Friday, June 5, 1998 6:19 AM I think it is very clear to the actor/doer as to whether he seeks to comply with a sheer maxim (prudence or a self-elevating and self-serving rule) or whether with a principle (moral and universally valid rule).

I, in my hurt, consider this and that hateful and resentful action, and when I take a moment to evaluate what I am doing, I see that I am reacting in a way which is designed to repay that hurt, especially (but not entirely) when I perceive injustice and bully-ness.

Enemy, I find, is very easy to hate; but then it is also easy to hate the wimps who refuse to stand up against her for their own rights and peace.

When will compassion come?

Actually there have been occasions where I have wept sincerely for Enemy, for the life that she must life, insisting upon others crawling before her, etc., and for the fear that she will have to live such a life forever. But these moments have not lasted long, and before you know it, I am incensed again at her arrogance and not only seek ways to remove her from the power that she so loves and misuses but also relishing her demise in my heart.

This latter is what I must object to. O God! Remove this depravity of my heart and make me wish her well (albeit in a way that works for her in a community).

Take away this hate so that I may both think clearly and remove obstacles between her and myself so that I may bring a gift to your altar!

6:44 AM Now there are two aspects of importance here: in the first place there is the commitment to love as Christ did. In this respect I am constantly evaluating my actions and my thoughts and rejecting those which conflict with that standard.

And then there is the natural or spontaneous or first impulse which can be love, but, in the case of Enemy, is more often hate. It is this that I tend to call the flesh.

The first, the commitment, is the spirit, and the second, the impulsive love or hate, is the flesh.

Now the first, as I muse further, constitutes my commitment to Christ and it is the spiritual tie between us, such that he and I both can lament together my (presently having to) struggle with the flesh, i.e., actively have to resist the hating of my enemy.

The second, it seems to me, must be the point and focus of what Paul calls sanctification, namely I am to expect an easing of this hate and/or a strengthening of the commitment, such that this hate either vanishes and turns into love and compassion, or at least does not interfere with the actions undertaken in accordance with the commitment.

[Now another commitment might be made entirely to myself, selfishly and egotistically (as I actually suspect is the case with Enemy); and that would be a wedding with the flesh and a servitude to the flesh. This is a contrast to, and even opposite of, a commitment to Christ.]

Now I expect that this love/hate flesh is at the bottom what Paul is referring to in the latter part of Romans 7. But due to the work of Christ, I am no longer under the law (per the early part of 7), and so this hate that spills out does not actually work to my own detriment with regard to the heart of God in Christ. If I were still under the law, then I would be like a Mormon, or even like the younger John Wesley, and worry about my salvation, for I would not be conforming to the standard set by God.

But since Christ abolished the law, I have no real need to comply with the law as such, i.e., because it is law.

I do have a need to comply with the law of love, but that is merely the struggle. And because it is a struggle that proves that I belong to Christ, for it is the sin in me that continues this struggle against the commitment. And so either the spontaneous love of Enemy or the continuing struggle against the hate of Enemy both prove that I belong to Christ.*

[* If I possessed a spontaneous love of Enemy without reference to a commitment, then I am like the righteous gentiles of Romans 2, I suspect; but since the commitment is present, I am also like Abraham of Romans 4, and thus, in the union, a perfected Christian, i.e., at least in direction and goal and promise. So while the "righteous gentile" functions according to conscience, there is no commitment and so no expectation of consistency at all.]

Let me try to make that plainer: 1. I am not under the law and so am under no obligation to comply with the law and so this is simply not a factor in my equation. So much for that!

2. I am committed to Christ and thereby to the love of all persons and thereby to the love of Enemy.

3. I still harbor hate in my heart for Enemy.

4. I am not dismayed by that, for that (being flesh) will take an act of God to change, and I wait patiently and expectantly (in perfect faith) for that to occur; far rather I am united with Christ per my commitment to him, i.e., spiritually (2 above).

This seems to be Romans 7 and much of 8.

The connection of the spirit is manifested in this wise: I can call out Abba Father and so (given also the consciousness of my commitment to Christ) know that I am God's son and brother of Jesus, the Christ, the Holy One of God.

This connection goes so far as to become unbreakable, for even if my mouth should deny Christ due to fear and pain and horror, I am not dismayed (and can still call "Abba Father"), for the spirit of God is not impressed with words, but only with the intention (commitment) of the heart (groanings).

The pain that I suffer in my commitment to Christ can only be considered a glory for me, and never again (per Romans 5 also) a matter to cause me to question my relationship with Christ and with God through Christ. Thus I banish forever the question: why is this happening to me? for now I am Christ's and am a lamb for the slaughter chamber of God and account all as dung in comparison with this great gift of grace, for not only had I not earned it, like the criminal Barabbas I had even earned death.

