The Letter kills but the Spirit gives life – A perspective

 

Paul wrote to Corinthians famously; the letter kills but the Spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:4). Paul, who was once a student of Gamaliel writes that the law of Moses kills but the Spirit of God gives life. What led him to make such a bold declaration? Why did he decide to deny his whole Jewish background once he met with Jesus? The answers to these questions could best be found by studying the life of Paul besides his epistles.

Paul was born in the cultural, commercial, cosmopolitan capital of the Roman province of Cilicia, Tarsus. He was born to the dispersed Jews who settled outside the Holy land. Tarsus equaled Athens in Greece and Alexandria in Egypt as a dominant center of education. All of them stood out like bright jewels around the shores of the magnificent Mediterranean Sea. Being situated at a cross junction of civilizations, Tarsus had traders and learned people bustling the streets where a young and aspirant Saul (Paul’s Hebrew name) grew up.

Though he grew up in a city of traders and learned men, the calling of his life was neither the wealth nor the wisdom of this world. It was to return to the Holy Land and learn the law of Moses. Being born to strict and devout jews who were of the tribe of Benjamin, he was circumcised on the eighth day (Phil 3:5). The strict Jewish upbringing made him a Hebrew of Hebrews (Phil 3:5) as he describes himself. His parents even gave him the name Saul who was the first king of Israel from the same tribe Benjamin as Saul was.

To summarize the life of Paul, he was

by blood a Jew

by tribe, a Benjaminite,

by bringing up an urbane Cilician

by ethnicity a Hebrew,

by practice a Pharisee,

by privilege a Roman citizen,

by pursuit a Rabbi

by passion a zealot.

In his pursuit of the truth of the law, he landed in the school of Gamaliel, the most respected Rabbi of the times in Jerusalem. There could not have been a better place than this to learn the law of Moses in those days. As the great scholar Gamaliel unfolded the nuances of the law, Saul began to visualize his salvation coming to him through the obedience to the entire law. He began to foresee the fulfilment of the prophecies in a future Messiah, and he lived in earnest expectation of his arrival.

As his passion for the law grew into an obsession under the grand tutelage of Gamaliel, he heard about a new movement in Jerusalem. A group of Jews claimed that a criminal by name ‘Jesus’ who was recently crucified by the Romans has come back to life after three days of his burial and his followers were claiming that he was the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies. The new movement originated in Galilee, and was spreading far and wide into Jerusalem, the City of David. Masses were fast embracing this message and moving away from their Jewish traditions. He even heard that they were giving sermons in the temple premises and healing people.

This piece of news was a major distraction for Saul. According to him, it was a complete violation of the law and prophecy; the messiah is yet to come, and a bunch of illiterate men cannot be projecting their hero as the Messiah. This movement had to be eradicated before it could destroy the Jewish culture. He decided to tear into this movement and nip the matter at the budding stage. In the meantime, he heard of the arrest of a disciple by name Stephen who was accused of belittling the law of Moses. He was to be tried by the Council for speaking against the Temple and the law of Moses (Acts 6:11-13). Saul found this as an opportune time to attack the new way as they called it. He decided to join the trial along with his band of people. False witnesses lined up the trial accusing him of many charges.

Stephen began his defense by unfolding the whole Jewish history step by step beginning with Abraham and narrating through the slavery of Jews in Egypt, liberation of them by Moses, God’s provisions in the desert and the delivery of the commandments in Mount Sinai. Here Stephen carefully made a mention of Jesus from the statement of Moses

“God will raise up a Prophet of Israel much like me from among your brothers” (Acts 7:37).

Then he moved on to the disobedience of Israelites in the desert and their rejection of God by making a calf for their worship. Then he spoke about the Ark, life of David and the temple of God. The more he spoke, the more his face shone with the glory of God. His eloquence was supernatural. Saul noticed that years of his training under Gamaliel had not equipped him to conclude the entire Jewish history in such a manner. Ordinary folks of this new movement were summarizing the complex Jewish history eloquently.

At this moment, Stephen’s defense took a blunt and bold turn from mere narrations. He accused the Jews as stiff-necked heathens who killed all the prophets, who destroyed Gods laws, and murdered the righteous one Jesus. In other words, he declared that Jesus was the Messiah and the Jews have crucified him. The Jewish leaders were stung to fury by Stephen’s accusation and ground their teeth with burning rage (Acts 7: 1- 56). For a moment Saul saw his entire tradition on the verge of a wipe out.  

His obsession for the law turned into uncontrolled madness. No sooner Stephen finished his speech, his band of men pounced on him. They grabbed him and dragged him out of the city. They picked the sharpest stones and hurled at him. They punctured his flesh ruthlessly. Blood oozed out drop by drop. Saul stood at a distance keeping guard of the clothes of the witnesses. But Stephen prayed through the moments of agony till he died offering no resistance and asking God to forgive his persecutors and Saul approved of his execution (Acts 7:60).

