God's Easy Yoke!

Have you ever watched a toddler who has just learnt about the idea of not being allowed to do some things, and of having the capacity to do exactly what she or he is aware that he or she should not be doing (or at least what Mum or Dad says that she or he should not be doing). Sometimes it can be a game, as the child reaches towards the heater or the stove saying, “Burnie”, with a glint in her eye, and as soon as she knows she has Dad’s attention, the hand is withdrawn, and maybe there’s a scuttle away. Sometimes it’s a pure act of defiance: “You tell me I can’t do that Mum, but I am going to do just that!” And poor Mum ends up having rescue little Tommy from imminent danger. Paul is taking about neither of those situations.

In this section of Romans, Paul is taking about the situation where we have an idea of what God is calling us to, and want with all our hearts to achieve that goal, but simply because of ourselves, our human frailty, our completely human misunderstanding of what it takes to get it right, we are not able to achieve that illusive goal of the life to which God calls us: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Romans 7:15)

Human life is like that. We want to do good. We want to do the best. We want to do what is right. We may even want to perfect. But we cannot, we are not, and do not do what we really want to do. Because life is full of unexpected consequences; and we are not free. We are not free from the vagaries of mortal existence. We are not free from the realities of being physical beings. We are not free from our contexts. We are not free from the complexities of being beings who are not just alive, but who think and feel and want what we cannot achieve by ourselves because of precisely who we are—mortal beings.

As New Testament Scholar, Bill Loader, notes, Paul’s hearers were probably familiar with this idea: “It was alive in the intellectual traditions of the Greco-Roman world as an analysis of the human predicament and how people are not free.” The idea reached back as far as the ancient Greek playwrights. (http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/AEpPentecost3.htm) Think of the story of Oedipus Rex. His parents, warned by an oracle that he will kill his father and marry his mother, leave him to die on a hillside—an act that precipitates the very tragedy which they are afraid will happen. Human beings are not free. We think we know what we are doing. We think we are conscious of what we are doing; and we think we are in control of our lives, but we really aren’t. We do the best we can; and that’s all we can do. And that’s what Paul is on about: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Romans 7:15)

For Paul, the Law, God’s Law, plays a complex role for us as God’s creatures, as God’s people. It reminds us of the life to which God calls us; and it reminds us of how far short we fall in achieving that life on our own. As quickly as the Law tries to free us from ourselves, it binds us to our frailties. It is tragic; and maybe just a little bit comic too—the ultimate double-bind or Catch 22 situation.

And here, surely, we are hearing part of Paul’s very own story: “I tried so hard to live up to the Law, but it wasn’t until I discovered that that was futile, that I discovered the freedom I have been given in Christ. It wasn’t until I realised that I couldn’t do it, that I discovered I didn’t need to.” For Paul, God’s graciousness in Christ is freedom from this double-bind, this impossible puzzle. And this is the good news, this is the Gospel!

As we open ourselves in faith up to the story and promises of God, God’s gift of grace and mercy, God’s love and God’s utter forgiveness, as we simply make ourselves available to God, we move from the cycle of death and failure to the wonder of life and growth and freedom—freedom from sin and guilt and death; freedom to live hopefully and love freely, freedom from the effort of an impossible struggle for perfection grounded in fear. God’s love for us, when we accept it, reproduces in us, love for others; and that is the fulfilment of the Law. The acceptance of God’s love for us is the pathway to life in God, not trying harder and harder to obey a set of commandments.

In verse 24, Paul voices the profound question of human existence, of human hopelessness: “Who will rescue us from this roundabout of death? Who will help us get off this never-ending treadmill of guilt?” And in verse 25, he answers is own question: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

“I may have tried to serve God when I was busting a gut to follow the Law; and intellectually I might have understood what was required, but I was thoroughly incapable of achieving what I thought I understood. And that made me not a slave to the Law, but a slave to sin, a slave to guilt. And the Law becomes not an instrument of freedom, but a tool which enslaves me to the profound internal conflict of hopelessness and despair.”

These days, psychologically we know that it is not prohibition but positive reinforcement that changes people’s behaviour, changes people’s lives. We need someone to believe in us in order to be the people we are meant to be. And Paul’s profound insight is that God believes in us—God made us, God loves us and God believes in us! Shame and guilt and fear are banished in the face of this utterly unconditional love. God’s radical love offers us new life, new birth—all we have to do is trust God’s love, accept God’s forgiveness, live out of God’s graciousness. And God’s additional promise is that through that acceptance God’s love will be reproduced in us.

“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Romans 7:15) Who will rescue us from this roundabout of death? (v. 24) “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (v. 25) This is God’s easy yoke! And it is much, much lighter than the burden of our sin, shame, guilt and fear! Thanks be to God.