The Law and the Soul

Today's topic concerns the law, or commands of God, and the soul. 

It is precisely Jesus' grasp of the structure in the human soul that leads him to deal primarily with the sources of wrongdoing and not to focus on the actions themselves. Wrong action, he well knew, is not the problem in human existence, though it is constantly taken to be so. It is only a symptom, which from time to time produces vast evils in its own right.


I can't recall to what extent I've discussed this matter before. I will say that I had heard it many times before this book without it ever really clicking. Perhaps it's the copious amounts of "House" that I've watched prior to reading the book, or perhaps it is the newly found wisdom of the preceding chapters, but I suddenly seem to get what Jesus is talking about when he says to "go beyond the goodness of the scribes and the pharisees," to get at the root or cause of the evil.

This, however, does not mean that the law does not matter.

Confidence in Christ is, correctly understood, inseparable from the fulfilling of the law.

Clean the inside of the cup and the outside will also be clean. Jesus spoke those words clearly, but how many of us still go about trying to fix the symptoms of our actions before we take a look inside at our hearts? It's like sowing up a bullet wound without removing the bullet. It's like taking cough medicine when you have the flu. The coughing may stop, but you are still incredibly ill. This illness will show itself one way or another.

If, on the other hand, you are vaccinated prior to being infected, the illness will never show, and the cough medicine need never be administered. At the very least you can give your body rest and consume fluids to flush out the inside. This will help to fight off the virus consuming your life, and once that is gone, the coughing will also cease.

To be sure, law is not the source of rightness, but it is forever the course of rightness.

For anyone who's taken a course in logic, this is a conditional statement. It could be written as, "If one is right then one obeys the law." It is not a biconditional. It is not a two-way street. The law does not produce rightness. Rightness, the quality of living life in the right manner or way or, in other words, in obedience to God's commands, precepts, and laws, is not something obtained by obeying those laws in the first place.

Just as simply believing God exists isn't enough to call yourself a follower of God, so also doing God's commands isn't enough to create a rightness in your life. You must first have the change on the inside that brings about that healthy style of living. A leper who becomes a vegan will remain a leper until his leprosy is removed. Vegan living may then be a positive help to his life, but will likely not help much otherwise in the long run.

This is the beginning of a revisioning of Christ and his kingdom. What it means to be a Christian and what it means to be a disciple of Christ. More on that later. Tomorrow I will be getting into just what it means to "clean the inside of the cup." How do we make our souls clean? How do we know when they are? How do we keep them that way? How does "keeping the law" follow from that?

A lot of questions still go unanswered. I know this was a short piece, but I will be expanding quite a bit on this subject. Check back in tomorrow.