the law of sin and death – Forging Ploughshares

Seventy-seven-fold: The Negative Infinite of Death Countered by Eternal Life

It is easy to understand the incident: a boy slaps and insults his elder and the man, forced by honor and perhaps self-protection, kills the young man (Gen. 4:23-24). Lamech kills the boy for striking him, and promises he will take seventy-seven-fold vengeance should anyone else dare to insult him. If the number is literal, he would kill 490 more rather than suffer the humiliation of unrequited insult. But this is not a limited number or a finite amount, as in Hebrew idiom seventy-times-seven is infinite. We have passed from the realm of quantification into the realm of pure drive. While radical evil, or the presumption the evil is in ontological competition with the good, is clearly a lie, Lamech demonstrates that this lie can be enacted.

Cain needs God to protect him, but Lamech takes up the work of God, even imitating and going beyond God in his own protection: seventy times more than the divine vengeance God promises for Cain. It is divine-like righteous indignation he serves, not God’s, but the obscene superego. As Paul and Freud describe, there is a split in the ego in which the superego is representative of the law, authority, God, but which is taken up into the self. This is not exactly self-worship, as what is served is death-dealing, fearful, shameful, and punishing in the experience. It is the sense in which one never feels adequate, never enough, never complete, and there is continual striving to achieve adequacy, life, fullness of being. This is a result of the self-diminishing superego or unconscious sense of having to gain life through serving the father, the law, or the masochistic orientation to death. It is a drive toward death, not only in murder but in the pursuit of life through death. Honor is gained through revenge, life is established through the power of death. In presuming a divine-like vengeance Lamech would establish justice, he will be justice, and he will spend himself in absolute servitude to the violence that has gripped him. Where Cain feared he would be avenged for Abel’s murder, Lamech is willing to spend his life in service of vengeance, the punishing law he would enact. He would be the law, the punisher, the judge, and the exactor of righteousness. Clearly the realm in which he is keeping account is symbolic, and the law he serves is larger than himself. What will come to be called “the law of sin and death” does not serve life but death. Soon the entire earth will take up and serve the law of Lamech: “Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence” (Gen. 6:11).

Lamech has assurance and even pride (perhaps religious pride), that he has done what was necessary, so he pens a little poem for his wives explaining his heroism (he has taken two wives, clearly an innovator in the realm of passion). In his poetic flourish he waxes hyperbolic about the impact of the slap, describing it as a “wound.” In the flesh a slap may not amount to much, but in the symbolic world of wounded pride and shame, a slap is a wound to the ego. The boy may as well have severed a limb, as Lamech is wounded spiritually and personally. No matter the age of the boy, as the greater his youth the greater the wound to Lamech’s dignity, and the greater the humiliation if the price of this offence is not exacted. This sort of evil deserves death or annihilation in payment.

Lamech may be describing a double homicide, as he has killed both a man and a boy, but more than likely it is the boys slap, that in his rhetorical flourish has become a wound, and the boy takes on an ominous manliness. This boy-man cannot simply be slapped in return, as the wound to Lamech is greater than the blow to the flesh. It has taken on symbolic weight; thus Lamech’s call for infinite revenge and the immediate death of the boy, signals passage into the symbolic. The symbolic is the realm of death drive, no longer subject to or explainable by the finite. Something as delimiting as “an eye for an eye” or “a tooth for a tooth” is only for the finite and fleshly, but with Lamech the wound is clearly spiritual. The boy has offended one of divine-like status and for an infinite offense an infinite payment is necessary. The superego is an all-consuming deity, and no hint of wounded pride can go unpunished, and no punishment will ultimately satisfy.

Clearly there is delusion at work in Lamech’s presumption of divine dignity and revenge (the lie of the serpent continues). Gaining God-like status by being interpolated into the law, being the law, enacting justice, is “life” through the law. “Life” is the wrong word, as with the letter of the law, there is an incapacity for dying (a deadness not subject to mortality) taken up in identity through the symbolic order. The imagined self (the ego) is striving for life (dignity, pride, or substance). The struggle of Lamech to eternally revenge his wounded dignity, is on the order of the struggle Paul describes as the self-antagonistic body of death.

