GOD'S NEW WORLD, DAY 14 (life in the Spirit, part 1)


“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.  For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Rom. 8.1-4) 

     As he begins the eighth chapter of his letter to the Christians of Rome, Paul has reached the beating heart of what has proved to be his most important epistle.  After demonstrating that the God of Israel has fulfilled his promised to Abraham to create a family composed of both Jews and Gentiles (chapters 1—4; cf. Gn. 12.1-3), Paul has continued to tell Israel’s story as the “controlling narrative” of the Christian life.  That is to say, in chapter 6, Paul says that we have been liberated from slavery to sin and death – like the Israelites were liberated from slavery in Egypt – through baptism, in which we die and are raised with Christ.  This is not the only time that Paul compares baptism to the Israelites’ crossing of the Red Sea (cf. 1 Cor. 10.1-5).

     After crossing the sea, the Israelites journeyed to Mt. Sinai, where they received the law from Yahweh.  In chapter 7, Paul discusses Israel’s tortured relationship to the law of Moses as they journey through the desert for 40 years (7.8-12) and as Paul’s Jewish contemporaries continued to struggle to obey Torah (7.13-19).  The good law, which had promised life (7.10) – because it had to work with “sinful flesh”, actually produced death in those who tried to obey it (7.9-13; cf. Dt. 30.15-20).  In chapter 5, Paul had argued that Israel was “in Adam”, i.e., Israel was guilty of perpetuating Adam’s sin, and the law only served to exacerbate the problem (cf. Rom. 5.20).  In the strange purposes of Yahweh, Israel was the means for “Sin” to be drawn to one place (Rom. 7.13) – the people of God – where it could be dealt with (cf. Rom. 8.3).  Then, in chapter 8, Paul describes the “arrival in the promised land of new creation” (cf. 8.18-25).  Those who believe in Jesus and receive his Spirit are enabled to fulfill the law’s requirements (cf. 8.4), and so inherit the promises of covenant-obedience.  In Rom. 13.8-10, Paul reminds his readers that the law is summed up in the command to love one’s neighbour.  Those who, empowered by the Spirit, live in love and so fulfill the law.

     The opening paragraph of chapter 8 could be summarized as follows: “the just requirement of the law has been fulfilled in us” (v. 4), “therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ” (v. 1) – as opposed to those who are “in Adam” (cf. Rom. 5.12-21).  The law’s requirement has been fulfilled through the death of Jesus on the cross and the work of the Spirit.  Now that the Spirit has been given, the role of the law has been transformed – no longer frustrated by intractable “flesh”, the law can finally give that which it was designed to give, i.e., life – Paul now calls it “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ”; it is no longer “the law of sin and death”.  However, it is important to notice that Paul is not talking about two different laws – he is talking about the same double-sided “law” that he discussed in chapter 7 (“the holy, good, just law of God” that had become for the fleshly “I” “the law of sin and death”).  Indeed, the law of the Spirit of life has become part of the rescue operation from the law of sin and death – the Torah has become the active agent in the work of release!  What God has done in the Messiah’s death, and in the gift of the Spirit, is to give the “life” which Torah had promised all along. 

     God has done what the Torah couldn’t do – he has condemned sin in the flesh…of the Messiah (8.3)!  The purpose of Torah was to lure Sin into one place, i.e., Israel, and there to let it do its worst, to become its full, horrid self – so that in the person of Israel’s representative, the Messiah, it might then be dealt with once and for all.  God’s plan of salvation has been worked out through Abraham’s people, fulfilled in the Messiah, and now extended to the worldwide, Jesus-believing, Spirit-filled family.  God made humans to be his stewards, reflecting his wise image in the world, so that he might himself come into his world as the ultimate steward of creation.  Following sin, God called Abraham and his family to be the means of rescuing humans and thereby the whole creation – so that he might himself come, as the anointed representative of Abraham’s family, to rescue Israel and the whole world from sin.  Humans were made as appropriate vehicles for God’s self-expression in his world.  Israel was called as the vessel for the self-expression of God’s rescuing love.  Davidic Messiahship was called into being to bring Israel’s task and destiny into focus on one figure, royal, rejected, resurrected, reigning.  All this is there in Romans 8.1-4.[1]


[1] Cf. N.T. Wright, Into the Heart of Romans: A deep dive into Paul’s greatest letter, Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2023, pp. 28-54.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A 40-DAY JOURNEY WITH THE KING: Lenten reflections from Mark’s Gospel (5)

Image
“A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean .”   Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean !” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean .   (Mk. 1.40-42)      Along with exorcisms, Jesus performs many healings of various physical ailments in the early chapters of Mark’s Gospel.   Jesus’ first healing is that of Simon’s mother-in-law (1.29-31).   With the restoration of the leper, we begin to understand the meaning of Jesus’ healings (and exorcisms).   The thrice-repeated word “clean” in the above passage reveals what is truly going on when the King restores the members of the people of God to wholeness.   Leprosy rendered its victim “unclean”, i.e., it proscribed that person from participation in the life of the community, of both civil society and the worship/litur...
Read more

The Protestant Reformation - good news?

Image
  The study of Reformation Europe makes many Christians wish that they had lived in the 16th century. Name 1) Some good reasons for not living in the sixteenth century and 2) Some ways in which we can live more deliberately as Christians today because of the events of that century. How should it and how should it not make a difference?    Some good reasons for not living in the 16th century include the climate of religious intolerance and violence.   Religious affiliation and observance were compulsory and imposed on the people by the state, especially it seems, in Protestant countries.   There was no freedom of conscience, except perhaps in England during the reign of Elizabeth, where the windows to people’s souls remained shut to the state, so long as they publicly conformed to the monarch’s religion (as enforced by parliament).   One may have thought that Luther’s appeal to conscience at the Diet of Worms would have inspired a broader and more sensit...
Read more

“Walking the tightrope” (St. Luke’s: Wednesday, August 22nd, 2018: Ez. 34.1-11; Ps. 23; St. Mt. 20.1-16)

Image
Ancient relevance.   Any conscientious catholic who has the habit of watching the news cannot help but notice a direct link between today’s first reading and what is going on in the Church these days.   Last week, a grand jury released a report detailing the results of their 2-year long investigation into dozens of clergymen who had abused upwards of 1,000 children in various dioceses in the state of Pennsylvania.   Every time cases of the abuse of children by priests and religious come to light, we are reminded that we live in a world – and are part of a Church – deeply infected by evil .   And of course, let’s not forget that the line between good and evil runs through each one of us (cf. Solzhenitsyn).   In today’s first reading, the prophet Ezekiel proclaims an oracle of judgment against the false “shepherds” of God’s “flock”.   Instead of caring for, protecting and nurturing God’s people , Israel’s leaders had exploited the people for their...
Read more