Sunday, September 10, 2017

Just One Commandment (Romans 13:8-14)

Our tendency in Christianity is to set the two parts of the Bible -- the Old and the New Testaments -- in tension if not outright pitting one against the other. Usually when we do this we cast it as something along these lines: The Old Testament is a book of law and the New Testament is a book of grace. In the OT our relationship is dominated by obedience to the law or lack thereof. In the NT we're relieved of the burden of the law through the grace of God, given in Jesus.

But when we read Romans, we find that this idea might have surprised Paul a little. We know that he wrote Romans to the Christians of that city, most of whom he had never met and who wouldn't have known a lot about him. Instead of corresponding back and forth with a church, like he did with the Corinthians, and answering their questions, Romans is Paul introducing himself and his theology to people who didn't know him. So he spends a little time on the relationship between the law and grace, and it doesn't seem to be as clear cut as the way I described it above.

For one, Paul's understanding of grace comes from Scripture, which for him would have been the Old Testament. He's writing what will become the New Testament, so it's not available to him beyond maybe some lists of things Jesus said and copies of stories he told. That means we find grace written into the OT books in addition to the law.

For another, Romans and several other of his letters stress the importance of obeying what God called us to do. Jesus himself says that following him means obeying his commandments. Mixed in with the dominant message of grace through Christ is a call for obedience that's just as serious as the other. Paul doesn't devalue obedience and in this passage ties it to a lifestyle that "puts on Jesus Christ."

He does reduce several commandments to one simple direction: Love your neighbor. Thanks to his training as a Pharisee, Paul knows the entire Torah by heart and elsewhere says he obeys all of its provisions. He knows, though, that the mostly Gentile Christians of Rome will probably know little of that law -- perhaps some of the Ten Commandments at most. He refers to a couple in describing how the law has just one or two main purposes, and he refers to one of the two great commandments Jesus explained, loving our neighbors. If we obey that commandment, Paul says, we fulfill the law.

But the only people who think that makes things easier are people who don't have neighbors. Because loving our neighbors is about as big a job as memorizing the entire Torah and, depending on the neighbor in question, might be even harder. Not to mention how hard of a job our neighbors might have in loving us sometimes.

The single commandment, in Jesus' view, has the same function as the more extensive OT law. He tells us that our loving one another lets people know we're his disciples, just as the OT law was meant to help distinguish the Israelites as God's people, distinct from those around them. And here, if Paul's right, the teaching's not just advisory but as essential to following Jesus as obedience to the OT law was to following the path God laid out for his people.

And yet we must obey this commandment in order to have any hope of fulfilling the law, something Jesus himself said he came to do. This whole idea that the NT represents some sort of easing up from the mean ol' OT falls apart once we understand that obedience is just as important as it ever was, and that it's no easier now than when there were hundreds of rules.

So how the heck can we do it? How do we "make no provision for the flesh" but instead "put on Jesus Christ?" Even if we ditch all of the obvious provisions for the flesh like gluttony or adultery we're still left with a long list of things that elevate us and what we want more than they do Christ. Things like gossiping, running people down, insisting that our mean behavior or snappy retort was justified because of what someone else has done... Well, make your own list because you know better than I do where you cross the lines.

Just when we might think we're in the same boat as we've always been in, though, as unable to meet the demands that following God places on us as the ancient Israelites were, Paul explains the role that grace plays in the situation. We're to obey the law, which even in its simplest form asks more than we're capable of -- but thanks to the grace a loving God offers us, we have the one thing we need to do what we're called to do: Help.

The key, Paul tells the Romans, is that our relationship with God is as broken as the commandments we can't keep. Jesus, through his life, death and resurrection, restores the possibility of a whole relationship, and the Holy Spirit works within us to restore the ability to make it happen. Jesus' grace restored us to God and the Holy Spirit makes that real in our lives.  We can love our neighbors as God requires of us.

Be hard to find a bigger miracle than that.

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