Messiah

On why the NIV gets Luke 11:41 correct contra the ESV (ie why alms should be taken literally in Luke 11:41)

This mini essay is written in response to the New Testament Lecture on the 28th of March, 2024 which discussed Luke 11:37-44. Thanks to Peter Orr for putting up with my utter tosh in class and being willing to read even more of it below.

My thesis is as follows. In Luke, generous giving to the poor is the test case that reveals the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and shows that despite their outward religious activity, they are inwardly unclean and have no relationship with God. Read in light of this ubiquitous theme, the mention of alms in Luke 11:41 refers to literal and material giving to the poor, although the focus of the verse and the passage it sits within is the contrast of the outward purity and inward wickedness that characterise the Pharisees.

The Greek original of Luke 11:41 is sparse and my own knowledge of the language is near nonexistent. Nonetheless, it seems clear to me both the NIV and the ESV read implied words and meanings into the text in order to produce a comprehensible translation. Although the NIV has interpolated more words, the key difference seems to be this: the NIV understands alms in Luke 11:41 as literally referring to generosity to the poor, whereas the ESV understands alms as metaphorically referring to the giving of what is within a person (who the recipient is or what exactly “what is within a person” refers to, is less clear from the translation). As a corollary to my thesis, then, the NIV brings out the intended meaning of the text more accurately.

That money is a major theme in Luke is indisputable. For example, we can loosely categorise relevant passages into:

• Those concerning the rich and the poor: 1:53 (magnificat) 4:18 (good news to the poor), 6:20 (blessed are the poor), 6:24 (woe to the rich), 7:25 (John the Forerunner not being dressed in soft clothing), 16:19-31 (rich man and Lazarus);

• Wealth used well and given generously: 3.11 (fruits in keeping with repentance), 6:30-35 (give to the one who begs), 12:33-34 (sell your possessions and give to the needy), 14:12-14 (inviting the poor to banquets), 16:1-11 (shrewd steward), 19:8-10 (Zaccheus);

• Material greed of the Scribes and Pharisees: 11:37-44 (the passage at hand), 16:14-15 (Pharisees are lovers of money), 20:46-47 (devour widows’ houses); and

• Danger of riches: 6:45 (evil treasure in the heart), 8:14 (thorns in the parable of sower), 16:12-13 (serving two masters), 18:18-25 (rich ruler).

Of special note to our discussion on 11:41 are 6:45, 16:12-15, and 20:46-47, which I will now specifically use to establish the general theme italicised near the beginning without going through every single Lukan passage relevant to money. In 6:45, Jesus says that evil treasure produces evil. Thus, he establishes that evil treasure in the heart results in evil fruit that can be outwardly recognised if only one has eyes to see it. In 16:12-13, Jesus says that a man cannot serve both God and money. This is followed immediately by 16:14, which states that the Pharisees love money and by implication do not serve God. This raises the question, in light of 6:45, of whether the Pharisees can truly be lovers of money, and that greed not manifest itself in evil money-related fruit. The answer is, evidently, no. In 20:46-47, the Scribes are condemned by Jesus as people who love all the same things the Pharisees love (see 11:43; justifying my lumping the two of them together) and yet fail to show generosity (devouring widows’ houses), hiding this greed behind a pretence of long prayers. Thus, in Luke, generous giving to the poor is the test case that reveals the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and shows that despite their outward religious activity, they are inwardly unclean and have no relationship with God.

Now we now go through our passage verse by verse. Verse 37 sets the scene: the “while” highlights the preceding context of Jesus discussing values—having healthy eyes. Proverbs 22:9 literally describes “he who has a good eye” as those who give their bread to the poor and this phrase is translated in the ESV as “whoever has a bountiful eye” and in the NIV as “the generous”. This cements generosity as the dominant contextual theme in what is to follow.

Verse 38 describes the Pharisee who invited Jesus being astonished about an outward regulation. In v39, Jesus accuses the Pharisees of cleaning the outside of a cup and dish and applies this as a metaphor for outward Pharisaical cleanliness which belies greed and wickedness. Note that what Jesus says is within the Pharisee includes and underscores greed. In v40, Jesus highlights that God made both outside and inside (of the cup and of the human), implying perhaps that God both sees and cares about what is within a person and not only what is without. I believe it is mistaken, at this point, to broaden what Jesus is contrasting to everything outward vs everything inward. Rather, it is important to realise that given the context in v39, Jesus is speaking specifically about outward cleanliness vs inward cleanliness. In particular, Jesus does not necessarily include generous giving to the poor as something external that the Pharisees hypocritically do, and we should be wary of lumping in truly generous giving with merely external things.

