Master of the House

For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.  Romans 6:14  NASB

Not under law – How often we hear this verse as a proof text that the Torah has been set aside and no longer applies to Christian believers!  Many scholars make the claim.  “[Believers] must fight their battle in the certainty that their enemy has been overcome.  For they no longer live under the rule of the law, but under that of grace.”[1] “His death and resurrection has inaugurated the messianic age which superseded the age of law . . .”[2]  Even Leon Morris (whose work I so much admire) says, “Paul saw clearly that law and grace do not go together.”[3]  But how can this be when Paul calls the law “holy and good,” when Paul claims that he himself has always been obedient to Torah, and when Paul cites the Tanakh over and over as justification for his arguments?  Something doesn’t make sense.

Perhaps we can start by recognizing that Paul uses nomos (usually translated “law”) in many different ways.  It can mean “norm,” “standard,” “principle” and under specific conditions, “Torah,” “the Mosaic code” or “the Tanakh.”  The first distinction comes when Paul uses nomos with or without the definite article, ho.  With the definite article  (the law), Paul almost always has the Torah in mind.  Exactly what he means by Torah must also be investigated because in the first century the word torah could mean all of the Tanakh or the Pentateuch or the technical sense of the specific commands of the first five books of Scripture.  What is clear is that without the definite article the word nomos is more likely to mean “principle” or “norm,” in the general sense.  For example, there is no definite article in Romans 2:12, 14, 23, 25, 27; Romans 3:20, 21, 27, 28 31; Romans 4:12,14, 15; Romans 5:13, 20; Romans 6:14, 15.  Translations that add “the” to “law” in these verses are incorporating a technical distinction that Paul does not make.

Let’s apply this distinction to this verse.  Sin no longer has authority over the believer.  Why?  Because the believer has died to sin in the death of Yeshua.  In other words, since Yeshua has conquered death itself, the hallmark of sin’s power, sin no longer has dominion.  When the believer identifies with the death of Yeshua, he recognizes that his previous master no longer has authority over his life.  He now lives under the authority of Yeshua as his new master.  Paul exhorts believers to “consider themselves dead” to this old master.  Everything about the behavior of the believer changes because the old master no longer has control.  “You are no longer under the rule, the principle, the norm of the old master.  You are under grace.”

Does “grace” mean you have no rules for living?  No, of course not.  Grace comes with a different set of rules, the rules of the Kingdom.  The new master is your new King.  His Kingdom operates like any other kingdom.  There are expectations for those who claim to be citizens.  The norm of the new Kingdom is Torah, not freedom from all law.  The believer no longer is forced to live under the old principles, the old norm, the old rules.  He is now released from those so that he may live under the new norms of the new Kingdom.

Most of us treat Paul’s use of nomos as if it were consistently the same everywhere he employs it.  But this isn’t true.  Furthermore, nomos also has different nuances not found in the Hebrew word torah, and visa versa.  Much more care is required if we are going to unravel the presuppositions that Paul rightly expected of his first century Jewish/Gentile audience.  We aren’t that audience so we have to work much harder at understanding his meaning.  But once we do, oh how clearly he expresses what we have experienced to be the truth.  We are freed from that old master so that we may serve the new one.

Topical Index:  law, grace, master, Romans 6:14