5
QUESTIONS ABOUT ALLEGIANCE ALONE
It is time for a question-and-answer session. But first, let’s briefly recap. The first chapter sought to deconstruct deficient but popular understandings of faith. In the second it was argued that there is only one true gospel and that this one gospel is attested by Paul. In chapter 3 we discovered that Jesus and the Evangelists proclaim this same gospel in the Gospels, including Jesus’s future rule as king of heaven and earth. In its essence, this gospel is not that “all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory,” and so “we are saved by trusting in the sufficiency of Jesus’s death for our sins.” These statements contain important truths, but they truncate and distort the gospel, which instead climaxes and is directed most emphatically toward the enthronement of Jesus as the Christ. We are indeed saved by pistis, traditionally translated “faith,” but when this word is applied to the question of salvation, it is best to speak of loyalty or allegiance, since saving “faith” is directed toward Jesus as the actively ruling king.
But with this claim, a multitude of related questions and possible objections readily spring to mind that have not yet been addressed: Doesn’t allegiance require self-effort and in so doing preempt God’s grace? How can allegiance be reconciled with Paul’s teaching about works? What of the law? How can we be saved by allegiance if our allegiance is less than perfect? Many other questions need to be addressed as well.
In this chapter, working topically, I will begin to answer these questions. Although some satisfactory answers can be given at this stage of the book, exhaustive answers are out of the question—entire books have been written on the subtopics addressed here. Even complete answers still remain just beyond our reach, as what we mean by salvation will remain underdetermined until we can discuss the matter more fully in subsequent chapters.
In what follows, each section starts with a hypothetical question—although many of these questions are not fully hypothetical, as colleagues, friends, and students have often asked them as I have presented this material. My hope is that after pondering this chapter, the reader will have a better sense of why it is true to say that we are saved by allegiance alone, even if the reader still has unanswered questions regarding salvation, for this topic will be addressed more fully later.
Grace and Allegiance Alone?
Question: If salvation is by grace (a gift), then how can it depend on our allegiance to Jesus?
The Bible is absolutely clear that we cannot earn eternal salvation. No person on the basis of self-effort—by living a clean life or doing some heroic deed—can approach God and say, “If you are truly a just and fair God, then you owe me eternal life; I am a good person and I deserve it.” If we think otherwise, it is because we have an unrealistic assessment of God’s holiness, his righteous standard, and the depths of our own wickedness. Paul makes this abundantly clear in Romans 1:18–3:20, especially through his climactic assessment of the pervasive nature of the sin problem and the resulting implications:
For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” (Rom. 3:9–12)
Since in the final analysis all are dominated by sin apart from the Christ, the implication is that right standing with God cannot follow from “works of the law”—that is, performance of the covenantal commandments given by God to Moses (or any other system of commandments). On the contrary, such commandments in the end only serve to heighten our awareness of the degree to which we have transgressed the holy standard that God has given (see Rom. 3:20; 7:7–14; 7:21–25). Humans are entirely undeserving of God’s gift of salvation because they have been unfaithful to him. In consequence, salvation must come as a gift, by grace. Lest we miss the point, Paul underscores it by using two terms together, the adverb dōrean (“as a gift,” “without payment”) and the noun charis (“grace,” “gift”), to stress emphatically the unmerited nature of the gift, saying that through the saving action of the Christ we are “justified by his grace [charis] as a gift [dōrean]” (Rom. 3:24).
Thus, it is certain that if we are to be saved, it must come from outside ourselves, as an undeserved gift from God (Eph. 2:5). God graciously takes the saving initiative in both corporate (Rom. 5:6; Titus 3:4–7) and personal salvation (Acts 13:48). A positive affirmation of the necessity of God’s saving initiative with respect to the individual (e.g., “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him”—John 6:44) must be balanced with Scripture’s affirmation that God has in some sense already taken that saving initiative for all because he desires that all be saved (e.g., “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself”—John 12:32; cf. 1 Tim. 2:4). Various Christian traditions (e.g., Reformed, Arminian, Catholic) systematize this in some sense very differently, as it is disputed whether God’s saving initiative truly extends to all individuals (or merely to the elect) and the degree to which it can be resisted. Regardless, it is agreed that God does not call or select either individuals or groups of people for salvation on the basis of prior allegiance or loyalty to him, but only on the basis of his own inscrutable desire to show mercy to the undeserving (Rom. 9:1–26; 11:5–6). These are bedrock truths that we must not lose sight of in our subsequent discussion.1
Yet not even traditional understandings of faith as belief or trust in Jesus’s saving work claim that humans have no active role to play in salvation. On the contrary, most everyone would affirm that God requires us to perform at least one concrete action in response to God’s grace, to respond “in faith,” however we define it, to God’s offer of salvation in Jesus. In fact, Jesus himself states as much in the Gospel of John. When the crowds ask Jesus, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus responds quite simply, “This is the work of God, that you pisteuēte eis the one whom he has sent” (John 6:28–29). Regardless of how we translate pisteuēte eis, whether “believe in” or “trust in,” or as I am tempted to translate it, “give allegiance to,” there is no doubt that pistis, to whatever degree it constitutes a “work,” is required—and this is not felt to preclude grace under the traditional understandings of faith.2
The matter, I submit, is essentially no different if we understand pistis as allegiance to Jesus, the cosmic king. We are still saved by grace through pistis; salvation comes from outside ourselves as the Christ gift. Yet we must respond to that gift by giving allegiance to Jesus as Lord. The offer of salvation is free, but it absolutely does come with strings attached. Obedient loyalty to the king is required as a condition of acceptance.
