The Blackberry Walk

As of late, I've been interested in Galatians, and have found St Paul's teaching of the 'Curse of the Law' of particular interest. The churches St Paul founded and was trying to heal fell into two general categories: one's which drifted 'rightwards', the Judaizers; and one's which drifted 'leftwards', the libertines. In Corinth, there were people in the congregation banging their step-mothers, and having it be applauded: this libertine behaviour clearly falls short, and in his epistles, St Paul clearly wasn't impressed. To the Corinthians, the law was paper-thin, and clearly was not written on their hearts. In contrast, the churches of Rome and Galatia wanted to bring back circumcision and a strict adherence to the OT (Old Testament) law. This, to St Paul, was also wrong. For, as he wrote in Galatians 3:13, 'Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us'. Let's first look at the OT; for everything found in the NT is prototyped in the OT. We begin with the simple question, who are the children of Abraham? As St Paul writes in Galatians 4:21-31, Ishmael, whom Abraham had unto Hagar, was born naturally without miracle nor promise at Mount Sinai; Mount Sinai being where the law was given to Moses. In contrast, Abraham's son of promise, Isaac, was born to his wife Sarah at the overripe old age of ninety, and was the fulfilment of God's promise to him. It is those of the promise, not of the flesh, of Abraham who are counted among his children; it was through the circumcision and the worship of Yahweh rather than ethnic pedigree that one becomes a son of Abraham. The most notable example is Caleb in the Exodus narrative. Caleb is described as a Kennizite (Numbers 32:12); the Kennizites are a people mentioned as an indigenous tribe of the Levant when God is listing the local peoples to Abraham (Genesis 15:19). Nevertheless, Caleb is seen as supremely pious. He becomes the representative of the house of Judah (Numbers 13:6), and he along with Joshua are the only two of the original exodus allowed by God into the promised land. Clearly, one doesn't need to be an ethnic Jew to be a son of Abraham, nor to be a Christian. The parallels between the Torah and the ministry of Christ, once you look into them, are remarkable. We receive the word 'Passion' to refer to the Easter narrative from the Passover. Christ is the lamb sacrificed at Passover (1 Peter 18-19), whose blood protects us, just as the sacrificed lamb's blood protected the Jews at Passover. And, through both the resurrection and His ministry, we are led out of slavery from sin into the current wilderness to await the Second Coming and the Promised Land. In this parallel, Pharaoh is Satan, attempting to prevent Christ from liberating us from sin. And in the wilderness into which Christ is leading us, we will need nothing to sustain ourselves but the new and improved Manna: His flesh and blood (John 6:31-35). To sin, then, is to be enslaved; but how then can the law be a curse? To follow Christ out of slavery to the sin would require the law, would it not? For St Paul, the curse of the law is the compulsion to follow it and the consequences of not. 'Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of law' (Galatians 3:10 quoting Deuteronomy 27:26), St Paul writes, explicating the consequences not following the law. The law is a kind of Sword of Damocles over Israel and her fortunes. What Christ does is to break off the Old Covenant through his death, and begin the New Covenant. St Paul describes us as being widows and widowers with our contract annulled through death, and how through the Resurrection a new covenant is formed (Romans 7:4). The Old Covenant of circumcision is now replaced with the New Covenant of baptism: this is why St Paul is irate at the misunderstandings of the Judaizers who don't realise they are trying to enter a dead contract. But Christ didn't merely come to end the law: he came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17). And the law was fulfilled through crucifixion. 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree' (Galatians 3:13 quoting Deuteronomy 21:23), and yet Christ bore this sin by symbolically being hanged on a tree in the form of the cross. Throughout His ministry, Jesus hung around with whores and lepers who were considered under the law to be unclean. Not only did Jesus heal these people, but sanctified them in the process through His presence. However, in the crucifixion, Christ becomes accursed Himself by being in violation of the Law; but just as the curses on the unclean were sanctified through Christ, in falling foul Himself of the law, the curse of the law is sanctified in Him and lifted. If the law was a curse to be lifted, why were the Jews given the law in the first place? As St Paul describes, the law aroused passions causing him to sin (Romans 7:5), just like how a child, when told not to snack before dinner, begins to have a deep urge to do so. Owing to our fallen natures, the moment we hear the law, Satan and his demons tempt us to break it. And it is just like childhood: the Father, the creator of the universe, has told us this is what we can and cannot do, and if we disobey His commandments, we shall be thrown from his protection into the wilderness. Spiritually speaking, the Jewish people were like a child given commandments to keep them from sinning until they reached a kind of spiritual adulthood. God's plan was for the Jews to become 'a light to the nations' (Isaiah 42:6), so that they could teach the nations of earth who weren't chosen their generations of experience in spiritual warfare. Such was, of course, not to be, for the Jews rejected Christ. The Incarnation, then, is a kind of spiritual coming of age for mankind; no longer would mankind be cursed under the law, but freed from the domestic laws of the Father, to the law of Christ, the firstborn (Romans 8:29), for 'all authority has been given to [Christ] on heaven and earth' (Matthew 28:18). Today, titles like 'father' and 'firstborn' have lost their weight; however in the ancient world, in Biblical times, these titles carried great authority. A father must be obeyed: his word is tantamount to the law of the household. And the eldest son carries a great deal of authority also over his younger brothers and sisters. If we are to becomes sons of God by theosis, and become brothers and sisters of Christ, we must obey His command as an eldest brother of a family of old. Given the historical purpose of the law of the OT, what is its value today? The value of the law today, St Paul notes, is as a tutor (Galatians 3:24). If it weren't for the law, after all, we wouldn't know what sin was (Romans 7:7); therefore the purpose of the law for us is to teach us what is moral and immoral so that we can maturely act morally. Again, we can use the analogy of coming of age. When you are young and amoral, your parents tell you "don't do that", or congratulate you for your virtues and achievements in order to teach you how one ought to act. Once you are old enough though, your parents cease to give you this guidance for they trust you are able to live virtuously on your own two feet. This is the meaning of Easter. Christ dying on the cross isn't just the abolition of the Old Covenant of law for the New Covenant of grace; it isn't just Christ's victory over death, that we may have immortal life; and it isn't just that Christ paid off the wages of sin so that we may be freed through His grace: the cross also represent a great trust in mankind's spiritual development. Despite our sinful natures, and despite our constant stumbling, God deemed us mature enough to live virtuously on our own two feet. Whilst we may fail and stumble, falling short of what Christ trusts us to achieve, we must take responsibility for our sin in the way Adam never did: for the law is now written on the heart, guided by the Holy Spirit, rather than in the Torah. The law of the Torah was a kind of curse, insofar as the freedom from Egyptian slavery wasn't the freeing from the real slaver, sin; and the promised land of Canaan was hardly as grand as the New Jerusalem will be. Whilst the law of Moses is good, it is not the fullness of the truth as expressed in Christ. Through the fullness of Christ's truth, we are granted true life, and are through the cross brought back to the Tree of Life to grant us immortal life, rather than the worldly life and success afforded by the law (Galatians 3:12).