and live forever when we go to heaven after we die, but we do not yet know what eternity means. So, to accept this biblical term as an indefinite continuation of our experience here would be a major misunderstanding.
honor and glory
Then you might ask, does that mean that we don't have anything concrete to say about God with certainty? I don't mean that. We have come to know God explicitly through Jesus Christ. It means that Jesus is God. However, the final reality of God revealed through Jesus Christ is not yet over. It is the ultimate reality that will be revealed only in the end. What we have to do, or what we can do, until the end comes is to glorify the God who mysteriously exists and comes to us in that way. “May God be honored and glorified forever and ever. Amen.” The early Christian hymn was not only sung in a rhetorical sense. This is a hymn that most accurately explains the relationship between God and those who believe in God.
We are perplexed when we encounter these terms. This is because it is not easy to understand what it means to give “glory” to God. In general, I think of it as giving a solemn worship service, going on a mission, or praising with both hands raised high. I think that giving up the worldly things as much as possible and doing the things belonging to the church is to glorify God. In principle, you are right, but it has a much more fundamental meaning. To allow God to be master in our lives is to glorify Him. It is said that during the monarchy, the king was honored by all people, which means that no one ever presented himself before the king. Even when discussing matters for the country, you should focus only on revealing the will of the king, not your own. Likewise, we, too, are glorifying God by destroying ourselves and allowing only the will of God to be revealed.
Together with Paul, we are people who pursue the spiritual life that the early church's pick-up means. When we give ourselves and the glory of God is revealed, we receive true life. Keep this secret of life well.