Reading the Bible again for the First Time
Page 24
The Way from Life “in Adam” to Life “in Christ” Paul’s description of life “in Adam” strikes me as disturbingly (but accurately) dark, while his description of life “in Christ” is enormously attractive. Who would not want a life marked by freedom, love, joy, and peace? And thus the question becomes imperative: How does one move from life “in Adam” to life “in Christ”? For Paul, the new way of life is created by God through Christ. And the way one participates in that new way of life is by dying with Christ and being raised with Christ.
In Galatians, Paul writes about his own internal death and the birth of a new self within him: “I died to the law, so that I might live to God.” He then makes the connection to the language of crucifixion: “I have been crucified with Christ.” Thus the old Paul has died, and a new reality lives within Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”58
In Romans, Paul develops Jesus’ death and resurrection as a metaphor for the way of transition from Adamic existence to life in Christ at greater length and connects death and resurrection to the ritual of baptism. To be baptized symbolizes and ritually embodies dying to an old way of life and being resurrected into a new way of life:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.59
The metaphor of dying to an old way of being is also central to Paul’s ethic of transformation. We are to become “sacrifices,” an obvious image for death. The result is to be no longer conformed to this age, but to be transformed:
I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your selves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.60
In Philippians, Paul writes, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” He then speaks of Jesus’ death on the cross as involving self-emptying, humbling (roughly synonymous with self-emptying), and obedience unto death, followed by Jesus’ exaltation. This is the pattern Paul commends to his community for their own lives.61 This kind of self-emptying and humbling should not be confused with the kind that goes with an Adamic way of being, where it can mean simply giving in to the will of others. Paul is advocating neither autonomy (centering in one’s self) nor heteronomy (centering in others), but theonomy (centering in God as known in Christ)
In short, the way we become “in Christ” is by dying and rising with Christ, by participating in the path of death and resurrection—the same path that we saw in the synoptic gospels and John, and in the Hebrew Bible (with different metaphors), especially in the subversive wisdom of Ecclesiastes and Job. Becoming “in Christ” involves a new identity, a new way of seeing, and a new way of living.
How did this transformation happen in practice in Paul’s communities? A variety of instrumental means were involved, including Paul’s teaching and the radical perceptual shift it sought to bring about. The transformation was also embodied and enacted in baptism. Finally, it was mediated through life together in community: not only were the communities of Paul Spirit-filled, but they also functioned as communities of resocialization in which the new identity and way of seeing and living were internalized.
The Social Vision of Life “in Christ” Life “in Christ” also has concrete social implications. The new humanity in Christ subverts and negates the social boundaries that mark conventional human existence. Those who are “in Christ” are all “one body.”62 The solidarity in Christ overcomes the primary divisions that Paul knew in his world, including especially (but not only) the sharp social boundary between Jew and Gentile:
In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.63
Of course, people continued to be Jew or Gentile by birth, and slave or free, and male or female, but within the community these distinctions were not to matter.64 Life “in Christ” involved an egalitarian social vision. In the context of Paul’s world, it was a new social reality.
In I Corinthians, the challenge to social distinctions extended to rich and poor. The context is the celebration of “the Lord’s supper,” which involved a real meal within which the ritual remembrance of the final meal of Jesus occurred. The Christ community in Corinth, which included some wealthy people, was a villa house church that met in the home of a wealthy patron. Paul learned that the rich had been eating their own meal separate from the poor (or before the poor could arrive from work). His indictment in I Corinthians is harsh:
When you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. . . . When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?
Then he warns them of eating the Lord’s supper in an unworthy manner—that is, “without discerning the body” (meaning the community).65 The issue is not the centuries’ later Christian concern with discerning the “real presence” of Jesus in the elements of the eucharist, but the betrayal of “the body”—namely, the egalitarian social reality of life “in Christ.”
Thus life “in Christ” is a remarkably comprehensive metaphor in Paul. It speaks of the new way of life in both its personal and social dimensions, as well as the path to the new life. It is also the subject of one of Paul’s most eloquently lyrical passages. In Christ, we are indissolubly united with the love of God:
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril or sword?
. . . I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.66
“Justification by Grace”
Paul’s other central metaphor for speaking of the Christian life is drawn from the legal world. The literal meaning of “justification” is found in a court of law: to be “justified” is a legal verdict that means “to be found in the right” or “to be acquitted.” It is the verdict one would want to hear if one were on trial.
