9. Conversion: Staying In (Part 1)— The Spirit and Pauline Ethics
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Conversion: Staying In (Part 1)—
The Spirit and Pauline Ethics
The Spirit, in constituting a new people for God’s name, fulfills the purpose of the law and stands over against the “flesh” by enabling righteous living.
I grew up in a church where the buzz phrases “eternal security” and “once saved, always saved” were bad news. People who believed so, I was told, even if they did not intend it, encouraged “easy-believism” and “cheap grace”; that is, people believed in Christ for salvation but failed to exhibit it in their lives. They were eternally secure, so why get uptight about how they lived? Only later did I learn that this language was a popular distortion of Calvin’s perseverance of the saints. Calvin believed (rightly so) that God enables his holy ones, his saints, to persevere to the end, and in that sense they were secure—eternally. Unfortunately, what was sometimes advocated as Calvinism often did offer false security to unbelievers, people who wanted a passport to heaven without becoming citizens.
Nothing could be further from Paul’s perspective. Salvation has to do with both getting in and staying in. To get saved means to be joined to the people of God by the Spirit; and to be saved means to live the life of the saved person. We are brought to life by the Spirit so as to live the life of heaven on earth, also by the Spirit—walking in the Spirit, being led by the Spirit, sowing to the Spirit. The Spirit who implants the faith by which we believe (2 Cor. 4:13) is the same Spirit whose fruit in our lives includes faith (Gal. 5:22), meaning now “faithful walking in God’s ways.” Merely optional righteousness is unthinkable.
What does it mean, then, to live in the Christian community and in the world as the people of God? That is what ethics is all about, which is what this chapter is all about. To be sure, life in the Spirit means far more than just ethical behavior. The whole of life under the new covenant is now lived in and by the Spirit, including worship, one’s relationship to God, and everyday life itself. But since ethical life is often central in his letters, and since the Spirit is mentioned often in these contexts, Paul’s understanding of Christian ethics as life in the Spirit is the focus of this chapter.
The Spirit and Ethical Life
For many people Christian behavior is a rather straightforward affair. They read Paul’s various imperatives (commands) as a new form of law and try their best to abide by them, giving each command much the same value. Love for neighbor and the wearing of head coverings, forgiveness and women keeping silent in church, sexual purity and what you eat or drink, all carry the same weight. Even though we are saved by grace, God expects us to live according to his commands in every aspect of our lives. But such a view is both too easy and too hard, and a poor reading of Paul.
First of all, it is too easy because it is purely individualistic. It is far easier to be a Christian in isolation than it is to live out one’s faith in the context of all those other imperfect people who make up God’s church. It is too easy precisely because it turns Christian ethics into easily performed codes of conduct having to do not with caring for one another but with penny-ante stuff like food and drink. At the same time it is too hard, because it thinks of ethics in terms of law and finds forgiving wrongdoing and loving the unlovely impossible; such ethics totally misses the glorious freedom of the children of God to live the life of the future together, empowered by the Spirit.
Two issues, therefore, confront us in this chapter. First, that Christian ethics is not primarily an individualistic, one-on-one-with-God brand of personal holiness; rather it has to do with living the life of the Spirit in Christian community and in the world. As with getting in, Paul’s accent here falls heavily on the community. His concern is with the local church as the people of God in their city. Hence most of his instructions to them are in the second person plural, with the whole church in mind. But these instructions are expressed in such a way that they are experienced and obeyed at the individual level. For example, the command to remain filled with the Spirit in Ephesians 5:18 is addressed to a community setting in which believers teach one another with various kinds of songs. By the very nature of things, it applies first to individual believers, who must respond to the exhortation if the community is to be filled with the Spirit.
The second issue is that ethics has to do with life in the Spirit, not life disguised as such though really a continuation of life under law. In saving us through Christ and the Spirit, God has created an eschatological people, who live the life of the future in the present, a life reflecting the character of the God who became present first in Christ and then by his Spirit. As the renewed presence of God, the Spirit, having given life to his people, now leads them in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Part of this second issue has to do with the role of the law in Pauline ethics. For whenever Paul wrestles theologically with “works of law” and “justification by grace,” he invariably brings in the Spirit as the key to the question, What happens to righteousness in terms of behavior, if righteousness is by grace apart from the law? Since some of what Paul says on this matter seems ambiguous to many people, we will begin our look at “Spirit ethics” by first trying to resolve this issue.
