Apostle Pauls View of the Law - Essay Example

Paul or better known as St. Paul or Apostle Paul was born in Tarsus (an ancient located in the south-central part of modern day Turkey) and was a Roman citizen by birth. His family members were Hellenistic Jews and thus, he was, as he himself claims “I am a Jew, a Tarsian, a citizen of no ordinary city” (Acts 21:39). As Ramsay and Wilson tells us, “to Hebrews he emphasizes his Jewish character, and his birth in Tarsus is added as an accident: but to Claudius Lysias, a Greek Roman, he emphasizes Tarsian citizenship (after having told of his Roman citizenship)” 1. His Hebrew name was Saul and while still a Pharisee he persecuted the Christians. He was a person of prominence in the holy city of Jerusalem and had supervised the stoning of a Christian named, Stephen. As Paul himself says in Gal. 1.13 and also in Gal. 1.23, “I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it”. After the incident of murdering Stephen, Paul asked permission from the religious authorities to go to Damascus and persecute the Christians there. On his way to Damascus he had a vision of the Christ rising from the dead, and this vision made him temporarily blind. It was a pivotal moment in Sauls life and it changed the course of both, his life and the history of the world. On reaching Damascus still blind, Saul was treated by Ananias, and later baptized to Paul and Christianity by the same person. On changing religion, now he became the persecuted and had to flee to save himself from the Jews. St. Paul as he was known later was one of the earliest Christian missionaries along with St. Peter and his fellow apostle, James. St. Paul is credited with writing the thirteen epistles in the New Testament though now speculation has arisen as to whether he is the actual author of six out of the credited thirteen. Amidst all the authors of the New Testament Paul is the most influential one of all. Pauls view of the law as we can see from the gospels written in the form of letters to the Galatians and the Romans is the most controversial part in the studies on New Testament. It has also been said that the two letters written to Galatians and Romans contradict each other in context to the laws, as Paul changed his views while writing them. However a closer look into the two letters reveal that they complement each other while Paul talks about the Law and there is nothing to show his contradictory talk on it. Other academicians speculate that there was no study or understanding of the Laws by Paul, he just responded to his adversaries who questioned and threatened him and his religion, at various stages of his life. In fact, Paul nowhere gives a formal description or systematically lists his views on the Laws, instead we get to read them as mainly moral teachings and discussions. Given below are some of his views on the Law related to the Abraham covenant and the rigidity with which the Jews followed them and tried to impress them upon others. 1. In the Genesis 12:7, 13:15 and 17:7 we come to the episode which tells us that Abraham is promised by God that he and his children would get the right to live in the very land where they are now living as outsiders, therefore, as Paul reiterated in his letter to the Galatians, that the inheritance of the Jews did not depend on the rule of the Law. It was based solely on Gods promise to Abraham, that is, it was completely based on faith. As in his letter to the Galatians Paul says “for if the inheritance is from Law, it is no longer from promise: but to Abraham God gave it freely through promise” (3.18). We notice the same point of view in his letter to the Romans where he says the Promised Land was entirely faith based and had nothing to do with the Law. 2. The possession of the Laws by the Jews made them feel superior to Christianity and other religions because as Wright frames it “the belief that ethnic Israel is inalienably the people of the one true God and that her possession of the law, quite irrespective of her keeping of it, demonstrates this fact.” 2 However Paul in his letter to the Romans vehemently denies this claim of superior knowledge by the Jews. He tells us that possession of the Law is not enough; one will have to follow it religiously. As in Gal. 3.10, Paul tells us “Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all that has been written in the book of the law to do it.” The Jews have committed blasphemy by not following the rules and thus breaking it. Just the possession of the law does not make all Jews rectitude nor does it give them the leave to absolve from practicing faith. According to Paul, Jews do have the right to fight for righteousness but the chosen path should be correct and the only path to get righteousness is by following faith. As in Rom. 4.42- 5.5, Paul tells the Romans, “since we are justified ( made righteous) by faith[fulness], we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”. It is only hypocrites, according to Paul, who feel superior just by having the law, but not following it. This is in direct opposition to what Leviticus in 18:5 tell us, that those who keep God’s laws will live by them. Thus, Paul tells us that just because the Jews have the law, it does not mean that they live by it. As in Gal. 2.16 Paul points out “We know that a person is justified not by the works of law but through the faith of Jesus Christ”. 