Writer of Fancy: The Playful Piety of Jane Austen

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

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Bible - NT - Paul: Sanders, Dunn, NPP

As Watson goes on, he notes Dunn’s early and fundamental attacks on Sanders’s reading of Paul.  Dunn argues that Sanders treats Paul as an un-Jewish theologian, rejecting not only covenant nomism but the whole apparatus of covenantal, biblical theology that the Jews built from.  Dunn insists that Paul opposes covenant nomism (in Watson’s words) “on the basis of an expanded, inclusive, but still recognizably Jewish covenantal theology.”  Wright has made similar criticisms of Sanders, adding that Sanders’s view is vitiated by his avoidance of eschatology.

Watson concludes laconically: “it is ironic, then, that Sanders and Dunn are both commonly seen as representatives of a single ‘New Perspective on Paul.’  The reality is that a repudiation of Sanders’s reading of Paul is integral to the New Perspective as Dunn conceived it.”

Bible - NT - Paul: Universal law

In the introduction to his book, Watson summarizes the thesis of his unpublished doctoral thesis, on which the published book is based.  His initiating observation is that “in virtually every passage where the Reformation tradition has found an attack on ‘earning salvation,’ there is a reference to the exclusiveness of the Jewish theology of the covenant as contrasted with the universality of Paul’s proclamation.”  Paul’s attack does not, as Sanders claimed, arise from Christology per se, but from a “universalizing view of the law itself, peculiar to Paul and derived from his gospel.”

For the Jews, the law has a positive role, marking the Jews out as a special people, “exempt . . .  from that solidarity in guilt before God.”  Paul argued, on the contrary, that the law has universal, not particular application, and that this universal application is fundamentally negative: It “reveals to be the true position of all men, Jews and Gentiles alike.”  Promise too is not particular, as the Jews would have it, but universal.  This led Watson to conclude that “justification has a clear social dimension, in that it is directed against a construal of the law that serves only to exclude.”

Watson, interestingly, lists a large number of scholars who noted this social dimension prior to Sanders and Dunn: Bauer, Markus Barth, Dahl, W. D. Davies, George Howard, Ulrich Mauer, Paul Minear, Halvor Moxnes, as well as Krister Stendahl and NT Wright.   He notes that the diversity of this group makes “their common emphasis on the universality/exclusiveness polarity all the more striking.”

Bible - NT - Paul: NPP

In his recently revised Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles, Francis Watson offers a pithy summary of the agenda of the New Perspective.  Sanders, he says, extended the critique that G. F. Moore mounted in 1921 against German Lutheran scholarship on Judaism; Moore basically argued that German scholarship was systematizing and apologetic rather than genuinely historical, and Watson suggests that Sanders’s work extended the Moore critique to the Strack-Billerbeck rabbinic collection and the scholarship that came from it.

Watson summarizes Sanders: “The crucial concept of ‘covenant nomism’ was set in polemical opposition to the familiar pejorative terminology - ‘legalism,’ ‘externalism,’ ‘formalism,’ ‘earning salvation,’ ‘works-righteousness,’ ‘acquiring merit,’ and so forth - whose overwhelmingly negative connotations eliminate from the outset all possibility of sympathetic understanding.  It is easy to forget hw freely and unquestioningly such terminology was used prior to Sanders, especially in the field of Pauline studies.  After Sanders, the whole conceptual apparatus underlying the terminology would have to be dismantled.  And that mean rethinking all the polemical Pauline antitheses: faith and works, grace and law, Spirit and letter, life and death, blessing and curse, promise and flesh.”

Bible - NT - Paul: Paul as Job

Richard Hays has pointed to Job allusions in various writings of Paul. One of these occurs in 2 Timothy 1:12: “I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.”

Hays points out that the form “I know that” in several of Paul’s letters alludes back to Job 19:25 among other passages. Though the form is not the same here, Paul’s confidence that he knows the one who redeems and “guards” is a more distant echo of Job. This eminently fits the context, where Paul is talking about the suffering he endures for the sake of the gospel. Like Job, he suffers in hope, knowing that the Redeemer will intervene to save. And this helps to establish what Paul means by saying that he will not be ashamed. Shame is the result of defeat. Paul is confident that he, like Job, will be finally vindicated “in that day.”

Bible - NT - Paul: Paul and Israel

N. T. Wright’s views on Paul and justification will be misconstrued if they are examined outside the context of his views on Israel’s history and Jesus’ role in that history. That is, Wright’s work is of a piece – his historical Jesus studies are essential to a proper understanding of his historical Paul studies.

How does this work? Wright says that God called Israel into covenant as an answer to the problem of human sin. Abraham is the antidote to Adam, and through Abraham God intends to bring blessings to the nations by gathering a single worldwide family in Abraham’s seed. Israel, however, proved as sinful as the nations; the problem is “the hidden Adam in the Jew,” which is particularly evident in Israel’s “meta-sin” of boasting in her special place in God’s purposes.

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Bible - NT - Paul: Sanders and Bultmann

To understand EP Sanders’s “revolution” in Pauline studies, it’s helpful to look at Bultmann’s understanding of Paul, against which Sanders and others are explicitly and implicitly reacting. (I’m following the superb summary in Stephen Westerholm’s Perspectives Old and New on Paul.)

Bultmann’s starting point is anthropological. As a creature, man is dependent on God for everything, and only when man acknowledges this dependence is he “authentic” and “at one with himself.” Since always involves turning from God to the creation as the basis for security, to procure life, to gain satisfaction in one’s accomplishments. The “desire to gain recognition for one’s achievement” (Westerholm’s phrase) is universal and “the root of all other evils” (Bultmann).

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Bible - NT - Paul: Five Points of NT Wright

The volume edited by McCormack includes a final chapter by NT Wright. Like a good Calvinist, Wright summarizes his views on Paul and justification under five points.

He begins where he says Paul begins, with the gospel. For Paul, Wright argues, the gospel is not a message of individual salvation, not a how-to about how to be saved. The gospel implies these things, but that’s not the content of the gospel. Instead, it’s “the proclamation that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth ahs been raised from the dead and thereby demonstrated to be both Israel’s Messiah and the world’s true Lord.” In contrast to the Roman imperial ideology, Paul’s confrontational message is that “Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord, and at his name, not that of the emperor, every knee shall bow.” When Paul preaches this gospel, he is confident that the Spirit is at work in and through the message to awaken people to faith. The message is “a royal summons to submission, to obedience, to allegiance; and the form that this submission and obedient allegiance takes is faith.”

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Bible - NT - Paul: Faith = Jesus?

What happens to Paul’s doctrine of justification if “faith” in the phrase “justified by faith” is a name for Jesus, as it appears to be in Gal 3:23, 25, on analogy with the use of PISTOS as a name in Rev 19:11? Or, perhaps, if “faith” is shorthand for “faith of Jesus,” understood in Hays’s sense as “faithfulness of Jesus”?

This wouldn’t undermine the Protestant insistence that faith is the proper human response to God, a point that can be established on the basis of all the passages that talk about our “believing into” Christ (Rom 4; Gal 2:16).

But this thesis would give a different coloration to the opposition of “works of the law” v. “faith”:

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Bible - NT - Paul: Old Perspective on Paul

Ambrosiaster writes, “Iustitia est Dei, quia quod promisit dedit, ideo credens hoc esse se consecutum quod promiserat Deus per prophetas suos, iustum Deum probat et testis est iustitiae eius” (PL, 17.56b).

McGrath explains: “God, having promised to give salvation, subsequently gives it, and as a result is deemed to be ‘righteous’ - faithful to what has been promised. The ‘righteousness of God’ is therefore demonstrated in God’s faithfulness to the divine promises of salvation. The gospel is thus understood to manifest the divine righteousness in that God is shown to have fulfilled the Old Testament promises, made in the prophets and elsewhere, of the salvation of God’s people.”

Bible - NT - Paul: NT Wright on Justification

This summary of Wright’s views on justification is taken from passages in his new Paul in Fresh Perspective.