The Spirit and the New Covenant
Even though it was God’s presence that distinguished Israel as God’s own people, their identity as that people was bound up with their obedience to the Torah, the law. Itinerant Jewish Christians were forever dogging Paul’s heels, entering his churches and arguing that for believers in Christ to be identified with God’s people they must also observe Torah. On the contrary, Paul argues, the Spirit, and the Spirit alone, identifies the people of God under the new covenant.
The failure of the former covenant, the covenant of law, was that even though the Torah was “Spiritual” in the sense that it came by way of Spirit-inspiration (Rom. 7:14), and even though it came with glory (2 Cor. 3:7), it was not accompanied by the empowering Spirit. Indeed, it was written on stone tablets, which for Paul represented its deadness, its basic inability to set people free. It had become a covenant of letter (a merely written code of laws requiring obedience) leading to death (Rom. 2:29; 7:6; 2 Cor. 3:5–6); and a veil like that which covered Moses’s face to hide the fading glory now covers the hearts of all who hear it read (2 Cor. 3:14).
In contrast, the new covenant, by means of the life-giving Spirit, is written on “tablets of human hearts” (2 Cor. 3:3); its rite of “circumcision” is by the Spirit and “of the heart” (Rom. 2:29). The gospel and its ministry are accompanied by a much greater and more enduring glory, the ministry of the Spirit himself (2 Cor. 3:8). The new covenant is life-giving because its content, Christ, is administered by the Spirit. It is through the Spirit that we behold—and are being transformed into—the glory of the Lord (2 Cor. 3:4–18). The promised new covenant has replaced the old, and the gift of the Spirit proves it.
Essential to this view of things is Paul’s understanding of the gift of the Spirit as fulfillment of the new covenant promise of Jeremiah 31:31–34, which had come to be read in light of Ezekiel 36:26–37:14. The reason for a new covenant was the failure of the old to produce a truly meaningful righteousness, a righteousness coming from an obedient heart, rather than dutiful observances—as though God’s people could be identified by cirumcision, the observance of days, and food laws. The Old Testament itself is abundantly clear that God’s intent with Torah was for his character to be revealed in the way his people worshipped and lived, hence the crucial role to be played by the Spirit.
The Spirit, promised as part of the new covenant, would produce the righteousness the former covenant called for but failed to produce. The Spirit has now been experienced by Jew and gentile alike, and that quite apart from Torah. Thus the Spirit, as the eschatological fulfillment of the promised new covenant, plays a central role in Paul’s argumentation whenever gentile inclusion, Torah-free, is the issue.
The Spirit Brings an End to Torah Observance
The gift of the Spirit as the new covenant replacement of Torah and the new covenant fulfillment of Torah’s righteous requirement is the key to one of the nagging questions in our reading of Paul: How are we to understand his view of the law? Our primary difficulty here stems from the tension we feel over many of Paul’s own statements. He sometimes speaks of the law in a negative way, as having had its day; these stand side by side, sometimes in the same contexts, with other statements that affirm Torah as good and as being established by faith. Here as much as at any other place we face the complications of Paul’s simultaneous continuity and discontinuity with the Old Testament.
On the one hand, Paul can speak of the law as bringing knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20; 7:7–12) or as “arousing sin” (7:5); indeed, it was “added so that the trespass might increase” (5:20). To be under the law is to be in prison, to be under slavery (Gal. 3:23; 4:1); it means to be a descendant of Hagar rather than of Sarah (Gal. 4:21–31). Having increased the transgression, it led to condemnation (2 Cor. 3:9); and it was helpless to do anything about it (Rom. 7:14–25; 8:3). For this reason the law ultimately deals in death, not life (2 Cor. 3:6; Gal. 2:19; Rom. 7:5, 9). Those who promote Torah observance therefore belong to “the mutilation” (Phil. 3:2); they are enemies of Christ whom Paul wishes would go the whole way and castrate themselves (Gal. 5:12). With the coming of Christ and the Spirit, therefore, the time of Torah has come to an end (Rom. 10:4; Gal. 5:18, 23). All these passages clearly emphasize discontinuity.