Let us postpone discussion of v41, the verse of interest, for the end. In v42, Jesus pronounces woe on the Pharisees (c.f. 6:24) and says that they “tithe mint and rue and every herb” and yet neglect “justice and the love of God”. To equate meticulous tithing with external righteousness is to claim too much. In particular, to connect tithing with almsgiving is a complete mistake. Rather, the tithing of mint and rue and every herb refers specifically to particular external religious activities that appear to be about directly relating to God. Note that tithing is technically to do with the Levitical order and the Temple, rather than to the poor. This sort of activity fits in with the lengthy prayers of the Scribes (20:46-47) and the scrupulous keeping of ritual purity (v38-39), and does not necessarily (and indeed, should not) include generous giving to the poor. I recognise that in Matthew 6, Jesus includes almsgiving as a hypocritical activity, but the hypocrites in Matthew 6 who are blowing a trumpet whenever they give need not be giving more than a mere token to the poor.

Jesus continues in v42 by accusing the Pharisees of neglecting justice and the love of God. My Greek is not good enough to know whether this means (justice) and (the love of God) or the (justice and love) of God. In either case, the justice of God in the Old Testament is associated with social justice and compassion on the poor (no references provided because this is not a graded exegetical essay). Indeed, the parallel verse of Matthew 23:23 highlights the lack of justice and mercy, and calls them the weightier things of the law compared to tithing one tenth. Again, this is further evidence that the tithing envisaged here is not the same as almsgiving, and is referring to the technical sense of giving to the religious order. What use do the poor have of mint and rue anyway? In short, Jesus accuses the Pharisees of keeping up a facade of external ritual cleanliness and religious activity that masks greed and wickedness—a greed that prevents generous giving to the poor. In v43, Jesus pinpoints the motives for this outward hypocrisy—the love of human recognition, before he announces one more woe in v44, using the unmarked grave to illustrate that the Pharisees have a hidden internal uncleanness that others cannot see. It might be objected that if others cannot see the uncleanness, then the Pharisees must have given generously to the poor because the latter is an external thing. My response to this is that those others themselves have failed to recognise that justice and mercy are weightier than external religiosity, and that the religious piety of the Pharisees so dazzled onlookers they were taken in by the Pharisees’ deception. There may perhaps also be a connection here with the particular metaphor of the unmarked grave which points to a hidden but spreading contagion (thanks to Nate Xing for sharing the observation that the graves have a contagious ritual impurity with me): those who are deceived by the Pharisees are spiritually contaminated just like those who unwittingly come into contact with dead bodies—the result being that their values and judgement are also corrupted, rendering them unable to spot the Pharisees’ hypocrisy.

So far we have seen that:

• Generosity forms the backdrop to the passage containing v41;

• In the text immediately before v41, Jesus contrasts an outward ritual cleanliness against an inward wickedness with a focus on greed (anti-generosity); and

• In the text immediately after v41, he contrasts an outward pretence of religiosity exemplified by a scrupulous tithing that should not be conflated with almsgiving against justice and the love of God which are heavy with social overtones.

We return now to v41 itself. I make no judgements about whether the NIV or ESV makes better grammatical sense of the Greek. Rather, assuming that genuine Greek scholarship has gone into both to produce plausible translations, let us judge the preferability of each translation given our general theme and the more detailed exposition above. The ESV identifies the alms that Jesus says to give as the things which are within, having just said in v39 that what is within the Pharisees is greed and wickedness. While this is possible, it seems a strange thing to say. However, given that Jesus has just accused the Pharisees of not only wickedness but more illuminatingly of greed, and then accuses them of the neglect of justice (especially given its social connotations), it is more plausible that alms refers to literal alms that the Pharisees have failed to give. The problem this second interpretation raises is how does the literal giving of alms connect with “everything being clean” and “what is within”? Here, our theme can shed some light: In Luke, generous giving to the poor is the test case that reveals the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and shows that despite their outward religious activity, they are inwardly unclean and have no relationship with God. The connection is as follows. In line with 6:45 and 16:12-13, inward greed results in a lack of and even anti-generosity (exemplified for instance in the devouring of widows’ houses of 20:47), whereas inward cleanliness results in generous giving to the poor. Thus, if the Pharisees were able to give generously to the poor, this would show that all the treasure in their heart is good. Indeed, generous giving cannot happen unless what is within is clean. This happens in the case of Zaccheus (19:8-10). Note that Jesus is not saying, “If you give alms, you will be clean within”, but rather, “If you give alms, you are clean within”. The state of being clean is concomitant with the giving of alms, and not a consequence of giving alms. In other words, the person who gives generously to the poor is the person for whom everything—within and without—is clean.

