A community that marches to a different step

The gift of God in Christ is articulated as an unconditioned gift in its creation of a community that neither mirrors nor endorses the regnant systems of value. The incongruous gift is defined as incongruous in the formation of a community that marches to a different step — and it is only in practice that that difference can be effected and evidenced. By its strategic indifference to preconstituted evaluations of worth — ethnic, social, sexual, or other — the community declares and enacts its freedom. By its “crucifixion of the flesh” — its break with the dispositions and habits that stand contrary to the values of the Spirit — it demonstrates an alternative allegiance derived from an alternative source of meaning and “life.” Through resisting the tendencies to intra-communal rivalry, it affirms its special identity as a community beholden to “the law of Christ.”—J. M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 439 (emphasis original)