The split objectifies the self, which is the psychological reality of Adam and Eve, in shame seeing themselves through the eyes of another. In the experience of shame, the objectified self is at once alienated (from God and self) and the struggle is pursuit of life (self) in the midst of shame and death. The symbolic, the law, the knowledge of good and evil, or simply language, is the medium of pursuit. Honor and pride, in the case of Lamech, constitute the symbolic (law), or superego (a function and creation of this law) he serves. Though it seems we are dealing in the realm of morality, the entire engagement is one of immorality, antagonism, and aggression. While it is obviously aggression against the other, the boy, it is also an inward violence turned outward (masochism turned outward in sadism). The price of serving this law is a life oriented to death.

As bizarre as the story of Lamech might be, it rings true with human experience of shame, anger, and revenge. While we may not want to own up to it, the story is not unfamiliar. On the other hand, what seems impossible, is Jesus’ counter to the story of Lamech: “Then Peter came and said to Him, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven’” (Matt. 18:21-22). Jesus poses the opposite, and seemingly incomprehensible ideal of infinite forgiveness, of forgiving seventy-seven-fold. Combined with his recommendations in the Sermon on the Mount, to love the enemy (Matt. 5:44), to turn the other cheek (Matt. 5:39), to joyfully suffer persecution (Matt. 5:11-12), this all seems highly implausible. The act of turning the other cheek alone, given the history following in the wake of Lamech’s revenge, poses a profound countermeasure to the cycles of revenge.

The two alternative actions arise from two different worlds and experiential resources. The pure evil of Lamech is posed against the pure goodness, grace and mercy of God in Jesus’ account. Lamech’s infinite revenge is a lying form of radical evil (an absolute evil) which experientially is the resource of murder or murderous anger. Jesus counters the infinite negative with the (actually existing) infinite God he incarnates. The lying infinite may seem more within our reach and realm of experience. Lamech’s revenge is more or less normalized in continuous war and violence of the world and inward struggle with pride and shame, while Jesus’ command of infinite forgiveness seems beyond human capacity. Jesus’ infinite forgiveness calls, not on the lying transcendence of the law (which transcends life only in its deadness) but His is a living transcendence and resource. Lamech’s infinite revenge or radical evil, is a lying impossibility but it is a lie that poses itself in our existential experience of unquenchable anger and shame. What we learn in Christ is that the power of evil can be broken, not by exhausting human effort, but through participation in the divine life.

As in the Lord’s prayer forgiveness is divine, and to be perfect like the heavenly Father is to forgive as He forgives (Matt. 5:48). Forgiveness is limitless in that it never capitulates to revenge, but also because it is a participation in God’s perfection (Matt. 5:48). God’s love and mercy are boundless and directly counter the negative infinity of evil. God is an infinite resource for goodness made available in Christ, as alien as this goodness may seem: “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust” (2 Pet. 1:3–4). Christ provides the existential and experiential reality of participating in God, restoring the divine image through becoming partakers of the divine nature. In this manner we escape the seemingly infinite lust that consumed Lamech.

Lamech stands at the head of long traditions of manly honor, machismo masculinity, knightly sensibilities, samurai spirit, laying down one’s life in violence, in which blood must be spilt that honor be restored. Jesus poses the opposite, and seemingly incomprehensible ideal, of forgiving seventy-seven-fold and then makes this seeming impossibility a reality through pouring out his life in his disciples.

Paul’s Gospel Challenge to the Romans: From Sin as Law Breaking to Sin as Bondage to Law and Death

In addition to refuting the false Teacher in Romans, Paul is also challenging the Roman Christians to accept a more comprehensive understanding of the work of Christ. His very reason for writing, and eventually visiting, is to explain the gospel (1:15). Paul is presuming they have not heard the gospel in its fulness, and he is eager that they would have this more complete understanding so as to be able to resist the false Teacher, but also so they might enjoy a deeper faith. Where he is moving them from (or his point of departure), is their view regarding the work of Christ (in 3:23-26), in which atonement is said to be “for the sake of release from previously committed transgressions.” Their understanding is true, in so far as it goes, but it does not go very far, and so Paul is beginning with what they understand and building from there. They may be so focused on the efficacy of Christ’s death that they fail to consider the resurrection (as his defeat of death and the beginning of his rule over the powers).