1) Covenant and apocalyptic. Unlike some contemporary scholars, Wright insists that covenant and apocalyptic are not opposed to one another, but joined in Paul’s teaching. By “covenant,” he means God’s settled promise to Abraham (and through him to others) to put the sinful work back in order, to intervene in the fallen world to deal with sin and death, to exercise “restorative justice” in the world. By “apocalyptic,” he means “the sudden, dramatic and shocking unveiling of secret truths, the sudden shining of bright heavenly light on a dark and unsuspecting world.” The trick is to keep these two aspects of Paul together: To affirm with Paul both that what God did in Christ is what He always intended to do, what Jews were hoping He would do and that the way God fulfilled this intention is so surprising that no Jew would have dreamed it.

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Bible - NT - Paul: Nomos

Thinking about Plato’s Crito, it again strikes me that NOMOS is closer to what our “culture” than to “law.” If Paul is entering into a Greek debate about NOMOS (as well, of course, as a Jewish one), then he’s critiquing the notion that justice can be achieved through the institutions of culture. Romans stands not only against Greek experiments in utopia through NOMOS, but against Matthew Arnold (as Arnold no doubt realized he stood against Romans).

Bible - NT - Paul: Letter and Spirit

Scott Hafemann has characteristically thoughtful comments about Paul’s contrast of letter and Spirit in 2 Corinthians 3: “Paul’s contrast is not an abstract one between ‘outward’ and ‘inward,’ between ‘externality’ and ‘internality,’ between ‘ritualism’ and ‘a living experience fo the Spirit,’ or between ‘rigidity’ and ’spontaneity,’ etc., as is often suggested. Nor is Paul making a negative statement about the nature or content o fthe law by asociating it with ’stone,’ which seems to be the common denominator undergirding these interpretations. The reference in 3:3 to the ‘tablets of stone’ is part of a long tradition in which this designation is at least a normal, neutral way of referring to the law, and more likely functions to emphasize its permanence, divine authority, honor, and glory (cf. 3:7, 9, 11!). . . . The fact that the law was engraved on stone is not associated in Ezekiel or anywhere else with ’stone hearts’ as something to be done away with under the new covenant.” He concludes that the contrast is a redemptive historical one, with “letter” referring not to a particular interpretation or approach to the law, or to some Jewish perversion of the law, but to “the law without the Spirit”: “Devoid of God’s Spirit, the law remains to those who encounter it merely a rejected declaration of God’s saving purposes and promises, including its corresponding calls for repentance and the obedience of faith. Although the law declares God’s will, it is powerless to enable people to keep it. Only the Spirit ‘gives life’ by changing the human heart.”

To elaborate a bit: Without the Spirit who writes the law on tablets of the human heart, the law cannot change persons. The aim of the law is not to produce a particular set of actions, abstracted from the desires, will, goals, intentions, etc., of the person doing the actions. The law calls for a particular kind of person, whose desires, will, goals, intentions, etc. express themselves in external actions that conform to the law. The law calls for a people with a particular orientation of “heart,” but cannot provide that orientation itself. That is the work of the Spirit. Of course, the Spirit uses the words of Scripture and preaching, the fellowship of other believers, the rites of the church, etc., to shape the heart, but the Spirit is the effective agent. Through the Spirit, Word and Sacrament and other means become effectual for salvation - that is, for producing persons who perform the obedience of faith, for forming a people living truly human lives with one another before God.

Bible - NT - Paul: 2 Corinthians 5

When Paul brings Isaiah?s vision into 2 Corinthians 5, he speaks of the mortal being swallowed up by life. ?Life?Ehas already taken on a specific coloration in the course of 2 Corinthians 4. Having spoken of the glory of Christ that has shone in his heart, Paul concedes that he has this treasure of light and glory in fragile earthen vessels (4:7), but after a description of his afflictions and the way the power of the ?divine ?but?? is revealed in his life, he no longer describes the treasure as ?glory?Eor ?light?Ebut as the ?life of Jesus?E(4:10-11). That is, ?earthen vessel?E(4:7) parallels ?dying of Jesus?Eand ?being delivered over to death,?Ewhile ?treasure?Eparallels ?life of Jesus.?E The treasure that Paul bears in the earthen vessel of his mortal flesh can be described as ?glory,?E?light?Eor ?life of Jesus.?E But this glory will someday envelop and overtake the earthen vessel, so that, in 5:4, to say that ?mortality?Eis swallowed up by ?life?Eis to say that mortal flesh, the earthen vessel of the tent-like body, is swallowed up in the glory and the life of Jesus, who is the image of the glory of God. Putting this together with our other findings, we conclude that being swallowed up by life involves being swallowed up into the glorious Priest Jesus, who is the heavenly temple of God.

What is the concrete referent of this exposure to the glory of the Lord? In 3:1-16, the glory appears to be revealed through the reading and preaching of the word of God, specifically the reading of Moses. The veil separates the unbelieving from the glory revealed in the Law, but conversion removes the veil so that one can see in the Law the face of Christ. In 4:1ff, what mediates the glory is the gospel preached by Paul; he moves from the veil on the heart when Moses is read to the veil over the eyes of those who cannot see the light of Christ?s glory in the gospel (4:3-4), the light of the new creation (4:6), which shines in the heart by the Spirit. Paul puts it succinctly in 3:12: he is not like Moses, who veiled his face, but is bold and open in ?speech.?E The LOGOS of Paul the apostle mediates the transforming glory of the eternal LOGOS who is also the DOXA of God. Paul?s evangelistic speech, however, cannot be separated from Paul the person, and so, as N.T. Wright has argued, it is through the members of the church behold the glory of God in the mirror of other believers (1991). Like Adam, the people of God are the original image of God?s glory, and exposure to the glory-image of Christ in other members of the church transforms each member from glory to glory.

Confirmation of this is found in 8:23, where Paul refers to the members of the apostolic delegation that is being sent to Corinth to prepare for his arrival as ?messengers of the churches, a glory of Christ.?E Most commentators suggest that the ?messengers?Erather than the ?churches?Eare here called the ?glory of Christ.?E (I do not accept the interpretation that reduces DOXA to ?honor.?E After so fully developing the theme of glory earlier in the letter, it is hard to imagine Paul using the term without some allusion to the earlier discussion. This argument raises the issue of the unity of 2 Corinthians. I have nothing to say in this debate, and merely cite Stockhausen?s comment that, in the light of the unanimous manuscript evidence of a unified epistle, one must be extremely cautious in claiming that the letter is a composite work.) Even if this is accepted as the primary reference, in the light of the earlier discussion of 2 Corinthians, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the church would somehow be entitled to the same description. However the phrase is interpreted, it is striking that Paul refers to people not merely as ?reflecting?Ethe glory but as being the glory of Christ. Moreover, all believers, Paul says in 3:18, gaze steadily with unveiled face at the glory, and are thereby transformed from glory to glory. If the messengers are transmitters of glory, the Corinthians will reflect the glory that is transmitted by them, and thereby become glorious themselves. If the messengers are called the ?glory of Christ?Ebecause they transmit the glory of Christ, believers who are transformed into the image of the glory are also entitled to be called the glory of Christ.

Bible - NT - Paul: Romans 8, continued

CONTRASTING MINDSETS, Romans 8:5-13
Paul has announced that through the work of Father, Son and Spirit, we who are in Christ have been set free from Sin and Death, and are now capable of keeping the requirement of the Law. Torah aimed at giving life; but that purpose cannot not fulfilled by those who were ?under Torah?Ebecause those ?under Torah?Eare also ?under Sin.?E The life and righteousness that Torah aims at, the formation of a humanity that is living richly, abundantly, righteously before God, that aim can only be achieved through the Spirit and by those who are in the Spirit. Those who are in the flesh are incapable of achieving this end.

By ?flesh?Eand ?Spirit,?EPaul is not talking about two aspects of the individual human, about body and soul. ?Flesh?Eand ?Spirit?Eare two dominating principles for life, two ways of life, two ?cultures?Ewe might say (notice how expansively Paul speaks of ?flesh?Ein Philippians 3; everything he received from Judaism is ?flesh?E. ?Flesh?Ein Paul?s terminology is aligned and allied with Sin, Death, the Old Order, the Old Creation, Adam, the ?elementary principles of the world.?E To live by the flesh is to continue living in that old world. On the other hand, to live in the Spirit is to live in righteousness, in the new creation, in the new Adam, in maturity. Each of these ?regimes?Ecomes with a particular ?mindset,?Ea particular set of aims, beliefs, goals, plans, aspirations, desires. Those who are living in the flesh have their minds filled with certain ideas, but also aspire to certain kinds of accomplishments in life, have fleshly plans and goals and desires. Dittos for those who have the mindset of the Spirit.

