Faith

The war within- Friday, 29th week in ordinary time – Romans 7:18-25a

You almost think St Paul is a mind reader for he seems to reflect the struggle of all Christians and may I dare say, of humanity itself. There is no one who, in their right mind, desires sin. Perhaps there are some who fall so deeply in sin that they feel compelled, over a period of time, to justify it. But no one wants to live a life of sin.

Robert Louis Stevenson, in 1885 wrote about the strange case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. It is unclear if his book was inspired by Romans chapter seven but what we do read is that his story and this part of Paul’s letter deal with the same universal issue. Dr Jekyll doesn’t like Mr Hyde and does not want to become him, but his unknown desire to become evil has more control of him. We all struggle with two natures. There is in each of us a desire to do good and a desire to do evil; to be a monster or serve the master.

Paul’s teaching is based on the tension and struggle between life in the Spirit and life in the flesh. We know what is right–we just do not do it. The gap between willing and doing is a universal phenomenon. How then, according to Paul, can this gap be completed?

In the first part of chapter seven Paul talks about trying to battle sin by simply clinging on to the law; that for Paul is a war you cannot win. In the second part of chapter seven he focuses on fighting sin with the Son and that is a war you can win. Paul is acknowledging the conflict in the innermost depths of humanity, between reason dominated desire and actual performance.

For most people who read this text, their understanding of sin is that of their own personal sin. When Paul writes of sin, it is not merely of ‘a’ sin; it is sin with a capital ‘S’. Sin is more than the sum of human misdeeds. Sin for Paul is a force to be reckoned with, a force set against humanity and God alike. Sin takes advantage of the person and compels one to actions contrary to one’s best understandings and intentions. Sin opposes God, drives humanity to destruction; and only God can deal with this evil power in such a way as to liberate humanity from its force.

This force, this sin, will use anything including that which is good, like the law, to destroy human beings. This does not make the law in itself is bad or a failure, for it is man who succumbs to this force of sin. This sin is so deadly that it allows even something as good as the law to be used for evil. This is why Paul respectfully rejects the law as a means to be saved.

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It’s Christmas in heaven today- Thursday, 29th week in ordinary time- Romans 6:19-23

In today’s first reading, Paul speaks in “human terms” or as we would say he talks the lingo to the Romans. He does this for their (and our) better understanding of the matter at hand. He apologises for using a common figure (the use of slavery as an example) derived from a social institution, in order to express a Christian reality but he does so because he wants to be sure that his talk of Christian liberty is not misunderstood.

Remember that Paul spoke of freedom from the law but he does not want this to be misunderstood that therefore one was ‘free’ to do anything now that they were free from the law. For Paul, freedom from the law is not license to do as we wish but rather a call to be of service to Christ, motivated by love, which proceeds from the heart. This call is a call to be ‘enslaved to God’ rather than be ‘enslaved to sin’.

Paul is clear when he asks the Romans, ‘what advantage did you get from sin except death?’ Paul deliberately, in a play of words, links the reality of sin as giving one a ‘false sense of freedom’ from doing what is just in the eyes of God. This unfortunately is what ails our world today. We have the false notion of being ‘free from God’, ‘free from righteousness’ and hence succumb to the belief of the ‘death of God’ in our society. ‘Who needs God’ is one of the false slogans peddled by certain groups in our own generation. For Paul, a human being can be deluded by what he thinks is freedom and Paul sets off all the red flags for for he knows that there is no ‘freedom’ in living in sin, it comes with a price tag. Such beliefs bring spiritual death, making our consciences dead.

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Paradoxes abound- Wednesday, 29th week in Ordinary time- Romans 6:12-18

How do you free yourself from sin? Have you ever felt more frustrated and disgusted with repeated sins that you have tried hard to shake off? The problem with battling sin is that we foolishly think that we can work this out or deal with it by ourselves. In order to rid ourselves from sin, in order to detach ourselves from this slavery, we need to attach ourselves slavishly to Christ. Yet this slavish attachment is done in freedom. Paradoxes abound.

Sin is slavery to our wants and to our desires. Paul is calling us to freedom from self though a union with Christ. For Paul, the Christian has entered a new life with Christ who reigns supreme over sin and death. Through baptism we are identified with Christ’s death and resurrection and our very being or self is transformed.

In one sense Paul is telling the Romans that God has already rescued the Christians out of the mud and cleaned them off through the bath of baptism, so that Paul admonishes these same believers to stay out of the mud, to resist any subsequent urge to return to the mud-bath from which they have already been rescued.

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The power of THE ONE- Tuesday, 29th week in ordinary time- Romans 5:12, 15b, 17-19, 20b-21

This letter is significantly different from the other epistles. It was not a community Paul had established. Nevertheless, he wrote with the goal of creating unity out of the conflict between the various already established communities. Whether or not he achieved his goal we do not know, but we do know that this letter has had a profound effect on church leaders throughout the centuries from Augustine to Luther.

Having established the justification of human beings through faith in Christ Jesus, Paul begins to discuss the Christian experience in itself and explains how salvation is assured for the upright. Paul explains that once justified, the Christian is reconciled to God and experiences a peace that distressing troubles cannot upset, a hope that knows no disappointments and a confidence of salvation.

In today’s reading, Paul begins his description of the condition of the justified and reconciled Christian by comparing it with the status of humanity before Christ’s coming. It involves a comparison of Adam, the first parent, with Christ, the head of the new humanity. Paul also wants to clarify the dissimilarity and the superabundance of Christ’s grace that now reigns instead of sin and death, which had been in control since Adam.

Just as sin came into the world through Adam, and with it death, which affects all human beings; so through Christ, came uprightness and with it life eternal. Paul emphasizes that it was Adam’s sin that has affected all human beings. Adam made a paraptōma, a false step, a blunder. He fell away from the life that God had given to him. Paul compares and contrasts the death wrought by Adam with the life brought by Christ. While Adam was maleficent to the human race, Christ was beneficent.

It was Adam’s disobedient transgression that unleashed upon human history an active force; namely sin, which now entered the world. Paul now uses two personifications; Hamartia or sin and thanatos or death. Hamartia is best translated as ‘missing the mark’. Paul personifies sin as a malevolent power hostile to God and alienating human beings from Him. It strode upon the stage of human history with the transgression of Adam.

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Faith without faltering- Monday, 29th Week in ordinary time – Romans 4: 20-25

Paul did not start with a doctrine but started with a problem. The problem was, how could Gentiles be brought into a right relationship with God? How could they be “justified”? Paul had always believed that Jews were made righteous through the law–but what about Gentiles?

Now here is the tricky thing, in order to answer his question about righteousness without the law, Paul had to look in the law, in the Torah, because the Torah was for him the authoritative revelation of God. But he could not look at Moses or at any Jew who came after Moses because all of them lived under the law and therefore could not be models for Gentile Christians.

So he looked before the law, at Abraham. And looking at Abraham he discovered two wonderful things. First of all, according to Genesis, Abraham was made right with God–not only before there was the law on Sinai, but even before Abraham himself got circumcised (in Genesis 17). Second of all, Genesis tells us what it was that allowed Abraham to have a right relationship with God: he had faith…Genesis 15:6.

But this faith was not without faltering. When at the age of 99 and Sarah at the age of 90 was told they would have children, Abraham fell on his face and laughed. It is in later Jewish tradition that this laughter becomes Abraham’s great joy.

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