Wednesday, July 13, 2022

 

Wednesday, July 13, 2022


Psalm 35:1-17

Amos 2:6-16

Galatians 6:1-10


Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.


Having completed his whirlwind condemnation of the cities and nations surrounding Israel, Amos now moves in to tell them how they are to be measured by the same standard. Just as God will reward the evil of Israel’s neighbours with “fire that will devour strongholds”, Israel themselves will be pressed down in place “just as a cart presses down when it is full of sheaves”. Being held in place, the oncoming Assyrian army will then be able to do as it pleases with the people of Israel. The fundamental offence Israel has made against God is their greed: selling the needy for sandals, trampling the poor into the dust, imposing fines on people in order to buy wine on which to get drunk, both father and son committing sexual immorality with the same girl.


Paul uses a particularly vivid word to describe sin in 6:8: “corruption”. It is an active word; it is describing something happening. That thing that is happening is decomposition. Phthora as it is in the Greek, is what happens to a body after it is dead and buried. This is what we do to ourselves when we are greedy. Paul contrasts this with “eternal life from the Spirit”: aionios, or, “eternal”, is the same “eternal” redemption Jesus has secured for us (in Hebrews 8:12), so that we may be held together in love with the “eternal” God (in Romans 16:26). Instead of holding down other people to serve our own greed, thereby participating in phthora, let us forgive each other, and lift each other up, thereby participating in the aionios of God in Christ.

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