According to the TDNT, ?sarx [flesh] is for Paul everything human and earthly, which includes legal righteousness . . . . But since this entices man to put his trust in it, to find security and renown thereby, it takes on for Paul the character of a power which is opposed to the working of the Spirit. The sharpest formulation is in Gal 5:13, 17, where sarx is an independent force superior to man. Paul realises, of course, that this power which entices away from God and His Spirit is not just a power alien to man. It belongs to man himself. The Gnostic answer that the divine core of man has been tragically overpowered by the sinister forces which seduce the senses is not Paul?s answer. OT man regarded himself as flesh when he experienced subjection to sickness and death, to the inscrutability of his destiny, to the hiddenness of God. Paul is aware of the subjection to things which take the place of God for him. But this is not just tragic fate; it is his guilt. The same applies in Rom 8:1?E3 . . . A life orientated to the sarx is also a life which serves the sarx (v. 12) and carries out its thinking (v. 6f.). This is not the thinking of a mythological power. For Paul can just as well regard man himself as the subject of phronein ta tes sarkos. It is the thinking which is proper to pre-Christian man, which rejects God and consequently reaps death. This is also the reason for repudiation of the Law, v. 3. If on this account the Son of God comes en omoiomati sarkos hamartias . . . and God condemns sin en te sarki Paul has in view the corporeality of the earthly Jesus who was crucified. But this embraces man with all his physical and mental functions. Its opposite, then, is not the spiritual; it is God.?E In many places in Paul, ?flesh?Eis set over against Spirit as a description of two contrasting realms, which are eschatologically distinguished. The old world is flesh, and the new life in Christ is the life of the Spirit.

The verb and noun for ?mindset?Eimply pondering, setting one?s mind on something, or even honoring and respecting something. Someone with a mind set on the flesh ponders and sets his hopes and desires on fleshly accomplishment.

The fleshly mindset is destined for frustration. Those who are in flesh cannot please God, and they are hostile to God. That means that they have an infinite obstacle standing between them and their happiness, the achievement of their hopes and desires. They are not, to put it mildly, going to get past that obstacle. The Spirit, by contrast, enables us to do God?s will, to do what God intends, and that means that those who are in the Spirit can achieve what God intends for them to achieve, life and righteousness and peace. There are several things to note here. First, Paul speaks of the Spirit with a rich variety of terms here: He is the Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus. Paul also says that Christ is in us, which means that Christ is in us by the Spirit. We are dwelling places for the Spirit and for Christ, for the Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of the Father. And the Triune God has become a dwelling place for us. We enter into the mutual-indwelling, the perichoretic life of the Trinity, through the Spirit. That is what it means to have ?no condemnation?E that is what it means to live the life of a justified man.

This indwelling is in contrast to the indwelling of Sin in chapter 7. This is curious: We are, all of us, indwelt by something. In Adam, we are indwelt by Sin that dominates and impels us recklessly toward death; in Christ, we are indwelt by the Spirit Who dominates us and impels us equally recklessly toward life. We are, all of us, temples, containers, houses for something other than we ourselves. This is part of being images of God, the Triune God, each Person of which is a temple, a house for the others. We are created to be indwelt and to indwell. And that indwelling something is what determines our course in life, our desires, our mindset, our ultimate destiny. We are not only ourselves; we are what indwells us. At the same time, we are ?in?Esomething else: Paul shifts back and forth between saying the Spirit is ?in us?Eand saying we are ?in the Spirit.?E There is a perichoretic interpenetration here. Those who are indwelt by the Spirit dwell in the Spirit, and in Christ. We are what indwells us; and we are also what we indwell.

Further, Paul describes the inability of the flesh here as an inability to ?please God?Eand to ?submit to the law of God.?E The implication, as NT Wright points out, is that those who are in the Spirit can please God, and also that they are able to submit to and fulfill the law of God, the Torah. Spirit and Torah are not at odds in the least. Those who are in the Spirit are in complete agreement with Torah.

The goal toward which the Spirit pushes us it the life of the resurrection. The logic of vv 10-11 is intriguing: Christ in us, and even though sin?s effect is not removed (we die), yet the Spirit is life because of righteousness. This is the Spirit of God, not the human spirit, and the Spirit of Christ brings life because of righteousness. Whose righteousness is this? Is the Spirit life for us because of the righteous work of Jesus (Rom 5)? Is the Spirit life for us because of the righteousness, the covenant-loyalty of God the Father? Or is the Spirit life because we have received a gift of righteousness through the righteousness of Jesus and the covenant faithfulness of God? It doesn?t appears to be necessary to make a choice here. Life comes to us through righteousness in all these senses. Our justification is a ?justification unto life?E(Rom 5), which involves necessarily a gift of the Spirit who is the Lord of life. Christ?s righteous act undoes the act of Adam, and brings life instead of death. And all this is backed up by the fixed purpose of God to keep His promises and realize righteousness in creation.

Then v 11 talks about the resurrection through the Spirit; so the Spirit is life to us because of righteousness, and the reason why we are raised is the same reason Jesus was raised, as a vindication of His righteousness. As Brendan Byrne puts it, ?God vindicated the personal righteousness of Jesus ?Ehis ?obedience unto death?E?E- by raising him from the dead. His resurrection was, then, the outward, bodily shape of his ?justification?Eby God. Believers do not have any personal righteousness in this sense; it is as sinners that they are grasped by grace. But ?in Christ?Ethe indwelling Spirit fulfills in them the righteousness required for salvation. They can have, then, the confident hope that the God who was faithful to Jesus, raising him from the dead in vindication of his personal righteousness, will raise also ?their mortal bodies?Ebecause of the righteousness created and preserved in them by the Spirit?E God, who has intervened at such cost to create righteousness (8:3-4), will most certainly see the work through to resurrection.?E Wright comments: ?We look back here all the way to Abraham, who in chap. 4 believed precisely in the life-giving power of God upon which the covenant depended, the covenant to which God has now been faithful in Jesus the Messiah.?E

This section concludes with an exhortation based on the indicatives that Paul has been unpacking. Because the Spirit dwells in us, we are not under obligation to the flesh; we owe nothing to the flesh. Concerning the notion of ?obligation?Eor ?debt?Ein places like Romans 13 and 15, the TDNT says, ?apostolic preaching, though it contains [imperatives], unfolds the obligations which follow from the basic Christian facts and total Christian thinking. In the main the obligation in these apostolic references is an obligation towards men which is deduced and which follows from the experienced or preceding act of God the Saviour. In many instances the sentence construction indicates the connection between human obligation and the experienced act of salvation. From this it may also be seen that NT opheilein does not lead into externally imposed legalism, but that the Christian commitment, the NT imperative, develops out of salvation already known.?E The obligation that Paul talks about arises from the act of God in delivering us. It is an imperative to live according to the Spirit, but it is an imperative based on an accomplished fact, the condemnation of sin in the flesh of Jesus and our deliverance from Sin and Death through the invading power of the Spirit. We may still live in the flesh, and we definitely sin. But we are not under the LORDSHIP of sin, and have no need to render homage to the flesh or to sin.

The paradoxical character of the Christian life is well-put in v 13: There is one way that leads to life and another that leads to death, but paradoxically, the way that leads to life is the way of death, and the way that leads to death is the way of life. This is the paradox of the gospel: as Jesus said, whoever wants to enter into life has to die; whoever preserves his life loses it, but whoever loses his life finds it. Notice that the deeds of the body are being put to death by the Spirit (v. 13). This has a couple of interesting implications. It means, first, that the Spirit of God is a killer. We think of the Spirit as Comforter, and rightly so; but here the Spirit is a weapon against the flesh. This fits with the basic meaning of RUACH, the Hebrew term for Spirit, which Sinclair Ferguson describes as the ?violence of God.?E Receiving the Spirit means that violence is going to be done to our old mindset, desires, patterns of life, etc. Second, the fact that we put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit means that we are incapable of killing the deeds of the body ourselves. It takes a divine act of killing to kill the body. Paul says elsewhere that various bodily disciplines are not sufficient to overcome the flesh. The Spirit alone is sufficient. And the Spirit operates through the Word, Sacrament, prayer, singing, feasting and fellowship. These practices, rather than fasting and flagellation, form the principal ?ascesis?Eof the NT (though fasting and other self-afflictions are not ruled out), and they form the Christian ascesis because they are means by which the Spirit ministers to us.

