Christ and the end of the Law

What do you do with a passage like that in 1 Corinthians 10.23? Does Paul really mean what he says when he says that all things are permissible for me? Can he really mean that? Doesn't that fly in the face of just about every Christian sermon for the last 2000 years, which all end with: do this and don't do that?

I know people like to avoid those verses by saying that Paul is only quoting someone else, but I can't escape the nagging suspicion that he's quoting them and agreeing with them at the same time. But how is that possible in the context of the very real right and wrong that we see expressed in various places in the bible? Surely Paul doesn't mean that a little bit of idolatry is permissible, even though it's not beneficial? Surely?

I'm not going to pretend that I've got a complete answer to that question, but I do suspect that there is actually a great deal of truth here that our overly simplistic readings of God's morality have obscured. If I take seriously the claim that Christ's sacrifice has freed me from the law, then in some sense I'm accepting as truth, that the right and wrong of the law no longer apply to me. That doesn't mean that the law was anything but correct to speak of right and wrong, or that anything about that right and wrong have changed, only that living shielded by Christ's sacrifice the reality and consequences of that right and wrong no longer reach me. Rather I am free, free from fear of the law, free from fear of judgement, there is truly no condemnation for me in Christ. And at that point it becomes truth indeed that everything is permissible for me, though not necessarily beneficial.

Controversial though this will sound, I could theoretically sin and sin again with impunity, Christ's sacrifice has covered me. Everything is permissible for me, what freedom to be and do whatever I want to be and do!!!!

Now before anyone thinks I'm advocating an end to morality and an anarchist state, let me hold up for a moment the counter image. If I have been renewed by the Spirit, then while I have escaped slavery to the law and its categories of right and wrong, I have now become a slave to the Spirit, to seek that which pleases him. This is one of the great tests to see if the Spirit of Christ is living in us: do we long for that which God longs for, do we seek that which is good and right? If we have the Spirit, we will seek those things, even though there is no threat compelling us, but only the longing that there might be a smile on the face of God.

This leads me into a connected but fascinating area of reflection: discipleship and the impossibility of either success or failure in that context. If I am beyond the law and its threat, which I believe in Christ's sacrifice I am, and if I believe that God is sovereign in ordering my days and ways, which I do, and also that God's highest goal is my likeness to Christ and not simply whether I get several behavioural tests right, which I believe to be true, then it actually ceases to be possible to speak of success or failure in the life of the disciple.

Say I sin, in some way, is it morally wrong? Yes. But if it produces in me a longing for holiness I didn't have before and a seeking after the likeness of Christ, is it still wrong? Can the end justify the means in discipleship? I suppose another way of asking the question is: does the redemption of mankind justify Jesus going to the cross? Is there a sense in which that incredible evil is justified? It's not an easy question to answer, but in God's providence I think we have to say yes. And if we live beyond the law in Christ, then whatever leads to my giving greater glory to God and being transformed into his likeness is thereby more good than evil, though it might seem to contravene traditional standards of right and wrong.

Does that stretch your mind? It stretches mine, but it also frees me. Now when I sin, I pick myself up, praise God for the experience and try once again to be like Jesus where I am and with my new knowledge. How can I praise God in all things, including my sin? I can do it because I am beyond the law and as a disciple, all things are truly permissible for me.

Thank God for his inestimable gift in Jesus Christ!

Why was Jesus sure he would rise?

How did Jesus know he was going to rise from the dead? I mean, he was so certain that he would not only suffer, but would also rise... how did he know?

After all, the scriptures are supposed to testify to this, and when it comes to the suffering, that's easy enough to find. There are plenty of references in Isaiah, not to mention the experience of every servant of God to come before him, so whether in direct prophecy or typologically, there is plenty of evidence for the fact that Jesus as God's servant was going to suffer and die... but how did he know he was going to rise?

Sure there are some rather oblique references in Isaiah to resurrection generally: 25.8, 26.19, but where did the certainty come from that he himself, the servant of the Lord would rise?? One day I'll write a fuller article about this, but here's my suspicion:

Jesus had a way of seeing things implied in Scripture when they are not clearly stated. Think for example of the way he reasoned for the resurrection from the fact that God IS the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Matt 22.32. A present tense in God's statement about himself is enough to tip Jesus off to the fact that the death of the body is not the final end of the person.

I suspect his expectation of his own resurrection is reasoned in a similar manner.

Take for example Psalm 22. It's a Psalm that at so many points Jesus applied to himself. Through the first 20 and a 1/2 verses the suffering of God's servant is plain, what is not plain is the presence of Resurrection. But wouldn't you almost expect Resurrection to be there if it was as integral to Christ's mission as he thought it was? If this Psalm is such a clear statement of the experience of God's servant, wouldn't you expect Resurrection to be there? I think it is. It's implied.

Verse 21 begins with the subject calling for God's deliverance, he has been poured out, his bones are showing, they have pierced him, and he cries out to be saved from the mouth of the lion... Then what happens? There's a miraculous turnaround. The second half of verse 21 is a clear statement of his having been delivered. But how? How is it possible to go from the suffering and abandonment of the first 20 & 1/2 verses to the confident assertion of deliverance in the second half of verse 21? I think the answer is resurrection. In the same way Jesus sees resurrection implied in the relationship of God with Abraham, Jesus sees his own resurrection implied in the reversal of fortune seen in Psalm 22.

And if you are willing to accept implied resurrection then you begin to see it everywhere. Take Isaiah 49 as an example. The early verses of Isaiah 49 are a constant confusion of positive statements about the servant and heartbreaking reflections on his powerlessness and pain. In verses 1-2 the servant is called, named, and made to be a polished arrow, but then he's hidden, concealed. In verse 3 he is the servant in whom God will be glorified, but then in verse 4 he seems to have laboured in vain. All this potential seems to have emptied itself into vanity and the spending of strength for nothing. But then, once again, we see this impossible turn around. The second half of verse 4 has the servant's recompense being with God and his right is with the Lord. How is it possible? How is it possible to be both poured out and still successful? I suspect the reason is resurrection.

If we're looking for resurrection throughout the whole of the Old Testament, and not just a few isolated texts, then I think the place to see it is both typologically in the deliverance of God's servants and prophetically in the paradoxical reversals of fortune God's servants seem to experience.

Would Jesus have seen it there? It's only conjecture, but somehow it seems to be the way he read his bible.