3. In the law as stated in the Genesis (17.11) and followed by the Jews, circumcision was a sign of the promise between Abraham and his children and thus forcible circumcision was quite rampant amongst the Pharisees. Paul raises a voice against this practice in the letter to the Galatians church. In his letter to the Romans he explains his stand. He tells us that Abraham was declared rectitude even before he was circumcised and this circumcision was just a token of the faith he had in God while still not circumcised. Thus according to Paul, if a Gentile who is uncircumcised yet obedient to the Law, is far nearer to God than a so called true circumcised Jew who chooses not to follow the Law. St. Paul wanted people to move away from the idea that circumcision was the only path to salvation and God. As Stanton puts it “Paul removes circumcision and the Law from the pedestal on which they had been placed.” 3 Paul is not totally against circumcision but he removes its importance and brings it down to the role of just being a symbol. St. Paul in his letters often quite harshly and openly criticizes the Law and advocates the Christians to move away from them. However historians differ on their interpretations of Pauls views. According to some as Raisanen puts it “it is not the law itself that is criticized and rejected by Paul, but rather the (alleged) Jewish misunderstanding and misuse of the Torah, which was perverted by Jewish teaching to a legalistic code requiring meritorious deeds” 4 while others put in the theory that “Paul in Galatians argues that the law has been superseded, in Romans he argues that the law is in force: it is only the perverted and the misunderstood law that is done away with” 5. Paul in his letters also talks about the curses that come with the Law. The Law states that anyone who does not follow it religiously is cursed. However according to Paul, anyone who tries to attain salvation and God by strictly adhering to the rule of Law is himself cursed, as it not humanely possible for anybody to follow the Law always. So the law in turn becomes and dictates something that cannot be ever achieved, as no human can always be obedient to the Law. He claims that one can attain salvation only if has complete faith in Jesus instead of the Laws. In Gal. 3.10-13 Paul tells us of Christs redemption from the “the curse of the Law”. Again in Gal. 5.4 we find him warning the Galatians by saying “you have been estranged from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by the Law; you have fallen away from Christ”. He talks in Gal 2.19-21 about his conversion to Christianity from Judaism, as to how he managed to escape this very curse of the Law by turning to Christ. Here he describes this incident as “through the Law I died to the Law, in order that I might live to God....and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me”. Paul also tells us that the rule of the Law makes its followers something similar to slaves. As in Gal 3.23 he tells us “before faith came, we were held in custody, confined under the law.” To prove this point he tells us the story of Abraham and his children. In Gal. 4.22- 31 we find that he speaks of Abrahams two wives. The slave wife known as Hagar represents the Law which is the Mosaic covenant and her son Ishmael is thus a son of slavery, while the Sarah, a free woman, is a representation of the promise made by God and is the Abraham covenant and so her son Isaac is a child of faith or promise. What he tries to say that Christians being Sarahs descendants are free children of the God. They can attain salvation by practicing faith and not by being slaves to the accursed laws. In Gal 55:1 he says that Christians have been set free from the bondage of sins. Paul here discusses his own fight with the laws and the sins caused by this Law. It is an everyday mental struggle for him for not doing what his body wants to do while trying very hard to work on something while his body refuses to co operate. This inner struggle Paul attributes to the Law being present within his body thus making him a slave to the Law. In Rom. 7.7 Paul reiterates this by saying “I would not have experienced sin except through the Law”. From the above discussions we thus can say that, according to Paul, the Laws are completely of unachievable standards. Along with this it makes a man who rigidly follows it, a slave. In Rom 8:2 we find Paul referring to these laws as “The Law of sin and death”. Thus we find that Paul almost drawing parallel lines between the evil and the Law. As Dunn would frame it “it is on the basis of such teaching that the fundamental gospel/law dialectic of reformation theology has been established: gospel and Law stand in sharpest antithesis....for Paul the law is indeed a hostile or even a demonic power......” 