Thus, if we follow the NIV translation of v41 where the word alms is taken literally, we have in vv37-44 a further example of the Lukan emphasis that the greed of the Pharisees is revealed by their lack of generosity to the poor, exposing their ritual cleanliness and external works of religious piety to be nothing but a sham and a facade.

QED

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01.01.24. Auburn, Sydney, Australia. On Luke 11:37-44.

What does it mean to be a Christian? Are we saved by faith or by obedience? What does the Bible mean when it says that we will be judged by our works at the end?

The letter to the Romans opens with the following words [my annotations in square brackets]:

'Paul, a servant of Christ [christos = Messiah, Chosen King] Jesus, called to be an apostle [apostolos = messenger, herald], set apart for the gospel [euangelion = good news, announcement] of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets, in the Holy Scriptures, concerning his son who was descended from David [Israel's historically greatest King] according to the flesh and was declared to be [horisthentos = literally appointed as, ordained] the Son of God [firstly a Messianic title with royal connotations, and eventually understood in its full significance as God the Son, the second person of the Trinity] in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord [kurios = Lord, a reference to both adonai/YHWH and also over and against kaiser kurios - Caeser is Lord], through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.'

One of the clearest ways of explaining what it means to be a Christian is with the phrase the obedience of faith. But this phrase has to be teased out. We begin with the context of the above passage. Paul calls himself a servant of King Jesus, one set apart and sent with an official announcement that the promised scion of the ancient royal house has been recently appointed King, Lord, the Son of God, in power by being momentously raised from the dead. And now Paul claims to have received a royal mandate to go among all the nations to bring them to the obedience of faith. This is imperial language about a newly installed Sovereign who demands allegiance. This is the context within which we hear about the obedience of faith.

As I write, I have two friends in mind - the first, more of an acquaintance, converted from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism, because she felt that many Protestants held to a cheap faith where being Christian was all talk and no walk. She pointed out that 'by faith alone' as a phrase does not appear in the Bible except in James, where the seemingly opposite point is made: 'You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone' (James 2:24). Roman Catholicism, however, offered to her a different explanation, that through grace, God produced works in Christians by which they are justified. I will not attempt to affirm or denounce Roman Catholicism here, though on the one hand I believe that it is often mischaracterised and misunderstood by its opponents (reading the documents from the Council of Trent and learning about the Second Vatican Council opened my eyes to the Roman Catholic Church's teaching somewhat) and on the other hand I respectfully disagree with many of its fundamental tenets (especially its claims to infallibility and monarchial supremacy of Rome's bishop). I nonetheless admire this first friend and her convictions, sympathising with her concerns, though I remain unconvinced that Protestantism is ultimately the problem or that swimming the Tiber is the solution. The second person in my mind is a very dear friend who's from a Christian home and is seeking to know the Truth for himself and to find his own way. We recently had a brief conversation along the following lines:

'I'm still a Christian you know, even if other people don't think I am'.
'Are you a Christian as in you believe a truth? Or are you Christian as in you're a follower of Jesus?'
'Good question... I'll have to think about that.'

Both of these people are not alone in their thoughts and struggles. I have also wrestled and am still wrestling with what it means to be a Christian, what it means to be justified by faith and not by works, where my works fit within the scheme of God's own saving work, and much much more. I also confess that there have been moments where, in the midst of doctrinal confusion, I have personally felt an attraction to the simple clarity that the Roman Catholic Church's teaching on salvation possesses despite continued disagreement with some of the teaching itself (this is a tug I no longer feel). Stronger and more importantly, however, is my revulsion towards cheap faith wherever it is found.

