Who Is Free? (2)
But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. Romans 6:17-18
Freed – Sha’ul echoes Yeshua. How is a man set free? By becoming a slave to righteousness. Sha’ul contrasts freedom from sin with slavery to righteousness. He writes to Gentiles who have embraced the faith of Israel. They were once embroiled in the inner battle for personal liberty, deluded into thinking that their license was freedom. Sha’ul splashes them with the cold, hard facts. They were slaves. But something happened. They became obedient to the teaching they had been given. Their obedience was a process of adopting rules and regulations about life. They submitted themselves to an external authority. What was the result? Exactly the same as the promise Yeshua made to His followers. They were free – to be slaves to righteousness. The yetzer ha’ra was domesticated to the will of God. They discovered the joy of no longer being held captive but rather being held in the arms of the Father. Yeshua and Paul agree. Freedom comes through obedience.
It seems so simple. It seems so obvious. But trying to overcome life-long habits of personal liberty is far from easy. That’s why it’s important to notice that the verb eleutheroo is passive in this verse. We have been set free. Someone else did something that affected us. We couldn’t do it ourselves because we were our own enemy. Someone else had to lay the sword against the neck of our rebellion and rescue us from our own destruction. We had to be the beneficiaries of another’s action. Now that this has been accomplished, we are empowered and enabled to submit. That’s all that’s left to do. Submit. Not calculate. Not query. Not investigate. Just submit. Submit to the teaching already delivered. Just say to ourselves, “I might not really understand why it has to be this way and I might feel powerless and afraid, but God says this is how I should live and so I am just going to do it, no matter what.” Abandon yourself to Him. Oh, you probably won’t feel like doing that. After all, we have trained ourselves to consume the liberty diet for a long time. That’s why our self-centered egos are so fat. We have been eating the “I deserve it” sweets for decades. The first step is a new meal (every Semitic covenant is sealed with a meal). God has set the table. He has done the cooking. The plates are filled with His word. All we need to do is eat. But the meals at God’s table are an acquired taste. We have to learn to love them.
When I was a child, I ate like a child. Candy and cookies tasted much better than spinach and oatmeal. I wanted Trick or Treat everyday. But then I grew to be a man. I put away childish things. I ate in order to live effectively. I avoided those things that harmed me. And over time, I discovered that I liked feeling healthy – and spinach wasn’t so bad after all. God’s table works the same way. Over time, it becomes our bread of life until one day we realize that we can’t live without it. We learn what it means to be free – one bite at a time.
Topical Index: freed, eleutheroo, eat, slave, Romans 6:18
Hi Skip, I too, noticed that covenants were always sealed with a meal between the 2 parties. Why was that?
People like to eat! 🙂 No, really, a meal between parties is a sign of honoring each other (Paul’s calls it table fellowship when he chastises Peter). In Semitic cultures, it is a sign of peace and mutual commitment. This is the background of the “Lord’s” supper and the marriage feast of the Lamb. Covenants were acknowledged with tangible actions, not simply words. Not all covenants ended with a meal, for example, the covenant is sometimes marked with another sign, like circumcision or baptism. But I can’t think of a single covenant that doesn’t have some outward sign. Eating is life. Why not celebrate join dependency with a tangible act of life?
Good morning brother Skip and all!
After all, we have trained ourselves to consume the liberty diet for a long time. That’s why our self-centered egos are so fat. We have been eating the “I deserve it” sweets for decades. The first step is a new meal (every Semitic covenant is sealed with a meal). God has set the table. He has done the cooking. The plates are filled with His word. All we need to do is eat. But the meals at God’s table are an acquired taste. We have to learn to love them.
When I was a child, I ate like a child. Candy and cookies tasted much better than spinach and oatmeal. I wanted Trick or Treat everyday. But then I grew to be a man. I put away childish things.
Reading this to my daughter just a moment ago, and as I came to this line, when I was a child, I ate like a child. Candy and cookies tasted much better than spinach and oatmeal. She said “un-uh, spinach and oatmeal is better”. Then she said matter of factly, “Candy and cookies are good, but spinach and oatmeal are much better”.
(every semitic covenant is sealed with a meal). That was very funny and poignant way to introduce the rest of your thoughts.
