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Context! Is! Everything!

Posted on December 11, 2012 Written by savage Leave a Comment

I was reading Romans 7 today, after one of our pastors did a study on Romans 6 last night, and something stood out.

Paul puts this much better than I do.

In Romans 6:15-23, Paul is talking about being slaves to righteousness; no longer are we slaves to sin, but we are slaves to righteousness, to which we are indebted and from which we derive obedience.

15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!

(Romans 6:15 ESV)

Yet the law has not passed away, because it is the baseline from which we can determine righteousness, even though we’re not justified by the law. It serves to condemn us (Romans 1) and inform us (Romans 7:7).

And there we proceed to Romans 7:

7:1 Or do you not know, brothers — for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? 2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. 3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

(Romans 7:1-6 ESV)

Okay… whoa. The thing that stuck out to me was the freedom from law because we have died to it.

I’ve mentioned before the whole concept of freedom in Christ, and here we have it yet again, expressed as freedom from the law as opposed to “freedom in Christ.”

It’s a little more forceful here, though.

Yet the law still has meaning to us, does it not? Or does it? I say it does, because, again, it’s the measure for proper behavior and feeling. (If one has no desire to murder, or steal, or covet, this is good…)

Paul, however, is still thinking like a Hebrew and writing for a Greek audience, using the polemic invective of the day. He is overemphasizing his point, to “scare them straight.”

Scaring Them Straight

“Scaring them straight” is what the anti-drug commercials of Reagan’s presidency were trying to do; overemphasize a point, in the hopes that some of the point remains.

The logic seems to be something like this:

If, for example, someone retains only 10% of a message, we can help them retain 100% of the message is we emphasize it ten times.

This ignores diminishing returns, but it seems to fit the mindset.

Where is Sparta?

Sparta is in Greece, of course. But the declaration – from Zach Snyder’s “300” – of “This! Is! Sparta!” was so … comical that it seemed to fit.

The thing about Paul’s declaration of death to the law – such that we’re free from it – is based on context.

Paul is writing to the Romans; he is explaining the theology to people who may or may not be theologically sound – as shown by his constant references to those who know the law, as a subgroup of the Roman church.

That means that he has two missions for his invective.

One is to connect to those who study the law, who expect the invective and passion. (If you’re not willing to fight for it, you must not believe it very much.)

The other is to overemphasize his point through passion, so that some retention was achieved.

Yet the law does not pass away; we still consider the law the metric for sin.

The key is to remember that Paul’s statement of death to the law is not a final word. It exists in context; it co-exists with everything else said about the Law, which is that it’s the standard by which we are able to judge behavior, and that it communicates to us part of God’s Will.

Shalom.

Filed Under: Bible Study, Lifestyle Tagged With: freedom, law, paul, romans, sin

Lost in Translation?

Posted on April 18, 2012 Written by savage Leave a Comment

Last week, our Sunday School teacher had a couple of really interesting points while talking about Philippians 4:4. This is the one that reads something like this:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.

Our teacher, who works at a HVAC company, was pointing out the difference between a thermometer and a thermostat.

A thermometer is something that measures temperature; a thermostat is something that controls temperature, assuming your AC is working properly, of course.

So how does that apply to Philippians 4:4? Well, the command (“rejoice!”) is a thermostat-type command, not a measurement.

It means that we are not to find joy, passively, but to see joy in our being in God’s will.

It means that our circumstances are able to control our happiness, but not our joy. Our happiness comes and goes; that’s normal. I could have been happy if my team had won on Thursday; I can be unhappy that it lost. That said, whether I’m happy in my external circumstances or not does not affect my joy.

My joy is a decision, a state enabled by God. It is a constant, regardless of my circumstances. It’s not always easy; I certainly fail at it.

But my choice is to find joy in all things, in that:

  1. God is in control. (“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose”, Romans 8:8)
  2. The trials God places upon us have a purpose. (“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance,” James 1:2-3)

The other thing that stood out was the actual text used for the verse. The translation I like for the verse is slightly different than the NASV I used above:

Rejoice in union with the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.

I find this clearer, because it focuses on the reason for the joy, rather than an unspecific “have joy.”

I run into this a lot, because the translations are trying to be readable, more than connotatively accurate.

Readable is “Thou shalt not kill.”

Better is “Thou shalt not murder.”

Accurate is “Thou shalt not lie in wait (to murder.)”

The latter is far more reaching than a simple “thou shalt not kill” rendering, because the Bible definitely has examples of people being put to death through law. (Your mileage may vary as to how you feel about this.)

If capital punishment is legal through the Law – and it is – then “thou shalt not kill” isn’t enough. The formation of the capital errors looks something like this:

If a man does the peppermint twist backwards while singing “heaven to stairway a buying she’s,” then he shall surely be put to death, and their blood shall not be upon them.

It’s fairly formulaic: if one performs a given act, this is the punishment, and their blood shall not be upon them. The “their” here is “the one being put to death.” The “them” is “the ones performing the punishment.”

Therefore, if the unfortunate soul caught doing the peppermint twist backwards (while reciting, etc. etc.) is put to death, the blood of the criminal is not upon the hands of those who punished him.

So “thou shalt not kill” has clear-cut exceptions, even in its simple rendering, which is all right, I suppose…

But I still prefer “thou shalt not lie in wait,” because of the more broad implications. It’s not just that you kill someone, you see, it’s that you intended to kill a specific person.

But is it really “kill?” Could it be more?

Well, the Decalogue already has injunctions against covetousness, lies, theft, and more, so would they be necessary if this commandment applied to those as well? I say yes, because of the purpose of the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments were not for God. They were for us. (“The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath,” Mark 2:27, can be considered a template for this concept.) God doesn’t need the Commandments, but we do, because we are wayward.

So to me, it makes perfect sense that God would be specific in areas to cover types of behavior; the “lie in wait” to do harm is appropriate to govern what we should do.

This doesn’t address the role of the Law for Christians. One of the things that burns me up is when Christians use the Law as a club with which to beat others. It’s not that way! The Law, for Christians, is a guide, certainly, but the Law does not cover us nor govern us.

The Law is meant to serve us. Paul and Simon Peter had a conflict over the application of the Law to Christians; Paul’s point was convincing, therefore Christians don’t do a lot of things that the Torah requires.

Nor should they do those things. It would not be bad if they did, but those things are not altogether meaningful for Christians, and some are things Christians should not do, if they’ve accepted Jesus – the blood sacrifice, for example, is something that the death of Christ on the cross completed. A blood sacrifice ignores the propitiation of sin that Christ gave us.

Paul said that the Holy Spirit guides us, not the Law. (See Hebrews 6.) We act as God wills, not by the will of a codex whose purpose it was to point us to a time when we would be acceptable in God through the blood of Jesus.

Accepting the full rule of Law would be difficult for Christians anyway – look at how few Jews even try. (The Orthodox certainly do, but they’re not the majority by any means.) If you’re going to apply the law, well, you should apply all of it, not just the parts that please you – and applying the parts that please us is usually exactly what happens.

Shalom.

Originally published on December 24, 2011.

Filed Under: Bible Study Tagged With: decalogue, law, rejoice, translation

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