The Roman Christians, as we gather from the way in which Paul builds his case, may simply believe Christ has replaced the need for sacrifice for sin in the Temple (even the false Teacher probably believes as much), but they may not have grasped the cosmic implications of Christ. As Douglas Campbell writes, “Christ’s death functions more as an apparent replacement of the temple cultus, which cleanses or wipes various individual transgressions from the relevant worshipers and their consciences (see Heb. 9:11–14, 24–28). Hence, there is no further atoning role for the resurrection to play.”[1] They may be looking forward to a future vindication in their own resurrection, but fail to apprehend the notion of a resurrection life now (present participation in the life of Christ). They seem to have missed that sin is not simply breaking laws, but an orientation to death defeated through Christ’s death and resurrection (as Paul will explain shortly, in some detail). (Thus, Paul’s true thesis for the letter may be his opening focus on resurrection in 1:4). It is not that the Roman understanding is wrong per se, but their limited understanding has left them vulnerable to the false Teacher.

In this understanding, God is concerned with good and bad deeds, and the judgment will be based on an accounting of these deeds. As Paul sums it up, “God will render to each person according to his deeds” (2:5) and only “the doers of the law will be justified” (2:14). But of course, this is not Paul’s position, because he immediately refutes this notion saying, “that from the works of law no flesh will be justified” (3:20). Paul’s teaching is that justification comes “by faith, apart from works of law” (3:28). The problem is the Romans may have such a limited notion of faith as to imagine it is defined by law keeping – Christ satisfies the law and faith is trusting in this fact.

The false Teacher has been able to take advantage of their narrow understanding, and Paul is simultaneously refuting the false teaching and broadening their understanding by presenting his more radical gospel. He is doing this on two fronts; showing that the problem of sin is more serious than they imagined, and then showing that the answer of salvation is also cosmic, fundamental and all-encompassing. Where their faith is attached to law and transgression, the resurrection faith which Paul will begin to spell out entails cosmic new creation.

To convince them of his more radical gospel their basic concepts of justification, judgment, and sin, are going to need to be reworked in light of the work of Christ, and this will involve a new hermeneutic. The concept of the false Teacher, which the Romans may share, is that justification is through works, judgment is on the basis of works, and sin is concerned with bad works. This is hardly an adequate understanding of the depth of the human predicament and the need for rescue, so Paul broadens their understanding of sin, moving them from focus on sin as a mere act to picturing it as bondage to deception.

Rather than speaking of plural “sins” Paul speaks of sin as a singular force. As Louis Martyn points out, “While Paul uses the word “sin” in the singular rather frequently, the plural form emerges only four times in the genuine letters.” Martyn provides an examination of all the plural uses of the word, and concludes, “Only when he is quoting traditional formulas does Paul speak of Jesus as having died for our sins (Gal. 1:4; I Cor 15:3).”[2] As long as the Roman Christians think of sins as defined by works of the law (“for the sake of release from previously committed transgressions”), they will consider the human predicament as concerned with outward works and signs (such as circumcision). In turn, God will be understood through the law, as the one who punishes and rewards, and justice and judgment will also be law-based determinations.

What becomes obvious by Romans 7 is that Paul’s definition of sin (deception in regard to the law) is manifest in the gospel of the false Teacher (his false gospel is sin at work). The Romans are susceptible to this false teaching, inasmuch as they have also misconstrued the importance of the law. Paul argues Christ is the righteousness of God revealed (not the law) but they may be a long way from this concept. Isn’t the law the righteousness of God revealed, they might ask? How can Paul say the gospel is the righteousness of God revealed (1:17)?

Paul’s depiction of the work of Christ (righteousness enacted) as release from a death-dealing deception (in chapters 5-8) is a new concept (if 3:23-26 reflects the extent of their initial understanding). The Roman Christians may be similar to Christians today, who hold to justification theory. Neither group seems to fully comprehended that in Paul’s gospel, Christian faith is a participation in the work of Christ (living out his death and resurrection) so as to break free of the bondage of the power of sin. Salvation is not merely a cleansing nor baptism the spiritual equivalent of a bath. Note, that he begins by questioning whether they know the full meaning of baptism: “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life (6:3-4). As Douglas Campbell puts it, “Christians are not merely enabled to live, purified, in the present world, but their very being is transformed and they enter a new world.”[3]

So, Paul’s task in Romans is to bridge a gap in the thinking of these Christians. He is going to try to move them from a child-like view of sins, to a more profound recognition of sin, and thus strengthen their recognition of the work of Christ. He does this in the immediate context by appeal to the life of Abraham.