John Barclay shows that “grace” (charis) has been susceptible to six differentiable meanings for those who have interpreted Paul’s Letters: (1) superabundance—the size of the gift; (2) singularity—the pure benevolence of the gift; (3) priority—giving at the ideal advance time; (4) incongruity—lack of merit in the recipient; (5) efficacy—the ability of the gift to achieve its intended purposes; (6) noncircularity—the absence of obligation to reciprocate by giving a gift in return. Paul himself does not necessarily “perfect,” or take to its extreme limit, each one of these nuances of grace. In fact, he does not even include all of them in his own understanding of grace, as noncircularity in particular is alien to Paul. In other words, Barclay has convincingly demonstrated that it is a misunderstanding of grace (gift) in antiquity and in Paul’s Letters to suggest that grace could not truly be grace if it requires obedience as an obligatory return. We are undeserving of God’s gift of the Messiah—shockingly so!—in ancient contexts as well as contemporary. Yet the modern notion of the “pure gift” (a gift that requires no reciprocation) seeks to perfect grace along the wrong axis and does not align with the ancient evidence pertaining to grace.3
Contemporary Christian notions of grace also frequently fail to take into account the effective nature of grace. That is, the aim of God’s gift of the Christ is to set us free from our slavery to sin, the law, and evil powers and to transform us so that we become new creatures, righteous in the Messiah (Rom. 5:20–21; 2 Cor. 5:17–21; Gal. 1:1–6; 6:15; Titus 2:11–14). In the Christ, we are ruled by grace, “grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life” (Rom. 5:21; cf. Rom. 5:17; 1 Cor. 15:10). It is inappropriate, then, to suggest that God’s gift of the Messiah, if the gift is accepted and subsequently held, would be ineffective in bringing about God’s transformative aims. So we should not set grace at odds with the required behavioral changes (good deeds) associated with allegiant union to Jesus the king.
In short, we cannot say in an unqualified fashion that final salvation is by grace and by faith apart from embodied obedience, for this misunderstands the nature of both charis (“grace”) and pistis (“faith”) in antiquity and in Paul’s Letters. We must recognize the bankruptcy of our current selves, especially our self-centered indulgences and ambitions. Through participation in the Christ’s death and resurrection, we must die to our old selves with the Messiah and become new selves, and in so doing follow the road of obedient service that our Lord commands by enacting allegiance. For Paul “faith” recognizes we are utterly dead and totally undeserving of God’s grace, but the grasping of God’s life-from-the-dead grace demands a trajectory of loyal obedience.
Irresistible Grace and Free Will?
Question: But doesn’t the Bible teach that God chooses us even before we can choose him, so grace is not only prior to our “faith” but also irresistible?
Grace in the sense of God’s prior activity precedes “faith,” for God first had to bring about the good news before it could be proclaimed and before allegiance to Jesus as Lord could be confessed (Rom. 10:9–14). Moreover, God is the creator, and every good gift comes from God (James 1:17), so we must affirm God as the ultimate source of “faith” and all else.
Regarding the “prior” and “irresistible” nature of God’s grace as it pertains to salvation, however, much more could be said. The Letter to the Ephesians, for example, combines these ideas in a powerful way when it says that God “chose us in him before the foundation of the world” and that “in love he predestined us for adoption” through Jesus the Christ (1:4–5). In my judgment these verses, and others like them, do prove that God orchestrates all human affairs, seeing both the beginning and the end of matters pertaining to human salvation. Note, however, that the focus is on God’s choosing of the church for salvation in advance, not God’s choice of individual humans for salvation (let alone for damnation) except inasmuch as they are part of the church.4 In other words, Paul is affirming that his audience (the Ephesians) are part of the one church, and hence that they have been chosen by God before the creation of the world for salvation.
Although philosophical consistency suggests that it is almost certainly the case that God—who transcends ordinary categories of space and time—knows in advance the eternal destiny of each individual person, this is not Paul’s point here or elsewhere (contra Calvin and others).5 Even Paul’s example vis-à-vis Pharaoh in Romans 9:16–23 does not speak directly about Pharaoh’s eternal fate, but only shows that God may harden individuals in order to assist others and to bring greater glory to God’s own self. God retains the prerogative to reshape that vessel of wrath into something new even as he uses it as an instrument of his mercy. Misshapen potter’s clay was not generally thrown away or destroyed in antiquity but rather put back on the wheel and crafted afresh (for evidence, see Jer. 18:4–6 as the background to Rom. 9:16–23). Even in this particular case, as the Bible presents the matter, God’s hardening is in full cooperation with Pharaoh’s free will, as the God-ordained consequences of Pharaoh’s own choices move him to a state of ever-greater (but from his vantage point still potentially revocable) hard-heartedness.6
Ephesians 1:3–14 does show that God chose the church for salvation in the Son even before creation. God also can choose individuals for distinct purposes before they are born. For example, Jacob is chosen for special privilege over Esau, even though God ultimately finds a way to bless them both (for Esau’s blessing, see Gen. 27:39–40 and Gen. 36). Accordingly, if some Christians prefer to theorize that God irresistibly chooses individuals,7 not just the collective church, this does not mean that those individuals would actually experience that grace as irresistible in a way that would violate their free will as these individuals move linearly through time. For we, unlike God in God’s own eternal self-existence, are not beyond time so that we can see our own end or the end of others; rather we are inescapably time-enmeshed creatures, compelled to make choices (experienced as truly free) at specific moments that will somehow move us toward our eternal destination.8
So, even if those who speculatively affirm a primordial choice by God to graciously favor some specific individuals with salvation and to deny it to others happen to be right, nevertheless pistis as an enduringly experienced free choice is still necessary for salvation. The real question, then, is not whether salvation by allegiance alone denies grace—in my judgment it does not deny grace properly understood (see the previous section) any more or less than traditional understandings of “faith” inasmuch as the activity of pistis is the only thing demanded regardless. Rather the true question is how pistis interfaces with works and the law of Moses.
Works and Allegiance Alone?
Question: If we are saved by allegiance alone, and allegiance involves concrete acts of obedience to Jesus the king, then does this not violate the principle that we are saved by faith, not by works?
The way that I have framed the question above is a common way of phrasing such a question, but it is a bit loaded, for it assumes rather than demonstrates as probable that Paul believed that works are both the opposite of faith and immaterial (if not dangerous!) to eternal salvation. That is, it presumes that Paul and the earliest Christians did not believe that “works” in any way contribute to our salvation. But this is incorrect.
Works as the Basis for Eternal Judgment
Regarding the role of works in salvation, although many systematic treatments attempt to skate around this issue in a variety of ingenious ways, Paul himself states that we will be judged on the basis of our deeds:
But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. God will render to each one according to his works: to those who by steadfastness in well-doing seek for glory and honor and incorruptibility—eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness—wrath and fury. (Rom. 2:5–8)
Paul affirms that God, on the day of judgment, will “render to each one according to his works,” or even more precisely, that God “will pay back” at the judgment in relation to works. And given that Paul describes this as “the day of wrath” in conjunction with judgment and the granting of “eternal life,” there is no real doubt we are talking about the final judgment here. Moreover, after the passage I just cited, Paul goes on to say that it is not the hearers of the law but the “doers of the law” who will be justified (Rom. 2:13), and that what is rendered on this day of judgment will extend even to sins committed in secret (Rom. 2:16). Paul is firm even if some modern commentators are not: we will be judged, at least in part, for eternal life on the basis of our works.