A couple of nights ago I used Romans 6:18 on my facebook page, and this is what I wrote:
Romans 6:18- and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. We have become slaves of righteousness……… It is okay……… lOOk who our MASTER is!
There is more to this story. Anyway………
Thanks again Skip, I enjoyed this much today.
Good afternoon Skip and Fellow readers,
I have been reading Acts 15, actually Chapter 21 in ” New Light on the Difficult Words of Jesus”
by David Bivin and other recommending readings, when I received ” Who is Free”(1-2), so I think it is a good opportunity to ask questions that have come to mind. Paul’s teachings as a Torah believer/follower align themselves with Jesus teachings, but when it came to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem about the requirements for Gentiles to enter church fellowship Paul and Peter persuaded the others to ” loose” the previous requires of total Torah observance and ” bind” the Gentiles to 3 or 4 of the Noahchide Covenant requirements in it’s place. This brings me to my questions:
1) Why would Paul/Peter as a Torah observant believers “loose” the Gentiles, when up until that point, as far as I can tell, all Gentiles converting to “The Way” had to become full Torah observant.
2) Wouldn’t/ Didn’t the “new” requirements, a) cause dissension between the Jewish Torah observant believers and the earlier Gentiles that converted and the “new” Gentiles believers,
(i.e. some following Torah and others observing the minimum requirements.)
3) Was this a Decree of convenience to those who where carrying the ” Good News” to the Gentiles, since many modern day “Replacement” Christians believe that Paul preached Christianity
as a separate religion from Torah observance.
4) Did this Decree open the door for the Hellenization of ” The Way” to the point that within just a few hundred years later that the complete separation from the “Root” was complete. I am aware that the “Greek-mind set ” that already infiltrated Judaism prior to this, but didn’t the “loosing” of Torah observance open the door for further “loosing” as the leadership in the Church became Hellenistic?
Here we are several centuries in the future from this event looking at the “Christian” church that has ” loosed” the way to where it is the ” name it and claim it”, “walk the aisle and say the prayer” to get your ticket punched to go to Heaven and I wonder if “The Way” would have become the “beacon of light” to both Jew and Gentile if the Decree had been different.
Thanks for listening to my wondering mind.
The problem with this interpretation of Acts 15 is the assumption that Peter and James apply the instructions to Gentiles within the Messianic community. In other words, we need to ask if these four conditions are the only expectations of believers after they have joined the community or if they are conditions expected of people who wish to join the community. There are a number of clues that suggest Peter and James are offering the minimum expectations of those who WISH TO JOIN, not of those who are already part of the community. Take another look at the four behavioral expectations. Each one of them is associated with a religious practice of idolatry. Each one would have been part of the worship of a false god. Also notice that James goes on the say that he has no fear about the lack of education in proper worship for those who join the community since “Moses is taught every week in the synagogues.” Obviously, this is a reference to Torah. Once the person leaves behind his idolatrous practices and joins the synagogue, then he is instructed in Torah. Why would James say this if there was no need to follow Torah? The implication is that this new believer will be instructed in Torah because that is the standard for living. Notice that James comments on the number of people who are “zealous for Torah” in this same discussion.
We can conclude that the four required behaviors are really the expectations of leaving behind any practices associated with idolatrous worship. If you are going to worship YHWH, you can’t also worship some other god (polytheism was the usual practice in the Roman empire). The Jerusalem council meeting establishes the exclusivity of YHWH for incoming Gentiles. That’s all. It does not divide the Torah into two separate applications.
Thanks Skip for the guidance, I will review Acts 15 in light of it.
Jerry
Jerry, further to Skip’s reply, the instructions given as the minimum standard for converts (proselytes) coming into fellowship in the synagogue are all taken from Leviticus chapters 11-20 (more specifically chapters 17-20). They deal with the three main appetites of man: what we worship (our ego), what we eat (food) and what we have sex with (intimacy). These instructions form what is known to Torah teachers (such as Paul) as “the heart of the Torah”.
James and Peter were saying in fact that the gentile converts coming to the faith needed to be instructed in the heart of the Torah, in the very things that they needed to do to be able to join in fellowship in the community of believers, with the expectation that they would continue to learn the rest through their daily interaction with other members of the community of believers and being instructed in the synagogues every Shabbat (which, of course, also implies that they would also be keeping Shabbat and joining in fellowship with other believers on that day).