So to return to our first and main question. What does it mean to be a Christian? The term Christian comes from the Greek designation Christianos, first used in Syrian Antioch (Acts 11:26), meaning literally 'Christ follower'. As annotated above, Christ is the Greek for Messiah - the Anointed One, and in First Century AD Jewish context, the Chosen King. So at the level of language, to be a Christian is to follow a King - specifically, King Jesus. This fits well into Paul's imperial mandate in the introduction of Romans. Paul's aim is to bring about (literally) the obedience of faith. This all-important term is tricky to understand at first, especially when we want to interpret it without treading on the toes of the Protestant slogan sola fide, by faith alone. Hence, the NIV translates the obedience of faith as 'the obedience that comes from faith', so as seemingly to make faith and obedience distinct things where faith is prior to obedience in logic, time, and significance. I think this is a well-intentioned mistake that limits the scope of meaning (though obedience of faith certainly contains this interpretation and much has already been written by many others on the correct rendering of this phrase). Instead, I submit that the obedience of faith means the obedience of faith and not anything else. Note that I am not saying that the obedience of faith is prior to grace - God's grace comes first - but rather that the obedience of faith is the single rightful response to God's prior grace.

In unpacking the term 'the obedience of faith', I have found Christopher Ash's 'Teaching Romans' to be extremely helpful. There, he gives the following definition: 'The obedience of faith' means bowing the knee in trusting submission to Jesus the Lord, both at the start and all through the Christian life.

Let me summarise and quote the points Ash makes to back this definition up [my own thoughts are in square brackets]:

1. In the letter, Paul uses both 'faith' by itself (Romans 1:8) and 'obedience' by itself (Romans 16:19) to abbreviate the expression, and in particular, in Romans 15:18, he says '...what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience - by word and deed...' rather than '...to bring the Gentiles to faith'.

2. God 'commands all people everywhere to repent' (Acts 17:30), so that to repent is therefore to obey God's command at the start of the Christian life. And to reject the gospel is to not obey it (Romans 10:16). [Also Romans 2:8.]

3. Ongoing faith means ongoing obedience. Ongoing obedience is the outworking of our salvation (Philippians 2:12). Ongoing obedience is faith in its concrete expression - faith without works is dead (James 2:26). The Christian life consists of ongoing disobedience to sin and ongoing obedience to God (Romans 6:15-23). [I concede that this point does not clash with the interpretation 'the obedience that comes from faith'.]

He concludes by saying, 'the obedience of faith is a trusting submission to Jesus the Lord, bowing the knee to him as [gracious] Lord at the start (initial obedience and faith) and going on bowing the knee to him [as gracious Lord] thereafter (continuing obedience and faith)... The obedience of faith helps us rightly to understand both obedience and faith, which are two ways of speaking of the same thing. Authentic faith is both a receiving and a surrender, and it is followed by ongoing receiving and ongoing surrender. True faith in Christ consists in bowing the knee in trusting submission to him as Lord. This obedience is the goal of Paul's apostleship.'

To this list of Ash's points, I add three more of my own:

4. In Romans 6:16-18, Paul puts forward the dichotomy of sin leading to death and obedience  leading to righteousness after which he thanks God that the Romans have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which they were committed and have become slaves of righteousness (rather than thanking God that the Romans have come to faith).

5. Jesus says to the disciples in the Great Commission, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you...' (Matthew 28: 18-20). In other words, Jesus is saying, 'Since I am now Lord of the cosmos, go and teach the nations to give me allegiance and obey me'.

6. The Greek word for faithfulness is the same word as faith - pistis. Hence faith has connotations of trusting loyalty.

Thus, the obedience of faith means trusting submission. Obedience and faith are two sides of the same coin, so to speak, two words describing essentially the same thing from perhaps slightly different angles. This is important because Jesus, as the Christ, must be both Lord and Saviour. Either he is your Saviour AND Lord, or he is not your Saviour at all. You cannot be saved without bowing the knee. [On another note, though Jesus may or may not receive your recognition of his Lordship at present, he is still Lord - the euangelion, the Good News, is an objective announcement about the enthronement of Jesus whether or not he has your current allegiance. Indeed, we are told with certainty that every knee will eventually bow (Isaiah 45:23, Philippians 2:10-11, Romans 14:11) either as a loyal subject or as a defeated foe. Your status as servant or as rebel doesn't change or affect this imperial reality.  This is why I often hesitate to use the language of 'accepting Jesus as your personal Lord'. I prefer to clear the ambiguity by emphasising the necessity of 'giving (personal) allegiance to Jesus as THE (nothing personal about it) Lord.']