Some scholars, however, do not accept this view. For example, John Piper and Thomas Schreiner (among others) suggest that Paul’s preposition kata (“according to”) in Romans 2:6 is extremely important, signaling that we will be judged for eternal life not on the basis of our works but only in accordance with our works.9 This interpretation, however, problematically suggests that the conceptual spheres of these phrases can be tidily separated. But this is true neither in English nor in Greek. For example, the sentence “In accordance with the rise in temperature, I changed from pants into shorts” does not ordinarily exclude “on the basis of the rise in temperature” as part of the reason for the change in clothing. The same holds for kata in Greek. Moreover, in contexts comparable to Romans 2:6 elsewhere in the Bible, kata gives the norm or the standard for judgment in a way that moves beyond mere congruency to basis.10 Even more vital is the context of Romans 2:6, where Paul moves immediately from the statement that we will be judged kata works to a description of concrete doing in 2:7–8 in such a way that the description of the doing appears to define fundamentally (not just correlatively) what Paul means by judgment kata works. All of this makes it unlikely that Paul was deliberately separating congruence from basis. Judgment for eternal life in accordance with our works but not on the basis of our works cannot be maintained.
Some of those who are particularly eager to rescue the idea of “faith alone, not works” seek, in squeamish alarm, to propose two judgments (or separate stages within the one judgment)—one on the basis of deeds that is for the purpose of determining rewards only, and another on the basis of “faith alone” that determines eternal destiny.11 But this ignores what Romans 2:5–8 plainly indicates, that on the basis of works the eternal verdict is rendered; specifically, eternal life is given to “those who by steadfastness in well-doing seek for glory and honor and incorruptibility.” Meanwhile, wrath and fury are poured out on those who “are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness.” Concrete actions and their results (works) are the basis of the judgment—doing or not doing certain things and the specific results obtained (albeit the list of approved and disapproved actions and deeds remains somewhat general).
Given the obvious machinations of attempting to rescue the faith-alone system in suggesting two judgments, it is currently more popular to see only one final judgment here, but to see salvation as granted on the basis of faith alone, with it understood that this faith necessarily caused sufficient good works, so that Paul can speak in this way. In other words, a typical solution is to suggest that faith, the act of decisive trust or belief, comes first, and then good works naturally flow as a secondary effect, like a river from a spring. As Thomas Schreiner puts it, “Works are the necessary evidence and fruit of a right relation with God. They demonstrate, although imperfectly, that one is truly trusting in Jesus Christ.”12 Yet there are problems with this works-are-not-the-basis and works-are-the-necessary-evidence approach of Schreiner, Piper, and others.13 There is a simpler solution.
Might it not be better to affirm that when Paul speaks of salvation by pistis in Jesus the Christ, not by works, that he speaks of allegiance to Jesus as the sovereign king? That is to say, we really are eternally judged, just as Paul indicates, in part on the basis of our works, but these works are part of pistis as embodied allegiance or enacted loyalty. Pistis is not the polar opposite of works; rather pistis as ongoing allegiance is the fundamental framework into which works must fit as part of our salvation.
The relationship between pistis and works is not one of cause to effect but rather of overlapping nested categories. The larger category or set (pistis as allegiance) can include a portion of the smaller category or subset (works as embodied allegiance) as the Holy Spirit empowers us for right living. To show that this is true, it needs to be demonstrated further that Paul does not oppose works in general in favor of pistis, but rather that works are integral to final salvation. As we shall see later, what Paul does adamantly oppose is works as a system of salvation predicated on successful performance of rules, rather than works as the embodiment of pistis (fidelity) to Jesus the king.
More on Salvation by Works
If one were to encounter Romans 2:5–8 and think that it is the sole text in which Paul announces that we will be eternally judged on the basis of our works, then one might perhaps be excused for dismissing it as an obscure text that is best ignored. However, we cannot do this. For in a closely related passage Paul again affirms that we will be judged after death according to what was accomplished while in the body, and on that basis we will be rewarded or punished:
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of the Christ, that each one may receive what is due for that which he has done through the body, whether good or evil. (2 Cor. 5:10)
Other texts in both Paul’s Letters and the rest of the New Testament also indicate that our works will be taken into account on the day of judgment. Consider the vision of the final assize in the book of Revelation:
And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne. Books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books in accordance with their works [kata ta erga autōn]. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, in accordance with their works [kata ta erga autōn]. And Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if [the name of] anyone was not found written in the book of life, he or she was cast into the lake of fire. (Rev. 20:12–15)
Now within this vision, regardless of how we parse out the exact details of what these various books might contain, it is clear that the final verdict is rendered by examining together both the books in which “works” are recorded and the Lamb’s book of life. To introduce two separate judgments (e.g., one for rewards and one for eternal life) is merely to introduce an unnecessary complexity because, so it is felt, salvation must be by “faith, not works.” But the conflict is illusory, for Paul himself, that great champion of pistis not works, elsewhere stresses that certain deeds, if they persist without any repentance or modification, will result in our exclusion from the kingdom of God and our destruction:
For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is greedy—that is, an idolater—has no inheritance in the kingdom of the Christ and God. (Eph. 5:5)
And again:
Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, rages, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envies, bouts of drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. (Gal. 5:19–21)
Failure to “inherit the kingdom of God” certainly sounds like exclusion from eternal life. That eternal life (not merely rewards) is indeed at stake with regard to these matters of performed obedience is made clear as Paul continues in Galatians: “For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap destruction [phthoran], but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (6:8).14
The contrast shows that eternal life is indeed the issue with regard to inheriting or not inheriting the kingdom. And it must be remembered that Paul is addressing the Christian community—not just those outside the church—in all of these texts that state that our actual (not just intended) obedience is a nonnegotiable essential with regard to our final salvation. As the author of Hebrews states, Jesus is “the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (5:9). Furthermore, other texts in the New Testament only reinforce the notion that those who continue to practice wickedness rather than obeying the Christ will have no share in God’s eternal kingdom (e.g., 1 Cor. 6:9–11; 2 Thess. 1:5–10; Rev. 22:15).
