Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Mothers often face the job of getting children off to school. If they have to travel to work themselves, more pressure is on. “I have nothing to wear,” moans the teen daughter, surveying her long rack of jeans and dresses. The youth culture enforces its own dress code, and rules designed to protect poorer kids carry little clout. If parents cannot foot the bill, teens will find ways to meet the cost. They must look like their friends, or at least like those who command the heights of fashion.
Time is of the essence for kids to dress in the morning. (Yes, she should have prepared her clothes the night before!)
Jesus told a parable about maidens who, according to the wedding customs, were waiting for the bridegroom. The foolish ones did not bring enough oil for their lamps. They had to go for more, and missed the coming of the bridegroom. That parable sheds its light on Paul’s words in Romans 13. Paul says that it is high time to awake from sleep (v. 11). We need to throw off the covers of darkness and put on the armor of light. Revelries and drunkenness are over. It is the day after the night before. But Paul has a brighter message than a remedy for a hangover. He promises equipment for battle against all the powers of the flesh—and that includes the sinful desires that he described in Romans 7.
That we need armor shows the fierce battle we must face. We need orderly lives to avoid the plunge into passion. Even our submission to the governments of this world helps to structure our lives as believers. These rules, too, are part of God’s plan of battle. He has ordained civil government—even when Nero was emperor of Rome, and delighted in cruelty to Christians.
Liberty cannot mean freedom from all submission. To the contrary, submission to the Lord our God is the beginning of liberty—for peoples or individuals. Christian freedom is freedom in Christ. The love of Christ is the Magna Carta of Christian freedom. Paul summarizes our life of love by saying that we are to put on Christ. “Wake up,” he says, “and get dressed.” The Lord Jesus Himself is to be our garment. How is it possible to “put on” Christ?
For one thing, we are to put on the armor of light. Jesus was transformed on the Mount of Transfiguration. Brilliant light shone from His face and from His clothing. So, too, the light of His glory transforms us. Paul contrasts putting on Christ with casting off the works of darkness. Christ is our armor. He defends us from the world, the flesh, and the devil. Putting on Christ joins us in love to our fellow Christians, and in love for the lost—those sinners Jesus came to save.
Using a different figure, Paul could speak of the gifts of the Spirit as gifts of the ascended Christ that equip us to serve Him. But we receive more than these gifts from His throne. By the Spirit we receive Christ Himself. Our union with Christ is the heart of Paul’s theology. Because of our union with Him as our representative, Jesus took our place on the cross. He died bearing the curse of our transgressions. Beyond that, He rose from the grave. We are united to the living Christ, risen and glorified. His life is ours through His Spirit; our union with Him is therefore also living, vital.
Paul knew the reality of the life of Christ in his ministry. He compared the reputation and prestige he had as a zealous Pharisee with his calling by Christ. Those things that seemed to be gain for him he reckoned as rubbish that he might gain Christ. He not only counted them as lost; he lost them. No longer would his former associates remember that he was circumcised on the eighth day, or that he could trace his tribal genealogy, and knew that he was of the tribe of Benjamin, and was named after King Saul, the first king of Israel. His established family tree, his reputation as a strict Pharisee, and his zeal for the law—all this made his former associates now brand him as a heretic and traitor. With murderous zeal that mirrored his own, they sought his life.
For what had Paul sacrificed so much, paid so great a price?
For knowing Jesus! “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3:10–11).
Union with Christ as our representative and our life means knowing the Lord. Paul’s doctrine is never separate from his experience. Only the mystery and wonder of union with Christ could lead him to say, “Put on Christ!” Apostle to the gentiles as he was, and servant of the Lord, Paul never could have written, “Put on me!”
Getting up and getting dressed is to put on Christ in the sense of imitating Christ. As we put on Christ, we are awakened from the empty fantasies of pride. We can never boast in ourselves, because we are clothed with Him.
Putting on Christ shapes our lives in fellowship with Christ. The motto, “What would Jesus do?” drawn from the book In His Steps, will mislead us apart from Paul’s doctrine of union with Christ. Drawn from that doctrine, however, putting on Christ means shaping our lives by doing all in fellowship with Christ. This is not first a matter of our feelings. It is a matter of obedience in the power of the Holy Spirit. Works righteousness will always put a trap along the path. We cannot earn merit by obedience. But we can practice the presence of the Lord, trusting Him to guide us, and especially to open doors of opportunity before us.