HEIRS OF GOD, Romans 8:14-17
With verse 14, Paul introduces a couple of new images into the mix. First, instead of talking about the Spirit ?dwelling?Ein us (a tabernacle/temple image), he says that we are being ?led?Eby the Spirit of God. Clearly, we are being led from death to life (v. 13). The image is drawn from a different part of the exodus story, the story of Israel?s wilderness wanderings, when the people of God were led from the death of Egypt to abundant life in the promised land by the Spirit-glory. Second, and consistently with this, Paul says that those who have received the Spirit and are being led by the Spirit are the true ?sons of God.?E Adam was God?s Son, and as the new Adamic race, Israel was God?s son (Ex 4:22-23). Those who are led by the Spirit are the true Israel, delivered by the true Passover lamb, making their way through the wilderness to the true Promised Land. Romans 8 is often read as pure ?ordo salutis,?Ea chapter about individual redemption. But the fact that Paul speaks of Christians as ?sons of God?Eshows that he is still thinking of the Jew-Gentile question that has been a central theme of the letter throughout. He is still addressing the question that he raised in chapter 4: Who are the true sons of Abraham? Here, he says that the true sons of Abraham, the true Exodus people, are those who have the Spirit of Christ. We have become children of Abraham, and of the Father, by the work of the Son and Spirit. The TDNT notes that even Israel?s sonship was a matter of grace: ?This is true already of Israel?s sonship in Rom 9:4, where God?s covenants and promises seem to be associated with it and where the main point in what follows is that sonship be understood not as an assured sonship by natural descent or merit but as a sonship always dependent on God?s free grace and to be received in faith.?E

Verse 15 makes this point even clearer. Paul has written about contrasting ?laws?Ein verse 2, the Torah as it functions in the sphere of the old flesh and the Torah as it functions in the sphere of the Spirit. In verse 15, he speaks of two ?spirits,?Ebut the contrast is similar. The two phrases are neatly and precisely parallel:

spirit of slavery to fear
Spirit of adoption to cry out

The exodus story is in the background, with Paul associating the old life with ?slavery?Ein Egypt. And in context, Paul is thinking of the old life under the dominion of Sin and Death as being under a spirit of slavery, with the product being fear. The Old Covenant was a covenant for minors, and so long as we are in minority we are no better than slaves (Galatians 3-4). Those who have refused Christ Jesus and therefore are without His Spirit are still laboring under this slavery and fear. They are not the true Israel, but are still in Egypt. The true Israel is the people who have received the Spirit of adoption, and are sons by the Spirit of the Son, who have cried out (as Israel did in Egypt) for deliverance. The Trinitarian act in the atonement (the Father condemning sin in the flesh of His Son, so that the Spirit can be given) is matched by a Trinitarian structure in our experience of redemption: We are sons by the Spirit of sonship, which is the Spirit of Christ, so that we speak to the Father in the same terms that the Son speaks to the Father. This is the chiasm of redemption: The Father sent the Son to secure the Spirit, and the Spirit fills and leads us to make us sons through the Son to the Father.

(Is it possible that the ?spirit of slavery?Eis the Holy Spirit, analogous to the way the ?law of sin and death?Eis Torah? Perhaps. After all, Paul talks a few verses later about God as the one who has ?subjected [creation] to futility?E[v. 20]. The finger/Spirit of God wrote the law on the tablets of stone, and thus instituted the ministry of condemnation and fear [2 Cor 3]. The Spirit dwelt among Israel during the wilderness wanderings, but that was not necessarily a cause for joy. Instead, the Spirit broke out in wrath against the people over and over again. The Spirit stood as a witness against Israel. But now that God has condemned sin in flesh, and the Spirit of the resurrection has been poured out, the Spirit comes as the Spirit of adoption and not as the Spirit of slavery.)

In the OT, the Spirit is a witness-bearer, and Jesus also talks about the work of the Spirit as a matter of bearing witness (John 15:26-27). Paul?s point appears to be that the Spirit comes alongside the human spirit and confirms it, so that there is a ?double witness?Eestablishing the fact that we are sons of God. But this seems odd. Would Paul say that we have, independently of the Spirit, a sense of being children of God? In the light of the preceding verses, it seems not. The reason our Spirit witnesses that we are sons of God is precisely that we?ve received the Spirit of adoption. So, the Spirit that ?bears witness with?Ein verse 16 seems to be doubling His own witness, since ?our spirit?Ehas come to a consciousness of sonship only by the Spirit of adoption. The Spirit is thus confirmation of Himself.

Paul then moves on to describe the implications of adoption, the fact that we are heirs, heirs of the glory of God in Christ. We?ll look at this next time.

Bible - NT - Paul: More on Romans 8

INTRODUCTION
In chapter 8, Paul brings to a climax his discussion of the law, its cooption by sin, and the resulting death. He has shown the law to be weak and helpless in dealing with the condition of sin and death, and now announces that God has done what the law could not do. The Triune God has acted to fulfill His righteousness: God the Father has sent His Son in the likeness of flesh, so that He might condemn Sin in flesh; the result is that those who receive the Spirit fulfill the requirement of the Law. To reverse the sentence of condemnation that came through Adam (5:12-21), God has ?condemned?Esin. Torah could not achieve liberation, but God has acted to that the Torah can be fulfilled in us.

Let me highlight a few additional features of verses 1-4 before moving on a bit in the passage. First, what ?condemnation?Eis Paul talking about in verse 1? On the one hand, it?s clear from Romans 5:15-16 and 8:12-13 that the condemnation is a judgment of death. In 5:15-16, Paul uses two parallel statements to describe the effects of Adam?s transgression: ?by the transgression of the one the many died?E(v. 15), and ?the judgment from one [transgression] to condemnation?E(v. 16). The implication is that ?condemnation?Emeans ?death penalty.?E Because of Adam?s transgression, all human beings were condemned to death. In 8:12-13, Paul reiterates that life in the flesh leads to death, and in context this is the condemnation that no longer applies to those who are in Christ.

So, Paul is talking about condemnation to death. But that still leaves the question of which death he is talking about? Is he talking about the Death?s reign over Adamic humanity (5:17)? In that case, ?no condemnation?Ewould mean that those who are in Christ are liberated from the reign of death in order to live under a different regime. Or, is he talking about the simple fact of physical death? In that case, ?no condemnation?Ewould mean that those who are in Christ will ultimately be raised from the dead. Or, is he talking about eternal death? In that case, ?no condemnation?Ewould mean that those who are in Christ will stand in the final judgment, and will enter into eschatological life. All of these make contextual sense. As Romans 8 develops, Paul points to the liberation of the whole creation from its bondage to decay (v. 21), and specifically of the resurrection of the sons of God. Thus, the reversal of the sentence of physical death and the hope for a favorable verdict in the final judgment are within Paul?s purview.

But that is not all Paul has in mind. He also means that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ now. That is clear from at least three factors: a) He uses the word ?now?Ein verse 1. The freedom from condemnation is not merely a hope for a final verdict in the future; those who are in Christ Jesus are now under a judgment of ?no condemnation,?Ea judgment of ?justification.?E b) Verses 2-4 also speak of a present liberation from the law of sin and death. Paul is not talking simply about eschatological liberation from sin and death. The result of Christ?s work is that the requirement of the law is fulfilled in those who ?walk?Eby the Spirit, and ?walk?Erefers to the course of a life. Father, Son, and Spirit have worked together to produce an obedient people in the present, in history, not merely a forgiven people at the final judgment. God has acted not only to bring a people to their final destination, but to enable them to take the right path in reaching that destination. c) Chapter 7 describes (among other things) the existential dilemma of a faithful Jew under the law, agreeing with the law of God in the mind but unable to keep the law. Only a present deliverance from death answers the dilemma described in that chapter.