Allegiance Alone and the Law? (Part 1)
Question: If Paul and other New Testament authors indicate that our eternal verdict will be rendered on the basis of works (at least in part), then how does our salvation relate to obedience to God’s law or other rules?
It is hoped that the reader has been convinced that Paul and the other New Testament authors regarded our actual obedience to Jesus the king—that is, the deeds that we perform in enacting pistis—as essential to our final salvation. Why then is Paul so strident in his polemic against works? I think we can now provide an answer.
Inasmuch as it pertains to salvation, in short, Paul does not oppose all works—in fact he demands good works as embodied loyalty. But Paul is absolutely against something more specific: “works of law.” That is, Paul opposed the idea that anyone can perform the works of the law (as given by God to Moses)—and by extension any other rule-based system—in order to establish or confirm righteousness before God. To show why this is so, it is helpful to gain at least a rudimentary acquaintance with recent scholarly conversations that have helped us nuance these matters more accurately, and then we will move to the examination of some specific texts.
The New Perspective on Paul
Lively and often heated discussion about salvation (especially justification, roughly, “right standing before God”) has occupied the center of the study of Paul’s Letters among professional scholars for approximately the past thirty-five years. This is not the appropriate place to retell the whole story of what has been termed the New Perspective on Paul, especially because many others have told it well already and the interested reader can easily follow up.15 For our purposes, the main point is that in response to groundbreaking work by Krister Stendahl, E. P. Sanders, James Dunn, N. T. Wright, and many others, a broad spectrum of New Testament scholars have come to question ways of reading Paul’s Letters, especially Romans and Galatians, that had become traditional since the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. The issue at hand, for our purposes, is not so much whether this reassessment is correct but the manner in which it helps us ask different questions of the text than we might otherwise have been prepared to ask.
So, then, what is the gist of this recent scholarly discussion about salvation in Paul’s Letters? In brief, it is claimed that two of Paul’s most important letters, Romans and Galatians, had been systematized by Reformers such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and especially their spiritual descendants as if Paul was trying to teach his ancient congregations how a person comes to be saved—namely, “by faith, not by works.” In arriving at this conclusion, however, the Protestant Reformers, so this scholarly story goes, had in fact falsely projected their caricatured conceptions of medieval Catholic teaching—that is, that Catholic teaching demands “works” as a condition for salvation—onto ancient Judaism. So allegedly (but there is at least some truth in the matter) the Protestant Reformers had determined that the ancient Jews were much like the medieval Catholic church in demanding a works-based system in which salvation could only be earned by accruing sufficient merit by performing certain deeds. Specifically, the Reformers judged that the ancient Jews quite uniformly believed salvation could only come by remaining obedient to the Mosaic commands (as interpreted), so that salvation might be earned through performing the commands sufficiently well, so that the good deeds might outweigh the bad at the final judgment.
The Protestant Reformers believed that Paul was the great champion of the gospel and liberty for the earliest church over against Paul’s Judaizing opponents. In the face of opposition from Jewish Christians and their allies, Paul above all others was the one who preserved the “good news” that we are saved as a free gift by faith alone, not by works. Moreover, Paul was not just a champion for the church during ancient times; for the Reformers he was also a champion for their own day and age. For them, Paul’s Letters could be wielded to show that the medieval Catholic salvation-by-works system was a corruption of the one true gospel. The Reformers especially objected to the notion that the “works” required by the sacrament of penance could contribute to the forgiveness of mortal sins committed post-baptism or that the works demanded by the indulgence system could guarantee reduced time in purgatory (see chap. 8 for more discussion). According to the Reformers, the genuine good news—the gospel—was, still is, and always shall be that we are saved by faith alone and grace alone apart from any such works that we might accomplish!
Regardless of whether this scholarly reassessment has correctly described the real position of the Reformers, medieval Catholicism, or ancient Judaism (and professional opinions on these matters vary considerably), it is beyond dispute that this reassessment has had the salutary effect of forcing all serious interpreters of Paul and the New Testament to step out of habitual ways of reading these texts and to seek to become reacclimated. And as we move outside the box to reframe, common sense (as well as inspection of the texts in question) suggests that it is unlikely that Paul’s main goal would be to outline a program for his ancient Christian readers regarding how to enter into salvation, since Paul indisputably regards his readers as already having decisively entered. Moreover, E. P. Sanders and others have shown that most ancient Jews believed that they were born into covenant membership as an ethnic privilege (chosen by God by race as much as by grace), and hence that they were moving toward final salvation so long as they did not flagrantly disregard the commands.16
Thus, when we read about “justification” in Paul, which has traditionally been regarded as denoting the first step of salvation, the moment at which we enter into “right” relationship with God through Jesus, we ought to begin with at least a modicum of suspicion that Paul’s language about justification might be more flexible than has been encouraged by the traditional Reformation-inspired systems.17 The upshot of all this is that when in Galatians, for example, Paul stridently opposes certain individuals who are perverting the gospel (1:6–10) or who are not acting in line with the truth of the gospel (2:11–14), because they are pushing the necessity of maintaining Jewish customs connected to the Mosaic law (see Gal. 4:10, 21; 5:1–4; 6:12–13), Paul is probably not as concerned with perversions regarding how an individual might enter into right relationship with God as he is with false ideas about what can truly demarcate the people of God as the genuinely “declared to be in the right” people of God—although the issues overlap and cannot be entirely separated.18 That is, the nub of the question with which Paul is wrestling is this: Do the people of God have right standing with God through performing a legal code, or is it by allegiance (pistis) to the Christ as the Holy Spirit works in the community to actualize the power of God for salvation?
