513 Gal3:24
514 Eph2:13-15
515 Rom13:8
516 Rom13:10
517 Gal5:14
518 Cf. Mt7:12
519 Gal5:6
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The apostle James makes it clear that works are relevant to (in the sense of being referenced within) the process of justification, but unlike Paul, he is not referring to the outward requirements of the Law, but the practical outworking and evidence of a formed faith:
“How does it help, my brothers, when someone who has never done a single good act claims to have faith?”520
And again:
“You believe in one God; that is creditable enough, but even the demons have the same belief, and they tremble with fear. Fool! – do you not realize that faith without works is useless?”521
James goes on to the give examples of how Abraham and Rahab the harlot were justified by their actions. He concludes:
“You see now that it is by works and not only by believing that someone is justified”522
By that he means there needs to be a reference to works, i.e., to see that fruit is produced confirming the faith to be formed. It is not really the work itself that justifies but the faith from which it springs, for an evil person may perform the very same act for self-centred reasons but it will never be from faith, and they will not be justified. James is not contradicting Paul, who was addressing the problem in the churches initiated by the Judaic exclusivists that Peter had also had to contend with in Jerusalem that were insisting that Christians be circumcised and keep Torah523. We know Paul is referring to the Torah when he speaks of the Law in this context when he says elsewhere524 that the Law was given 430
years after God’s Covenant with Abraham.
James would agree with Paul that only perfection would suffice if justification were on the basis of perfect obedience to the Law, and then it would no longer be by grace, it would be a wage. Likewise, Paul would agree with James when he insisted that nobody can be justified without the good deeds that flow out from faith, showing that it is formed. For deeds in the form of kindness and compassion are not merely the evidence of faith, they are
its efflux. Expressed another way there cannot be love ( agape) without formed faith being present, for love flows out from faith; they are effectively a part of the same. James affirms with Paul, the Jewish Law has been replaced for the Christian by the royal law of love for neighbour525, a law which the Christian himself must fulfil526, by which he shall be judged. It is a law in spirit rather than in letter - written in the heart. Paul regarded himself as being outside the Law, yet at the same time under a law; that of Christ527. Anyone who shows kindness to his “neighbour” out of compassion or a sense of duty is justified by faith within 520 Jam2:14
521 Jam2:19-20
522 Jam2:24
523 Acts15:7-11
524 Gal3:17
525 Jam2:8
526 Gal6:2
527 1Cor9:21
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the Universal Covenant being a “doer of God’s law” as both James and Paul have re-envisaged it528; and that applied to many Gentiles who did not have the Law (Torah) but are a law for themselves529 which they endeavour to obey, whereas as shall be shown in chapter six, some people do not.
Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est
Wherever love and charity are to be found within human society, God is there. Love according to the blessed apostle is the fulfilment of the Law, and of the three cardinal virtues being faith, hope and love, love is the best530. In terms of the individual: where love is demonstrated, an underlying “faith” is behind it, but it does not necessarily result in hope for the future which requires an informed faith, being a definite creed. John manages to summarize the essence of Christian theology and anthropology in a single verse:
“Love is from God and everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God.
Whoever fails to love is not of God because God is love”531
Love is the beating heart of Johannine and Pauline theology, i.e., “agape”, compassionate love: the essence of true humanity and the essence of God.
Jesus had come to make complete or fill out the Law not to abolish it532; for whilst the Law says, “Do not kill”, He says “Do not hate without a cause”. The Law says, “Do not commit adultery” but He says, “Do not even lust after a woman in your mind”. The Law made allowances for hardness of heart and permitted divorce; Christ’s law says the sons of the Kingdom can do better for the Spirit will write these new principles upon their heart and He will aid them. The Law had pertained to the letter; Christ’s law pertains to spirit and the mind. The Decalogue was filled out by the teaching of Christ; it was not “fulfilled” by proxy so as no longer to be a requirement for the Christian, for it is the doers of the law who are justified, not the hearers533. For those who truly belong to Christ instinctively love God and their neighbour or they are none of His; they therefore do fulfil the law in spirit and in truth
– “the righteous requirement of the law being fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit”534. Servants obey commands out of duty but those who have become the friends of Christ535 are acquainted with their Master’s business and obey Him out of love.
