Remember not the events of the past,
the things of long ago consider not;
see, I am doing something new!
The Lord was the one who led Israel by opening a way in the sea and path in the mighty waters. The chariots and horsemen of a powerful Egyptian army followed, but they went on to lie prostrate, never to rise, snuffed out and quenched like a wick, just as Isaiah described. At the time of those events Moses promised that they would mark a new beginning for the people.
Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again (see Exodus 14:13).
After that victory thanksgiving and celebration was appropriate, and in that sense it was inappropriate to forget the former things. But there was another sense in which being overly preoccupied with the mighty deeds of the past could constrain one's ability to see the new thing God desired to do. If one could only imagine a certain kind of enemy, in the vein of the Egyptian oppressors, and a certain kind of victory, a victory gained in a battle against flesh and blood, one would fail to see the still more impressive supernatural realities to which those past historical facts were meant to point.
Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
In the desert I make a way,
in the wasteland, rivers.
With eyes constrained to reading the Torah at a strictly historical and literal level one would fail to perceive this mysterious thing taking place in the present. Yet to dismiss those truths was not the solution either. Eyes of faith were required to see how they presaged and validated God's still greater actions in the present.
Jesus appeared as the source of living waters, even while the circumstances of reality still had the external appearance of a desert. But with eyes of faith one could live in this same reality but without being thirsty, having themselves found the source of living water. Even those figures that represented that danger of the desert themselves perhaps representing Gentiles such as the Romans, as well as sinners and outcasts, would be converted to lives honoring God by this new work that God himself was doing. These conversions, promised by Isaiah, were nevertheless a scandal to the Pharisees who could not recognize in them a promise fulfilled.
For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things
and I consider them so much rubbish,
that I may gain Christ and be found in him,
not having any righteousness of my own based on the law
Paul, because of his prestigious intellectual formation and his unquestionable zeal and passion, ought to have displayed righteousness according to the law if such a thing were possible. But before his conversion on the road to Damascus he was too preoccupied with the past, with a rigid analysis of Scripture that contained no room for Christ or his followers. He demonstrated how a single individual could look at the same realities without faith and then again after having come to faith and see something that completely different.
but that which comes through faith in Christ,
the righteousness from God,
depending on faith to know him and the power of his resurrection
Paul had to recognize the new thing that God was doing. The only entry point into this new reality was for him to embrace the faithfulness of Christ as the source of his own righteousness. Having come to recognize and embrace Christ when he revealed himself to Paul on the road to Damascus, Paul was able to reevaluate all that he previously considered to be has assets to be instead insufficient, "so much rubbish". With only the letter of the Torah and not the Spirit his zeal for the law imploded in a way that not only did not align with what God was doing, but was in fact openly and violently hostile and opposed to that action. Yet in spite of this, Paul did not waste time hung up on these past failures, which, when we consider it, is truly impressive. How difficult it would be for us to move past failures of the magnitude of the stoning of Steven once we realized that they were in fact failures? Yet Paul demonstrated what is meant to be the case for all Christians. He let himself be defined by the new thing God was doing, by the mercy which made he himself a new creation in Christ.
Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind
but straining forward to what lies ahead,
I continue my pursuit toward the goal,
the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.
The Pharisees that accused the woman in the temple were constrained in a way Paul prior to his conversion might well have approved. Their mindset left no room open for mercy. Looking at sinners they could not recognize the possibility of redemption. Looking at Romans they could only see enemies, enemies which to their mind Jesus was no better opposition than they themselves. Their trap was designed to show that Jesus was no better at enforcing the rigorous demands of the law than they themselves, all of them together impotent in the face of the Roman law forbidding them to put anyone to death.
They said this to test him,
so that they could have some charge to bring against him.
To their surprise Jesus did not choose either of the prongs of the trap they had set. He neither suggested that Roman law should be violated nor did he suggest that the law was wrong in its condemnation and punishment of adultery. Instead, he cast that law in a new light, as one which human beings were to flawed and fallible to carry out. He taught in the Sermon on the Mount that even to entertain thoughts of lust were in some sense equivalent to adultery. External observance of the law, however perfect the Pharisees had kept it, did not in fact make them sinless in the eyes of Jesus. They themselves, only interested in such external appearances, probably did consider themselves to be righteous under the law, perfectly qualified to throw the first stone, the second, and and as many as they desired. But the trap had now been reversed. They were not free to do so because Roman law forbade it. By not condemning this woman now they were unmasked as sinners in the sight of the crowd.
“Let the one among you who is without sin
be the first to throw a stone at her.”
We have the same choice that Paul and this woman faced. Will we allow ourselves to be defined by our past failures or will we instead receive and live based on "the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus" our Lord? Jesus is more than able to send the voices of others, even the voices of our own hearts, that are still speaking words of condemnation, fleeing away one by one.
“Woman, where are they?
Has no one condemned you?”
She replied, “No one, sir.”
Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.
Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”
Only when Jesus tells us to sin no more can we truly begin to live new lives. It is only by his faith in him and the power of his resurrection, the truly new thing he has done, as a reality at work in our own lives, that we can move beyond the old way of looking at things. That old mindset was why we were constrained us to fall again and again. It contained no other possibilities. Only receiving the new mind he desires to give, can set us on a path that is aligned with his will, with the glorious new thing he never ceases to bring forth in our midst.
The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.
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