Life in the Spirit

3.8 - A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age

The Christianity of Paul

Life in the Spirit

This profound and remarkable answer was entirely in line with the experience through which Paul had passed. It was in fact the only answer that could have satisfied him in the light of that experience.

To have believed that the work of Christ was only substitutionary in its significance; that he died merely as a sacrifice by virtue of which other men, though sinful, might be relieved of death, the penalty of their sin; to have believed that there was only an arbitrary and forensic connection between the work of Christ and the salvation of men, would have been to do violence to his most sacred convictions, and to run counter to all his religious experience.

Another man of less rigorous character, and less profoundly conscious than he, of the inalienable and essential connection of sin with death, -- one of his Jewish contemporaries, for example, -- might have believed that God could sever that essential connection, and in virtue of a merely substitutionary sacrifice of Christ could pronounce a sinful man righteous and grant him life, but Paul could not. No other answer, indeed, was possible to him than the answer given above, and yet its boldness is startling.

It is not in any sense a scholastic answer, an inference from observed facts, or a logical deduction from premises supplied by Scripture or tradition, but it is an answer based upon direct personal knowledge, upon immediate consciousness. Paul would never have dared to give it, not could he ever have discovered it, except under the influence and upon the basis of a profound and vivid Christian experience, which was the most real thing in all his life to him.

We can understand neither Paul the Christian nor Paul the theologian, unless we appreciated that experience and give it its full value. It marks him as one of the great religious geniuses of history, and it has done more than all else to make his name immortal and his influence world-wide, and that, too, in spite of the fact that he has been all to commonly misinterpreted and degraded into a mere rabbinic legalist or scholastic dialectician.

To his Christian experience he gives clear and vivid expression in such striking utterances as the following: "When it pleased God to reveal his Son [not "to me" but] in me"; [Gal. 1:16] "I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me"; [Gal. 2:20] "God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts"; [Gal 4:6] and in other passages where he simply transfers his own experience to others, as for example, in the words: "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ"; [Gal. 3: 27] "My little children of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you; [Gal. 4:19] "If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness" [Rom. 8:10; cf. also 2 Cor. 4:6 sq.]

Paul's epistles are full of utterances like these, and it is plain that in them is revealed the very center and heart of his Christian experience. Out of that experience, out of the revelation of the Son of God within him, was born the conviction to which he gave such constant expression, that Christ had redeemed him by making him completely one with himself.

But this union between himself and Christ, of which Paul became conscious at the time of his conversion, had a double significance to him. His experience had convinced him, as we have seen, that he could never attain life unless he could be freed from the flesh, which was constantly dragging him downward and dooming him to death.

But in the revelation of the living Christ within him, he became conscious that he had already come under the control of a life-giving spirit, and had already passed from death unto life. He must have died, then, with Christ unto the flesh, which had formerly had dominion over him, and he must have risen again with him unto the new life in the Spirit that he was now living. His union with Christ, therefore, meant to Paul both death and life; death unto the flesh, life in the Spirit. [Rom. 6:2 sq., 7:4, 8:10; 2 Cor. 4:10, 5:1 sq.; Gal. 2:20, 3:27; Phil 3:10 sq., etc.]

Thus the work of Jesus had been made of benefit to Paul. Because he was one with Christ, Christ had effected his salvation by his death and resurrection.

Paul conceived this oneness between himself and the Messiah, which alone made his salvation possible and actual, in a very real way. The words in which he describes it are no mere figure of speech. It was not simply a oneness of mind or heart or will, not simply that he possessed the disposition or character of Christ, but that he was actually one with Christ in nature.

He conceived the oneness between the spiritual man and Christ, the second Adam, to be as true and complete as between the fleshly man and the first Adam. [1 Cor 15:47-49; cf. Rom. 5:15]. Christ and the spiritual man were one as Adam and the natural man. The oneness between Adam and the natural man lies in the sarx; the oneness between Christ and the spiritual man lies in the pneuma or the spirit. It is because Adam and all his descendants partake of human flesh, that they are equally one in nature; and it is because Christ and the believer alike partake of the Divine Spirit that they are equally one in nature. [1 Cor. 6:17].

Paul does not think of the spiritual nature of Christ as of another and lower order than the spiritual nature of God; he does not make Christ's Spirit of one kind and God's Spirit of another; in fact, as already remarked, he does not in any way distinguish the Spirit of God from the Spirit of Christ, but speaks of the same Spirit at one time as the Spirit of God, and again even in the same passage, as the Spirit of Christ. [Cf. e.g. Rom. 8:9 sq.] Moreover, in some passages Paul identifies Christ himself and the Spirit of Christ or the Spirit of God, [Cf. e.g. Rom. 8:10; 2 Cor. 3:17] using indifferently the personal name Christ and the term pneuma, which denotes Christ's nature, just as he uses interchangeably the words anqrwpoz and sarx.

It is thus abundantly evident that the pneuma, or spiritual nature of Christ, is the divine pneuma. This Divine Spirit, holy by nature, and possessed of life and endowed with the power to impart life, [1 Cor. 15:45] is placed by Paul in constant contrast with the flesh, which is evil and therefore doomed to death and death-dealing in its effects. The one is holy, the other sinful; the one incorruptible, the other corruptible; the one immortal, the other mortal; the one heavenly, the other earthly. At every point the contrast between them is complete, and is frequently emphasized by Paul. [Cf. Rom. 7, 8; 1 Cor. 15; Gal. 5]

In becoming really united to Christ, then, a man becomes a partaker with him in the divine nature, or pneuma. When Christ takes up his abode in the man, it is the Divine Spirit that dwells in him; he has within him a new nature the opposite in every respect of his old fleshly nature. If he is truly united to Christ, he is dead unto the latter and alive in the former. His personality has not been destroyed or displaced by the personality of Christ. But his personality has received a new content; Spirit in place of flesh. The old discord between the Ego and the flesh has now given place to the new harmony between the Ego and the Spirit; he is no longer a fleshly but a spiritual man. He has thus passed from death unto life, and his eternal existence is already begun. [Cf. Rom. 5:5; 1 Cor. 2:12, 3:16, 22; 6:11, 19; 12:13; 14:25; 2 Cor 1:22, 4:16, 17; Gal. 4:6, 5:16 sq., etc.]

Used by permission of the publisher.

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