However, only when the Spirit's work of sanctification comes to completion in our glorification will we experience the full reality of God's solution to the experience of law as an extrinsic burden. Through Jesus we are brought into a relationship of sonship with God the Father.[33] Christians are predestined by the Father to be conformed to the likeness of his Son (Romans 8:29). Our resurrection into Christ-likeness is assured by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.[34]
One day, because we will be indwelt by the fullness of the Holy Spirit we will become totally holy, that is to say our wills will be wholly aligned with the will of the Father. Our love for God, empowered and mediated by the Spirit, will be perfectly expressed, so that the possibility of sinning will simply be unthinkable. Doing what God wants will be second nature. Till then, however, reflecting on God's law, including the Torah, is an indispensable part of the Spirit-guided wisdom of discerning what it means in practice to love God in this world.
Dr David McIlroy, a guest contributor to Cambridge Papers, is a practising barrister and a theologian. He has recently completed a PhD on 'A Trinitarian Theology of Law'. This article first appeared in the Cambridge Papers Vol 17 No 2, published by the Jubilee Centre www.jubilee-centre.org, and printed in Christian Today with permission.
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[1]William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman, Passus I, line 161. Everyman 2nd edition, London: J. M. Dent, 1995, p.22.
[2]P. G. Nelson, in 'Christian Morality: Jesus' Teaching on the Law', Themelios 31, 2006, pp.4-17, explores how Jesus insisted on a strict interpretation of God's will regarding divorce and a radically different understanding of the Sabbath from the rigid pharisaical approach.
[3]Rom. 6:14; Gal. 3:25.
[4]A suggested approach to answering these last two questions is available at www.jubilee-centre.org
[5]Christ's fulfilment of the moral, ceremonial and civil aspects of the Torah is not the subject of this paper. I have explored how he did so in McIlroy, A Biblical View of Law and Justice, Carlisle: Paternoster, 2004, pp.122-130.
[6]There is a longstanding debate about the status of the Torah for Christians: see Greg L. Bahnsen, Walter C. Kaiser, Douglas J. Moo, Wayne G. Strickland and Willem A. Van Gemeren, Five Views on Law and Gospel, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996. The argument of this paper is that a trinitarian perspective re-frames that debate.
