The Law of the Spirit of Life

We’re still working on the Roman road to salvation and finding that the road is in pretty poor condition. Let’s keep patching things up, filling the potholes and sealing the cracks! Romans 8:1 declares, “There is no condemnation for those who are in Jesus the Messiah.” However, most evangelicals don’t seem to have any grasp on what Paul writes next. Perhaps they ignore this part of scripture altogether. Or perhaps they just assume that Paul must be saying what they think he should be saying. They know that there is no condemnation because Jesus died on the cross, your sins are forgiven, and your future in heaven is assured. All you need to do is put your faith in Jesus, and make sure you don’t rely on your own conduct.

Let’s instead proceed by listening to Paul himself. He explains that there is no condemnation “because the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” What in the world does he mean by that? Well, we’ve already noted that when Paul talks about “the law,” he always means the Torah, the covenant law given to Israel. One of the key insights to understanding Paul is to recognize that “the law”, “works of the law”, Israel and “the flesh” all go together. It’s a package deal. If you try and pull these things apart you will get yourself into an exegetical and theological mess. The law means the Torah, the Jewish law. And it was given to “Israel according to the flesh.” “Israel according to the flesh” can simply denote the descendants of Israel, or ethnic Israel. But we’ve also learned it means much more than that. For Paul, “the flesh” is a very specific, technical term which denotes sinful, rebellious humanity which is doomed to decay and ultimately die.

Paul spends all of Romans chapter 7 explaining the conundrum of Israel in the flesh receiving the Torah. Remember, there’s nothing wrong with the Torah. Earlier in Romans 2:20, Paul had described the Torah as “the embodiment of knowledge and truth.” In Romans 7:12 he declares, “So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good.” Many Christians might find it hard to believe that Paul could speak of the law in such exalted terms. But it’s right there in black and white. And it makes perfect sense. Like all Jews, Paul knew that the Torah commanded Israel to love God with all her heart, mind, soul, and strength. It called the people of Israel to love their neighbor as themselves. It required proper worship of the one true God and obedience to his commands.

And beyond all this, the Torah held out the promise of life. In Leviticus 18:5, God says to Moses, “Keep my decrees and laws, for the man who obeys them will live by them.” And in Deuteronomy 30:19 God proclaims, “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

The tragedy occurs when Israel in the flesh is bound to God’s holy law. It turns out that the people of Israel were just like the rest of humanity: stiff-necked, obstinate, rebellious, sinful. And giving them the Torah (in one sense) just made matters worse. As is often observed, the law is like a magnifying glass or a searchlight. The Torah shone the bright light of God’s truth upon the dark thoughts and deeds of Israel. The Torah fully exposed the sin of Israel, and therefore made Israel’s condemnation all the more fitting. The more Israel in the flesh embraced the covenant law, the more certain her death sentence became. This dynamic is precisely what Paul means when he talks about “the law of sin and death.”

So what does Paul believe is God’s solution to this problem? He states his answer very compactly, “the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” Over the next few verses, Paul will go on to explain exactly what he has in mind when he pens the mysterious little phrase “the law of the Spirit of life.” Let’s follow along and listen to what he has to say.

“For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, to be a sin-offering. And so God condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous verdict of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Romans 8:3-4 is arguably the single most important passage for understanding the mind of the Apostle Paul. He begins by talking about “what the law was powerless to do.” From our discussion above, we know that the ultimate goal of the law was to give life. God deeply desires to bless humans with joyful, abundant, prosperous life. Such life only comes through the proper worship and obedience to the creator God. But even though the law rightly held out the promise of life, it did not have the power to produce the obedience necessary to achieve the life it promised. Israel in the flesh could recognize what was right, but they did not have power to do what was right. (This is the whole point of Romans 7:14-20) Israel in the flesh was still under the power of sin, still enslaved by sin.

In order to remedy this situation, two things needed to occur. First, sin must be condemned. The God of justice must condemn wickedness and vindicate righteousness. This was accomplished by Jesus’ sacrificial death upon the cross. Sin was drawn into the flesh of King Jesus, so that it might be condemned there, and not in his people. This first element fits quite comfortably within the typical evangelical understanding of this passage. Yes, Jesus took upon himself the condemnation, the death sentence that was warranted by our wickedness. Instead of facing condemnation, we receive forgiveness and righteous standing before God.