On the other hand, Paul sees the law as “holy” and “Spiritual” and its requirements as “holy, righteous, and good” (Rom. 7:12, 14). The singular advantage of the Jews is that they have “been entrusted with the very words of God” (3:2; cf. 9:4); and to these words Paul appeals again and again as still having authority for God’s people. Thus faith does not nullify the law; rather it establishes or upholds it (3:31). If circumcision is out, the same cannot be said of the commandments of God (1 Cor. 7:19).
How, then, shall we reconcile such diversity? The traditional way was theological: the law as a means of achieving right standing with God has had its day, to be replaced by faith in Christ. But this view tends to read the Old Testament rather poorly, as though keeping the law were a means of gaining God’s favor in the Old Testament. The authors of Psalms 19 and 119 surely did not think so!
The solution lies with the role of the Spirit in Paul’s understanding. Indeed, the experience of the promised eschatological Spirit, not righteousness by faith, forms the core of Paul’s argumentation in the one letter (Galatians) devoted primarily to this issue. The death of Christ brought an end to the curse of the law—that one had to live by “doing the law” and thus not “by faith” (Gal. 3:10–14). The gift of the Spirit makes the law’s function of identifying God’s people obsolete. “Those who are led by the Spirit,” Paul says, “are not under Torah” (5:18). For those in whom the fruit of the Spirit is growing “there is no law” (v. 23). For Paul the Spirit thus marks the effective end of Torah. How so? Because the Spirit is sufficient to do what Torah was not able to do in terms of righteousness, namely, to “fulfill in us who walk by the Spirit the righteous commandment of Torah” (Rom. 8:4).
Herein lies the discontinuity and continuity. In the age of the Spirit, discontinuity lies in the area of Torah observance— keeping the law as a way either to identify the people of God or to establish one’s relationship with God. Paul’s break with his Jewish tradition at this point is absolute—and resolute: “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; what counts is keeping the commandments of God” (1 Cor. 7:19). Even though it counts for nothing, Jewish parents may continue to circumcise their sons if they wish, as long as they understand that it has no bearing on their being counted among the people of God. But also because it counts for nothing, one may not impose it on gentiles, precisely because that would give it religious significance. Continuity lies in the Spirit’s “fulfilling” Torah by leading God’s people in the paths of God, to live in such a way so as to express the original intent of Torah: to create a people for God’s name, who bear God’s likeness in their character, as is seen in their behavior.
The fruit of the Spirit is none other than the Spirit’s producing in our lives the righteousness of God (the righteousness that characterizes God). When this is happening Torah is fulfilled in such a way that for all practical purposes it has become obsolete; however, Torah as part of the Old Testament story, of which ours is the continuation, is never obsolete. In this sense it will endure as long as this between-the-times existence endures—not as a means of righteousness or as a means of identity, but as a means of pointing us to the righteousness of God, which the Spirit brings to pass in our lives in the present expression of the eschatological future.
The Nature of Christian Ethics
According to 1 Corinthians 7:19, while circumcision counts for nothing, “keeping the commandments of God” does count. Is Paul now bringing the law in again through the back door? Hardly. This is simply his way of saying that righteousness as an expression of God’s character in his people’s lives is not optional. The reason for this lies with the gift of the promised Spirit, who has both rendered Torah observance obsolete and made possible the fulfillment of the righteous requirement of Torah. The goal of Torah, God’s own righteousness reflected in his people, is precisely what the Spirit can do, which Torah could not. Here is the crux of things regarding Spirit ethics. Only those matters which have to do with God and his character are regarded as absolute; all others are adiaphora, nonessentials.
Paul’s attitude toward these matters is clearly expressed in Romans 14:17, the theological insertion that lies at the heart of Paul’s response to some practical ethical questions. How do those who follow certain religious practices live together as one people of God with those who do not, so that “together with one voice” they might “glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 15:6)? Paul’s answer is that the one who is observant must not condemn the nonobservant, and the nonobservant must not scorn the observant (14:1–6). The reason? “The kingdom of God has nothing at all to do with food and drink [utter nonessentials], but with the righteousness, joy, and peace that the Holy Spirit empowers” (14:17). Food and drink count for nothing; righteousness, joy, and peace count for everything.
Thus the Spirit is central in Paul’s ethics, first, because there is no such thing as salvation in Christ that does not also include righteousness on the part of God’s people. They are not saved by doing righteousness—that is unthinkable, since righteousness as behavior is the product of the Spirit’s empowering, not a requirement of obedience in order to get in. But for that very reason ethical life is also required, because both getting in and staying in are the work of the Spirit, and Paul sees no division between the two.
