Energy calibration

forgiveness, and more is the way of holiness. Nothing is said about devotional exercises for a life on a higher plane. The law of God is the way of holiness.

Then, in v. 2, Paul says that “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” Kasemann is an example of the strange extremes scholars can pursue. He says of v. 2, “The law of the Spirit is nothing other than the Spirit himself in his ruling function in the sphere of Christ. He creates life and separates not only from sin and death but also from their instrument, the irreparably perverted law of Moses.”² In terms of this, for him Paul says, “God’s will is learned only through the Spirit.”³ If Paul is so hostile to the law, why does he twice use the word law in this one sentence? Did Paul believe that the law given to Moses was obsolete, and that some vague other law floated in space, to be revealed to us by the Spirit?

Paul rather believes that the expressed word of God is His law and expresses God’s justice or righteousness. When we break God’s covenant law, it is sin and death to us; the law of sin works in us, because our rebellion against God leads us into the pursuit of death (Prov. 8:36). In Christ, however, the law is in harmony with and expressive of the Holy Spirit of life, and it gives us covenant blessings.

Marcionism in the early church held that two gods were represented in the Bible. The god of the Old Testament was the god of law, justice, wrath, and hate, and the god of the New Testament the god of love and mercy. In modified form, Marcionism entered the church and still survives. Thus, the Catholic scholar, Joseph L. Lilly, held that “the Law itself was abrogated (as well as its “penalties”) by the death of Christ.”⁴ Goppelt called attention to the revival of a Marcionite attitude towards the Old Testament, which he said, “may have resulted from a distortion of the law/gospel dialectic of traditional Lutheranism.” This point was made also by C.E. Braaten in History and Hermeneutics (1968). Goppelt cited also evidences of a strong Marcionite vein in G. Klein, one of Bultmann’s pupils.⁵

We must approach Romans, not in terms of Marcion, but in terms of Jesus and Paul, not seeking to divide the word of truth (2 Tim. 2:15) into contradictory sections, but seeing it as the one word of the triune God. The word that gives us “no condemnation” must not be condemned or wrongly divided by us!

2. Ernst Kasemann: Commentary on Romans, p. 215f. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Ee-rdmans, 1980.

3. Ibid., p. 216.

4. Joseph L. Lilly, “Romans,” in The Catholic Biblical Association: A Commentary on the New Testament, p. 428. Catholic Biblical Association, 1942.

5. Leonhard Goppelt: Typos, p. xi. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1982.

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29. The Required Walk (Romans 8:3-8)

3. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:

4. That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

5. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.

6. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

7. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

8. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. (Romans 8:3-8) One of the deadly aspects of antinomianism is that it undermines God’s plain word concerning the way of life. The law tells us that there is a way of blessings or life, and of curses, or death (Deut. 28). Paul emphasizes these two ways. When our Lord, in the Sermon on the Mount, says, “I say unto you,” He speaks as the Lawgiver who gave the Law to Moses and who now interprets it and corrects false teachings. He is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), and the Law expresses the righteousness of God’s being, i.e., of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Moses received direct revelations from God (Ex. 3:6-10; 14:15-18; Deut.

1:5-8, 34-40, 42-45; 2:2-8, 9-13, 16-25). To despise “Moses’ law” meant “death without mercy under two or three witnesses” (Heb. 10:28). Michael the archangel had charge of Moses’ body on his death, an unequalled honor (Jude 9). The great song of triumph in heaven is called the song of Moses and of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, because the great victory is their work, and Moses is the Great Forerunner of Christ, the Great Prophet (Deut. 18:15-22). Hence, the song of triumph bears both their names:

3. And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are they ways, thou King of saints.

4. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify they name? for thou only are holy: for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest. (Rev. 15:3-4)

Now, if Moses, to whom God spoke directly, and whom God described as the forerunner and type of Christ, is repudiated by God in due time, and the law set aside, why should God not repudiate all of us in due time? If God sets aside His law, and the minister of His law, why should He not, in an age to come, set aside our faith? We often grow weary of one another.

Why should God not grow weary of us, who are wearisome creatures, after a few thousand years and drop us? His answer is clear-cut: “I am the LORD,

ROMANS & GALATIANS

I change not.” (Mal. 3:6). Because He is the unchanging Lord, His law is unchanging, Moses is secure, and we are secure.

Paul, in v. 3, says that the law could not save man, because “it was weak through the flesh.” In so speaking, Paul does not negate or diminish the law. The law, he makes clear in Romans 1:17-21, is not only God’s revealed and written word, but it is also so essentially a part of all God’s creation, that it is known to all men. Men, as fallen and rebellious creatures, hold down that witness in their injustice. Thus, Paul says, whereas an Adam could hear God’s law in all his being, Adam’s seed hears but will not listen.

The word weak is asthenei, impotent, without strength. As Cranfield notes,

“the fault was not in the law but in men’s fallen nature.”¹ Sanday and Headlam stated it thus: “The Law points the way to what is right, but frail humanity is tempted and falls, and so the Law’s good counsels come to nothing.”²

It is important to note here that this verse and many more are seriously misread if they are seen with salvation as the goal. Rather, the purpose is that we be restored into the service of God, so that “the righteous (or, justice) of the law might be fulfilled in us” (Rom. 8:4). Both Luther and Augustine recognized this fact. The law has no power to justify; it tells men what God requires of them. Man’s fall does not absolve man of the duty to serve and obey God with all his heart, mind, and being; that mandate remains, despite man’s impotence. Christ comes to remedy that incapacity.

By His incarnation, He becomes one of us. He breaks the bonds of impotence, keeps God’s law perfectly, makes vicarious atonement for our sins, as our substitute, to satisfy the death penalty against us, and then regenerates us. We are made a new human race in Him and are now freed to serve God and to exercise dominion for Him.

We are saved (v. 4) “That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.” The word fulfilled is pleroo, here plerothe, executed, or put into force. The justice of the law is to be made full, perfected, or executed in us. This is only possible in those

“who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.” The word “walk” is peripateo, to tread all around, i.e., it refers to those who apply God’s justice across the boards to all of life. It has reference to the exercise of dominion.

Dominion man executes or puts into practice the justice of God.

The Bartian, Walter Luthi, cites a play, Durrenmatt’s Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi, in which “a drunken man who proclaims the Grace of God is the personification of justification by faith alone.” The playwright contrasts to him Mr. Mississippi, “the public prosecutor, who makes the

1. C.E.B. Cranfield: The Epistle to the Romans, vol. I, p. 379. Edinburgh, Scotland:

T. & T. Clark (1975) 1977.

2. William Sanday and Arthur C. Headlam: The Epistle to the Romans, p. 192. Edin-burgh, Scotland: T. & T. Clark (1895) 1968.

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