Works of Law as Rule Performance
As we have already discovered, Paul does not think works are immaterial to salvation. Paul says that works will form the basis of eternal judgment (at least partially) and that lived obedience is essential for salvation. Non-embodied pistis is not pistis at all, but rather a dead thing, as James so forcefully reminds us (2:17, 26). Paul does not oppose works in general (good works are both desirable and inevitable); what he opposes are works as part of a race-based, performance-demanding, rule-oriented system of salvation that fails to recognize the worthlessness of such criteria in the wake of the Christ event. As Paul himself puts it:
For as many as are by means of the works of law, they are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not persist in all the things written in the Book of the Law, in order to do them.” (Gal. 3:10, citing Deut. 27:26)
Here Paul shows why works of the law are insufficient for right standing with God. The one who does not successfully perform all the commandments written in the Book of the Law (that is, the law of Moses as found in the first five books of the Bible) finds that the curses that are attached to the covenant as sanctions for disobedience inevitably come crashing down on the one attempting to perform the works. That Paul has in mind covenant curses such as those mentioned in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 27–28 is clear, for he has drawn his Old Testament quotations from these contexts. Paul continues:
Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, because “The righteous one will live by pistis.” Now the law is not by pistis, rather “The one who does these things shall live by them.” (Gal. 3:11–12, citing Hab. 2:4 and Lev. 18:5)
Having just mentioned “works of the law” (Gal. 3:10), Paul now makes the contrast between pistis and works of the law (performing the commands) more precise. He indicates that the works-of-the-law approach is fundamentally different in orientation than the pistis path (“the law is not by pistis”). Moreover, the pistis path succeeds whereas the works-of-the-law approach fails specifically because successful performance of all the commands is demanded by the law if life is going to result—but as we have just discovered in 3:10, the law itself testifies that the commandments cannot be successfully performed, and the covenant curse is the inevitable result.19
We see here that Paul construes “by works of law” and “by pistis” as different paths to right standing, one that succeeds “by pistis” and one that fails. We also see that Paul’s complaint against works is rooted in specific limitations of the Mosaic system and, we might surmise because Paul himself suggests it, limitations in any rule-based system. Paul argues that even before the law of Moses was given, trespasses still had a death-dealing effect (e.g., see Rom. 5:12–14 and 7:9–10). So the problem is not specific to the Mosaic law but extends to all rule-based systems because they inappropriately rely on successful performance of enumerated commands.
The problem need not be that the individual in question is inappropriately trying to “earn” salvation by trying to establish his or her own righteousness (nor is this possibility excluded), but it could merely stem from a failure to see that grace, the gift of the Christ event, has shown that all forms of worth that could determine a person’s righteousness are empty. This would explain why, for instance, Paul’s concern in Galatians is not just circumcision but both circumcision (performing a command) and uncircumcision (not performing a command); the Galatians must see that both are a matter of total indifference (Gal. 5:6). All that matters is re-creation “in the Messiah” through allegiance.20
Moreover, even if some of Paul’s compatriots were not convinced that perfect performance of all the commands was necessary for salvation, Paul himself seems to have felt that Scripture points to the necessity of obedience to all the commands (“cursed is the one who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law” [Gal. 3:10, citing Deut. 27:26]). Such obedience is impossible. Likewise, for Paul the person who makes circumcision necessary becomes responsible for obedience to “the whole law” (Gal. 5:3). Because a person cannot obey the entire law, the result is that the covenant curses come upon the one attempting the rule-based performance.
Yet there is good news in the midst of the gloomy prospect of the covenant curses. For the curses have indeed fallen, but Jesus has taken these curses upon himself: “The Messiah redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us!” (Gal. 3:13). And in so doing, Jesus the Christ has delivered the blessing of Abraham that God promised the gentiles,21 which Paul understands to be the gift of the Holy Spirit, received through pistis (Gal. 3:14). Paul is opposed to “works of law” inasmuch as they demand performance of the commands in an attempt to establish or otherwise demonstrate righteousness but are unsuccessful in securing it.
Another text also gets at one of Paul’s basic objections to works of the law. Paul invokes the metaphor of a race. In this race, the gentiles have obtained the prize of righteousness, but Israel, tragically, has fallen short. How has this come about?
What shall we say, then? That gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it—that is, a righteousness that is by pistis; but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by pistis, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone. . . . For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For the Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who gives allegiance [panti tō pisteuonti]. (Rom. 9:30–32; 10:3–4)
Here we find out something further. Paul is opposed to “works of law” not merely because they are unsuccessful at meeting the performance requirement (and so leading to righteousness and life) but also because such works could, for Israel, smack of an attempt to establish their own righteousness rather than acquiescing to the true demarcation for God’s righteousness—pistis, rendered allegiance to Jesus as the Christ, the messianic stone that God has placed as a gift in Zion.
Does Paul indicate that some of his compatriots were self-righteously seeking to “earn” their own salvation by accumulating sufficient good deeds? This possibility is not excluded, but it is better to suggest that the weight of Paul’s critique lies subtly elsewhere. As John Barclay puts it, Paul’s compatriots were mistakenly insisting that “God’s righteousness should recognize as its fitting object, the righteousness defined in their own Torah-based terms”22—and in so doing they were failing to recognize that the Torah had in fact reached its telos (goal or fulfilling end) in the Christ event. That is, Paul regarded his compatriots as falsely believing that God gives his gift of righteousness only to those who prove themselves worthy—and that God’s “worth” system was enshrined in the performance-demanding Torah. The importance of this subtle difference is that Paul is not critiquing the general human attempt to “earn” salvation by doing good deeds or self-righteousness as much as he is hinting that all merit-based systems fail to grasp the totally unmerited nature of the Christ gift—a gift that can be accessed only by pistis to the king.
Allegiance Alone and the Law? (Part 2)
Question: If the law of Moses represents a genuine, God-given standard but at the same time does not result in righteousness, is it the case that the good works necessary for salvation and the good works that the law demands are different?
To frame this question in slightly different terms, when Paul and other New Testament authors affirm that our works will be taken into account in rendering a verdict regarding our eternal destination, are these good works different than the works demanded by the law of Moses?
Salvation and Obeying the Law of Moses
The answer, like much else, is a complicated yes and no. It is no inasmuch as we will not be assessed on the basis of our performance of specific rituals or moral commands in the Mosaic law apart from how these inhere in loyal obedience (pistis) to Jesus as Lord. God will not judge us on the basis of whether we ate meat with the blood still inside it, as is forbidden by Leviticus 19:26, apart from whether such a command is required for us by allegiance to Jesus. (And for some this regulation perhaps is demanded because of their particular circumstances or life mission, but for most of us it is not.) God will not judge us on the basis of whether we have broken the commandment “You shall not steal,” except inasmuch as such a command is demanded for us by allegiance to Jesus. (And for all of us, this command is binding for allegiance to Jesus—although one might be able to think of a Robin Hood scenario where concern for the weak might permit it in the face of corrupt hording.)
