God’s Grace to His Enemies

While reading Genesis I have been particularly struck by how gracious God is even to those who are his enemies, and those who will become his enemies.

When Hagar is driven away from the mother of the covenant child Isaac, God has mercy on her and promises her that her child will become a great nation. That child is Ishmael, who is the father of the Arab Muslims today. When God determines to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness, Abraham intercedes for any righteous who may dwell in the city. Because of this, God has mercy on Lot, and allows him to escape the judgement with his daughters. By incestuous union, those daughters bear both Moab and Ammon.

Ishmael, Moab, and Ammon later become Israel’s greatest enemies and stumbling blocks to the people of God.  But God not only allows them to prosper when they are evil, but he ensures that they will come into being by acts of special preservation.

Of course, we also remember that God uses this to his ends.  Later from Moab comes Ruth, who will be one of the great women in the line of Jesus Christ.  And as long as we are talking about those who were the enemies of God, we must remember ourselves.  Christ prayed for those who were crucifying him.

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
Romans 5:10

Created in Covenant

Much has been made of the two “variant” accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and 2, especially the use of the name YHWH for God in chapter 2, when the more general Elohim is used in chapter 1. This has led to speculations about different writers from different times in history.  I’m not going to get into all the textual criticism here, but I operate under the assumption that the two chapters have the same human author.

With that assumption, I believe there is a good reason that chapter 2 names God as YHWH.  The name of God is a covenant name.  When we read things from a broader viewpoint in chapter 1, there is a distance apparent from the reader to this God.  But when the writer of Genesis takes a closer look at the creation of man, he gets personal.  YHWH is supremely personal.  It is a name, and it not only tells us what God is, but who he is.  The creation of man in chapter 2 is extremely personal.  God breathes life into him.  He gives them a place to live and food to eat.  In short, he creates man in covenant and gives a commandment together with sanctions and blessings.

In chapter 3 we have an interesting development.  The serpent is deliberate in its way of addressing God, not as YHWH, but merely as Elohim.  The serpent’s words are the only part of the section that address God in general, rather than personally.  In so doing, he seeks to draw Eve away from the personal nature of God and portrays him merely as a despot.

It is as if the serpent told Eve, “God is not near.  He is a domineering power who seeks to keep good things from you, and so there is no covenant with him worth keeping.”

That Your Days May Be Long

Every Lord’s Day my church recites the Ten Commandments, acknowledging the God’s Law as the standard to direct our lives. The fifth commandment in particular is something I’ve wanted to write a bit about for a while. “Honor your father and mother,” the commandment says. But then, as Paul points out in Ephesians, it adds something. It is the first commandment with a promise attached to it: “that your days may be long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”

This is saying something quite different from how it is rendered in some translations. The NLT, for instance, says “Then you will live a long, full life in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”  While it may be true as a general principle that those who honor their parents and heed the wisdom of the past generation are more likely to healthy, prosperous, and long-lived, I don’t think that is what the promise is getting at.

God is addressing His people as an assembly in Exodus 20.  The third commandment is followed up with an expression of God’s wrath and blessings upon generations.  We see immediately that God is very concerned about covenant faithfulness over generations.  And now, when we come to the commandment that is addressing the relationship between two generations, are we to presume that the blessings are primarily individual in nature?

I would argue that the blessings promised are also generational, to fit the commandment and the concern that God shows repeatedly in urging faithfulness.  That is, in this commandment God promises not so much that you’ll have long life if you honor your parents as an individual (which nevertheless may be true), but He is promising that a nation or assembly (or church) that is characterized by covenant faithfulness and honor from one generation to the next will likewise be blessed over generations.  If Israel were to be faithful in honoring past faithful generations, God would extend their days in the land.  That your days may be long in the land.

Today, this applies to the Church just as much.  If we as a Christian culture disregard the wisdom of our parents and are characterized as rebels, thinking we know better and have nothing to learn from those who have gone before, then we may forfeit blessings.  God’s kingdom will march on, but we or our children may be left out.  A generation of rebels will beget a generation of monsters.