"I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene."

7:13 AM The Jews? A very natural question must arise to every one who reads Romans: what then is to become of the Jews? They were the favored ones and the ones of promise; what is to become of them? And if the promises to them are not honored, then how can we be sure of the promises to the gentile followers of Christ, or to the follows of Christ in general, Jew and Gentile.

Paul answers this somewhat academic question in Romans 9-11, indicating that the Jews are not to be lost at all, and that the promises are all valid, only that now they will be kept through the love (and gift = grace) of God and not through any obligation on his part (or deal), i.e., it is the joy of God that all people come to him. The recalcitrance of the Jews now merely serves to make it possible to dispense with the law, and that is the wonderment of the Christian message. Later all Jews will come into the Christian faith. Many (Paul, for example) have already done so.

7:17 AM Now we have established the general framework for the Christian, i.e., he is not bound by law; and it is the commitment to Christ that is the connection to Christ, such that the actual actions and deeds of the flesh do not count, * i.e., the relationship is spiritual (or what [I think] Kant would call: moral).

[* In order to fully appreciate the extent of this revolution the reader must remember (also per Chapter 6 of Romans) that the commitment is real and not formal, i.e., the commitment spills naturally into action upon the mere perception of opportunity. E.g., when I catch myself railing out against Enemy either with my mouth in public or with my mind in private, I seek earnestly to stop, to rectify the damage to the world, and incorporate that experience into the equation of my psyche in order to seek to avoid that in the future. Thus the commitment is real and serious.]

We find that there is a general principle which underlies all actions of the Christian (with any relevance to Christ), namely the Golden Rule. Paul expresses this generally in Romans 12; but in 13 goes so far as to indicate that it is by virtue of this Golden Rule that we comply with the demands of the governor of society, i.e., we comply with the laws of the governor for the reason that they are right and good and lead to a harmonious society with the possibility of interaction and exchange and cooperation. Thus compliance with the Golden Rule makes us not only at peace with God (Matthew 7:12 [get for here the citation of Jesus' words where the man is to leave his gift and make up with his brother and then come and present the gift to God]) but also with man, i.e., we are pleasing to man and God by virtue of the our commitment to the Golden rule (with regard to God) and actual compliance with that rule (with regard to man).

How about differences of opinion amongst diverse Christians? This is not to trouble us, for our interpretation of the Golden Rule means that we are not only to rule our own behavior directly with regard to that rule, but are to conform to a certain extent to the beliefs of our fellow Christians. We are not to do publicly before them what would weaken them in their faith. And so we are not to be engaged in great debates about this and that, for each man stands alone before Christ and Christ looks to the heart (commitment), the understanding and the conscience of each person individually, and so each person can be made to stand before Christ without fear. Let each be persuaded in his own conscience and let him not act except in his own faith. Whether weak in faith or strong, it is between that individual and Christ, and Christ can enable him to stand.

7:28 AM How is this latter to be interpreted? The strong, I submit, are able to derive their questioned behavior from the Golden Rule, or else at least can see that the opposite cannot be so derived, e.g., I see that I can drink coffee because while I cannot derive coffee drinking from the Golden Rule, I see that I cannot derive its opposite therefrom, and so it is neither forbidden nor required, and so it is permitted and optional.

If I see a presumed Christian doing the opposite of the Golden Rule, according to my understanding, then I question him about it and if he is not able to satisfy me, I bring an impartial Christian with me to listen to our exchange. If we both agree that the other is acting contrary to the Golden Rule and he refuses to stop, then we realize that he no longer has the commitment to Christ and so therefore has fallen from grace (or never received that grace).

If another Christian is offended by a certain behavior that I normally engage in, e.g., smoking cigarettes or drinking wine, and is unable to derive its opposite from the Golden Rule but rather cites scripture or custom or some other external source as the authority for his judgment, then I do not dispute about this, but rather do not smoke or drink wine in his presence.

10:14 AM All that is lacking now, I think, to make this a complete system with Paul's Romans is to add what he included at the beginning, namely that neither the whoring Gentile of Romans 1 (who are headed toward destruction by virtue of the fact that they breed contempt for law and decency for they not only do evil, they applaud the evil doing and doer); nor the hypocritical Jew of Romans 2 (who does the same evil, but publicly derides it and thereby [though atonements, etc.] actually corrupts the very concept of morality by pretending to be righteous and thereby bringing God Himself into contempt among the Gentiles.

No one meets the standard set up by God, and so he sends Jesus at the right time and we come to the union of the righteous gentile of Romans 2 and the righteous Jew of Romans 4, which union is called the Christian.