Paul uses justification as a metaphor to speak about the divine-human relationship. His most important expositions of it are in Galatians and Romans (especially the first four chapters). The dialectical character of his thought is again apparent. Just as life “in Adam” and life “in Christ” and life according to the flesh and life according to the Spirit are sharply contrasted, here “justification by works of the law” and “justification by grace through faith” are placed in sharp opposition to each other. What is the basis for being found in the right by God? Paul’s answer: grace, not law; faith, not works. Justification is a free gift, not a reward for achievement.
In Galatians, the issue is particular. Paul had founded a Christ community in Galatia. After his departure, Christian Jewish opponents of Paul insisted that Gentiles who wished to be part of the Christ community had to be circumcised. The issue was therefore this: On what basis could Gentiles become part of this new Jewish movement? Paul’s opponents had a reasonable case. After all, this was a Jewish movement, and God’s law as disclosed in the Torah clearly required circumcision.
Paul stridently opposed his Christian Jewish opponents. Insisting that Gentiles were justified by their faith in Christ, he saw the issue as one of grace versus law, faith versus works:
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nbsp; A person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Christ Jesus. . . . No one will be justified by the works of the law. . . . All who rely on the works of the law are under a curse. . . . Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law; for “The one who is righteous will live by faith.” . . . I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.67
As his letter nears its close, Paul cuttingly contrasts the demand for circumcision with grace: “You who want to be justified by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.” A few verses later, he goes further: “I wish those who unsettle you [by demanding circumcision] would castrate themselves.”68 In Galatians, justification by grace through faith is the basis for Gentiles becoming part of the community without becoming Jewish through circumcision.
In Romans, the issue is more general. Much of the first three chapters is an indictment of all humanity—Jews and Gentiles alike—as sinners:
All, both Jews and Gentiles, are under the power of sin. . . .
So that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For “no human being will be justified in God’s sight” by works of the law . . . since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.69
Instead, all “are now justified by God’s grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,” made “effective through faith.”70
Then Paul invokes Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, as a paradigm of faith, not works: “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” And, Paul emphasizes, “Faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness” before he was circumcised and apart from works of the law.71
Justification by grace is radical. Though the language has been domesticated by familiarity, it is extraordinary: “God justifies the ungodly,” Paul says. A few verses later: “Christ died for the ungodly.” Then: “While we were yet sinners” and “enemies” of God, “Christ died for us.”72 God’s love for us is prior to our worthiness. It need not be earned—indeed, cannot be earned.
Justification by grace has been more important in some periods of Christian history (and among some Christian groups) than others. It became particularly important in the Protestant Reformation. Though the understanding of it by Luther and Calvin has been criticized by many modern scholars as a misunderstanding of Paul and a projection upon Paul of the introspective conscience of early modern Western culture, it seems to me that there is insight in the radical Protestant understanding of grace.
Though I am not at all sure that I have understood Paul’s message of justification adequately, and am quite sure that there is more to understand, I want to clarify it here by identifying some important misunderstandings.
First, justification by grace in opposition to justification by works of the law is not about the inadequacy of the Jewish law or Judaism. When Paul indicts life under the law, he is not attacking the Torah in particular. On the contrary, he saw the Torah as “holy, just and good.”73 The failure to recognize this has erroneously led Christians to think of Judaism as a religion of law, works, and judgment and Christianity as a religion of grace, faith, and love. But the way of being that Paul indicts—life under the law—is as present in Christianity as it is in Judaism. So also, grace is as present within the Jewish tradition as it is within the Christian tradition.
Rather, Paul’s attack on “the law” subverts a more universal way of being, found not only within Christianity and Judaism but also within secular culture. Life under the law is the life of “measuring up” in which our well-being depends upon how well we do. If we are religious, we see our standing before God as dependent upon the earnestness of our religious life. Do we have enough faith? Are we good enough? If we are not religious, life under the law means seeing our identity and self-esteem (whether in positive or negative terms) as dependent upon our measuring up to cultural standards of achievement or appearance or worth. Life under the law is, as one contemporary scholar puts it, living according to the “performance principle.”74
Second, justification by grace is not about forgiveness; it is not simply an affirmation that God will forgive those who repent. Forgiveness was a given for Paul even before his Damascus Road experience. The Judaism he knew did not teach that one had to observe the law perfectly; rather, it taught that God forgives repentant sinners, and it provided means for mediating forgiveness.