But if we honor past faithful generations and teach our children to do likewise, then God’s promise is that He will bless in a broad generational way through His covenant with us.  Our days will be long and He will prosper us.  God’s blessings are not for individuals only.  They are from one generation to the next.

Freed from the Law . . . by the Law?

I recently reread Romans 8 in its immediate context.  It’s interesting how we often take the classic verse referring to our acquittal and justification (Romans 8:1) out of the context which follows it.  I think it is worth another look:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

~Romans 8:1-9

Okay, so let’s break this section down and follow Paul’s line of reasoning.  He begins the section by telling us that there is no condemnation for those who are “in Christ Jesus.”  This is consistent with Paul’s language elsewhere of being “in Christ,” vitally and covenantally (Romans 6).  To be “in Christ Jesus,” then, is to be justified.  We no longer stand condemned before God.  But that is not where Paul stops.  In the next eight verses he goes further.

For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

The “For” (γὰρ) here does not necessarily mean that this presents a cause to the lack of condemnation.  It is likely that Paul is elaborating on the further results of the justification we have already received in Christ.  Cranfield takes it as “confirmation of the reality of the fundamental liberation described in v. 1.”¹  Douglas Moo, on the other hand, takes “for” here to indicate the “basis on which the person ‘in Christ’ is forever saved from condemnation” (i.e. justification), and this is probably the reason he must interpret certain subsequent phrases as he does.²

We often say without much thought that we have been freed from the bondage of the Law by grace.  Christ has taken upon himself to obey the Law in its entirety, and so fulfilled the “righteous requirement” of the law himself in our place.  His works are accounted to us.  This is all true (see my post on imputation in Paul), and I actually appealed to Romans 8:1 to show this.  But the following verses also show us that this is not the whole story.  Paul tells us here that we are freed from the law by the law.  Specifically, we are freed from the “law of sin and death” by the “law of the Spirit of life.”  So often the law is spoken of only as a condemning imprisoning entity, which we must escape.  Usually it is Romans 7:6 that is quoted, which speaks of us being released from the law.  How then does Paul speak of the law as being the thing that has freed us?

First, one may argue, as Douglas Moo does, that Paul here is not even speaking of “law” in the Torah sense.  It is possible Paul is using the word to refer to an abstract principle or power.³  In which case we do not have such a difficult passage here, at least in the first couple of verses.  With this reading, we would say that the principle (or power) of the Spirit of life has freed us from the principle of sin and death.  Indeed, Paul speaks of sin and death and cosmic powers which are defeated by Christ.  And if all we had were the first couple of verses in Romans 8 we might read it this way and be very comfortable.  But Paul does not stop there.

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.

Can Paul really be speaking of some sort of abstract principle?  Here he refers to “the law,” which is deficient because it has been “weakened by the flesh.”  This is strikingly in line with how he often speaks of the Mosaic law and administration.  In fact, he is referring back directly to Romans 7:14.  “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.”  The law is spiritual, but fallen humanity is of the flesh.  The deficiency then is not inherent to the law, but is found in our sinful unregenerate natures.  If we take the “law” of vv. 2 and 3 of chapter 8 to mean the same thing (and I see no good reason in the text why we should not), then we must conclude that Paul is speaking specifically in this section of the law as given by God (i.e. the Mosaic law, under the Old Covenant).  This becomes even more clear immediately in the next verse:

By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

God condemns the sin in the flesh through Christ, who took on himself the just punishment for sin, though sinless.  And what is the result—or rather, the purpose—of this?  “In order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us“!  Well, this is something unexpected, is it not?

We are used to saying that Christ has fulfilled the righteous requirements of the law on our behalf.  Sin has totally corrupted us, and we have no ability to fulfill the law.  Christ must do it for us.  Even as redeemed and saved people, we cannot obey the law perfectly, which is perfectly evident, since we know that we fail and sin constantly.  1 John tells us that if we say we are without sin, we are liars!  So what can Paul mean by saying that the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us?

