Paul's Gospel

Part 5, Where the Spirit of the Lord Is

This will be our last post trying to unpack Paul's gospel. 

I don't want to claim that this series is exhaustive and comprehensive. But I do think it describes our central predicament, as seen by Paul, and the work of Christ in saving us from that predicament. Christ rescues us from the sarx/sin/death catastrophe, which Paul most fully describes in Romans 5-8, through the pouring out of the Spirit and removing the curse of the law. Salvation involves both these aspects, the ontological and the forensic. The gospel involves both power and atonement. 

And yet, that isn't all there is to the gospel. I want to end this series by making three additional observations.

First, the Spirit of Christ has been poured out upon both Jews and Gentiles. Both groups are rescued from the sarx/sin/death catastrophe. Consequently, not only did the Spirit emancipate us from our ontological predicament, it created a new humanity, where "there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female." For we are "all one in Christ Jesus." In short, beyond the ontological and forensic, the gospel also has social implications. And one of those implications is that the Gentiles, as Gentiles, have been given access to the covenantal promises made to Abraham. Much of Paul's writing about the gospel is making this point, the inclusion of the Gentiles. As Paul describes it in Romans, through the Spirit the Gentiles have been "grafted into" the olive tree of Israel. 

Much as been written and said about the social implications of the gospel, the dismantling of the "wall of hostility" that had existed between Jews and Gentiles, along with the possibility this creates for the pluralistic community of God. I simply want to draw your attention to those implications.

A second point I want to make concerns the status of righteous moral action in Paul's gospel. 

Again, it is wrong to think that the Jews were legalists who were trying to "earn their salvation." The problem was, rather, that the sarx/sin/death catastrophe had caused all people, Jew and Gentile, to come under condemnation. We are all mired in sin and death. And Christ pulls us out of that morass. Having been set free we are now called to be responsive to God's commands. As Paul says in Galatians 5, faith must work itself out in love. If the Spirit of Christ lives within us, we must "walk by the Spirit and put away the works of the flesh." We must display in our lives the fruit of the Spirit, "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." As Paul continues in Galatians 5: "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit."

Simply stated, because the Spirit gives us moral capacity the Christian life carries moral expectations. We are required and expected to bear fruit. 

The point, obviously, is that if you have a clear understanding of Paul's gospel the whole "works versus grace" debate evaporates. The grace of the Spirit, accepted by faith, gives you the capacity to follow God's commands. And because of Christ's death on the cross, the blood of Christ continually cleanses us should we falter and stumble. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Again, salvation is both power and atonement.

Now let me turn to a final observation.

There is a lot of scholarly debate about how Paul thought about the law in relation to Jews who come to faith in Jesus. Are messianic Jews still required to follow the law? Lots of ink has been spilled on this topic. There is an argument that, according to Paul's gospel, Jews remain Torah observant Jews after coming to Christ, that the Torah remans in force for them. Again, the law was never the problem. Thus, now empowered by the Spirit and liberated from the curse of the law, messianic Jews are now set free to follow the path of Torah, Jews coming to God as Jews. Gentiles, by contrast, do not need to become Jews, as Paul argues in Galatians. But Gentiles do need to display the fruit of the Spirit and are required to fulfill the law of love. Gentiles don't need to become circumcised or follow Jewish dietary laws. Basically, this is a "two paths" vision of the gospel, how the pouring out of the Spirit upon both Jews and Gentiles allows the Jews to be saved as Jews and the Gentiles to be saved as Gentiles. 

This "two paths" vision of Paul's gospel sits in contrast to the supersessionist views held by many (most?) Christians. In this view, Judaism comes to a dead end in Christ and is wholly replaced by the church. The Old Testament law is nullified and set aside. Jewish people, in this view, must "convert" to Christianity and leave their Jewish ways behind. 

The scholarship behind the two paths vision--Jews retain the law and have their own distinctive path to God in contrast to Gentiles--is very concerned with the anti-Semitism and Marcionism they see at work in supersessionism. This is good, but I think the debates here could use some clarification. 

In favor of the two paths view, I think it is clear that, for Paul, God does not set aside the law and is perfectly happy in seeing Jews seeking God as Jews and in a distinctly Jewish way. I don't think Paul was a supersessionist. 

And yet, I also don't think Paul was concerned about Jews who felt at liberty, in light of Christ, to step away from Jewish practice or observance. Paul himself is evidence of this. Paul felt at liberty to conform to or reject Jewish practices as he deemed best. You see this in statements of Paul's like, "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." (Gal. 5.6). In my estimation, what characterized Paul's vision here was freedom. As he says in 2 Corinthians, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom." This was a freedom to follow the law and a freedom to let some of those things go. The crucial issue for Paul was treating each other respectfully in light of how we make these different discernments. You see Paul discussing this in Romans 14.

All that to say, my views are a little bit different from the "two paths" view of Paul. I agree that Paul was no supersessionist, and that he wasn't calling for the Jewish people to abandon Torah. Jews come to Christ as Jews and remain Jews. However, I don't think Paul would have been bothered if a Jewish believer, having come to Christ, started to stop eating kosher. Or stopped observing certain Jewish holy days. I don't think that would have bothered Paul in the least. These observances were not set aside by Christ, but neither were they strict requirements. As I read Paul, the law was not nullified, but a certain wind of freedom had begun to blow. As Paul says in Galatians, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free."