In short, Paul has both present and future aspects of justification/no condemnation in view here. Those who are in Christ Jesus are not condemned now, and that means that they are now liberated from the law of sin and death (8:2). And, in the future, those who have walked by the Spirit and killed the flesh will be justified at the final judgment. Across the board, in every aspect, God has acted to reverse the sentence of condemnation and to justify His people.

Second, what are we to make of the connection of the judicial language of ?no condemnation?Eand the emphasis throughout chapter 8 on the gift of the Spirit? The Spirit plays very little role in many accounts of justification, which is usually seen as an event between the Father and the Son. Pentecostal scholar Frank Macchia describes a typical evangelical position (in an article in Pneuma 22:1 [2000], pp. 3-21): ?God, as an impartial judge, is about to exact punitive justice against humanity, when Jesus, our advocate, offers his own meritorious righteousness on our behalf. Since his righteousness has satisfied God?s righteous requirements, it is enough to change our verdict from condemned to acquitted?E(p. 4).

There are at least two problems with this construal of justification. First, as Robert Jenson has intimated, this is a binitarian rather than a Trinitarian account of justification, and as such it violates the axiom of Trinitarian theology that all of God does all that God does, or, as Jenson puts it (following the Cappadocians), ?every act of God . . . is ?initiated by the Father, effected by the Son and perfected by the Spirit.?? That the Cappadocians were reflecting a Pauline idea is suggested by the Trinitarian structure of Romans 8:1-4: There is no condemnation because of the work of the Triune God. ?No condemnation?E(or justification) arises not merely from a combined act of Father and Son, but from the united activity of Father, Son, and Spirit. Second, this way of accounting for justification has a hard time integrating Paul?s emphasis on the resurrection of Jesus into the doctrine of justification. Paul explicitly links justification to the resurrection (not the cross) in Romans 4, and Paul states in 1 Corinthians 15 that a cross without a resurrection does not bring forgiveness: ?If Christ is not raised, you are still in your sins.?E It is common for evangelical commentators and theologians to assign the resurrection a role in sanctification but not in justification. Macchia again: ?the resurrection was thus reserved for the basis of our subjective faith response to a justification ?objectively?Ewon in the cross. It is then sanctification that has its basis in the resurrection. The cross justifies by satisfying God?s justice while the resurrection sanctifies with new life. The end result is that the Spirit has nothing directly to do with the origin of justification?E(p. 9). At times, this is quite explicit. Macchia quotes from Everett Harrison?s commentary on Romans (Expositor?s Bible Commentary): ?It may be helpful to recognize that justification, considered objectively from the standpoint of God?s provision, was indeed accomplished in the death of Christ and therefore did not require the resurrection to complete it.?E

Paul, I think, would beg, strenuously, to differ. At this key moment in his letter, he announces that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, that those who are in Christ are justified. And immediately grounds that verdict of justification in the work of the Spirit: ?For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death?E(v. 2). Nor is this a unique passage in Paul. He makes a similar link in Galatians 3, where he describes the promise to Abraham as, interchangeably, justification and the gift of the Spirit. Abraham is reckoned righteous before God by faith (vv. 6-7), and this is a blessing that God intended to extend to the Gentiles (v. 8). Those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham (v. 9), and the blessing is clearly the blessing of justification, of being accounted righteous by God. Yet, Paul can also describe the promise to Abraham as the ?promise of the Spirit through faith.?E This same equation is implicit in the progression of Paul?s argument from chapter 2 to chapter 3. Paul describes his rebuke of Peter, which focuses on the issue of justification through faith and not through the works of Torah (2:16), and the chapter ends with Paul still condemning the notion that righteousness comes through Torah (2:21). But as soon as we move into chapter 3, the terms have changed. The prepositional phrases are the same; there is the same contrast of ?by faith?Eand ?by works of Torah?E(3:2; cf. 2:16), but Paul no longer describes the gift received through faith as ?justification.?E Instead, he asks whether the Galatians received the Spirit through faith or through the works of the law. This is not a new topic; it?s a way of talking about the same topic. ?Justification by faith and not by the works of Torah?Eand ?receiving the Spirit by the hearing with faith and not by the works of Torah?Eare two aspects of the same reality. Otherwise, chapter 3 is simply a diversion, and not on topic at all.

How can we put these things together? How is the Spirit involved in justification? This can be answered by recognizing the Spirit?s role in the resurrection of Jesus. Among other passages, Romans 8:11 shows that the Spirit is the Father?s agent in raising the Son (as He was the agent in the incarnation of the Son). God the Father will give life to our dead bodies through the Spirit, and we are assured that this will occur because God raised His Son. The implication is that God the Father raised the Son through the Spirit and in the same way will raise us up by the same life-giving Spirit. As Paul says in 1 Timothy 3:16, Jesus was ?justified in the Spirit?Eby His resurrection from the dead. For Paul, then, justification is not merely a verdict passed by the Father because of the intervention of the Son. It is certainly that, but the Spirit is integral to the act of justification. Justification for us as for Jesus is an enacted declaration, a judgment by the Father passed through the Spirit?s raising of Jesus from the dead. Brendan Byrne puts it this way: ?God vindicated the personal righteousness of Jesus ?Ehis ?obedience unto death?E?E- by raising him from the dead. His resurrection was, then, the outward, bodily shape of his ?justification?Eby God.?E We have no personal righteousness, but because we are ?in Christ Jesus?EGod enacts the same judgment on us that He enacted on the Son through the Spirit. Our justification takes the form of a deliverance from the ?law of sin and death?Ethrough the Spirit of Jesus.

ONTOLOGICAL CHANGE?
I can only begin to address verses 5-11 here. Let me worm my way into it by raising a question discussed by Thomas Schreiner in his commentary on Romans, namely, is the change from ?according to flesh?Eto ?according to Spirit?Ean ontological change, a change in the being and identity of a sinner, or is it merely a change in behavior. Schreiner refers to Charles Cranfield as a commentator who argues the latter: ?Cranfield . . . mistakenly blunts the ontological character of the text by saying that those who ?are?Eof the flesh are equated with those who ?walk?Eaccording to the flesh, and thereby puts the emphasis on behavior rather than being.?E For Schreiner, this is the opposite of Paul?s own argument: ?What Paul communicates in verses 5-11 is that those who ?walk?Eby the flesh or the Spirit do so because they ?are?Eof the flesh or the Spirit. In other words, his argument is that behavior stems from the being or nature of a person.?E

I largely agree with Schreiner here, but with some qualifications. He seems to claim that there is some ontological change of nature that ?underlies?Ethe change in walk, mindset, telos. That is, a change of nature produces change in behavior, in the orientation of life and thought, in the final end to which the person moves. I would rather say that the change in walk, mindset, and telos simply is the ontological change. To say a sinner?s being is changed is simply to say that he walks differently, thinks differently, is headed to a different ultimate end. These are not merely manifestations of a more fundamental change; these are the fundamental changes.

Apart from this, Paul?s description of those who are in the flesh implies a couple of fairly radical things about human nature. First, the ?ontological?Echange that Paul describes is a change that has to do with the invasion and indwelling of a new reality, something ?other?Ethan the person who is changed. In fact, the ontological reality of the sinner also has to do with the indwelling of a principle that is not identical with the sinner himself; that is one of Paul?s main points in chapter 7: ?no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which indwells me?E(v. 17). That is, our ?nature?Eis not something that pertains to us alone, but is determined by what indwells us, by our relation to something alien, whether Sin or the Spirit. To put this differently, the change in nature has to do with a change from one realm to another, from one regime to another, from the regime of Sin and Death to the regime of the Spirit and grace and righteousness. Again, our being is not simply OUR being, but is determined by what realm we are in, what ?aeon?Ewe live in, whether in the present age of death or the future age of the Spirit.

Second, Paul obviously does not believe in an unchanging human nature, at least not without qualification. It is true that human beings are made in the image of God, and that this does not change. We don?t become beasts or gods. But God can change our being, so that we become human in a radically different way.

Third, referring back to our earlier discussion, we should not that this whole chapter began with the announcement that there is ?no condemnation.?E That announcement is being unpacked with a series of clauses beginning with ?for?E(Greek, gar): There is no condemnation because the Spirit has set us free; because God did what the Law could not do; because those who are according to Spirit set their minds on the Spirit; for the mind set on Spirit is life and peace. The ontological change is part of Paul?s unpacking of the ?no condemnation.?E God?s favorable judgment, His declaration that there is no condemnation, takes the form of resurrection in Christ, as I?ve argued above. Now, Paul makes clear that God?s judgment against Sin that liberates us from the domination of Sin and Death, is a change in our being. Justification makes us different people.

Bible - NT - Paul: Romans 8:1

Chuck Lowe has a thoughtful analysis of Romans 8:1-4 in an essay in the June 1999 issue of JETS. He argues that the text means just what it says, that there is “no condemnation” because those who are in Christ have been liberated from sin and death through the Spirit, and therefore the eschatological “escape from condemnation [is] contingent upon sanctification.” Lowe argues that this is not in conflict with the Protestant confession of justification by faith, and says that Paul is teaching that sanctification is “necessary but not meritorious,” necessary, that is, for final deliverance from death. Lowe’s article is admirable for his willingness to take the precise language of Paul seriously, and to avoid forcing Paul into the mode of what he calls “populist evangelicalism.” At the same time, I find a few details of Lowe’s discussion unconvincing: a) He assumes that the “no condemnation” has to do with eschatological judgment and eternal life. While he quotes approvingly NT Wright’s claim that justification by faith is an anticipation in the present of a verdict that will be passed eschatologically, his argument operates with the assumption that eschatological judgment is in view in Romans 8. b) He employs “justification” and “sanctification” in their systematic senses, without recognizing the flexibility with which Paul uses these terms. Again, he quotes from John Murray’s exegesis of the passage, but doesn’t follow Murray in acknowledging that forensic language in Romans 8 is not “narrowly forensic,” but includes deliverance from the power of sin and death. These are not quibbles, but they don’t undermine the value of a fine article.

Bible - NT - Paul: Paul and the Law

Veronica Koperski has a useful (if overly detailed) overview of current debates on Paul and the Law in her 2001 Paulist Press volume, What Are They Saying About Paul and the Law?. Refreshingly, Koperski does not simply review the same old cast of characters, but includes fairly extensive treatments of Reformed NT scholars like Thielman and Silva. She focuses on interpretations of Philippians 3, which also breaks out of the normal routine of concentrating almost exclusive attention on Romans and Galatians. A few summary points:

1) Describing the “Lutheran” view that the NPP writers are writing against, Koperski concentrates not on Luther but on Bultmann. For Bultmann and his followers, the opposition of two kinds of righteousness is “an opposition between an attitude of (prideful) human effort and humble acceptance of a gift from God.” Bultmann views the Law and Judaism as a system that encourages boasting in one’s merits, in contrast, Koperski says, to Luther, “who distinguished between the Jews and Paul’s opponents on the one hand, and the ‘heretics’ of his own day on the other. Luther could at least find undserstandable the ancient Jewish devotion to the Law because it was given by God.” (Unfortunately, she offers no citations from Luther to back this up.)

2) She summarizes the options for understanding Paul and the law under three headings, each of which is designed to explain why Paul criticized the law. Bultmann’s is the first of these; the problem with the law is that it’s a system of human effort and encourages pride; Paul’s opposition to the law is an opposition of “Human Effort vs. Gift of God.” For Sanders and others, the contrast is “Through Christ vs. not Through Christ”; there is nothing wrong with the law per se, but now that Christ has come trying to achieve righteousness through law is wrong. For Dunn and others, the key problem is the restrictiveness of the Law and especially of first-century interpretations of the law, a restrictiveness that prevents Gentiles from sharing in the blessings of God; thus, the opposition is “Particular vs. Universal.” She also recognizes and discussions scholars who combine these positions in various ways, identifying Westerholm and Byrne as writers who in various ways maintain a basically Bultmannian view of Paul’s critique of the law while accepting that Sanders scored some points by offering a more accurate portrayal of Judaism.

3) Koperski gives a lot of air time to Moises Silva’s work on Galatians. Silva is critical of Sanders and the NPP because it “results in (1) an underrating of ‘legalistic’ elements that are not only present in early Judaism but endemic to the human condition, and (2) the creation of false dichotomies.” (I remember reading or hearing Silva express his astonishment that Sanders was considered revolutionary for spending so much time in the Jewish sources; Silva’s comment was something like, “I thought that was basic equipment for a NT specialist.”) Yet, Silva also recognizes that Paul has multiple targets - sometimes attacking individual legalism and self-righteousness, at other times attacking Jewish exclusiveness and national pride, and “he concedes that exegetes who shift attention . . . to the Jew-Gentiel question undeniably have a point.” Galatians 3 is in fact about the question of who the sons of Abraham are, and not merely about Abraham’s personal justification by faith; Protestant exegesis historically has failed to recognized the prominence of this issue. Silva sees Paul’s gospel as essentially eschatological, and notes that this is the gravamen of his opposition to Judaizers: “Paul has characterized message of the Judaizers as belonging to an earlier stage of salvation history. He thus effectively argues that a manner of existence founded on works of the Law is obsolete from an eschatological perspective. According to Silva, the Law is “flawed” only in the sense that it “cannot impart life” and because “righteousness is not by Law.” Silva argues that righteousness and life are two aspects of the same reality for Paul, both gifts rooted in the resurrection of Jesus.

Bible - NT - Paul: Romans 8:1-4

The following notes repeat a number of things from previous posts on this site.

INTRODUCTION
How does Romans 8 fit into the overall flow of Romans? First, Paul has announced the gospel of God?s righteousness, revealed from faith to faith (1:16-17). God?s righteousness involves His faithfulness to His promises to Israel, His promise to bless the nations through Abraham and his seed. Righteousness also means something like ?right order,?Eand describes God?s commitment to establishing right order in His creation. Thus, righteousness is (in Isaiah, eg) often virtually equivalent to ?salvation.?E For God to bring ?righteousness?Emeans that He comes in judgment to scatter the wicked and all His enemies, to deliver His chosen ones from their enemies, and to establish harmony and right order in creation. The good news has to do with God?s commitment to Israel, and more broadly with His commitment to bring His creation to its proper goal. As Steven Westerholm puts it: Paul believes, with the OT, that creation is good, but that sin makes it impossible for that goodness to be manifest. God is determined to make His goodness manifest by rescuing His good creation from tyranny of Sin and Death.

As Romans develops, however, Paul shows that there is an obstacle to the fulfillment of these promises: The general obstacle of human sin, and the more specific obstacle of Israel?s sin; instead of leading the Gentiles to worship Yahweh, Israel causes Yahweh?s name to be blasphemed among the nations. Unless the curse on Israel is broken through, unless there is a true seed of Abraham, there is no hope of blessing flowing out to the Gentiles.

Romans 8 brings these themes to a climax. In stark contrast to the world Paul describes in Romans 1, a world under wrath, full of idolatry and sin, Romans 8 describes the effects of God?s action in the Son and Spirit, His action to restore creation and humanity, His righteous restoration of the world, His manifestation of His own infinite goodness.

The nearer context has to do with the role of the Law/Torah in redemptive history. The sequence from Romans 4-8 is similar to the sequence in Galatians 3-4. Abraham was justified by faith and not by the works of the law (in any sense of that disputed phrase). Why then was the law added? Paul says in Galatians that the Law was added because of transgressions. In Romans, especially chapter 7, Paul argues emphatically that the law cannot bring life. Because of Sin and the dominance of Flesh, the man who receives the Law is radically divided, schizophrenic, in a state of living death, torn apart between his inward desire to obey God and his total inability to do so. In Romans 7, Paul, as a representative Torah-loving Israelite, is on the rack, stretched out and desperate for deliverance. Romans 8 describes the deliverance. What the Law is incapable of doing ?Etransforming flesh into Spirit, overcoming the reign of Sin and Death that is the effect of God?s condemnation ?EGod does in the Son and Spirit.

ROMANS 8:1-4
The ?therefore?Eat the beginning of the chapter raises some difficulties. How does the announcement of verse 1 follow from what Paul says in chapter 7? Obviously, the ?no condemnation?Eis not grounded I Paul?s bondage to sin. Paul does treat sinners as, in some sense, victims of Sin and Death, but this is not the basis for deliverance from condemnation. Rather, the ?therefore?Eseems to reach back to 7:6. As Schreiner has noted, 7:6 sets out the themes of chapters 7-8. 7:7ff develops the ?bondage of the law,?Ewhile chapter 8 develops the service of the Spirit.