Third, justification by grace is not about who goes to heaven, or how. The notion that it is flows out of conventional Christianity’s preoccupation with the afterlife throughout the centuries, as if that were most central to the message of Jesus and Paul and the New Testament. When justification by grace is thought about in this context, it leads to questions such as: Does this mean that everybody goes to heaven, regardless of what they believe or how they have lived (which strikes most people as unfair)? And if it doesn’t mean that, what distinguishes those who do go to heaven from those who don’t? If it’s something we do, then we are back to works. But if going to heaven doesn’t depend on something we do, then God must arbitrarily decide who goes to heaven—and then notions of predestination emerge. Here, as in much else, preoccupation with the afterlife has profoundly distorted Christianity.
Fourth, Paul’s understanding of justification is not about the replacement of one requirement with another. This frequently happens in Christianity when “faith” replaces “good works” as what God requires of us. The system of requirements remains; only the content has changed. Of course, faith in God and Jesus was central for Paul. But it was not a new requirement; rather, faith in God’s grace—in the God who justifies the ungodly—is the abolition of the whole system of requirements. It is thus a radically new way of seeing.
So what, then, is justification by grace about? Very simply, it is about the basis of our relationship to God in the present. Is it constituted by something we do or believe? Or is it a gift, a given? For Paul, of course, the answer is by now obvious. Justification is a gift of God, not a human accomplishment. Within the framework of justification by grace, the Christian life is about becoming conscious of and entering more deeply into an already existing relationship with God as known in Jesus. It is not about meeting requirements for salvation later but about newness of life in the present. And living by grace produces the same qualities as life “in Christ”: freedom, joy, peace, and love.
Thus far I have spoken primarily about the personal meaning of justification by grace, perhaps because of my Protestant conditioning. But it also has a radically egalitarian social meaning. It did for Paul, for whom it was the basis for including Jews and Gentiles as equals within his communities. Along with his metaphor of “in Christ,” it was the theological foundation of a new social reality. The logic is impeccable: within the framework of grace, there are no privileged few, no elites, no favored ones. Grace means that we are all equal before God. Indeed, even Paul’s emphasis in Romans that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” is a radically egalitarian notion.
“Christ Crucified”
For Paul, the death of Jesus was utterly central. When he wrote to the community in Corinth and reminded its members of what he had preached to them, he said, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified,” and, even more compactly, “We proclaim Christ crucified.”75
Paul’s crystallization of his message as “Christ crucified” illustrates the combination of history and metaphor that characterizes so much of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. On the one hand, “Christ crucified” is a straightforward historical fact: Jesus, whom we as Christians confess to be the messiah, was crucified. On the other hand, Paul invests this historical fact with a wide range of symbolic meanings that go far beyond a historical assertion. As a symbol or metaphor, “Christ crucified” has multiple resonances of meaning. They are political as well as theological, and they sum up much of Paul’s message.
> For Paul, “Christ crucified” is an indictment of the imperial system of domination that executed Jesus. “The rulers of this age . . . crucified the Lord of glory.” And for Paul, the resurrection was God’s yes to Jesus and God’s no to the domination system. The consequence: the rulers of this world are “doomed to perish.” It is not simply that emperors and kings will die. Rather, the domination system itself must end.76*
“Christ crucified” also discloses the wisdom of God and counters the wisdom of this world. How does the cross expose the wisdom of this world? Through paradox: the notion of a crucified messiah is an oxymoron, a Christian koan that shatters conventional ways of thinking and expectations. In Paul’s words, it is “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”77
For Paul, “Christ crucified” is also the revelation of God’s love for us. The death of God’s son on the cross discloses the depth of God’s love for us: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”78 For Paul, the cross of Jesus is the sacrifice provided by God.79 It is thus both the fulfillment of the law and the end of the law as a system of requirements.80
Finally, as we have seen, “Christ crucified” is also for Paul a symbol of the path of transformation. At the center of Paul’s life was not only the proclamation of “Christ crucified,” but also his own experience of dying and rising with Christ: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”