I hasten to clarify that it is not by our obedience or faithfulness that we are saved. Neither is it strictly true that we are saved by our faith. Ephesians 2:8-9 puts it most clearly: 'For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.' We are saved neither by our faith nor by our obedience. The basis for our salvation is God's grace through the work of Christ. As Paul puts it starkly in Romans 5:19 - 'For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's (Jesus') obedience the many will be made righteous.' It is Jesus' obedience by which we are saved, not our own. It is his work that is the basis for our salvation. But in order to appropriate, as it were, the efficacy of Jesus' work, to receive the free gift, one must 'confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead' (Romans 10:9). We are saved by (God's) grace through (our) faith. What is this faith? The obedience of faith.

Hence, this is why Paul can speak in Romans 2:6 of God 'rendering to each one according to his works' followed in verses 9-10 by 'There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honour and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek'. I do not think, as some have claimed, that the second category of people is an empty hypothetical category. Rather, Paul is foreshadowing in the opening chapters of his letter that those who have true faith in Jesus will be judged to have true faith by the obedience of their lives. The obedience of those who are saved by the grace of God alone will prove that they have indeed trusted in the sole saving work of Christ. In this way, we see that Paul is not at odds with James when the latter says with force that 'a person is justified by works and not by faith alone' (James 2:24; see also John 5:29 and Revelation 21:7-8). This doesn't contradict the fact that the robber on the cross was saved even though he didn't have a long life of obedience following his conversion. He submitted himself to Jesus as Lord for the rest of his life, even if in this life it wasn't for long.

Let me caveat this obedience by saying that it means a life as a whole committed in trusting obedience to Jesus, and not perfect obedience in every single thought, word, and deed without fail. Yes, we aim to obey in every single thought, word, and deed, but there is forgiveness for every single time we sin and make mistakes. 1 John 1:8-9 says that 'If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness'. Our obedience need not be perfect because Jesus' obedience to the Father was perfect. His righteousness and his perfect obedience is counted to be ours when we are united to him by faith. A loyal trusting subject of the King can make mistakes because his Lord is gracious and has provided the means of ongoing forgiveness. Obedience of faith, then, means following the King as a loyal subject, rather than as a perfect subject. We need not be afraid that God will cast us out because of our failures and our sin. God is committed to transforming us and he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. BUT, if we live a life of profligate sin, flagrantly flaunting our rebellion and caring not for obedience or ongoing repentance, then may Paul's exhortation to 'examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not know that Jesus Christ is in you? - unless indeed you fail to meet the test!' (2 Corinthians 13:5) and the warning of Hebrews, 'For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries' (Hebrews 10:23-27), shock and frighten us to check if indeed we have true faith.

This is all in harmony with the declarations of Jesus himself in the gospels that 'if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me' (Matthew 16:24). Jesus the King offers salvation for all who will bow the knee to him in trusting submission. Trusting submission is to repent (turn around and change course) and believe, and not to mentally assent alone. No one will be saved by mentally assenting to an abstract idea, but by actively receiving the gift of salvation by bending the knee, taking up their cross, and following the King.

Returning to our opening questions then:

What does it mean to be a Christian? It means following the King in the obedience of faith.

Are we saved by faith or by obedience? We are saved by the grace of God alone through the obedience of faith.

What does the Bible mean when it says that we will be judged by our works at the end? In the Last Judgement, our life of obedience shows that we have true faith, the obedience of faith, in the sole saving work of Jesus Christ.

***There is much that remains to be said about following the King. Is it easy or is it hard? Does Jesus promise to help and empower our obedience? What does it mean for us to say 'we have been saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved'? How do we balance warning and assurance? (Spoiler to the first two: Both and yes by the Spirit.) God willing, I will address more of these questions in my limited capacity sometime in the future.***

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14.01.21. Hurstville, Sydney, Australia. On Romans 1:5.

