Paul and Law: Keeping the Commandments of God - Dr Brian Rosner
Paul's Repudiation of the Law - "Not under the law"
1. The Nature and Extent of Paul's Opposition to the Law
Need to face the negative approach of Paul to the law head on. The kind of statement such as "circumcision is nothing" is not isolated. Does Paul just take issue with nationalistic abuse of the law? Only certain parts? This is all a subset of Paul's relationship to Judaism. Is Paul guilty of the charge of apostasy? (Acts 21) Is he so radical he ceases to be a Jew? Paul didn't abandon the Jews and just go to the Gentiles. Acts gives a very different picture.
Statements against the law found across the Pauline corpus, and say the same things in different ways. For Paul the law is a failed path to life and righteousness. Paul's biggest problem with the law was that it excluded Gentiles.
2. Paul's insistence that Believers are "not under the law"
ὑπο νομον "under the law" occurs eleven times (in eight verses) in Galatians, Romans and 1 Corinthians. This phrase seems to be Paul's coinage. Meaning
a. bound by the demands of the Mosaic law code and subject to its sanctions
b. Gentiles are not and were never "under the law"
c. can have a neutral sense, referring to Jewish identity or negative meaning "under the penalty of sin" and is thus something from which Jews need to be released and something to which being under grace can be favourably contrasted.
1 Cor 9:19-21, Gal 3:10, 3:22, 3:25, 4:2–3 4:4–5, Rom 3:9, 7:14,
There's nothing wrong with keeping law under tradition as long as it's not put on Gentiles and doesn't impede relationship with Christ. Paul happy enough to observe law when living among those who would stumble if not.
Paul did not need to qualify his statement that he was a Jew, but did clarify his statement of "under the law" that he is not under the law (1 Cor 9). As Rom 6:14 under grace
Gal 4:4–5, 1 Cor 9:19–21 seems to say Jews are under the law and Gentiles not. But why do Gentiles need to be freed from the law if they were never under the law as in Rom 6:14?
This has been explained by:
1. Paul is writing from exclusively Jewish perspective. But Rom 6 seems to be talking of both.
2. Paul talks of Gentiles under the law by analogy as they are law to themselves. However, Rom 2 + 4 sees the law as possession of Jews.
3. Paul is generalising unconsciously from what he knows of Jews as if it's applicable to all
But the texts don't actually say Gentiles were under the law. However, to say you aren't something, is not to say you ever were? To say Australia is better than England to an Aussie audience, is not to say that everyone listening has lived in England. As Paul addresses mixed audience, his aim in Rom 6 is to convince them to live holy life through unification to Christ, and so he addresses a customarily Jewish objection to the law that the law gives life (Lev 18:5). The law increases sin. Paul is not reminding them of transference but that the gospel breaks the power of sin. Thus all people are under sin, but Jews are under the law, which is equivalent to be under sin.
This is defending Paul's consistency to being under the law. Could do the same thing with Galatians (Gal 4:21, 5:18). Some want Gentile believers to be under the law but they are 'led by the Spirit' (5:18) which is synonym for grace.
Sometimes 'under the law' means 'under sin'. Gal 3:23–25, 4:5. Oppressive overtones based on the concept of being "under" someone (which can be good or bad).
In Gal 3:10–14 Paul contrasts two paths to life. There are two dominions, "being under the law", and "being led by the Spirit". The law was an impermanent parenthesis in God's purposes. New Perspective says to be part of people of God you don't need to be under law of Moses, and this is true of Paul. But though this sociological element is important for Paul, it is reductionistic to leave it there. This does not exhaust Paul's negation of the law. His quotation of Lev 18:5 in Gal 3:12 shows Paul's polemic against the law is about doing and faith as two paths to life. Salvation is by grace through faith, and the way to protect this, is to say we are no longer under law (even though some of us never were). The path to life is not by doing but by faith.
What is the origin of Paul's opposition to being under the law?
1. Paul's calling and conversion
2. Biblical theology of Paul's position as he sees himself fulfilling prophetic expectation. Jer 31:31–33, Ez 36:22–32 and Daniel 9:9–16a, 18b lament that the Mosaic covenant and law have failed due to human sinfulness and declare time has come/will come when people must look to God's mercy and grace alone apart from the law. For Paul these hopes come to fruition in Christ.
Christ has abolished the laws in its commandments and ordinances, and it has been replaced by grace.
3. In Paul's Own Words
How does he refer to not being under the law that might help us?
Rom 2:29, Paul sets up contrast between "lettter" and "Spirit" (Also in Rom 7:6, 2 Cor 3:6). These are only three places Paul refers to the law as "letter". Paul does refer to "letters" in the plural as in 2 Tim 3:15 but when in singular Paul uses "letter" to refer to Law of Moses and thus "letter" refers to "the externality of the law". Some translations take "letter" as "written code" in the three passages above.
Paul uses "letter" as a way of referring to the law as a set of commandments to be obeyed, as a written "legal code". If Jews have the law as "letter" as legal code and written collection of commandments, Christians do not. Not under law as letter.
There are four other terms in Paul's letters that describe the law as a possession of the Jews, but not of Christians:
1. Commandments
Rom 7:7–12
2. Book
Quotation of Deut 27:26 in Gal 3:10
3. Decrees
Eph 2:15, Col 2:14 Christians are freed from the law as decrees.
4. Covenant
2 Cor 3:13–14 Whenever old covenant is read, is equivalent of whenever books of Moses are read.
Christians are not under the law as letter, commandments, books, decrees or covenant. Law is not for the righteous (believers), but to condemn the lawless.
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