3 - Incarnational Ethics of Self-Sacrifice

Summary

This chapter contends that Paul has a coherent approach to ethics and the law of God if understood with an incarnational and a reconciliatory component for Christ and his disciples. It gives special attention to his idea of “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. The chapter relates Paul’s approach to ethics and the law of God to reparative self-sacrifice. It thus gives a primary role to a divine lawgiver, above the law itself, thereby enabling the kinds of changes in the law and in the covenants acknowledged by Paul. The chapter attributes a key role in Paul’s perspective on ethics and the law to the promise of the new covenant in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The chapter contends that Paul aimed to uphold the law of God, not to nullify it, through faith in God, and that he acknowledged “the law of Christ” as exemplifying the law of God. He also recognized the law of God in terms of “the law of the Spirit of life” in Christ Jesus. Paul acknowledged his dying to (the works of) the law in order to “live to God” and to Christ, in a way that reciprocates divine self-sacrificial love.