A lot of Pauline material exists where he replaces 'law' with something else.
“Christ is given lordship over mankind in place of the Law”
“In a real sense conformity to Christ, His teaching and His life has taken the place for Paul of conformity to the Jewish Torah. … We should accept on a priori grounds that attributes ascribed to the Torah revealed on Sinai would by the Apostle be
The alternative world that emerges from Galatians, an eschatological reality, replaces law with promise - Philip Kern
In New Testament theology the theme of replacement as a way of relating the Old and New Testament is regularly associated with the Fourth Gospel. In the Gospel of John Jesus is the new Moses, enacts a new exodus, eclipses the great Jewish feasts and institutions which marked God’s saving work in the past, replaces the Jerusalem temple, and by dying during Passover week, is the ultimate Jewish Passover sacrifice. Hebrews stands out among the New Testament letters as developing similar ideas, especially in relation to Jesus vis-à-vis sacrifice and priesthood.
So - how prevalent is the replacement motif with respect to the law?
Commentators on Paul’s letters familiar with his Jewish roots sometimes make passing comments that point to his subtle replacement of the law:
· With reference to Romans 15:16 James Dunn notes that whereas in 4 Maccabees 7:8 “priestly service” (ἱερουργέω) is offered to the law, Paul offers “priestly service” to his gospel.
· In connection with Ephesians 6:4, where fathers are to instruct their children “in the Lord,” Harold Hoehner notes that “the father’s training and admonition is not … centered around the law as in the rabbinics, but, rather, [is] Christocentric.”
· N.T. Wright argues that the underlying view of Christ in Colossians (esp. in 1:15-20) is that “he has taken the position which Judaism assigned to the Jewish Law.”
· Roy Ciampa, et al, note that in 1 Corinthians 7:32-35 Paul explains that he prefers singleness because marriage makes life more complicated and can be a distraction from devotion to Christ, whereas in several rabbinic texts, worldly preoccupations, such as a wife, are seen as a potential distraction from the study of Torah.
The two most commonly-cited texts in connection with Paul’s so-called Christ-Torah antithesis are Galatians 2 and Philippians 3. In both texts, if once the law held a central place for Paul the Jew, for Paul the Christian that place is firmly and exclusively occupied by Christ.
“For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:19-20)
“If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Phil. 3:4b-8).
3. The Law of Moses Substitutes
Doesn’t not being under the law mean that you’ll be lawless?
Doesn’t living without the rules of the law make you unruly?
Doesn’t living without the law make you an outlaw?
Haven’t you gone too far Paul in repudiating / abolishing the law?
“Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ
Paul is using some phrases that are coined in contrast to the law of Moses.
What can 'the law of Christ' mean? Not, 'the law of Moses'. Not Jesus's teaching or example. But - a principle, or authority. See 1 Corinthians 9:20... Paul is of course commited to obeying God.
4. Fulfilling the Law
“You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful natured; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled (πεπλήρωται) in keeping this one command: “’Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Gal. 5:13-14; TNIV)
“For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled (πληρωθῇ) in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according
to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:3-4; NRSV)
“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled (πεπλήρωκεν) the law.
The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not covet,’ and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command:
‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
(Rom 13:8-9; TNIV)
Notice that it is not laws, but the entire law that is fulfilled.
Is the perfect tense significant?
Is the passive voice critical?
“whenever your obedience is fulfilled (πληρωθῇ) …” (2 Cor 10:6)
“For the commandments of the law (αἱ ἐντολαὶ τοῦ νόμου) are twofold, and through prudence they must be fulfilled (πληροῦνται). For there is a time for a man to embrace his wife, and a time to abstain from that for his prayer. So there are two commandments (δύο ἐντολαί); and, unless they be done in their order, they cause sin. So it is likewise with the remaining commandments. Therefore, be wise and sensible in God, understanding the order of His commandments, and the rules of every deed,
so that the Lord will love you.” (Test. Naph. 8:7-10)
5. Walk in newness of life
“How to walk and please God” (1 Thess. 4:1) was a question asked and debated in every quarter of Judaism in the first century. The standard Jewish answer, based firmly on Scripture, was to walk “according to the law.”
The Old Testament regularly calls Israel to “walk in God’s law / statutes / ordinances” (Exod. 164; Lev. 18:4; 26:3; 1 Kings 6:12; 2 Kings 10:31; 2 Chron. 6:16; Neh. 10:29-30; Jer. 44:23; Ezek. 5:6-7; 11:12; Pss. 77:10; 89:30; 119:1). Leviticus 26:3 is typical: “Walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments and do them.”
A wide range of Second Temple Jewish texts stand in the same tradition of commending walking in a manner pleasing to God, which is taken to mean conduct according to the law:
· CD 7:1 and 9:1: “walk according to the law” (cf. T Jos 4:5; T Jud 23:5).