8:1 does follow from the end of chapter 7, however. (Again, I?m reliant on Shreiner?s comments here.) At the end of ch 7, Paul is looking forward to a deliverance from the power of sin and death that holds him. His wretchedness is not relieved by the law, but only made worse. But he hopes for a deliverance, one that he characterizes as a future deliverance: ?Who will set me free from the body of this death??E(v. 24). The statement in 8:1, however, is about a ?now,?Eand v. 2 makes it clear that what happens ?now?Eis the ?setting free?Ethat Paul said he was hoping for in the future. The word for ?set free?Ein 7:24 is not the same as in 8:2, but the notion is the same: Both speak of liberation from death, of rescue and deliverance. 8:2 seems clearly to be referring back to the hope of 7:24, but announcing that the future hope of deliverance is now in effect. For those who are in Christ Jesus, deliverance is realized; there is now a rescue, now a new exodus.

What is extremely curious and interesting here is that the future deliverance that is now realized for those who are in Christ Jesus by baptism is the ground on which Paul announces that there is no condemnation. Note the sequence in 8:1-2: There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus because the law of the Spirit of life has liberated you from the law of sin and death. There is a present deliverance, the breaking in of a future deliverance in the now; and because of this deliverance, this future deliverance made present, there is no condemnation for those in Christ. In short, the ?no condemnation?Eis declared in view of future deliverance now made present.

There is yet a closer link between the deliverance and the declaration of ?no condemnation.?E The word for ?condemnation?Eis KATAKRIMA, a word used in legal contexts to refer to a verdict of guilty. In courtroom settings, to ?condemn?Emeans to ?pass a guilty verdict.?E And the word has that connotation here. It is a forensic term. But what Paul is talking about is not merely a forensic declaration, a verdict of not guilty. The sequence of Paul?s discussion makes that impossible. To verse 1 we can pose the question, Why is there no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus? And verse 2 answers, Because the Spirit has delivered from sin and death. The deliverance from the power of sin through the Spirit is the ground for the verdict of no condemnation. The ?no condemnation?Eis not just a declaration about the status of those who are in Christ; it is also a declaration of their deliverance from Sin and Death.

Paul goes on to emphasize that those who have been liberated from Sin and Death through the Spirit do what the Law requires, and are not only righteous in status, but also actually perform righteousness. The declaration of ?no condemnation?Ethus embraces not only the status of the person, but is a declaration that describes or effects the liberation from Sin and the power to walk in newness of life. This has important implications for how we are understanding justification in Paul?s thought. Condemnation, KATAKRIMA, is the opposite of justification, and a declaration of ?no condemnation?Eis essentially a declaration of ?justified.?E But the declaration of ?justification?Ehere is grounded in a future deliverance from Sin and Death that has been made a present reality in Christ Jesus. We might say that the justification implied in v 1 is a declaration not only of status but of deliverance (as in Rom 6:7), that it is a declaration that effects a deliverance and doesn?t merely affect the status of the person who is justified.

Lest this view be taken as outside the bounds of Reformed orthodoxy, I refer you to some quotations from John Murray?s commentary on Romans, posted on this site on October 25, 2004.

ROMANS 8:2
The liberation language of v. 2 is once again language of exodus. The Spirit sets free form bondage to sin and death. But the specific language of v. not only opposes Spirit/life to Sin/Death, but opposes the ?law?Eof the Spirit of life to the ?law?Eof sin and death. Do we have here an example of Paul using ?nomos?E(law) in a sense other than ?Torah?E Or can some sense be made of the idea of a ?Torah of Spirit and Life?Eas opposed to a ?Torah of Sin and Death.?E Unapologetically, perhaps insanely clinging to my assumption that for Paul ?nomos?Emeans ?Torah,?EI suggest the latter (as do Schreiner and Wright). We have already encountered a ?divided law?Ein Romans 7, the division between the ?different law?Eand the ?law of sin.?E There, I took the ?law of sin?Eas shorthand for the Mosaic system insofar as it was coopted by Sin and Death and used to kill rather than give life. Sin and Death hijacked the law, and turned it into its opposite. This would mean then that the ?law of the Spirit of life?Ethat sets free is the Torah and its system now operating in the sphere of the Spirit. For those who are in the Spirit, Torah has the power (as Psalm 19 already recognized) to convert the soul, to make wise the simple. Through the Spirit, the ?righteousness?Eof the Torah is being fulfilled among those who are not under Torah.

ROMANS 8:3
Verse 3 is full of cool stuff. The main point, of course, is that the Law was undermined and made ineffective because of flesh, a shorthand way of talking about men and women under the reign of Sin and Death that characterized the OC. Made ineffective by flesh, by Sin, the Law cannot give the life it promises. But God did what the Law could not do, and He does it through the condemnation of sin on the cross and the consequent gift of the Spirit.

In order to deal with flesh, and the reign of Sin, God sent His Son in the ?likeness?Eof sinful flesh, so that the judgment against Sin could be carried out in the Son. The ?likeness?Ehas occasioned some problems because it appears to qualify the real humanity of Jesus. But that?s not the point. ?Likeness?Ecan mean ?identity?E(Schreiner), so that the point is that Jesus participated fully in the cursed world of the OC, and that He came under the law. Perhaps too ?likeness?Eis a way of reminding us that though Jesus came in sinful flesh, came with ?dilapidated humanity?Eas one of my seminary professors put it, He was not a sinner. But it was necessary for Jesus to come in sinful flesh in order to accomplish what needed to be accomplished. Had the Son come in some other way, He could not be the one who received the condemnation for sin. He has to identify with us in our slavery to Sin and Death if the condemnation of Sin is going to be carried out in Him.

As many commentators have suggest, the phrase ?for sin?Erefers specifically to the sin offering (Leviticus 4). By presenting Jesus as a sin offering, God ?condemned sin in the flesh,?EPaul says. God carried out the sentence against Sin and Death by making Jesus a sin offering that received the sentence of Sin and Death. This verse also connects back to the argument of ch 7. Throughout ch 7, Paul argues that the Law is good, and that the ?I?Emight agree with the Law in the inner man. The force of the argument is to indict Sin as the culprit, as the one who keeps the ?I?Efrom doing what he desires to do. The purpose of giving the law, in fact, is to show that Sin can even coopt something that is holy, righteous, and good. The history of Israel and the law is designed to show Sin to be utterly sinful. And this sets up for what Paul says in 8:3: Sin stands condemned because of what it did to the Law, through the law, by effecting death through what is good. Chapter 7, then, can be seen as part of Paul?s prosecutorial case against Sin; and in 8:3, Paul says that the Judge who does right has carried out a righteous sentence against Sin. Sin deserves to be condemned.

Paul?s language of ?condemnation?Eis judicial. God is acting as judge, and refuses to condemn those who are in Christ. And He can rightly do this because He has carried out the penalty against Sin and Death on Jesus the Sin Offering.

If the ?for?Eat the beginning of v. 2 is ?because, on account of,?Ethen we have this sequence: There is no condemnation now because the Spirit has liberated us from the law of sin and death. That is, the liberation from the power of sin and death is the basis for the verdict. This is certainly a possible construction, but it implies that the justification ?Eno condemnation ?Eis grounded in something God has done for us rather than in something that God has done outside us. It seems best to take ?gar?E(for) as epexegetical, which means that the liberation from the law of Sin and Death is equivalent to the ?no condemnation.?E There is no condemnation IN THAT God has liberated from the Law of Sin and Death. The whole scenario is forensic, but it is not limited to the passing of a verdict. The choices before the interpreter seem obvious: Either the declaration of no condemnation is founded on the liberation that God performs; or, the condemnation is the same as the liberation that God performs. On either scenario, it is clear that Paul is using ?justification?Eterminology in a different sense here than is done in Protestant dogmatics.