This year, our church family has been listening to God speak through the book of Romans, a letter by the apostle Paul, in the Bible. As a result, I've been attempting to commit the entire letter to memory and so far have gotten the first six chapters down pat. Last week, someone in pastoral work encouraged me to learn a single book in the Bible inside and out, following the advice given to the apologist and mathematician John Lennox when he was a younger man, so naturally, I chose Romans both because I had already memorised over a third of it and because it is of such great importance to the Christian faith, especially in the Reformed thinking of later Latin Christendom - the tradition within which I developed much of my own more mature thought. In Romans, Paul expounds the gospel of righteousness by faith and not by works of the law with clarity (For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law -- Romans 3:28). But in Romans, Paul also writes in ways that can be quite confusing, and it doesn't help that he wrote in a language and culture so different to mine so that some things can be obfuscated by the limitation of linguistic and cultural translation. Even commentaries and books explaining Romans don't always help make things clear (as an accompanying guide, I'm using Teaching Romans by Christopher Ash, which has often been a brilliant source of insight for me). Yet God promises that the Holy Spirit will teach us the truth and so there is hope that we can slowly and falteringly understand the Scriptures more and more.

Which brings me to Chapter 7 and a long-time source of confusion for me. I'm not referring here to the tricky section of 7:7-25 where there is controversy who Paul is speaking about. Rather, I'm talking about the 'simple' analogy in the first six verses.

Or do you not know, brothers - for I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive, but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God... we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the spirit and not in the old way of the written code. -- Romans 7:1-4,6.

At first glance, the analogy is simple, someone is bound by law until someone dies and then someone is free from that law. Likewise, we are bound by the law but now we have died (in Christ) and so we are free from the law. But the waters become murky when we get into the specifics of the analogy, because who are the someone's in the analogy and who are the someone's in the reflected spiritual reality? Christopher Ash writes, 'There is a slight complication between the illustration and the reality. In Paul's illustration the husband dies and the wife (who is still alive) remarries. In the reality which Paul is illustrating, the believer is like a wife who dies and then, as a resurrected wife, marries a resurrected husband.' Ash then says, 'The key point is that death ends the first relationship and makes possible the second.' Similarly, when I had previously prepared a Bible study on this passage with some others, the only answer we were able to arrive at was that all Paul is trying to do is highlight the general principle that death frees someone from the law. Paul here is taking a well-understood scenario where death (in general) brings freedom from the law, even if the freedom is not for the one who died.

Though this general principle is true enough in the case of a married couple and is contained within the passage, I nonetheless found this explanation deeply unsatisfactory the previous times I had thought about these verses. I found it impossible to avoid that the general principle that Paul applies throughout Romans is specifically that when a person dies, that person is set free. The general principle, seems to be explicitly stated in verse 1 -- the law is binding on a person only as long as he (the person) lives. This idea also occurs in Romans 6:7 -- For one who has died has been set free from sin. Thus, for a person to be free from the law, they have to die, though that death may be achieved through someone else's death.

Paul usually writes with relentless logic, and when an analogy fails to bring out the main principles, he highlights the difference (see Romans 5 on Adam's trespass and the free gift through Christ Jesus -- granted the differences there are not only logical but, more importantly, theological). So as I came across this passage again while memorising it on the train, I thought long and hard about what was going on. Having been recently married, I was extra curious to understand the illustration. And then it clicked (let's see if you agree).

When a husband dies, his wife dies also. A woman is a wife for only as long as she is the wife of a husband. Her identity as a wife is literally bound inside her husband (and vice versa of course). When a husband physically dies, what happens to the identity of the wife? It doesn't just vanish in a puff of smoke for no reason. It literally dies. A woman's identity as a wife literally dies in her husband when her husband dies, just as it is alive in her husband when her husband is alive. Here I'm talking not so much about the law, but about identities (although the law recognises and in some sense validates the identity). It is not the case that the husband dies while the wife remains alive. The husband dies and the wife dies with (or in) him, even though the woman remains physically alive.

So in Paul's analogy, it is not that the man dies and the woman is free from the law, but rather that in her (now former) husband's death, the wife died. But when it comes to the law, the law is binding on (and only on) the identity of the woman as wife. Thus, when the wife dies in the death of her husband, the woman that was under the law that was binding on her identity as a wife is now free to remarry another without being an adulteress. In other words, even though the woman does not physically die, the wife literally dies. And since the law is only binding on the wife and the identity as wife has died, the woman is free. The woman's identity as a wife literally dies in the physical death of another leading to freedom from the law. Likewise, we who believe the gospel have not physically died when Christ physically died, but our identity as those under the law literally dies in the physical death of another leading to freedom from the law. The analogy is subtle, but it is not the wrong way around, nor do I think it is only underlining a vague general principle. In both cases, the one who literally dies in the physical death of another is the same one who is now free from the law. The woman's identity as a wife dies, so the woman is free. Our identity under the law dies, so we are free.