All that is true, although the way Paul describes this “righteous verdict” is often misunderstood. The NIV translates this phrase as “the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us.” But the Greek word for “righteous requirements” is dikaioma. Dikaioma is singular, not plural! It’s the exact opposite of “condemnation,” which in Greek is katakrima. So the thought here is not that we’ve somehow been credited with keeping all the specific decrees of the Torah. The main point is that the ultimate goal of the law – to give life – is fulfilled in Jesus’ people.

This is a crucial point. Some Christians believe that Jesus lived in perfect obedience to the Torah. In this scheme of thought, Jesus’ law-keeping is then credited, or imputed, to his followers through faith. There are fatal problems with this viewpoint. Especially problematic is that Paul never says anything like this, either here in Romans 8 or elsewhere. Equally as important, such an understanding gives the Torah a supreme importance that it does not deserve. It makes the law the eternal, ultimate standard; the standard which even Jesus himself was required to observe. Such a thought is completely foreign to Paul. (and Jesus for that matter) We’ll return to this train of thought in the future. The main thing to grasp is that Paul isn’t claiming Jesus obeyed the law and then gives us credit for keeping all the various commands of the law. No: Paul is only saying that ultimate goal of the law – to give life – is fulfilled in Jesus’ people. Instead of condemnation (katakrima) and death, we receive vindication (dikaioma) and life.

But how does this “righteous verdict,” this vindication leading to life come about? What Paul says next flies in the face of much evangelical thought. Paul is carefully laying out why we’ve been freed from “the law of sin and death.” I’ve said above that the remedy involves two basic things. First, sin has been condemned, fulfilling the requirements of God’s justice. We can infer that this results in our forgiveness, even though Paul doesn’t explicitly say that at this point. For most Christians, this is the end of the matter. Jesus’ sacrificial death accomplishes our forgiveness through faith apart from any behavior on our part. But Paul has something quite different in mind. He writes, “so that the righteous verdict of the law might be fulfilled in us, who live, not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” Here we find the second element in Paul’s remedy for the human condition. Forgiveness is not enough to make human beings into the creatures God made them to be. What they need is a power source, so that they can live in the way that honors God. The law pointed in the right direction, but it didn’t have the power to produce such a life. God has now provided the way forward, through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit enables Christians to live in a way that is pleasing to God. It transforms our thoughts, our actions, our conduct and our behavior. The Spirit brings about the complete rehabilitation of the human race. And the ultimate destination of the Spirit-filled person is eternal life, salvation itself.

So why then does Paul refer to this as “the law of the Spirit of life”? Why didn’t he just say “the power of the Holy Spirit gives me new life”? The answer reveals much about Paul’s view of the Torah. Many Christians make a very simplistic assumption that when he became a Christian, Paul developed a very negative view of the Torah. This line of thought goes something like this: Prior to his encounter with Jesus on the Damascus road, Saul of Tarsus had regarded the Torah as the greatest of all God’s gifts. He spend his entire life studying the Torah, and seeking to live in obedience to the law. By keeping the law, Paul hoped to achieve the status of righteous in God’s sight, and thereby receive God’s blessing. But when he met Jesus, Paul realized that all his efforts were completely worthless. He needed only to put his faith in Jesus sacrificial death in order to be declared righteous. And his own efforts to live in a way that is pleasing to God were not just hopeless, they were actually harmful. Even attempting to live a godly life might then become a temptation to trust in your own efforts, your own “works.”

This is a deeply distorted understanding of Paul which I hope we can now dispense. The fact is that Paul never stopped believing that “the Torah is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good.” What Paul recognized is that the law was powerless to give the life it promised. He realized that the Torah was never meant to be the permanent destination for God’s people. It was only a signpost. It pointed forward to the day when God’s people would be completely renewed and restored; when they would finally have the power to live in the way God intended. And a signpost certainly isn’t a bad thing, right? If you’re traveling, you’re grateful for all those signposts which help you find your ultimate destination. But when you reach your final goal, you can happily leave the signposts behind.

So, this is what Paul means when he writes “the law of the Spirit of life”: The Spirit-led life of those in Christ is the fulfillment of the Torah. Those who give their undivided loyalty to Jesus the Messiah receive forgiveness of sins AND the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit gives them the power to at last become the genuine, image bearing human beings God created them to be. Their whole person is renewed through and through so that they are able to love God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. They have the power to live in obedience to God’s commands, especially to love their neighbors as themselves. Such people have left the Torah behind, not because it was a bad thing, but because they have reached their ultimate destination, “the hope of glory, which is Christ in you.” And when the Torah looks on and sees God’s people, filled with his Spirit, joyfully living in obedience to Him, it says, “that’s what I was talking about!”