Paul deals with all of these topics in some detail, particularly in his first letter to the Corinthians. The stance he takes is complex and a bit confusing because his instincts are to allow “freedom in Christ” and not put his followers “under law” in a formal and legalistic way. On sexual matters he is quite strict and uncompromising, whereas on food and diet he tends to be openly liberal. With regard to “meat offered to idols” he had emphasized that “an idol is nothing” so that these sacrifices to “nothing” should be inconsequential to one who has the proper knowledge. He says one can eat whatever meat is sold in the marketplace without raising questions about where it came from—that is, had it been slaughtered on an altar in the temple of one of the Greco-Roman deities? Whether this would include meat from animals killed without draining their blood (“things strangled”) Paul never specifies, but one has the impression he was not stringent on that point. He tells the Corinthians that if they are invited to dinner at the house of a nonbeliever in Christ, to just go ahead and eat whatever is served, and presumably this could include meat from animals that had been strangled, or slaughtered at an idol’s temple (1 Corinthians 10:25–26).
He had taught his followers the general principle that “all things are lawful,” and the Corinthians quote this back to him, but he did not intend that to be applied to justify sexual immorality. He had to clarify and back off considerably on that point. Some of the Corinthians were apparently frequenting the brothels and Paul was quite outraged (1 Corinthians 6:15–16). Others, as we have seen, were attending festivals at temples and participating in the meals, in effect, as Paul puts it, “eating at the idol’s table” and thus essentially worshipping demons! (1 Corinthians 10:14–22).
In all of these areas Paul tries to walk a thin line between allowing freedom, considering the scruples of Jews and other God-fearers who might be stricter in their interpretations, while maintaining a strict standard against any kind of sexual immorality or involvement at local temples that might involve spiritual bonding with demonic forces. Paul expects that these principles, along with his basic moral catalogue of prohibited activities, which he derived from his Jewish background, would be an obvious minimum standard of behavior for “those in Christ,” but they did not even touch the new Law of Christ.
For this reason Paul was profoundly disappointed with all his churches. They never seemed to grasp what he believed was their heavenly calling—to be part of the glorified God-family—so that such petty minimal standards, either of the Jewish Torah, or the Noahide laws, would pale in significance before the spiritual Law of Christ. Paul mentions the term “Law of Christ” only two times in his letters—in 1 Corinthians and Galatians. These communities were his most fractured and troubled, and his frustrations and disappointment with both are evident. He told the Corinthians that living as a Jew under the Torah, or as a non-Jew “outside” the Torah, were of no consequence or interest to him—since he considered himself “under the Law of Christ.” He puts it to the Galatians as an exhortation: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the Law of Christ!” (Galatians 6:2). He had just explained that only those “led by the Spirit” were no longer “under the Law,” and that if one practiced what he calls the “works of the flesh,” including such things as sexual immorality, idolatry, envy, murder, and selfishness, one would be excluded from inheriting the kingdom of God—in other words one’s newly engendered life as a potential glorified child of God would be aborted (Galatians 5:18–21).
The Law of Christ is not a list of precepts or prohibitions, but rather involved what Paul calls “walking by the Spirit.” Paul believed that only those who were united with Christ, who had the Spirit of Christ, could “put to death” the desires of the flesh and be led by the Spirit. He saw this as a deeply internal moral battle, not a set of external behavioral measures—but it is a relentless struggle that continues daily. It never ceases and it is never won: “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would” (Galatians 5:17).
In his letter to the Romans he explains more fully, and here one sees clearly Paul’s “already but not yet” dilemma working to its fullest. Those who have the Spirit of Christ are “not in the flesh” but “in the Spirit,” yet their life in the body continues, and the body remains “dead” because of sin. Paul sees this as an existential condition, a dichotomy of being—never to be solved by moral victory but only to be resisted and struggled against. He goes so far as to say that when one sins, it is not really that person who sins—but their sinful “flesh” that does so. He explains this on a very personal level, speaking of his own unending struggle with sexual temptation:
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law [against “lust”] is good. So then it is no longer “I” that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Nor if I do what I do not want, it is no longer “I” that do it, but sin which dwells within me (Romans 7:15–20).
Paul had introduced the description of this struggle by quoting one of the Ten Commandments: “You shall not desire [Greek epithumeo] your neighbor’s wife” (Deuteronomy 5:21; Exodus 20:17). He says that as a child one would not be aware of this “Law” against coveting, but once one was able to realize the implications of the commandment, most likely as an adolescent, the prohibition itself, finding opportunity “through sin,” caused “all sorts of lust in me” (Romans 7:8–9). He does not fault the “Law” itself, which he calls “good, holy, and just,” but rather the “sin” that dwelt in his fleshly nature.
According to Paul there is no solution to this struggle, no victory to be won over the “flesh” until the body is shed at the resurrection and one becomes wholly transformed. Yet in the meantime, one has no choice but to resist—and that is the most that can be expected and required. He writes, “if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Romans 8:14). Paul’s point here is that “to put to death the deeds of the body” is not to win the battle against sin—in this case sexual lust—but to denounce the flesh itself. That is the operational base of the problem. That way when one does “sin” it is not the person who is sinning, but their “flesh,” which they have denounced.
Such a view of sin and human responsibility runs directly counter to what finds in the Torah, or in most forms of Judaism. Though there is within Jewish tradition what is called a yetzer ra, an “inclination to do evil,” there is also, equally at work, the yetzer tov, the “inclination to do good.” They are not mismatched, but represent two choices, and one can overcome the other. God warns Cain when he is incensed with jealousy against his brother Abeclass="underline" “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not well, sin is couching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Genesis 4:7). Moses, in rehearsing all the commandments of the Torah before the assembly of ancient Israelites, states: