A Matter of
Theological Tension
By John Gavazzoni

We believers who have confidence in the Bible's veracity, must admit that not infrequently The Book seems to present theses at odds with one another, even as such blatantly contradictory, and that, not necessarily of two different authors in opposition on the subject, but one in opposition to himself. Prompted by a subject brought to my attention by a discussion among believers on an internet page, I wish to address two seemingly contradictory views of the apostle Paul on the subject of the law. As I like to say, taking into account all that the apostle has to say on the subject, particularly as conventionally translated, involves an almost intolerable intellectual tension: how to resolve what appears to be Paul writing on one hand, thus and such, then turning around and taking a completely different position.

I hope I'm not coming across as judgmentally critical, but most Christians have not taken the time under the Spirit's guidance, to have anything of worth to offer as a resolution. A little bit of tension arises, and they opt out of any further truth-pursuit and give up, while others, thinking they know the resolution, but after hearing them out, you realize they've just added another layer or more of confusion. Paul makes some very straight-forward, explicit statements about the nature of the law that, taken together, might lead one to think, "Hey, wait brother Paul, just what is it that you want me to believe here? I can't understand how you can come to your subject from two apparently contradictory perspectives."

On one hand, Paul warns against the negative effects triggered by the law. He doesn't beat around the bush at all. He writes of the law being the power or might of sin, and that the law was not meant for a righteous man. I have come to the conclusion after pondering what scripture says of the devil/Satan/the dragon, that serpent of old, and then what it says of the law, that the law=the enemy. With death as the sting of sin, according to Paul, and the law being the power or might of sin, and not meant for a righteous man, we're faced with the thesis that the law is on the side of, it is for the encouragement and strengthening of, sin and death, not ultimately, I hasten to add, but most certainly penultimately.

On and on Paul goes asserting that the law was interjected, or interposed so that sin might become exceedingly sinful, opposed to the life which is in Christ Jesus. Paul, so to speak, stands replete in the armor of God with the sword of the Spirit drawn at the gate of his beloved Gentile believers, ready to do battle against any imposition of legalism into their midst. Yet...

He speaks of the law as spiritual and holy, and that it is a child-attendant or guardian to lead us to Christ (schoolmaster misses the mark of accurate translation). Effectively, God has imposed upon mankind, and theocratically upon Israel, that which is unnatural to our true humanness. It opens one up to resenting God which inevitably leads to rebellion. It is a wall separating Jew and Gentile from the unity and peace which belongs to both together in Christ. In its primal form as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the consequence of ingesting its fruit is death, not life.

Yet with all that, Paul asserted that the law is spiritual. How can that be? How can something that we must admit is instrumentally death-dealing, be spiritual. Jonathan Mitchell's expansion of Rom. 7:14, helps to head us in the right direction of understanding: "You see, we have seen and are aware (or: know) that the Law [=Torah] constantly exists being spiritual (is pertaining to spirit; is having the qualities of a Breath-effect; is relating to attitude), yet I myself am (or: constantly exist being) fleshly (composed of flesh; carnal; flesh-oriented; or: = affected by the alienated self), being one having been and now remaining sold under [the power and control of] the Sin (under failure, under the miss of the Target)."

Elsewhere, Paul wrote that all scripture is God-breathed. The law, therefore, is the Breath-effect of God Himself. How does that differ from scripture declaring the gospel of the grace of God? Both are God-breathed, the effect of His breathing out. The ESV has it as "all scripture is breathed out by God." The answer lies in the fact that the man of the flesh doesn't hear it, nor receive it, as God breathing out, of God sharing His life with us. The natural man, the man without the Spirit, does not "have an ear to hear" spirit and life, he only hears externally-imposed demand placed upon him. He only hears requirement without the revelation that what God requires of him, He supplies. Nature, even without the Spirit (that is, without the experience of God breathing out within it) always reacts negatively to that which is alien, that which is foreign to its constitution. Nature doesn't need, and certainly not in its depths, to be bossed. It needs to be nourished and nurtured.

The natural, or soulical man is created to be ruled from the inside out, by the kind of commandment that is not an externally-imposed code of/for right behavior, but is "command" as the literal Greek has it, "the imparted goal." We owe our thanks to the Spirit for prodding our brother Mitchell to look into that root-meaning which is conventionally translated as "commandment." When Christ calls us to Himself, and becomes "the life-giving Spirit" in, to, and for us. He, our living law, our law of life, He is in us as the goal already implanted in us progressively fulfilling our destiny to be conformed to the image of God's Son. This is the real meaning of predestination as Paul describes it in Romans. We are predestined to be conformed to the image of God's Son. The very goal ahead of us, is presently at work in us. The goal is ahead of us, yet now, presently, out from within the inwardly implanted Goal.

Does that mean we deny that the law has any place in the administration of God? Many have been deceived into reaching that conclusion. There's an interplay-effect of the law as received by the carnal mind, and the commandment received in our spirits as the imparted goal, and by that interplaying effect, the Word of God divides between soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart. When the goal implanted in our flesh is received with carnal misunderstanding of its nature, the effect is failure, yet it also is encouraging attempts at self-righteousness at the same time. "Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Having raised that rhetorical question, Paul goes on to thank God through Jesus Christ, for the "law of the Spirit of life which is in Christ Jesus."