Law vs. Grace, Part 2
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
In my first essay on this topic, "Law vs. Grace: Which Will Win?," I wrote that St. Paul made a clear disctinction between Law and Grace, and that nobody can be saved by merely observing the Law of Moses.
But there is a further distinction that must be made: St. Paul himself was not condemning those Jews who would choose to continue observing Jewish religious customs. As Paul wrote - "...when they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, they who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcision. They only asked us to remember the poor -- which very thing I was also zealous to do" (Galatians 2:9-10).
So basically, what he's saying is that it doesn't matter whether you observe certain religious customs {"the circumcision") or not ('the Gentiles"): the thing that really matters is faith in Christ and demonstrating that faith by remembering the poor. Note carefully that at the First Council in Jerusalem, the Apostles did not condemn those Jews who wanted to retain their religious customs: "For Moses from generations of old has in every city those who preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath" (Acts 15:21), clearly implying that the Jewish believers in Jesus could continue observing their traditions. The main point was that Gentiles who believed in Jesus as the Annointed One ("Messiah" in Hebrew, "Christ" in Greek) did not have to first become Jewish proselytes and observe the Mosaic Law before they could become Christians.
Paul makes this point again, this time rather sharply, in ch.5, v.4 - "You are alienated from Christ, you who desire to be justified by the law. You have fallen away from grace." If you believe that all you need to do in order to have salvation is to observe a collection of religious customs, rituals and ceremonies, you're sadly mistaken! The essence of the Christian faith does not consist of certain ethnic foods, or speaking in an archaic dialect, or singing in a certain strange manner, or using square and triangular musical notes, or crossing oneself right-to-left vs. left-to-right - those are all cultural traditions, human traditions, not Holy Tradition. The Christian faith is faith in Christ! All those other things are optional, not essential!
And in v. 6, Paul clarifies - "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision amounts to anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love." Merely following religious ritual ("circumcision") or no rituals ("uncircumcision") without faith doesn't save. What saves is a practical, working faith: if we say we "love mankind" but that love doesn't work out in practical, visible ways of loving that sometimes unlovely relative or neighbor, we're simply fooling ourselves when we say we have faith in Christ. Paul sums it up again - "For in Christ Jesus neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation" (Galatians 6:15).
What is this "new creation"? Paul tells us what happened to him: "For I, through the law, died to the law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me. That life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself up for me" (Galatians 2:19-20). "Crucified with Christ" = "Christ in me" = "being in Christ" - see 2 Corinthians 5:17 - "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new."
In Ephesians 1:22-23, St. Paul focuses on the Church, emphasizing the community or group nature of our salvation: "He [God the Father] put all things in subjection under His [Christ's] feet, and gave Him to be Head over all things for the Church, which is His Body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all." Where is this "fullness" of God's glory to be found? In Christ's Body, the Church!
St. Paul's whole first chapter of his letter to the saints in Ephesus uses over and over the plural "you" and "we" or "us" - he's not interested in preaching the modern-day Gospel of "Just Jesus, My Bible and Me" rugged individualism, self-centered pseudo-salvation that's simply a self-deceiving, phony easy-believism ticket to heaven. This heresy is called "Antinomianism" - it teaches us that we don't need to do anything, certainly not follow a bunch of rules, simply believe, because "doing things" might make us think that we are trying to save ourselves by our good works, not by faith.
Such people mis-quote Ephesians 2:8-9 - "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast." They indulge their fleshly passions and lusts, thinking that they don't need to do any good works. But they conveniently omit the very next verse - "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them." That word "walk" refers to our day-to-day behavior, our actions or works.
Many Christians labor under confusion about the meaning of "works" in St. Paul's New Testament letters: Paul uses the word "works" in two distinctly different ways - "the works of the Law" that refer to trying to keep the ritual Law of Moses, versus "good works" that refer to the way faith works through love. The first "works" he always describes negatively: they can't save us. But the second "works" he always describes positively as the evidence of Christ in us! All religions including Christianity have rituals and traditions - they're not bad as such, but they aren't the essence of Christianity. So here's how we should understand "Law vs. Grace" - Law is our human, fleshly efforts to save ourselves through religious ritual, but Grace is Christ's resurrected life in us empowering us to do good works.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
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