In chapter 4, he demonstrates from the story of Abraham that the law is not definitive of the faith of Abraham, but the life journey of Abraham (in which he was given the promise of life in the face of death) is definitive. “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (4:3). Where the Romans may consider righteousness as defined by the law, Paul connects it to the faith of Abraham, which precedes the law. “How then was it credited? While he was circumcised, or uncircumcised? Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised” (4:10). Abraham’s faith is not defined by the law, as there was no law. Abraham is the prototype of faith, and yet his faith is nothing on the order of that described by the false Teacher (or justification theory), in which law is determinant.

The law is secondary in the life of Abraham, a mere sign of the promise of life: “he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised, so that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised, that righteousness might be credited to them” (4:11). Certainly, he is the father of the circumcised, but also of the uncircumcised. “For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith” (4:13). Abraham’s faith stands juxtaposed to the notion that faith is in regard to the law, or that faith is objective and static (rather than dynamic and lived out). Abraham’s life journey, his active trust in God, leaving his home country and family, and his continued journey literally and metaphorically into the unknown, describe a participatory, lived out faith.

Abraham does not feel a guilt-stricken conscience before the law; that is not even a possibility. Law does not figure into the equation at all. Rather, Abraham’s faith was exercised in his orientation to the promise of life in the face of death: “Without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb; yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God” (4:13).

Paul concludes his depiction of the faith defining role of Abraham as culminating in resurrection faith: “Now not for his sake only was it written that it was credited to him, but for our sake also, to whom it will be credited, as those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead” (4:23-24). Righteousness is not primarily a legal term for Paul, but it pertains directly to Christ, and his making right that which is wrong. Where death reigned prior to faith, now life reigns through Christ and resurrection faith.

The Romans may have had a weak view of the resurrection, viewing it as the reward or end point of cleansing from sin. Paul’s view is more radical: Cleansing and freedom from sin are not the achievement leading to resurrection rather, “Cleansing and hence freedom from Sin [is the] freedom of resurrection.”[4] Resurrection is the liberating event bringing about freedom from the law of sin and death, and this is enacted in Christ for all who have faith. As illustrated in the resurrection faith of Abraham, one’s life course is liberated from death through faith. Christians are liberated from the very structures of sin through resurrection faith. This is the atoning, liberating work accomplished by Christ, displayed by Abraham, and definitive of Christian faith. This resurrection orientation is itself salvific in its defeat of the orientation to death, which is sin.

In Romans 5 Paul takes this a step further, juxtaposing Adam and Christ: “For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ” (5:17). Death reigned in Adam and this accounts for the spread of sin because “death spread to all men” (Rom. 5:12), “death reigned” (v. 14), “the many died” (v. 15), “death reigned through the one” (v. 17), and just so, “sin reigned in death” (v. 21). Here sin is a singular, ethical, epistemological, and ontological force that has captured the human race, not just in physical death but in an orientation which is death dealing. Paul describes this as a primordial deception, a covenant with death, or the law of sin and death. In chapter 7 he explains how the dynamic of this lie works in conjunction with the law, or simply with human understanding of the law. There is a fundamental deception in regard to the law, by which sin enters in: “sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me” (7:11). In this chapter Paul describes the topography of the human Subject, as the dynamic of this lie takes hold. Chapters 5 and 7 explain how it is that this law of sin and death has captured the human race, while chapters 6 and 8 describe how Christ frees from the death dealing bondage of sin.

Far from the law playing a guiding or defining role, in Paul’s gospel the law is the occasion for sin. It may be that it is not only the false Teacher implicated in this deception, but the Romans, through their own inadequate notion of atonement have given him an opportunity. But this is not the peculiar trick of the false Teacher, or a peculiar weakness on the part of the Romans, as Paul explains, this deception in regard to the law is the universal human problem resolved through the work of Christ. In his gospel, the law is displaced with a participatory faith in Christ which nullifies the law of sin and death.

[1] Douglas A, Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (p. 709). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.

[2] J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Yale University Press, 1997), 89. The rest of the quote from Martyn reads: “Of these four instances one is a sentence Paul explicitly identifies as an early Christian confession (I Cor 15:3); a second stands in the broad context of that confession (I Cor. 15:17); the third functions in effect as a plural adjective modifying a plural noun (Rom 7:5, “sinful passions”) and the fourth emerges in the present verse.” Martyn is referencing the verse in Galatians 1:4.

[3] Campbell, 709.

[4] Campbell, 710.