Condemnation and justification are clearly contrasted in the two other occurrences of ?condemnation?Ein the NT (5:16, 18). In that passage, ?condemnation?Eincludes not only the verdict of ?guilty?Eor the declaration ?dying you shall die?Ebut the carrying out of that verdict in the actual sentence of death. This is evident from the parallels running through the passage:

by the transgression of the one the many died (v 15)
the judgment arose from one [transgression] to condemnation (v 16)
if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one (v 17)
as through one transgression to condemnation to all men (v 18)
through the one man?s disobedience the many were made sinners (v 19)

The result of Adam?s sin can be described as ?death?Eor ?the reign of death?Eor ?being made sinners?EOR ?condemnation.?E Adam?s sin did not just result in God saying ?you are guilty?Ebut resulted in God bringing the punishment of death. That IS the condemnation from which those who are transferred to Christ are liberated. Conversely, in Romans 5, justification must be the reversal of condemnation in both senses. This is why Paul describes justification in 5:18 as ?justification to life.?E It is the opposite of condemnation to death.

ROMANS 8:4
The result of the condemnation of sin in the flesh, and of God doing what the Law could not do, is not the removal of the Law from consideration. Rather, through the work of Jesus, what the law aimed at is actually done: the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us. This doesn?t mean that we are still under the law; and it doesn?t refer directly to specific commandments of the law. But the law aimed at a certain kind of life, a certain way of life, a certain kind of person. That is now being carried out among those who have received the Spirit of God. Paul elsewhere talks about love being the fulfillment of the law. Those who live in love, who have the love of God poured out in them by the Spirit who is Love, are doing what the law aimed at. Alternatively, one could say that the law aimed at Christ, and now that the Spirit dwells in us, we are fulfilling the law in the sense of being Christlike, being truly human. Though some commentators see verse 4 as purely forensic, it is clear that Paul is talking about the actual behavior of Christians. He talks about their ?walk?Eby the Spirit, and not about the imputation of the righteousness of Jesus to them.

Bible - NT - Paul: Notes on Romans 4

A couple of scattered notes on Paul?s argument in Romans 4.

1) Paul?s statement about belief in ?Him who justifies the ungodly?E(v. 5) clearly applies to Abraham. Verse 2 says Abraham was not ?justified by works,?Eand verse 4 refers again to ?one who works?Ein contrast to the ?one who does not work?E(v. 5), evidently still drawing from the example of Abraham. The ?reckoning?Eof verses 4-5 also hearkens immediately back to verse 3, where Abraham?s faith is reckoned as righteousness. Verses 4-5 are certainly drawing a more general conclusion, but it?s one based on the description of Abraham?s justification in Genesis 15.

Now, the interesting thing is that Paul talks about justifying faith in verse 5 as a faith in ?Him who justifies the ungodly.?E But where in Genesis do we learn that Abraham had such a faith? Abram?s faith in Genesis 15 is a faith in God?s promise of a seed like the stars of heaven. Is Paul?s description of faith in the Justifier of the ungodly a way of describing Abraham?s faith in the promise of seed? If so, we get an interesting movement in the argument: Abraham believed Yahweh?s promise that He would triumph over death by giving Abraham and Sarah a child, and multiplying that seed like the stars of heaven. Paul calls this a faith in the justification of the ungodly. Thus, believing that God will give a child to two dead parents is equivalent to believing in the justification of the ungodly. That makes sense if 1) ungodliness is seen as a form of death (the basic form) and 2) justification is a deliverance from the dominion of death. And this would also imply that the gift of Isaac, the son of the Spirit, is a public declaration of justification; what Abraham hopes for is a son, and what he hopes for is the justification of the ungodly. Or, to reverse it, he trusts God to justify the ungodly, and what he receives is a miracle baby.

2) In arguments concerning law and promise, Paul frequently emphasizes the passage of time between Abraham and the law, or between different events in the life of Abraham (Romans 4; Galatians 3). What?s up with that? Surely the Jews who are his main opponents on these issues knew all about history, but Paul seems to be reminding them of temporal/historical factors that they have ignored. It is prima facie plausible that first-century Judaism, which had been infected in various ways with Greek modes of thought, would have drifted from the radically historical character of OT faith into a discourse of timelessness. (But I don?t know enough about first-century Judaism to see how this might work out in detail.) One of the things recovered in the gospel is temporality, redemptive history. I suppose there?s a thesis here for someone to develop.

Bible - NT - Paul: Elijah in Romans

1 KINGS 19 AND ROMANS 11
I want to examine, in an exploratory fashion, a Pauline passages that has links to 1 Kings 19. 1 Kings 19 is quoted in Romans 11:2-4, where Paul writes, ?God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says in Elijah, how he intercedes with God against Israel? ?Lord, they have killed thy prophets, they have torn down thine altars, and I alone am left, and they are seeking my life.?EBut what is the divine response to him? ?I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.?EIn the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to the election.?E

In the context, Paul is questioning God?s righteousness in the history of Israel. If God is faithful to His promises, as Paul insists He is, why is it that Israel, which received the promises, seems to be losing out. Chapter 11 begins with the question of whether God has rejected His people. In answer, Paul first points to his own experience: A son of Abraham and a Benjamite, he is a follower of Jesus, included in the consummation of the covenant. Then he quotes from 1 Kings 19. The clear surface meaning of this is that, just as the Lord preserved a remnant during the days of Elijah, when most of Israel was following the Baals, so the Lord will preserve a remnant of the Seed of Abraham in the days of Paul, when most of Israel is rejecting Jesus and the gospel.

But there appears to be another depth to the connection as well. Elijah states that he is alone a prophet of Yahweh, and receives Yahweh?s answer, while he?s accusing Israel on Mount Sinai. Part of Yahweh?s answer is that the Lord is going to raise up three ?swords?Eagainst Israel, but that He will yet preserve a remnant of 7000 who will survive the judgment. Paul is facing the same reality: There is a looming judgment over Israel, the coming Roman attack on Jerusalem. That judgment is coming because Israel is devoted to false gods, to pursuing the way of zealotry. Just as Jehu came to destroy Ahab?s house and to destroy the temple of Baal in Samaria, so the Romans are coming to destroy Israel and to topple the temple in Jerusalem, which has become infested with demons. The same sort of scenario is in view in Paul?s other reference to the ?remnant?Ein Romans 9:27-29.

There is also a direct parallel between Elijah and Paul. This is not the only place where Paul describes himself in terms of the Elijah model. Paul?s mysterious trip to Arabia (Galatians 1:17) might well mean that Paul followed the route of Elijah. Arabia is the location of Sinai (Galatians 4:25), so that Paul?s trip to Arabia could well be a journey to Sinai. Likewise, Paul?s postconverion itinerary ?EIsrael to Arabia to Damascus ?Erepeats the itinerary of Elijah in 1 Kings 19. Overall, Paul is right to discern that his ministry is like that of Elijah, the first prophet to the Gentiles. Paul, rejected by Israel, turns to the Gentiles to take good news to them. Paul?s anguish over Israel?s lack of faith (Romans 9:1-2), and even his desire that he could die for his brothers (9:3-4) might reflect Elijah?s anguish over Israel?s failure to repent after the events of Mount Carmel.

If Paul is indeed understanding his own ministry according to an Elijah typology (as he does sometimes with Moses, 2 Corinthians 3), then the sequence of his argument in Romans 11 becomes clearer. Verses 1-5 are chiastically arranged:

A. God has not rejected His people: Paul is a Jewish Christian, 11:1-2a
B. Elijah alone was a prophet, 11:2b-3
B?E But Yahweh preserved a remnant in Elijah?s time, 11:4
A?E In the same way, the Lord preserves a remnant by grace in Paul?s day, 11:5

Paul alone parallels Elijah alone; and the remnant of Elijah?s time parallels the remnant of Paul?s day. In both cases, further, the lone prophet/apostle is God?s means for preserving the remnant. Specifically, both help to preserve the remnant by ministering to Gentiles, rather than exclusively within Israel. Elijah goes to Zarephath, a sign of the gospel going to the Gentiles, as Jesus said (Luke 4), and Paul sees his mission to the Gentiles as a provocation to jealousy for Jews (Romans 11:13-14).

Paul also, no doubt, wants to insist on the ?I have kept?Eof verse 4. If there is a remnant, it is not because some Jews have been able to remain sufficiently faithful to Torah to win God?s favor. The remnant is ?according to the election,?Eand is preserved as a sheer act of mercy on God?s part. All Israel deserves death, but the Lord will preserve a portion for later restoration.

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