Perhaps he means that the law is fulfilled by Christ and that we simply receive the benefits?  Again, this is how Moo reads this section.⁴  After all, Paul says the requirement of the law is fulfilled in us, not by us.  In this case, it is still Christ’s obedience to the law that is in view.  We are simply vessels of that fulfillment, the evidence of Christ’s work done.  However, I am not convinced this is the best reading of this verse.

First of all, this would be a rather curious and round about way of expressing that idea.  But more than that, is what Paul says in clarification of this fulfillment.  The righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in whom?  In those “who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”  The fulfillment of the law in us is directly related to how we walk.  And again, immediately after, Paul continues:

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

Paul is concerned with how we walk and how we live.  And again he uses the contrast of the Spirit and the flesh.  If we walk and live according to the Spirit, we put to death the deeds of the flesh (Romans 8:13).  Remember again what Paul said in v.2.  The law is deficient because of the flesh.  But if we put to death the flesh, as Paul says we must do, then this deficiency is no more:

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.

Again the contrast.  In the flesh we cannot please God, but in the Spirit we are able.  Paul says that those in the flesh are hostile to God, specifically because this one “does not submit to God’s law; indeed it cannot.”  The implication then is that the one who is in the Spirit does live in submission to God’s law, and so is able to please him.  In a similar way, in Galatians 6:2 Paul exhorts us to “fulfill the law of Christ.”

If the Spirit of God dwells in us we are freed from the law of sin and death!  The law of the Spirit has liberated us.  In case we should mistake him, he emphasizes that all who are in Christ must also be in the Spirit and have the Spirit:

Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

So then.  The righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us through our walk and our living in the Spirit.  Does this diminish grace?  Certainly not.  The very fact that we are in the Spirit is because of God’s grace, and only through the instrument of faith.  In Ephesians 2:10, Paul makes it clear that even our works done in the Lord are “prepared for us” beforehand.  It is God who works in us to will and work his good pleasure (Philippians 2:13).  In this sense, the good works we do in Christ are truly Christ’s works, graciously given to us.  Do we continue to sin?  Certainly we do.  But our sin is covered by the perfect blood of the Lamb.  We are in Christ, and so God continues to look on us with grace and favor.

What then is the implication for imputation (in the classical Reformed sense of the word)?  Christ’s work is indeed accounted to us, because we are united to him.  It must be, for we certainly do not bring anything to the deal in terms of our own works.  Even in this very section, Paul makes clear that in the flesh (before we are regenerated) it is impossible to please God.  But in Christ, all that is Christ is ours.  With him as our covenant representative (Romans 5), in the court of heaven the just judge cannot do otherwise but to justify us.  This is, as it were, a down payment.  It is a totally unmerited justification, based solely on our identification with Christ.

Having now been placed in Christ, we continue in that state of no-condemnation, for we show forth the walk and the living of one who is in Christ and has his Spirit.  Paul says that for us who walk in the Spirit, the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us.  This, also, is totally unmerited justification, again based solely on our identification with Christ.  Yet it is not another justification, or a rejustification.  Rather, it is the outworking and continuing effect of that one declaration of God—it is faith made perfect (as in James 2:22, “faith completed” in ESV).  The good works we do cannot even be said to be truly our own.  They are not of ourselves, for only the works done in faith can truly be called “good.”  And just like faith, God has given these works to us and prepared them ahead of time that we should do them.  You cannot claim a gift as your own merit, particularly to the person who gave it to you. ⁵

In this way, then, the law has set us free from the law.

This law is not essentially a different law.  It still has righteous requirements, and still must be fulfilled.  Instead, it is we who are different.  We once made the law weak through the flesh, and so could not fulfill it.  But God did what the law in that state could not do, condemning the flesh and giving us his Spirit so that we could walk and live before him.

Is Paul saying then that we are saved by works?  Not at all.  For only the saved can work.  Only in the already-transformed are the righteous requirements of the law fulfilled.

Just want to end by saying that this is still an area of study for me, and I’m open to any thoughts and interactions.  So please feel free to comment!