So while the answer is no because it is the allegiance to the king himself that counts rather than performance of the Mosaic law, it is also yes since allegiance (pistis) to Jesus as king demands obedience to the deepest intentions of the law of Moses (see Matt. 5:17–48) even though this law has now reached its climactic goal (Rom. 10:4). At the final judgment, we will not be evaluated on the basis of whether we kept a list of rules such as the Ten Commandments, except inasmuch as genuine fidelity to Jesus the king demanded it. We are not saved by heaping up good works on our eternal balance sheet. We are saved by pistis rendered unto Jesus as Lord, and this involves a qualitative rather than quantitative enacted faithfulness to Jesus in real-life situations. I will speak to the issue of infidelity or disloyalty to Jesus the king subsequently.
Law, Excitable Flesh, and Spirit
How are we, devoid of an absolute rule-based standard such as the law of Moses, supposed to be able to make determinations about what constitutes obedience to Jesus the king? We are to obey the Lord Jesus’s commands through the discerning and empowering aid of the Holy Spirit—and in so doing we will fulfill the good works that all along the law was designed by God to aim toward. The result is that the true intention of all the commandments are fulfilled, especially the love command. As Paul himself puts it:
For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are recapitulated in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love renders no evil to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (Rom. 13:9–10)
So we fulfill the true aim of the specific commandments pertaining to the other when we love the neighbor as the self, and this comes about when we walk in the Holy Spirit (see Gal. 5:13–18).
But why is the aid of the Holy Spirit necessary? Why can’t we please God simply by remaining obedient to the Ten Commandments or God’s other moral instructions? Because of the powerlessness of our flesh, God had to do something for us. He had to send his Son. And furthermore, we needed the gift of the Spirit. Paul puts it this way:
For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. Having sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, those who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Rom. 8:3–4)
The law of Moses was powerless to effect sufficient good works on its own steam, for even though the law is God’s holy and righteous standard, it actually made the sin problem worse! How so?
Imagine that you are a small child and that your mother has just made a wonderful batch of chocolate chip cookies. She has placed them on a low shelf to cool. On a crisp morning, you prance into the kitchen and are suddenly overwhelmed by the homey and rich smell. With bright and hopeful eyes, you ask your mom for a cookie, but she curtly says, “No, not until after lunch,” and promptly leaves the kitchen, returning to coffee and a magazine in the living room. Hungry and disappointed, you are all alone with the cookies.
Now, prior to your mom’s “No,” the cookies were already highly desirable. But as soon as the commandment, the “No,” entered in, the desire suddenly heightened, because now they were forbidden cookies. Your mother’s law, her commandment, had come alongside your flesh-based desire and made the problem worse (cf. Rom. 7:7–8). You wanted a cookie before, but now you desperately want a cookie!
This heightening of desire is the fundamental way that a rule-based system operates on humankind—and this even prior to the coming of the Mosaic commandments, as is illustrated by the story of Adam, Eve, and the forbidden fruit. This is one of the reasons Paul is absolutely certain that a rule-based system devoid of Messiah-allegiance cannot result in righteousness. It does not alleviate the sin problem; it exacerbates it by exciting the flesh (cf. Rom. 7:14–23). But God through the Christ has set us free from the death-dealing effects of the law by doing what the law could not do: “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do” (Rom. 8:3). God has sent his Son “in the likeness of sinful flesh,” and in so doing he “condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom. 8:3; cf. Jesus’s taking on the curse of the law in Gal. 3:13). God did this so that “the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us” when we walk “in accordance with the Spirit” rather than “in accordance with the flesh” (Rom. 8:4).
Several other texts similarly indicate that the good works God requires for our salvation are performed as part of our allegiance to Jesus as actualized by the agency of the Holy Spirit. This is an additional reason why salvation by allegiance alone does not preclude grace. The good works that are required for salvation are embodied via a gift by the Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit operates with and through us. Yet these good works embodied in conjunction with the enabling Spirit are not optional extras—our salvation depends on their real, albeit imperfect, actualization: “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds [praxeis] of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Rom. 8:13–14).
So the Mosaic law, even though it is God-ordained, nonetheless was subject to the limitations of all such rule-based systems. Law makes the sin problem worse by exciting the flesh. Thus it cannot result in the kind of righteousness that God desires. As Paul puts it elsewhere, “For the letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive” (2 Cor. 3:6). That is, the letter of the law associated with the Mosaic covenant kills, but the Holy Spirit supplies life. Why? Because the Spirit sets us free from the performance demands of the Old Covenant (2 Cor. 3:17), allowing us to be transformed into the image of Jesus the Christ (2 Cor. 3:18). The good works that the law was really directed toward all along are indeed fulfilled for those who walk in accordance with the Spirit:
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not consummate the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are contrary to the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are contrary to the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, so that you do not do the things you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality . . . (Gal. 5:16–19)
In other words, allegiance to the Christ entails life in the Spirit (which is precisely what it means to be part of the church) rather than life under the law—and this allegiance is manifest as a concrete way of life that puts to death the flesh’s wicked practices. It also means that the fruit of the Spirit will be embodied, but not necessarily in a simple cause-and-effect relationship between initial “faith” (as “belief” or “trust”) and subsequent “good deeds.” Rather the Spirit’s actions in the midst of the community that continues to profess “Jesus is Lord” is the cause, and the effect is spiritual gifts that manifest “good deeds” performed as ongoing allegiance (see 1 Cor. 12:1–3). In other words, initial declared allegiance (pistis) to Jesus the king causes a union with the king and his body, and the maintenance of this union is an embodiment of allegiance, a lived obedience that includes good deeds within its purview. So there is not a simple cause-and-effect relationship between “faith” and “works”; rather pistis is quite simply not pistis at all if it is not embodied and embedded in the allegiant community.
So, in sum, for Paul, salvation requires the performance of concrete works (deeds) in loyal submission to Jesus as the king (i.e., salvation by pistis necessarily entails enacted allegiance), but Paul stridently opposes the idea that good works can contribute to our salvation when performed as part of a system of rule keeping apart from the more fundamental allegiance to King Jesus. In other words, the real “faith” versus “works” divide in Paul is more accurately framed as a divide between works performed as allegiance to Jesus the king versus works performed apart from new creation in the Christ. And the latter usually but not always takes the form of a system that seeks to establish righteousness through performing prescribed regulations.
