Understanding Paul Non-Dually
Grace and Law, Part I
Sunday, April 12, 2015
The relationship between grace and law is a central issue for almost anyone involved in religion. Basically, it is the creative tension between religion as requirements and religion as transformation. Is God’s favor based on a performance principle (Law)? Or does religion work within an entirely different economy and equation? This is a necessary boxing match, but a match in which grace must win. When it doesn’t, religion becomes moralistic, which is merely the ego’s need for order and control. I am sorry to say, but this is most garden-variety religion. Real love of God or neighbor is much too dangerous.
In Romans and Galatians, Paul gives us sophisticated studies of the meaning, purpose, and limitations of law. He says its function is just to get us started, but it too often takes over. Yet Paul’s brilliant analysis has had little effect on the continued Christian idealization of law, even though he makes it very clear: Laws can only give us information; they cannot give us transformation (Romans 3:20; 7:7-13).
Paul says, “Israel was looking for a righteousness derived from the law and yet it failed to achieve the purposes of the law. Why did they fail? Because they relied on being privately good instead of trusting in God for their goodness! In other words, they stumbled over the stumbling stone” (Romans 9:31-32). Law is a necessary stage, but if you stay there, Paul believes, it actually becomes a major obstacle to transformation into love and mercy. Law often frustrates the process of transformation by becoming an end in itself. It inoculates you from the real thing. Paul says that God gave us the law to show us that we can’t obey the law! (See Romans 7:7-13 if you don’t believe me!) In several contexts, Paul even says that the written law brings death, and only the Spirit can bring life (Romans 2:29, 7:5, 2 Corinthians 3:6). This man is religiously dangerous, but it did not take churches long to domesticate him.
Ironically, until people have had some level of inner God experience, there is no point in asking them to follow the ethical ideals of Jesus. It is largely a waste of time. Indeed, they will not be able to even understand their meaning and purpose. Religious requirements become the source of deeper anxiety. Humans quite simply don’t have the power to obey any spiritual law, especially issues like forgiveness of enemies, nonviolence, self-emptying, humble use of power, and so on, except in and through union with God. The Spirit in me awakens the only power that can obey the law or know its true purpose.
Gateway to Silence:
“When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).
Reference:
Adapted from Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, pp. 72, 78-79, 82