What Saul did not realize was that in his pursuit of the law, he broke the most sacred law

 

DO NOT MURDER

 

He did not stop there. He went from house to house and dragged the Christians out and tortured them. He threw them into jail. What he missed again was that he was violating the law which stood for love for the very purpose of its protection. His years of study of the law had turned his life into a cesspool of contradiction.

Mastery of the law had led him into utter slavery to sin.

He possessed no realization about it. He went about torturing Christians and spreading hatred. He heard that the movement had spread into Syria and neighboring countries. He saw his mission partially accomplished in Jerusalem as Stephen was eliminated and many Christians were in the jail. So, he took the approval of the high priest and headed off to Damascus.

He perhaps took along the same band of men who assisted him in the elimination of Stephen. He took letters from the high priest to visit the synagogues and bring the new converts bound to Jerusalem (Acts 9:2). They marched along with the sole aim of protecting their religion. Then the most historical thing happened.

A light from heaven shone around him (Acts 9:3) which outshone the brightest moment of the day. It completely blinded him. He fell to the ground. Suddenly he heard a voice, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”. “Who are you, Lord?” (Acts 9:4-5) Saul replied affably. Why did he call him Lord even before Jesus made himself known to him? Did the guilt of eliminating Stephen hang heavy upon him?  Was he tired of his sins? Was the law a huge burden on his shoulder? Was he looking for rest and comfort and freedom from sin and guilt?

“I am Jesus whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5) said Jesus to him affectionately. The tenderness of his voice was startling. Saul groped about as the bright light blinded him completely. His blindness forced him to dwell deep into what he heard “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting”. The name Jesus kept coming back to him. Saul noticed that Jesus considered every disciple as part of his body and the murder of Stephen had deeply hurt him. Yet the tenderness of his voice touched his soul. He sensed the breadth, length, height and depth of the love of Jesus (Eph 3:18) in one instance. He met the man the law was pointing to. The name Jesus was beginning to set him free because when the Son sets you free, you become free indeed. He always had the desire to do what is right but did not have the ability to carry it out. He always wanted to do good but found himself doing evil that he did not want to (Rom 7:19 modified). In his blindness he began to see things clearly. The more he pursued law, the more he sinned, he realized. He threw the letter from the High Priest on the ground and rose from the ground completely transformed. The search for the truth of the law was all over for him.

Rest of his life, Paul made a hard campaign (guided by the Spirit) to bring people out of the yoke of the law. Jewish converts showed greater tendency to go back to the law of Moses as they came from the law itself. Gentile converts came under the pressure of Jews and began to turn to law for salvation. Paul deals with this subject as drastic as possible in his famous letter to Galatians.

Galatian churches were founded by Paul during his first missionary journey, and it could be assumed that the church had a mix of gentile and Jewish converts. So possibly in his absence the gentile converts must have come under the influence of Jewish converts. They began well with the Spirit and now they were departing from the spirit and returning to Jewish customs. So, he launches a scathing attack on them with one question.

O foolish Galatians (Gal 3:1). Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? (Gal 3:2-3). Paul explains the rationale behind these few verses earlier. “A person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified” (Gal 2: 16). Seeking to justify oneself by obedience to law is a complete denial of what Jesus did on the cross. If good works could save man, why would God sacrifice his Son on the cross. If good works could save man, why there is a need of a salvation at all? Paul’s (who was once an orthodox Jewish Rabbi), encounter with Jesus filled him with fresh revelations and God used him to deliver his message for future humanity through his letters.

“Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law for the righteous shall live by faith” (Gal 3:11). Why do righteous have to live by faith and not by law? “The law is not of faith, rather the one who does them shall live by them” (Gal 3:12). The one who decides to find his salvation through law will have to fulfill the entire law and not partial. Full adherence to the law for all times to come would be the requirement. Can you name a person who can meet this criterion? “There is none righteous, not even one” (Rom 3:10). So, grace is a must for salvation.

So why did God introduce law? “The law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith” (Gal 3:24). Law tells what is wrong and what is right, yet it cannot empower you to adhere to it. “But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith” (Gal 3:26). When you submit to the law for salvation, we miss out on what Jesus did for you on the cross. The cross is the source of grace. He says, “you who would be justified by the law have fallen away from grace” (Gal 5: 4).

How do we get out of the burden of the law? “If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Gal 5:18). “So, should we go on sinning as we are free from the law? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Rom 6:2). But then how do we escape sin? “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (Rom 6:14).

Law is all about love. “All the law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Gal 5:14). When you live Spirit dominated life, you bear the “fruits of the Spirit such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control: against such things there is no law (Gal 5:22-23).

 

Prakash T John