Second, the Spirit is essential to Paul’s ethics because truly Christian ethics can only be by the Spirit’s empowering. That is why Torah observance does not work; it may make people “religious,” but it fails to make them truly “righteous,” in the sense of reproducing the righteousness of God in their lives. Spirit people not only want to please God but are empowered to do so.
This is also why Spirit ethics starts with a renewed mind (Rom. 12:1–2; cf. Col. 1:9; Eph. 1:17), because only in this way may we determine what God’s will is and thus be pleasing to him. The mind renewed by the Spirit leads us to understand that love must rule over all; and only by such a renewed mind may we discover how best to love. There is a time for speaking and a time for silence, a time for taking another’s load on oneself and a time to refrain from that for the sake of the other’s growth. Only dependence on the Spirit can enable us to know what is pleasing to God.
The passages in Colossians and Ephesians are especially significant in this regard. Although the specific nature and form of the Colossians’ heresy to which Paul is responding may be shrouded in mystery for us, there can be little question that it included (1) an appeal to something heady (wisdom, so-called philosophy, etc.), probably based on visions, and (2) an insistence on religious righteousness approaching an ascetic ideal (“don’t touch, don’t taste, don’t handle”). Paul’s response to this early in the letter (Col. 1:9–11) is to pray for the Colossian believers that they might “be filled with the knowledge of God’s will by means of the Spirit’s wisdom and insight,” precisely that they might walk worthy of the Lord in ways that are pleasing to him (cf. Rom. 12:1–2).
Thus, rather than give them Christian rules to live by Paul gives them the Spirit. Through the Spirit’s wisdom and insight they are to be done with rules and advance to living the life of those who by the Spirit are being “renewed into the likeness of the Creator” (Col. 3:10). The Creator’s character is then spelled out (v. 12) in language reminiscent of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22–23. This is the new form of revelation, which comes through the Spirit, who reveals God’s will in such a way that ethical life is a reflection of God’s character.
Ethics for Paul, therefore, is ultimately a theological issue pure and simple—that is, an issue related to the known character of God. Everything has to do with God and what God is about in Christ and the Spirit. Thus: (1) the purpose (or basis) of Christian ethics is the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31); (2) the pattern for such ethics is the Son of God, Christ himself (1 Cor. 4:16–17; 11:1; Eph. 4:20), into whose likeness we were predestined to be transformed (Rom. 8:29); (3) the principle is love, precisely because love is at the essence of who God is; (4) and the power is the Spirit, the Spirit of God.
Hence the essential role of the Spirit. Since the Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ, and since the first-mentioned fruit of the Spirit is love, the Spirit not only empowers the believer for ethical behavior but by indwelling the believer the Spirit also reproduces the pattern and the principle of that behavior.
Walking in/by the Spirit
The central role of the Spirit is most clearly spelled out in Galatians 5:13–6:10, where with a series of verbs modified by the phrase pneumati (“in/by the Spirit”), Paul urges the Galatians to “make a completion” (3:3) by means of the same Spirit by whom they had been converted. They are commanded to “walk in the Spirit,” and promised that those who so walk “will not fulfill the desire of the flesh” (v. 16); such people are “led by the Spirit,” attested by “the fruit of the Spirit” (vv. 22–23), and are not under Torah (vv. 18, 23). Since they “live by the Spirit” (= have been brought to life by the life-giving Spirit), they must also “behave in accordance with the Spirit” (v. 25). Finally, only those who “sow to the Spirit” in this way “will reap the eternal life” that is also from the Spirit (6:8).
Two things are clear from this passage: that the Spirit is the key to ethical life, and that Paul expects Spirit people to exhibit changed behavior. The first instruction, “walk by the Spirit,” is the basic command in Paul’s ethics. The verb “to walk” is commonly used in Judaism to refer to a person’s whole way of life. Paul adopted it as his most common verb for ethical conduct (seventeen occurrences in all). All other commands proceed from this one. The primary form that such walking takes is “in love” (Eph. 5:2; Gal. 5:6), hence love is the first-mentioned “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal. 5:22; cf. 5:14; Rom. 13:8–10).