Justification – a free gift
In terms of everyman’s standing before God, the fact that agape love is needed in evidence does not detract from the fact that justification is a gift from God536, for all that is required to receive it has already been provided. In the universal case, it is the ability to 528 Rom13:9-10
529 Rom2:14
530 1Cor13:13
531 1Jn4:7-8
532 Mt5:17
533 Rom2:13
534 Rom8:4
535 Jn15:15
536 Rom3:24
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love537. Like the breath in his body, a young child possesses agape from birth and like that breath it flows out from his God-given spirit in the very process of being human as he bonds with his mother. At the exclusive covenant level regarding who is in Christ and who has yet to be reconciled to Him, the marker is faith and allegiance to Jesus indicated by incorporation within His Body through baptism. The instrumental cause of Christian justification being faith confirmed by baptism could never be a cause for boasting. The meritorious cause certainly is538: that was the slow and agonising execution of the Son of Man as a sufficient atonement for the sins of the world.
Abraham – Father of the first elective covenant
Just as Cain and Abel being the first siblings to be born of woman were representative players in the Universal Covenant, Ishmael and Isaac are such for the new
embedded elective covenant established through Abraham. The difference here is that unlike Cain, Ishmael was not disqualified by his actions, he just wasn’t selected in the first place, whereas within an inclusive covenant all are admitted but some default. Ishmael had been circumcised by his father Abraham and blessed by God539 but Sarah’s son Isaac was elected to inherit the promises given to his Father Abraham. However, God continued to relate favourably to Ishmael540. He was still accepted within the Universal Covenant of life as potentially were his descendants. Others outside or preceding the Abrahamic Covenant specifically referred to as righteous in the Old Testament include Abel, Enoch, Noah, Lot and Job. As for the Christian:
“You brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise”541
And you sisters and brethren, if baptized, are in the elective covenant that replaced Abraham’s and you are there by grace alone. Others like Ishmael are loved by God but not elected to that exclusive family predestined before the foundation of the world to form the community in which the education and spiritual resources are provided for individuals to become holy and faultless in love before God through Jesus Christ542. That is the Church, priesthood for the world, brought forth by God’s will to be the first fruit of a restored universe.
The postdiluvian blessing upon fallen humanity
All who came out of the ark to populate the world after the universal flood were blessed by JHWE543. Of the sixteen seeds and nations stemming from Noah’s grandsons, only the seed of the youngest son of Noah’s youngest son was cursed for his father Ham’s sake, and his name was Canaan. His seed would go on to practice great wickedness as they did in Sodom and Gomorrah and would become contaminated with Anakim giants544, the offspring of unions between satanic beings and humans who occupied the Canaanite 537 1Jn4:7
538 Gal6:14
539 Gen17:20
540 Gen21:20
541 Gal4:28
542 Eph1:4-5
543 Gen9:1
544 E.g. Deut2:21; Num13:32-33
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territories, a notable being Og, the Amorite King of Bashan545. From these giants came the unclean spirits that roamed the world and were prevalent in Jesus’ day. The book of Enoch fills out much of the detail here for it pertains to the Gen6:1 incident concerning the fallen watchers. This polluted seed pool needed to be eliminated, explaining the wholesale extermination of men, women and children in seven of the Canaanite nations God’s elect race went on to inherit, although some of these demonic hybrids continued up to the time of David546. At the other end of the spectrum, the children of Israel stemmed from Arpachshad being the firstborn of Noah’s firstborn Shem. So for illustrative purposes, one
of the sixteen postdiluvian ancestral lines was cursed, stemming from the lastborn son (Canaan) of Ham who had exposed his father’s nakedness, one was the elect patriarchal line stemming from the firstborn son of Noah’s firstborn son leading down through a line of firstborns to Abraham; whilst the remaining fourteen of the sixteen postdiluvian national patriarchs retained the blessing imparted to Noah and his family on leaving the ark but were
not the elective line of firstborns.
There is also a motif evident here pertaining to the firstborn being the line of special blessing. This can be traced back to Adam’s son Seth; firstborn by default, his two elder brothers Cain and Abel having been respectively disqualified and murdered. Seth’s firstborn was Enosh, the first to evoke the Lord547. After Enosh came Kenan, then Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch who “walked with God”, Methuselah who outlived his son Lamech, father of Noah, dying within a year of the Flood. The same motif continues with the Church and her Head.
The “Firstborn of all creation” is Jesus Christ548; the firstborn of God’s children are the elect, who collectively are described as “the assembly of the firstborn (plural)”549. Under the Old Covenant with Israel, the firstborn son was always consecrated to the Lord. The firstborn sons are typically designated to sanctity and kingship, and through them are the whole family blessed.
