I think it must be one of the most difficult but most important tasks for a teacher, to make St Paul's ideas understandable! His thinking is so fertile and quick, darting up trains of thought, sometimes losing the thread of his main point and even forgetting to finish a sentence, if you know some Greek. I think it's worth pondering the fact that God wanted his writings to go in as letters, and to ponder what a letter is - and is not. And to ponder the wisdom behind Jesus' decision to leave no writing at all behind!
Alerted by the 'therefore' in Romans 8:1, I've been looking again at what St Paul has just written before (I have to remind myself to ignore chapter divisions when I meditate upon scripture). As I briefly mentioned in posting No 1, in chapter 7 St Paul sees a bigger picture than our preoccupations with sins and laws, and daringly states that '... apart from law, sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.' (Romans 7:8-9). In other words, if we are innocent about a law, we aren't sinning if we break it. It sounds so much better to live that way! and I naturally wonder whether law is such a good thing. St Paul delves into the psychology of all this in chapter 7, and it's a fascinating voyage he takes us. In answer to my question, he points out that 'I would not have known what sin was, except through law' (7:7). Reading on, we witness how St Paul realises what's going on inside him. He has a part to him which longs to do the right thing, which he calls his "inner being", and another part which never manages to do so, which he calls the "flesh": 'So I find this rule at work: when I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members' (Romans 7:21-24).
This is what chapter 8 explains we are rescued from, this "law of sin and death" (8:2). St Paul is talking about how we become free of what imprisons us. This affects both unbelievers and believers alike - St Paul certainly trusted in Christ, but these two parts of him were still in conflict. It's fundamentally this huge conflict within us which brings us our worst misery and self-condemnation. That's what God wants to heal us of, and restore to us His peace, His wholeness, His shalom. We are prisoners, even while believing, until He does so.
As St Paul recognises, it's an imprisonment that is part and parcel of our psychological make-up, our human condition, and to that extent not our fault. The wonderful Good News St Paul brings us is that God "knows how we are formed" (Psalm 103:14) and doesn't blame us for it. And never has.
When St Paul says that he would not have known what sin was, apart from the law, surely he isn't saying that the law is something imposed on him from the outside. If he meant this, then it would make no sense to say that he delights in it, in his inner being. We come to a realisation of the law through the conscience that God has given to all of us, and then we engage in a spiritual battle to follow what is right, putting to death the sinful nature every day. So I don't think St Paul is holding up as an ideal some kind of state of life without this battle. This is the work of our sanctification, the battle in which we must engage, and it through this struggle that we hope ultimately to reach salvation.
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