Now this raises the question of why Paul wasn't more explicit in his illustration. But Paul can often be hard to understand (like in the rest of Chapter 7 and also in Chapters 9-11) and when that's the case, it's important we use context and the rest of his written thought to understand what's going on. It seems to me that the principle itself is explicitly stated in verse 1, even though the illustration that follows is subtle. I also believe this understanding is consistent with the earlier chapters of Romans as well as with the spiritual reality that immediately follows.

Of course, there remains the issue of in what way our identity as those under the law dies when Christ physically dies, but that is a discussion for another time (I think Paul clearly explains this elsewhere) and this is not the original point of confusion for me.

Regardless of what's really going on in Paul's illustration, thanks be to God that we are now free from the law, having died in Christ to that which held us captive, and now serve in the new way of the spirit!

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Update

Since the time when I first wrote this post, I came across another interpretation of the wife-death-law analogy when listening to the commentary of Alastair Roberts. He understands the believer to be both the husband and the wife, in that the old self of the believer corresponds to the husband who dies, and the new self of the believer is the wife who is now free to marry a new husband—Jesus Christ. This understanding particularly coheres well with the idea that "we may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead," that is, Jesus. This is an interesting take as it more fully captures who is doing the dying and perhaps maps better than my original resolution. Perhaps there is a way to keep both interpretations and it is, in any case, worth further consideration.

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Originally written 14.12.2020, Hurstville, Sydney, Australia. Update written on 08.08.2024, Newtown, Sydney. On Romans 7:1-6.

Colossians is a letter containing statements of utmost majesty. Speaking of Christ, Paul writes 'He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities - all things were created through him and for him...' And so he continues, painting with vivid imagery and bold words the greatness of the one he calls Kurios -- Lord.

As I read through the whole letter in one sitting, I was caught up in the immensity of his proclamation about the splendour of the Messiah, the freedom of the saints, and the vision of new life. And then I reached the end. And the final verse hit me with no less force than the rest of this grand letter.

I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you.

You have to read this final flourish with heavy pauses and dwell on each sentence.

I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Love. Remember my chains. Longing. Grace be with you.

I wonder if Paul highlighted how he wrote this greeting in order to draw the eye to his hands... and wrists. Remember my chains.

And here I am, 2000 years later, reading this what-then-must-have-seemed-somewhat insignificant letter, written by a passionate and perplexing little man in prison. Remembering his chains.
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25.04.2020, Wentworthville, Sydney, Australia. On Colossians 4:18. In honour of those serving faithfully away from home and those being persecuted for their obedience.

Hominem te memento

A voice says, 'Cry!'
And I said, 'Why should I cry?'

We bring our years to an end, as it were a tale that is told.

The days of our age are threescore years and ten;
or even by reason of strength fourscore years;
yet their span is but labour and sorrow;
they are soon gone,
and we fly away.

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

And so I wept. Not so much from sorrow but from wonder. And I numbered my days. I imagined myself as an old man looking back on his life. This image was not so far in the distance as once I thought. I remembered my past days, when I was but a child no older than my nephew Mark. I remembered when I was a teenager and both my sister and I were young. So young. Forever young. And though I am still called young, I am a child no longer. Sometimes I still feel like a child. And so I wept. My beautiful young older sister will be 30 this year. She has two children already. My forever young parents will be 60 in no time. All in a flash. And so I wept.

Soon I shall be 30 and soon after that Mark will be as old as I am now. Not long after that my sister will hit 60 and not long after that I too shall follow. If we all make it that far. My parents will pass on. And so shall I. This realisation, this moment of magic hit me. And so I wept. Life in this present age is fleeting and beautiful. Fleetingly beautiful. Like the smoke of Ecclesiastes. Fleetingly beautiful. Like a tale that is told. And full of grief. And, not but. For there is some beauty in grief also.

But beauty and grief come together as they should only when we get that heart of wisdom.

And so I wept.

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Let the favour of the Lord our God be upon us;
and establish the work of our hands upon us.
Yes! Establish the work of our hands.

A voice says, 'Cry!'
And I said, 'What should I cry?'
All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the Lord blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
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19.04.2020, Wentworthville, Sydney, Australia. On Psalm 90, Isaiah 40, and a chair on the back porch in the sun. Suggested edits by Neil Buckman. Formerly titled 'A moment of magic'.