In terms of the New Covenant, Luke provides an account of how non-Jews were for the first time to be beneficiaries of the Covenant of Promise. This was revealed to Peter through a vision and led to his meeting with the Gentile Roman centurion Cornelius550. He and his household were described as devout, God-fearing, generous and prayerful. This Gentile non-Christian’s good works and prayers had been acknowledged by God551.
Cornelius was already participating in the cause of God’s chosen people “giving generously to Jewish causes”. The case of Cornelius is the clearest example in the New Testament of a non-Christian who feared God, acted virtuously, and was accepted in God’s sight552. Acts2:5
refers to the devout men living in Jerusalem from every nation under heaven, who assembled on Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples. In Paul’s sermon to a mainly Jewish assembly at Antioch, he addresses them as follows: 545 Deut3:11
546 1Chron20:4-8 - Refer to Hebrew interlinear
547 Gen4:26
548 Col1:15
549 Heb12:23
550 Acts10
551 Acts10:4
552 Acts10:35
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“Men and brethren, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who
fear God; to you the word of this salvation has been sent”553 .
Jesus and the apostles acknowledged that many who had yet to respond to the gospel were devout, decent and God-fearing, and if we if interpret Paul’s teaching as indicating otherwise we are mistaken. The fact that God does not set humanly unattainable standards of perfection but delights in human integrity and efforts to please Him was the starting point for the Book of Job as He addresses Satan, the arch-calumniator of human nature:
“Did you pay any attention to my servant Job? There is none like him on the earth: a sound and honest man who fears God and shuns evil”554
Yet not all who come to Christ are God fearers, there are also many scoundrels: “And s uch were some of you, but you were washed, you were consecrated, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God”555. Some who practice wickedness God punishes by hardening their hearts all the more, whereas with others who appear to be hell-bent on self-destruction or like Saul of Tarsus before his conversion are misguided fanatics, the Lord may show mercy556; yet we may be assured that He would never harden the hearts of those who fear Him, for He loves them. Christian-persecuting Saul of Tarsus had feared God – he did what he did in ignorance. As he himself affirmed, that is why God had shown him mercy557.
Conscience as an object of faith
Conscience is the eluded medium of effectual common grace and pertains to the human’s spirit, also largely eluded since the time of Augustine. It serves the natural law, and in the absence of a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ is “the impression of a divine Light within us, a participation of the eternal law in the rational creature”558. As such, conscience as the universal revelation of God, anterior to the Gospel and supreme over all other human faculties provides everyone with “a clear and sufficient object of faith”559. For faith is simply man’s positive response to what has been revealed to him from God, be it innately through the conscience or religiously through a creed. Through it one discerns the nature of right and wrong and senses a benefit in practicing the former to be at peace with oneself. The cardinal and distinguishing truth that conscience teaches is that God rewards the good and punishes the wayward; again, a facet of faith as the Bible defines it560.
Its very existence is the consequence of the fact that the human spirit has been created in God’s image and enlightened by Christ whereas the vessel that houses it is drawn to worldly lust like a magnet, for unlike the spirit it was conceived in sin and shaped in 553 Acts13:26
554 Job1:8
555 1Cor6:11
556 Rom9:18
557 1Tim1:13
558 John Henry Newman: “Grammar of Ascent”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_of_Assent
559 Ibid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_of_Assent
560 Heb11:6
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iniquity561. But by habitually taking heed to the dictates of conscience, the soul/spirit is effectively relating positively to something, in fact Someone superior to itself; hence the person is regarded as exercising faith in God and so is justified through the merits of Christ’s atonement.
Paul states that the conscience bears witness to God’s moral law, which is engraved in the heart562. “To obey conscience is the very dignity of man, and according to it he shall be judged”. So teaches the catholic faith563. The New Jerusalem Bible recommended for Catholic readers is one of the fewer translations that accurately conveys the meaning of this section of Paul’s letter regarding the role of this faculty:
“When Gentiles, not having the Law, still through their own innate sense
behave as the Law commands, even though they have no Law, they are a law for
themselves. They can demonstrate the effect of the law engraved on their hearts, to which their own conscience bears witness; since they are aware of various considerations, some of which accuse them, while others provide them with a defence”564
“Heautois eisin nomos” (v14) is literally “a law to themselves” but Paul did not mean this in the negative English colloquial sense of being lawless or doing things in one’s own way. As is clear from the context he means that many Gentiles, not possessing and therefore not observing the Torah did by nature the things contained within it, such as care, concern and consideration for their fellow man. And so they become a law for themselves as the New Jerusalem Bible correctly relays and the Apostolic Fathers understood. That is the result of the divinely implanted faculty, which at any particular time we describe as being either clear, such that the individual can find no reason for self-reproach, or guilty in which the person feels a sense of self-condemnation and shame.