· 1QS 1:8; 2:2; 3:9; 8:18; 9:6,8,9,19: “walk perfectly in all his ways” (a reference
to conduct according to the community’s interpretation of the Law of Moses).
· T. Judah. 24:3: “walk according to the commandments of the Lord.”
· Philo, Cong. Erud. Gr. 87: “walk in the judgments and ordinances of the Lord.”
· 1 Maccabees 10:37: “let them live walk by their own laws.”
· Baruch 1:18: “We have disobeyed him, and have not heeded the voice of the
Lord our God, to walk in the statutes of the Lord that he set before us.”
In this light, it is striking that Paul never says that believers in Christ are to walk according to the law. Instead, he recommends walking according to different norms: not as the Gentiles do (1 Cor 3:3; 2 Cor 10:2; Eph 4:17), nor in idleness (1 Thess 4:12), or as enemies of the gospel (Phil 3:18); according to or by the Spirit (Rom 8:4; Gal 5:16), apostolic example (Phil 3:17), apostolic teaching (2 Thess 3:6) and the truth of the gospel (Gal. 2:14); in Christ (Col 2:6), in love (Rom 14:15; Eph 5:2), in newness of resurrection life (Rom 6:4) and in good works (Eph 2:10); as in the day (Rom 13:13), as children of light (Eph 5:15); by faith (2 Cor 5:7); wisely (Eph 5:15; Col 4:5).
The language of walking in “newness,” “light” and the “Spirit” associate the Christian walk with the new age of the Spirit, a time when the Mosaic dispensation has come to an end.
Paul uses the four words regularly translated “new” or “newness”: νέος (x2), ἀνανεόω (x1), καινός (x6), καινότης (x2). Apart from one “new moon” (Col. 2:16), the rest of the occurrences appear as ways of characterizing the new age and new covenant that has been inaugurated by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is noteworthy that eight of the eleven are in contrast to the old law covenant.
The most obvious is the contrast with the old covenant in Paul’s two references to the new covenant in 1 Corinthians 11:25 and 2 Corinthians 3:6. The same notion of the new situation in Christ replacing the old under the Law of Moses can be found in the following when read in context: “newness of life” (Rom 6:4); “the new life of the Spirit” (Rom 7:6); “one new humanity” (Eph 2:15); and “a new creation” (Gal. 6:15; 2 Cor 5:17 [x2]). The other three occurrences appear in descriptions of the new life without drawing any contrast to the old covenant: believers as a “new batch” of dough (1 Cor 5:7); and “the new self” (Eph 4:24; Col 3:10).
That the new covenant replaced the old covenant is explicit in Jeremiah 31:32: “it will not be like the old covenant that they broke.” However, a possible objection to reading the language of newness in Paul’s letters as underscoring a replacement of the old covenant is the appearance in new covenant prophetic texts of intimations of the continued role of the law. Two texts bear mentioning:
“I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes
and be careful to observe my ordinances.” (Ezekiel 36:27)
“But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
(Jeremiah 31:33)
In both passages the accent is on the fundamental change in the human beings that the new covenant brings, the transformation of people’s hearts. Parallel to Jeremiah 31:33 is Jeremiah 32:39: “I will give them singleness of heart and action.” And the same is implied in Ezekiel’s promise of God’s Spirit within God’s people. While the new covenant prophetic texts indicate both continuity and discontinuity with the past, Williamson is surely right that: “the newness of the new covenant must not be underestimated.” As it turns out, Ezekiel’s language of obedience to the law in the LXX is not used by Paul to characterize how believer’s in Christ relate to the law (viz. φυλάσσω and ποιέω); “keeping the law” is evidently not a part of the prophecy that Paul felt the need to emphasize.
“As children of the promise who have been born of the Spirit we are free from the letter of the Mosaic covenant, which was vastly inferior to the light of the transforming glory we now have in the face of Jesus Christ.”
(Williamson, commenting on the new covenant in Paul)
“Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing,
but keeping the commandments of God” (1 Cor 7:19)
“In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value.
The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Gal 5:6);
“Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything;
what counts is a new creation” (Gal 6:15).
8. In Paul’s Own Words
Believers in Christ are not under the Law of Moses, but under the law of Christ, the law of faith and the law of the Spirit. Having died to the law, Christ lives in us and we live by faith in the Son of God. Above all else, including righteousness under the law, we value knowing Christ Jesus our Lord. We don’t keep the law, but fulfill the law in Christ and through love. We don’t seek to walk according to the law, but according to the truth of the gospel, in Christ, in newness of resurrection life, by faith, in the light and in step with the Spirit. Instead of the oldness of the letter, we participate in newness of life, the new life of the Spirit, and the one new humanity. What counts is not the law, but faith expressing itself through love, the new creation and keeping the commandments of God.
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