Paul views the by-pistis path (the allegiance path) as fundamentally different than the by-works-of-law path, even though both avenues equally demand good works for final salvation. One path succeeds through Holy Spirit–infused union with Jesus the Messiah; the other fails. Good deeds are required for salvation even though (apart from allegiance to Jesus the king) they are not on their own in the least bit meritorious. Nor can the good deeds necessary for salvation be enumerated or definitively prescribed as part of a salvation system without running afoul of Paul’s teaching here. Pistis alone counts—loyalty to Jesus that is pragmatically expressed in obedient and willing service to him as the king.
Struggling with Sin?
Question: Since we are all disloyal to Jesus—we have sinned in the past, sin in the present, and will sin in the future—how can our salvation depend on our allegiance alone?
First, it must be remembered that when Christians, using the traditional terminology, speak of salvation by faith alone, they are not asserting that nothing else is involved from the divine side. Obviously, they are not suggesting that we are saved by faith alone, so therefore God didn’t have to act in sending his Son to die for our sins. What is being claimed is that faith, enabled by grace, is the only contribution that we make to our salvation. I am making precisely the same claim, that we are saved by pistis alone, but that many contemporary understandings of “faith” dangerously and illegitimately shade out the loyalty-demanding portion of pistis. I am also suggesting that all too frequently the object toward which pistis is directed in contemporary Christianity (and also in much Reformation-era Christianity) is blurry, inasmuch as it centers on Jesus as a sin offering rather than as the fidelity-demanding king.
Imperfect Allegiance
So if allegiance (pistis) to Jesus as Lord is the only contribution that we can make to our salvation, then what of our ongoing sin problems? Are these not fundamentally acts of disloyalty? Yes, they are. We truly are saved by allegiance alone, but perfect allegiance is neither demanded for salvation in this earthly life nor is it possible any more than is perfect faith (or zero doubt) as traditionally understood. (What is demanded is transformative union with Jesus—see chap. 8.) Although sin has been decisively defeated and no longer controls us (Rom. 6:11–14), both our own experiences of failure and Scripture make it clear that we cannot live entirely sin-free lives on this side of glory, even with the aid of the Holy Spirit. As John puts it in his First Letter, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1:8; cf. 1:10). And then he continues, giving us a much more encouraging report: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1:9).
If perfect allegiance is neither demanded nor possible, then how much allegiance is sufficient? What if I give considerable allegiance most every day, but somehow every fourth Tuesday I find myself grossly disobeying the Lord Jesus? Personally, I have found myself in this predicament, wrestling with certain repeated sins that seem to have a stranglehold on me—and I know for certain that I am not alone in my repeated failings. I am convinced that through my confession of Jesus as the Lord and my overarching desire to actualize that confession through lived obedience, God (through the Spirit) and I are working in tandem in such a fashion that I never find myself entirely giving up the fight against sin. We are saved when our confessed and imperfectly maintained allegiance unites us to Jesus the king, for he has already been declared righteous, and we share that righteous standing (see chap. 8 for further discussion). Allegiance must be a settled conviction and basic disposition. Yet what if a person is not just struggling with sin but has fundamentally turned his or her back on Jesus in word or deed?
Treason against Jesus
In considering sin as disloyalty to the Lord Jesus, a closely related question arises: What about blatant treason? Is there any hope for those who have not merely temporarily lapsed or acted selfishly (i.e., in their own interests) more than in the interests of King Jesus, but have fundamentally denied him? Yes, there is hope, as the example of Peter, who denied Jesus three times but who was reinstated, makes certain. Meanwhile, another traitor, Judas, despite his remorse, committed suicide and was never reconciled (Matt. 27:3–5; Acts 1:16–19, 25). So treason is at least sometimes reversible through renewed allegiance; yet reversal, even for those who were at one time followers of Jesus, is not an inevitable outcome.
In fact, Jesus states that for those who blaspheme not just against Jesus himself but against the Holy Spirit, the sin is eternal and there is no possibility of forgiveness (Matt. 12:31; Mark 3:29; Luke 12:10). The contexts in the Synoptic Gospels in which we find this saying do, however, suggest that this irreversibility is not due to God’s lack of willingness to forgive should repentance occur but rather to the inability of the blasphemer to take the initiative in repenting.23 It seems best, then, to suggest that the lack of a possibility for forgiveness arises from the human side rather than from the divine: God would forgive the one who has blasphemed the Spirit if that person could right the ship enough to see good as good and evil as evil—and in so doing begin to choose the good in returning to God.
How Much Allegiance Is Required?
Question: If our salvation depends solely on allegiance to Jesus as Lord, how can I be sure that I have been loyal enough?
When I find myself wondering whether my allegiance is enough, I am forced to remind myself that this is to ask the wrong question. Indeed, those who are concerned enough to ask it are probably those who are in the least danger of a lack of allegiance—although they may be drawing nigh to a risky legalism. To seek to quantify or develop a set of hard and fast rules by which one could measure sufficient loyalty is antithetical to the gospel—indeed, it is precisely this rule-based approach that causes Paul so much consternation in his polemic against works of law. Enacted loyalty is required as the Holy Spirit empowers us, and this enacted loyalty means a settled intention and truly changed bodily behavior. But a personalized description of how much loyalty is necessary for me or for you is not only impossible; it is wrongheaded.
Allegiance cannot be quantified or enumerated. How would you feel if you were getting married and your spouse wanted a list of rules issued in advance describing how far he or she could go sexually in a relationship with another before it would be considered cheating? Or what, if you were a soldier during wartime, would your general think if you wanted a list defining how much military aid you could give to the opponent before it would be considered treason? The desire for an enumerated list is often indicative of one of two things: either a failure to know and trust the goodness of Jesus the king or a what-can-I-get-away-with orientation.
It is better to ask what sort of allegiance than how much, because allegiance depends on what Jesus the king commands each of us individually to do and whether he determines now and at the final judgment that you and I have given pistis. If we give pistis to Jesus as Lord by declaring allegiance, determining to enact loyalty, and showing through bodily doing that our determination was not just lip service, then we can rest assured that his death on our behalf is utterly and completely efficacious—all of our sins are forgiven in the Messiah (even our selfish acts of temporary disloyalty). And the Holy Spirit invariably comes alongside us to assist us in faithful living.