6 As Paul would let us know, the standards set by the Law is not possibly achievable by human standards, any man following the law and failing to meet its demands therefore cannot be called righteous, and so cursed by God and made a sinner. However Paul also points out that the law was originally not made to create sinners. It is sin who has mastered The Law and has taken in under its control, and now making it create sinners and causing death. In Rom. 7.5 we find Paul saying “for when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins which operate through the Law were effective ….to bear fruit for death”. However, it is also interesting to note that Paul in his letters also speaks well of these very laws, especially when communicating with the Romans. In Rom. 7.12 he says “the Law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good” and also in 7.14 he mentions that “the law is spiritual”. Again we find in 13.8 Paul saying that “love one another; for he who loves the other has fulfilled the law”. So Paul does not completely dismiss the law and as Dunn would tell us “Paul evidently regarded the law as a standard of universal judgment. Gentiles would be subject to judgment in accordance with the same standard.” 7 Paul believed in the Law, only he did not believe in those people who had mastered the law to misuse it. In other words, what Paul does is simply bring together the ancient Judaic church and the church of the holy God or Christ and amalgamating them together. In Gal 1.13 -14, while speaking of his earlier life as a Jew, he tells us, “I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people...for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors”. As Freed aptly frames it “on this evidence, it is hard to believe that Paul would have thought he was completely converted in any sense of term. He neither completely changed from no religion to religion nor from one religion to another. He did not forsake Judaism, because he never gave up his basic monotheistic belief about God nor the moral convictions stemming from the Jewish law. His beliefs about Jesus were simply added to his Judaism.” 8. Pauls primary aim had been to convert gentiles to Christianity, that is, from worship of many idols to the worship of only one God. For this he had realized that he had to make circumcision not compulsory and also had to relax the strict regulations that Jews had on their diet. So Paul decreed in his letters to the Roman converts (Rom. 7.6), “Now we are discharged from the Law (nomos), dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit”. He asked these new converts to do away with all the symbolisms and ceremonies of the Law, as for example, circumcision and strict regulations in the diet. He believed that God wanted him “to win obedience from the gentiles, by word and deed” (Rom. 15.18). As these gentiles or pagans were used to worshiping their idols as Gods and believed that all their heroes were sons of these Gods, Paul laid special emphasis on the fact that the only God is the God of the Jews, and Jesus his son. He completely forbade idol worship. Earlier Paul differentiated between these gentiles and the Jews who converted to Christianity. As time went on he realized that the Law cannot be made to stand between these two, and soon all became one for him. What were more important were their faith and “a new creation” (Gal 6.15- 16). As he again ascertains the same thing to the Romans he says, “All baptized converts, whether Jewish or gentile, serve in the new life of the Spirit” (Rom 7-6). Pauls belief in the Christ and God did not definitely come in a day. It took some years of retrospection and self introspection to come to this belief. However something unexplained, definitely happened on the day of his vision when he turned from being a persecutor of Christianity to a believer in the Christ. After the vision he went away to Arabia and Damascus and after three years he returned to Jerusalem. Later, again he went away, and returned to Jerusalem after fourteen years, this time fully prepared to spread the roots of Christianity. It was during these years that he came to terms with the change that occurred within him. After coming back to Jerusalem for the second time he told the religious authorities that he wished to preach amongst the gentiles. In this context he wrote the letters to the Romans and the Galatians describing them his feelings, his conversion and his thoughts of God and Christ. In these letters to the Romans and the Galatians in many places he discusses Christ in terms of the Law. We find in Rom. 8.1-2, Paul saying that “through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set [us] free from the law of sin and death.” What he tries to say is that that Christ died to save us from the evil effects of the Law and in his death he set us free. So according to Paul, those of us who have faith in Christ will not be condemned any more as “Sin is no longer our master, because we are now not under law, but under grace”. (Rom 6.14) He asked his followers to start their new free life afresh, under the Spirit of life or Christ. Paul in his letters to the Romans declared that “Christ is the end of the law in respect of righteousness for all who believe” (Rom. 10.4). End or goal or fulfillment in whichever way a believer wants to see it. However as we know that the Jews wanted to fulfill their sense of righteousness on acts that were based on the Laws. They did not base their righteousness on faith. Thus we find here in Pauls declaration he is trying to state that only if someone has faith in Christ and believe in him, only then will that person be able to attain righteousness. In the story of Abrahams two sons, as Paul redefined it (Gal 4.22- 31), he says that the ones who relate to Christ are the direct descendants of Abraham, thus they do not fall under the Law, but manage to side step and avoid it. In his letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor. 3.16), Paul says that “The spotlight has been turned from the Law and placed on Christ, and accordingly one must turn to Christ”. This moving away of the people from the law, towards Christ is not in violation of the acts of the Old Testament but very much in tune with it, as the new followers of the Spirit of life, though did not observe the commandments, yet they fulfill the law by completing what the laws were actually meant to do. Paul believed in justification by faith only to Christ. In Gal. 2.16 he repeatedly says “and we have believed in Christ Jesus, in order that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of law, because by works of the law shall no flesh be justified”. There is much debate amongst scholars as to whether Paul actually called for an abolition of the law. In his letter to the Galatians Paul refers to that the Law has given way to faith in Jesus Christ, whereas in his letter to the Romans he says that he “upholds the Law”(Rom. 3.31). It is only the misused and misinterpreted part of the Law that has to go. So some scholars say that Paul did not want the complete abolition of the Law. Others argue that Paul wanted the law to be replaced by the faith in Christ and the new Spirit of life. In fact, in Ephesians 2:15, Paul very categorically tells us that the Law has been abolished. A closer look at the Pauls views on the end of the law will give us a clearer view of these contradictory statements. In Gal 3.15 -20 Paul makes certain observations on the role of the Law. These are: 1. The Law, according to Paul, had a certain role to play in protecting the holy land of Israel from the coming of Moses till the coming of Christ. Thus the role of the Law should be only temporary. It was indeed valid, but its role ended with coming of the seed or Christ. So here we can safely assume that Paul says that with the coming of Christ the Law was abolished. 2. Paul condemned the coming of transgression and referred to it as a sin. He calls this a negative effect of the Law as it was used for creating transgressions. The Law increased sin by bringing forward the concept of conscious disobedience to God. 3. The Law itself came in to being about 430 years after the actual promise to Abraham was made. 4. The Law “was ordained through angels by a mediator” (3.19), so according to Paul, this showed the distance of God from the Law. Thus we can come to the conclusion that Paul in his gospel does not ask us to do away completely with the Law. The Law though of unattainable standards gives out the message of God’s holiness. The Law also reflects all that is holy, just and right, as it brings out Gods will. However if followed blindly will cause curse leading to sin and death. It is thus, one can say the Law is evil in its own way, as it causes its follower to sin. Paul in his gospel points out Israels misunderstanding of the Law and its failure to see the temporary nature of it. Thus Israel, as Paul points out, mistakenly thinks of itself as still a privileged nation. With the coming of Christ the need for the existence of such a Law has gone and so the code of Law can be easily done away with. However the application of many of its commandments still hold true in their spiritual sense. What Paul mainly tried to tell us through his gospel is that one does not require following and becoming a slave to the Law to gain salvation. One can attain salvation by simply having faith in Christ, as he has released us from the bondage of the Law. Notes 1. Sir William Mitchell Ramsay and Mark Wilson. St. Paul: The Traveler and Roman citizen. (London: Kregel Publications, 2001), 36. 2. N.T. Wright. “Law in Romans 2” in Paul and The Mosaic Law, edited by J D G Dunn (Tubingen: J C B Mohr, 1996), 139. 3. G. N. Stanton, “The Law of Moses and the Law of Christ”, in Paul and the Mosaic Law, edited by J D G Dunn (Tubingen: J C B Mohr, 1996), 108. 4. Heiki Raisanen. Paul and the Law. (Tubingen: (J C B Mohr ) Paul Siebeck, 1987), 42. 5. Ibid., 42. 6. James Dunn. The Theology of Paul the Apostle. (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1998), 130. 7. Ibid., 136. 8. Edwin D. Freed. The Apostle Paul and his letters. (London: Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2005), 43. Bibliography Dunn, J. The Theology of Paul the Apostle. Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. 1998. Freed, D., E. The Apostle Paul and his letters. London: Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2005. Raisanen, H. Paul and the Law. Tubingen: (J C B Mohr ) Paul Siebeck. 1987. Ramsay, W and Wilson, M. St. Paul: The Traveler and Roman citizen. London: Kregel Publications. 2001. Stanton, G.N. “The Law of Moses and the Law of Christ”, in Paul and the Mosaic Law, edited by J D G Dunn. Tubingen: J C B Mohr. 1996. Wright, N., T. “Law in Romans 2” in Paul and The Mosaic Law, edited by J D G Dunn. Tubingen: J C B Mohr. 1996. Read More