Discuss Theology

N.T. Wright discusses walking by the Spirit in the following fashion;

“This brings us to Galatians 5, where the point of the passage about the Spirit and the flesh is by no means to be reduced to a set of rules for Christian observance. Paul constantly gives us signs that that is the wrong way to read what he is saying. His main point, rather, is that if you are walking by the Spirit you are clearly already part of God’s new age and his renewed people, part of that inaugurated-eschatological family who have been delivered from the present evil age – and, as such, you are ‘not under the Torah’. The Torah has nothing more to say about you. As he says later, having just described all kinds of character traits which the Spirit produces, there is no Torah against such behavior”. Paul in Fresh Perspective, pg. 146-147.

The margin footnotes in my bible, at the start of Galatians 5, declare this passage to mean, “Call to freedom from the bondage of the Law”. Is it really a call to freedom from the Law, or is it a call to freedom in the Spirit? Certainly one should argue that the fruit of the Spirit is the central theme in this chapter, and not the deeds of the flesh. It is not that the Law was evil, but rather ‘the new covenant work of the Spirit, transforming the heart so as to enable it to keep the commandment of the Torah’ (pg. 146 above cited passage). Our heart is being changed into something new and the Spirit of God is doing it, not by commandments.

Every time I consider the works/grace discussion, I am reminded that Jesus declared the essence of the Law to be two fold. Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. And John says in 1 John 3.23-24, “And this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. And the one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And we know by this that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us”.

The main point is that we not free from the Law so much as we are free to, or in, the Spirit. It is not the Law at work in us to do good, but it is the Spirit of God who is transforming us. We are being transformed to love the Lord our God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Our life must reflect this aspect of the Law, but it is not done by our works so much as His sanctification. This is the new age that the Spirit of God is at work in.