There are also some things that Spirit ethics is not in Paul’s letters. On the one hand, Spirit ethics is not simply an ideal to be achieved by those few who are truly “spiritual,” as over against some who are still “carnal” or fleshly. The empowering of the Spirit belongs to all alike. Paul would have as little patience with a view that allows for people to be “justified sinners” without appropriate changes in attitudes and conduct (see chap. 7 above) as he would with an appeal to helplessness on the part of those who live in and walk by the Spirit (see chap. 11 below). Paul simply knows nothing about an internal struggle within the human breast in which the flesh continually proves to be the greater power. After all, Spirit ethics is not a matter of individual piety but of our life together in the world.
On the other hand, Spirit ethics is neither ethical perfectionism (life without sin at all) nor triumphalism (plastic smiles that convey perpetual victory in all circumstances). Life in the Spirit is ethical realism, life lived in the already/not yet by the power of the Spirit. If someone is overtaken in a trespass, the rest of God’s Spirit people restore that person through the Spiritual fruit of gentleness (Gal. 6:1–2). One who has brought grief to Paul and the community by his opposition to Paul is to be forgiven and thus restored (2 Cor. 2:5–11).
The key for Paul lies with the Spirit as a dynamically experienced reality in the life of both believers (Gal. 3:2, 4) and community (3:5). Paul’s expectation level is high on this matter because for him and his churches the Spirit is not simply believed in but is experienced in tangible, visible ways. If our experience of the Spirit lies at a lower level, we must resist the temptation to remake Paul into our image and thereby find comfort in a Paul that did not exist. Paul’s answer is “walk in/by the Spirit,” and he assumes that such a walk is available to those who have already “experienced so many things” of the Spirit (Gal. 5:4). He does not tell us how to do that because such a dynamic life in the Spirit is presumed by him.
The Spirit as Holy
Although Paul usually uses the term “sanctification” to refer to Christian conversion (see chap. 7 above), the word tends to appear where his concern is with his converts’ improper (sinful) behavior. For example, in 1 Thessalonians 4:3–8 he takes up the issue of sexual immorality with a group of former pagans for whom sexual irregularity was not considered a moral issue. Paul sees such conduct both as over against God and as wronging another believer. The argument begins, “this is God’s will for you, even your sanctification” (v. 3), and concludes that the person who rejects Paul’s instruction on this matter does not reject what a mere man has to say, “but rejects the very God who gives [present tense] you his Holy Spirit.” This further explains the use of the word “sanctification” in reminding them of their conversion in 2 Thessalonians 2:13, as well as the repeated emphasis on sanctification in 1 Corinthians (see 1:2, 30; 6:11).
Here we see at least in part the significance of the early church’s referring to the Spirit as the Holy Spirit. The early believers understood themselves to be dedicated to God, but not in a ritualistic way, as in the Old Testament use of the term “sanctified.” Rather, they were set apart for God, to be his holy people in the world. Hence the emphasis in 1 Thessalonians 4:3–8.
For Paul, “holiness,” that is, walking by means of the Holy Spirit, has two aspects. On the one hand, it means abstaining from some sins—absolutely. Since in Christ believers have died to both sin (the flesh) and the law, they are to serve God “in the newness of the Spirit” (Rom. 7:6). They must put to death the former way of life (Rom. 6:1–18; 8:12–13; Col. 3:5–11), portrayed in Galatians 5:19–21 as “the works of the flesh,” which refers to life before and outside Christ. Such a life is no longer an option for the new people of God, who indeed have become a people by the indwelling of the Spirit of God. Paul, therefore, understands “putting to death” the works of the flesh as the empowering work of the Spirit (Rom. 8:12–13).
On the other hand, “holiness” also (especially) means the Holy Spirit living in believers, reproducing the life of Christ within and among them, particularly in their communal relationships. To do otherwise is to “grieve the Holy Spirit of God” (Eph. 4:30), who by his presence has given them both unity and mutual growth. For this reason, Paul’s most common language for the people of God is “the saints” (= God’s holy people). They live differently in their relationships with one another, and are empowered to do so, because they are Spirit people, whatever else they may be.
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What remains to be looked at in terms of Christian conversion is what the converted person looks like, how “holiness” is expressed in the life of the believing community. The answer to this question is taken up next; and again the Spirit, the renewed presence of God, is the key to our being transformed into God’s own likeness.
Reflection Questions