We've talked in past posts about how Torah, or God's levitical law, was given to put flesh to death. It was meant to divide God's people away from flesh.
As we've also seen, Torah becomes captive to sinful flesh. Even so, however, it still divides, only now it divides in a way that causes futility and spiritual erosion. In Romans 7, Paul vividly describes this unfortunate division:
"So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?" (Rom. 7:21-24)
As we said in the post on "Circumcision," Torah was always meant to divide. It was meant to divide flesh from Spirit. All Torah practices had to do with cutting off flesh. Torah was given to put flesh to death.
But because Torah was given under the conditions of flesh, flesh is not killed so much as it is aroused. Somehow, when Torah tells Paul not to covet, he ends up coveting even more! Torah re-invigorates flesh, and flesh "seizes the opportunity." It rears up. It becomes supercharged. So instead of putting flesh to death and dividing it from the community, Torah arouses flesh. This is all a description of what Torah does under the realm of death. Torah is sin's "not-so-secret weapon." (Rutledge) Though governing from outside Israel, it gives the impression of coming from within under the guise of conflicting desires - a people who simultaneously love their law and hate their law. It is a schizophrenic reality, in which the greater the divide, the greater the agency and strength given to each side. As Paul writes, "Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me." As his desire for good grows, so does his desire for evil. As Jesus writes, the wheat and weeds are all bound up with each other. Only when they are fully grown, can they be separated, in part because they divide on their own. The Pharisees are a vivid picture of this. As their 'love' for Torah grows, it increasingly shields their own injustices from themselves. Paul, at least is aware that he both loves and hates the law. The Pharisees aren't. As flesh gains more control, the greater the division within Israel's inner being. Flesh turns Torah into a torture instrument. Torah creates a divided Israel, an Israel that "knows not what they do."
At the cross, Jesus asks God to forgive his accusers, for "they know not what they do." Which Israel puts Jesus to death? They think its the part that loves Torah. But they are wrong! What they don't realize is that flesh has taken over. Jesus is living Torah. As we've said in previous posts, Jesus embodies the access that Torah always pointed to. He is God come out from behind the cherubim's swords of Eden. But they don't see that. The Israel that puts Jesus to death is the part that hates Torah. Flesh blinds them to Jesus and they don't recognize him at all. They think they are crucifying someone God-forsaken. They think they are putting flesh to death. They think this is Torah's crowning achievement. But of course it's Torah's greatest betrayal.
They also don't realize that what they think is an execution is actually a sin offering for themselves. (Rom. 8:3) Jesus is an alternative Torah, an alternative Temple and Holy Place. God has used Israel's captivity to flesh as a way to flush flesh out in the open. Flesh acts at Calvary. Flesh dominates. Flesh exerts itself and makes every move. Flesh drags Jesus' corpse outside the city gates without realizing that, by a divine judo move, God is dragging sinful flesh into the sanctuary to put it to death once and for all. The deeper into Jesus the whips of sinful flesh go, the deeper they are brought into the holy of holies to be cleansed. The more sinful flesh puts Jesus to death, the more God ends up putting sinful flesh to death in Jesus. Sinful flesh tells Jesus, "I'm going to kill you." Jesus says, "You're coming with me." In other words, "He became sin who knew no sin." (2 Cor. 5:21) In Jesus, finally, Torah is putting flesh to death. In himself. And sparing the perpetrators. When God's verdict comes on Easter that Jesus was in the right, they can honestly repent: they didn't know what they did. They had no idea. Leithart writes:
"When the Father then reverses their verdict, when he completes the condemnation of flesh by raising Jesus in the Spirit, they can be brought to recognition and repentance. What looked to them like a pariah, an outcast and leper, barely human, is revealed in the resurrection to have been, all along, the Lord of glory, showing the glory of his covenant love in giving himself for his people." (Delivered, 352-353)
Paul writes in Romans 8:3-4:
"And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit."
What this means is that the mission back to Eden has been accomplished. Condemnation implies that God has delivered the world beyond this. Before Jesus' sin offering, before the veil was torn, before the resurrection and ascension, all civilization, all the world toiled under the power of death as it expressed itself in sinful flesh. Against this world order, God created Torah to subvert it. Now the world order has been condemned. And Torah has been exceeded by living Torah - Jesus. God made him a new sanctuary to bear the blood of sinful flesh. God made him a new holy of holies, no longer hidden deep within the temple, but outside the gates of Jerusalem, out in the open. Jesus is Torah that actually has killed flesh and his resurrection is a re-entry into Eden.
Throughout these posts, I've been calling the levitical law 'Torah', following Leithart's usage. And now I think I see why. Because Torah is not the same as law. In Jesus' death, Torah is finished. All the rituals and liturgies of Torah are designed for a world under the power of death and sinful flesh. But that is not the case anymore. There is a new world order. Flesh is finished. And so is the Torah that is designed to kill it. Much of the New Testament, as we've seen, is alive with this precise drama. The destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. is the final dismantling of the old world order.
All of Torah is like scaffolding for a temple made in Jesus' new Eden. When all is ready, it just needs to come down.
We say farewell to Torah. But 'law' remains. What is the new law that governs the world, if sinful flesh is condemned? Paul describes this as living "according to the Spirit." (Rom. 8:4). The Spirit becomes a law for the new people who have entered into Eden. Leithart writes:
"Once the gate of Eden is opened again, there is no need for sacrifice; the cherubim lay down their flaming swords and let those who are in Christ enter freely. Once Jesus has borne the curse for Israel and opened up the flood of the Spirit to the Gentiles, thus creating "the one" that Moses did not mediate, the structures that distinguish Jew from Gentile are pointless. Maintaining such structures is, by Paul's lights, worse than pointless. Anyone who sets up barriers at Eden's gate is trying to reverse the work of Jesus." (Delivered, 213)
We will go on to see that everything is different now for the whole world because of the one new humanity that Jesus has created.
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