But can we get a rough answer to the question of what sort of embodied loyalty is necessary? That is, can we get an approximate idea of what actualized loyalty to the Lord Jesus should look like, perhaps enough to gain assurance or sound a necessary alarm? Scripture does give us a broad description by way of an inverse picture, describing what sorts of activities enacted loyalty forbids—“sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, rages, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envies, bouts of drunkenness, orgies, and the like” (Gal. 5:19–21)—and we can only conclude, while still leaving space for God’s desire to show stunning mercy to all (Rom. 11:32; 1 Tim. 2:4), that persisting unchecked in these activities without change leads to condemnation.
The First Letter of John also gives helpful guidelines that we can use to measure whether we are truly enacting loyalty in such a fashion that the eternal kind of life is ours as a present and future possession—although we must resist turning any such guidelines into a legalistic prescription. Consider especially the specific actions mentioned:
And by this we know that we have come to know him [Jesus the Christ], if we keep his commandments. (2:3)
The one who claims to be in the light yet who hates his brother is still in the darkness. (2:9)
If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Because all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the arrogance associated with material possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. (2:15–16)
No one who denies the Son has the Father. The one who confesses the Son also has the Father. (2:23)
If you know that he [Jesus the Christ] is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him. (2:29)
No one who abides in him [Jesus the Christ] keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. (3:6)
No one born of God keeps on sinning, because God’s seed remains in him. He is unable to keep on sinning because he has been born of God. (3:9)
We know that we have moved from death into life, because we love the brothers and sisters. The one who does not love remains in death. (3:14)
By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit [of prophecy] that confesses that Jesus the Christ has come in the flesh is from God; every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. (4:2–3)
In weighing these various statements, we should notice how many of them pertain to concrete deeds: keeping Jesus’s commandments, ceasing from persistent sinning, practicing righteousness, turning away from hatred and worldliness, and loving the brothers and sisters. It seems that John left his ultimate test for last:
The one who gives pistis unto [ho pisteuōn eis] the Son of God has the testimony in himself. . . . And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life and this life is in his Son. The one who has the Son has life; the one who does not have the Son of God does not have life. (1 John 5:10–12)
Giving pistis unto the Son of God is what results in eternal life. John makes it evident that this test is definitive when he states his overall purpose in writing:
I write these things to you who give pistis unto [tois pisteuousin eis] the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life. (1 John 5:13)
So John explicitly avows that his primary purpose is to grant confidence to those who have given pistis to the Son of God. We can have confidence in knowing that our embodied loyalty is indicative of eternal life when we see a reflection of our own actions mirrored in the guidelines. Non-enacted pistis is not pistis at all but a dead thing. Although there may be important subjective ways to test whether we have assurance of our salvation (e.g., inner peace that we are God’s children, as that peace is facilitated by the Spirit [Rom. 8:16]), nevertheless the objective guidelines given by John are helpful to us in weighing whether our pistis is genuine.
This chapter has sought to clarify the salvation-by-allegiance-alone proposal. Grace is a multifaceted concept, but construing pistis as allegiance does not violate Paul’s understanding of grace. Quite the opposite: for Paul, acceptance of the Christ gift demands embodied allegiance (obedience) as an obligatory return. Meanwhile, Scripture is clear that we will be judged, at least in part, on the basis of our works. “Faith” and works are not unrelievedly opposed to one another, but rather Paul’s pistis-not-works polemic seeks to undercut any rule-based system—and the law of Moses is Paul’s premier example—that enshrines an alternative system of worth and preempts allegiance to the king. Rule-based systems ally with sin by exciting the flesh, making the sin problem worse, not better. But living in allegiance to Jesus means walking in step with the Holy Spirit as the Spirit is present in the midst of the people of God. Through the Spirit a person practices allegiance—that is, she or he embodies the good works toward which the law was aimed. Initial declared allegiance (pistis) to Jesus the king forges a union with the king and his body (the church), and this union is upheld subsequently through embodied allegiance, an enacted loyalty that is inclusive of good deeds. Our allegiance to Jesus the king is not perfect, but our imperfect but maintained allegiance is sufficient to sustain a union with Jesus the king, so that we are forgiven “in him” as we are joined to his death and resurrection. Allegiance cannot be quantified, but Scripture does give us general measures to help us weigh whether our imperfect allegiance is genuine.
FOR FURTHER THOUGHT
1. What is the difference between a gift and a legal obligation? What are a couple ways in which a gift might cause a nonlegal obligation?
2. Can the grace of the Christ gift be prior without it involving the eternal predestination of individuals? How could grace be prior yet still demand actual obedience (including good works) for salvation?
3. What does it mean for a gift to achieve its intended purpose? What is the purpose of the Christ gift?
4. Can you describe a time when someone lavished grace on you? Can you think of a situation into which you can bring God’s grace to someone else?
5. How does our time-bound status affect our spirituality? Do you struggle more with the past, the present, or the future? Why?
6. The New Testament attests that we will be judged for eternal life at least in part on the basis of our works. It may be that preestablished pistis can be described as the sole cause of subsequently produced saving works, but a more complex model has been suggested here. What’s another way to think about the relationship between pistis and saving deeds?
7. When Paul speaks about justification by pistis, why might it matter if this language pertains more to getting in or to demarcating what it means to be in?
8. In what sense does salvation not depend on our obedience to the law? In what sense does our salvation absolutely depend on our obedience to the law? Explain how this seeming paradox can be resolved.
9. Can you explain why, specifically, obedience to the Mosaic law as an aim in and of itself could not result in final salvation?
10. In considering the necessity of embodied allegiance (enacted loyalty) for salvation, do you think in the past you have been underconcerned or overconcerned with the necessity of obeying Jesus for eternal life? How has that impacted your past journey with God? What kind of concern should you maintain in the future?
11. Do you agree that it is wrongheaded to ask how much allegiance to Jesus is required for salvation? Why or why not?
12. What rules of thumb appear in Scripture to help us gauge whether our allegiance is genuine? Why do you think these rules are framed mostly in negative terms (describing what sort of behavior indicates a lack of genuine allegiance) rather than in positive terms?