However, in the category of people to be considered in chapter six, conscience has withered away565 or become fatally corrupted566 such that the person loses that most vital and noble part of their humanity, and with it any remaining interior semblance to the divine image. Such become absolute unbelievers and godless, for the internal witness (seed) of Christ has departed from them. They effectively opt out of the human race, for love ( agape) is definitive to being human as well as reflecting the image of God who is pure goodness, for He is Agape567.
The sense of satisfaction someone may receive from doing the right thing, regarded by certain Christians as a sin in itself, is how conscience functions, which is why Paul writes that he as a natural man was gratified by the law in the inward man568. The measure of peace a person may receive when acting in a humane way towards someone in need, far 561 Ps51:5
562 Rom2:15
563 Gaudiam et Spes para 16
http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-
ii_cons_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html
564 Rom2:14-16a New Jerusalem Bible
565 1Tim4:2
566 Cf. Tit1:15
567 1Jn4:8
568 Rom7:22
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from being sin is a reciprocation of the divine faculty of conscience; for God delights in human acts of kindness and efforts to comply with the moral code He has engrained within man’s heart; He regards it as faith. However, any who brag about their “kind deeds” have already had their reward for clearly the deeds were not primarily performed out of compassion or from a good conscience but to impress others, which is not of faith but of the flesh. Most who act humanely would acknowledge in their heart and to anyone who enquired: “I simply did what I sensed I should do as a fellow human being”. Such is the outworking of justifying faith in the context of the Universal Covenant.
Pauline anthropology and its moral outworking
The moral predicament especially for those outside the Church concerns their inherited disordered nature and the struggle the unaided human’s spirit has in controlling it.
The non-Christian’s plight is best summed up by Paul in this passage in Romans, which has been amplified in brackets for it is at the heart of misunderstandings concerning the human condition:
“For we know that the law (of God – implanted in the spirit and referenced by the conscience) is spiritual but I am fleshly sold into bondage of sin. For what I am doing I scarcely comprehend: for I am not practicing what I would like to do but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the law, acknowledging that the law is good. So it is no longer I who am really doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh – for the willing (to do good) is present in me, but the doing of the good is not: for the good that I want to do I fail to do; rather I practice the very evil which I do not want to do. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I (i.e., my soul/spirit) am not the one really doing it, but the sin that dwells in me (i.e., in my flesh). I find then the principle that evil is present in me (being) the one who wants to do good (showing at heart I am a good person), for I joyfully concur with the law of God in my inner man (affirmed by my conscience and the peace I receive when I do what is right), but I see a different law (the triple concupiscence) in the members of my body (as their senses are processed through the brain) waging war against the law in my (spiritual) mind (referenced by the conscience) and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am; who will set me from the body of this
death? Thanks be to God (it is) through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind (i.e., my eternal psyche/inner self) am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin”569
Augustine’s hermeneutical deception
Commenting on this crucial passage in his autobiographical “Confessions”, Augustine is either being woefully inept or deviously subtle, the reader must decide which:
“For though a man be delighted with the law of God according to the inward
man, what shall he do about that other law in his members, “fighting against the law in
his mind” and captivating him in the law of sin that is in his members? Thou art just O
Lord but we have sinned, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly and thy hand has grown heavily upon us and we are justly delivered over to that first sinner, the ruler of death, because he (Satan) turned our will to the likeness of his will, whereby he 569 Rom7:14-25
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stood not in thy truth” [Augustine’s “Confessions” Book VII Chapter 21 - my highlighting to demonstrate the contradiction]570
On the credit side, Augustine (at the time he wrote “Confessions”, he later changed his mind), does not try to make a case that the Romans chapter 7 passage was referring to Paul as a Christian (contradicted absolutely by chapter 8 – below), the apostle is speaking of man by nature. But then observe Augustine’s outrageous conclusions – that it follows from Paul’s statement that mankind’s will has been conformed to that of Satan - as if the devil would ever delight in God’s law in his inner being. If man’s will had been turned to that of Satan’s, then it could never be “free” but could only ever choose what is evil. Unlike Paul’s depiction there is no inner conflict in Satan’s mind, he is hateful at heart and unrestrained in his evil pursuits; man, even in his fallen state is not. Satan and natural man are therefore quite different in nature, for the one has a living spirit referenced by a conscience, the other does not.
Paul goes on in chapter 8 to confirm that the inability to practice what is right through enslavement to the opposing law of the “body of this death” is not the state of affairs for the Christian, who is divinely enabled such that he is “not living in accordance with the flesh but in accordance with the spirit”571. Paul says at the start of the passage being considered that the person he was depicting as himself was “in bondage to sin”: he therefore cannot be referring to the Christian – it is man by nature. For -
“You (Christians) however live not by the flesh but by the spirit since the Spirit of God has made a home in you572
Clearly, the person the apostle depicts as himself in the passage is living by the flesh: he desires good but consistently fails to practice it because he gives in to the lusts of the body and practices what is evil. That assuredly is not the Apostle Paul or else he would be contradicting his own teaching that any who do live in such a way shall die (verse below).
With the help of the Holy Spirit, any Christian (let alone Paul) can and should gain the victory:
“We have no obligation to the flesh to be dominated by it. If you do live in that way you shall die, but if by the spirit you put to death the habits originating in the body, you will have life”573
The mortifying of the worldly habits originating in the body is further aided by the renewing of the Christian’s mind, being enlightened by Christian teaching providing it is sound, and the Christian’s spirit is in mystical communion with Christ’s spirit574 so has the potential to over-ride the desire of the flesh and carry out what is pleasing to God:
“Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your
mind, that you may prove what is that good and perfect and acceptable will of God”575
570 http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/110107.htm
571 Rom8:4
572 Rom8:9a
573 Rom8:12-13
574 1Cor6:17
575 Rom12:2
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This mystical union of spirits also affirms the tripartite nature of man, for whilst Christ can have intimate fellowship with our spirit, He cannot become one with our soul or else we become as sinless as Christ, indeed we would become Christ. For the soul is the spiritual totality of who we are; it is what is being “saved to the uttermost” within the tent or vessel that is our temporary sin-prone body. The non-Christian on the other hand does not have the “grace of our Lord Jesus Christ aiding the spirit”576 to help control the impulses of the flesh; nor the teaching of the Church and Scriptures to instruct the mind.
Paul as apostle – assuredly not the chief of sinners
Every account of the Apostle’s post-conversion life and ministry shows him to be a thoroughly spiritual man who declares himself to have “lived in all good conscience before God up to this day”577, someone whose behaviour set a pattern for his converts to imitate.
Speaking of himself and his fellow workers “our exalting is in the testimony of our
conscience that in godly sincerity and purity, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God we have conducted ourselves in the world”578. That is hardly the testimony of one who was still the “chief of sinners”579 that some latch on to in support of their theological perspective. That description had been in the context of what he had referred to two verses earlier concerning his pre-conversion attempt to tear apart the infant Church of Jesus Christ; it was in the past. He also described the Christians in the Roman churches to whom he was writing as “full of goodness and filled with all knowledge”580 whereas he described many of the Christians in the Corinthian churches as fleshly or carnal581. It is the same Holy Spirit in Corinth as in Rome: the same Spirit, but different spirits and different mind-sets.
It is therefore inadequate to regard the Church as merely an “assembly of justified sinners”. The people consecrated to Christ should aspire to be like the Roman Church of Paul’s day which the apostle delighted in - an assembly of those who like the seed that fell on the good ground are noble of heart, zealous for good works and bearing much fruit582.
They are those who seek to imitate the Apostle Paul, who “disciplined his body like an athlete, training it do what it should”583, whilst “pressing towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus”584. Being already partakers of the divine nature, they endeavour “to attain to God”. Such was the language and aspirations of the immediate successors to the apostles. It has been described by some as a theology of glory585, yet it is underpinned and accommodated by a theology of the cross. Reconciling the two provides the basis for explaining the greatest mystery of the universe, being the prevalence of evil and suffering within the economy of the sovereign God Scripture describes as love personified586. Such will be examined further in chapters six and seven.
576 Cf. Gal6:18
577 Acts23:1
578 2Cor1:12
579 1Tim1:15
580 Rom15:14
581 1Cor3:3
582 Cf. Tit2:14
583 1Cor9:27
584 Phil3:14
585 E.g. within the Reformers’ 28 Theological Theses of Heidelberg
586 1Jn4:8
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