This week, Gayle reviewed Paul's Jewish interpretations of the words righteousness (God's act of bringing about shalom) and the Law (Obedience to the Law is like watering the tree of life. The fruit of the tree is righteousness, God bringing peace to the world.
We then moved into how Paul's Greco-Roman environment has impacted the way that he views Sin. Paul saw sin as a condition instead of individual acts of wrong. He knew that obedience to the Law does not produce righteousness, so what will?
Paul believes that Jesus Christ is the path to God's justification. God justifies us inspite of the fact that we are all sinners. We are all "out of whack," but God justifies us anyway through Christ, if we believe.
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I'm so glad that we have taken on this study because I have always been uncomfortable with the way that Paul describes sin. He describes it as a condition, as a power, or a force.
ReplyDeleteThat always made me uncomfortable because I felt it was a cop out. We can't help but to sin. We just can't help it. But this made it sound like Paul thought that was ok. To me, it always seemed like that took the responsibility out of being in a relationship with God.
However, he didn't look at it that way. He was looking at human nature itself. People for whatever reason sin by what they do and what they don't do. No matter how hard we try, we aren't perfect, and we can't always produce the fruit that we want.
Paul says that God justifies us in spite of being "out of whack," being sinners. We are all one in Him, with Christ as the defining factor.