Grace and the Law (1984)

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In this short treatise on spiritual development, Bishop Bimen outlines three stages in human life: an infantile, selfish stage where all decisions are made based on pleasure and pain; an adolescent stage where everything is measured in terms of rules, rewards and punishments; and finally, a stage of maturity where one perceives the realities of things and acts in accordance with truth and goodness for their own sake. These stages chart both the human race’s development throughout Scripture from the Old Testament to the New, and the spiritual journey of each individual person.

Grace and the Law

Bishop Bimen of MallawiGrace and Law Cover (transparent)

Contents

Introduction
1. The Stage of the First Adam
2. The Stage of Moses: The Law
3. The Life According to Christ

Introduction

Psychologists typically divide the human life into three psychological stages: childhood, adolescence and maturity. Further divisions could be made, but these three are the fundamental stages through which every human being passes. Each stage has its own distinctive marks and characteristics, and as a person grows, they leave behind the stage they have lived and proceed into the next, before passing on into the third stage, and so on …

By God’s grace, we can discern a pattern similar to these psychological stages in speaking of the spiritual stages we observe in the course of human history, and particularly the people of God in the Holy Bible. There is a human stage prior to the Law which we call the state of the First Adam, because in it the human being lived in accordance with the conscience God placed in Adam who fell; he lived on earth by particular means and

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methods … Then there is another stage called the stage of the Law of Sinai, or what we call the stage of Moses. This stage is characterised by the ritual and moral commandments and the rest of the laws which God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai … The people of Israel continued to interact with God by means of these laws and commandments which the Bible refers to as ‘the Law’ … However, when the Lord Jesus (to Whom be the glory) came to this world of ours, a new stage appeared, not those that preceded it, but rather expanding towards perfection: this stage is called the stage of grace, or the life according to Christ.

Throughout life, a person goes through the framework of these spiritual stages as they pass through the stages of temporal life. He lives at first as a son of the first Adam, when he is a child. When he is an adolescent, he lives piously on the level of the Jews. Then he comes into contact with grace and experiences the life of communion and inner experience of Christ …

In some cases, people skip over one stage without [going through] another.

In other cases, a person becomes fixed

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in a stage and stays there, unable to move beyond it.

If we consider each stage reflectively and look at it closely, every one of us will be able to determine their position along this road and know what stage they are living in, and what kind of religion they are practicing.

1. The Stage of the First Adam

This is a stage of fixation on the self. A soul in this stage is the centre of all being, just as a child looks out on the world through the lens of themselves, supposing that everything belongs to them. If he reaches out his hand to anything, he considers it his property, whatever it is and whoever might own it. He is amazed by his father, considering him to be the greatest thing in existence because he is his own father, and he loves his mother because she is kind to him, nourishes him and showers him with sympathy and affection. He does not want there to be anyone else besides him who might occupy the throne of maternal and paternal attention. If another little one is born, he will competes against it with a bitter zeal because it is distinct from him; very often, he will try to injure it …

He deals with things through the lens of pleasure and pain. Whatever pleases him becomes good

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to him, even if it is poison; and whatever causes him pain is despised by him, even if it is a healing medicine. This is why he uses his mouth as an exploratory instrument on nearly everything he sets his eyes upon or touches with his hand. The libido (the sexual instinct) is not concentrated in the reproductive organs but rather distributed throughout the whole body. For this reason he loves to embrace and caress and kiss and touch his whole body with great love and affection.

Was this not the state of Adam after the fall? The instinct for food caused him to fall. The pleasure of the apple in the mouth deceived him. The desire for deification and autonomy filled him, and he became fixed upon himself and his relationship to the other was poisoned. He ruled over Eve while she followed behind him and desired him.[1]Gen 3:16 The spirit of jealousy grew so much among his children that Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

This stage defines a person regardless of his age or how many days have since passed: even if he is an old man, well-advanced in years, he might still have the psychological condition of a child, and a spiritual level

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that has not advanced beyond the stage of selfishness (or narcissism, named after Narcissus of Greek mythology, who was so enchanted at the beauty of his own face that he stood marvelling at his reflection on the surface of the water until he died). Oftentimes, such an adult lives on the level of pleasure and pain, not advancing to the subsequent stages of the lawful vs. the forbidden, and then the true vs. the false. Often, the body gets the final say in most of their behaviours and choices; often, this sort of person’s discourse is given over entirely to self-glorification and excessive explanations of their glorious works and marvellous achievements. This agitates people; they reject it, and are nauseated at the way it is repeated and have to be forced to listen to it reluctantly. People like this often struggle in their marital lives. Marriage is a partnership of sacrifice, giving, love and openness, and how can one love if they have always lived imprisoned in the cell of their own selves? How can they give when they been slaves for so long to their own ego, self-admiration and their proud hearts?

The Apostle Paul explains this stage in many places and verses, a few of which are:

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+ And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful (Rom 1:28­–31)
+ They have all turned aside; they are together become unprofitable; there is none that does good, no, not so much one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace they have not known.” (Rom 3:12–17)
+ Those who are according to the flesh mind the things of the flesh … For the mind of the flesh is death … and they that are in the flesh cannot please God. (Rom 8:5–8)

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This stage is what the Bible refers to as the stage of life according to the flesh … a stage where the old, corrupted man reigns according to the deception and lusts of this world; a stage of slavery to sin that dwells in the members,[2]Cf. Rom 7:23 which everyone born of a woman inherits, because they were born in iniquity and in sins their mother conceived them.[3]A reference to Psalm 51:5.

This level characterises all those whom John saw as rejected, having no share in the age to come: ‘But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death’ (Rev 21:8).  If our father Adam died in the hope of the Messiah, and Christ went down to him through the Cross and brought him into Paradise, then those also who inherited his sin from him and did not believe with a living faith and did not live in hope of the Second Coming, these are those dead in sin.

2. The Stage of Moses: The Law

We can picture this stage through the lens of man’s attitude towards God, his attitude towards others, and his attitude towards himself.

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In this stage, which consists of life according the law, we find that man is unable to meet with God except by means of the law. The people said to Moses, ‘“You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.” And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, for God has come to test you, and that His fear may be before you, that you may not sin.” And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was’ (Ex 20.19–21).

The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go, get down; and you shall come up, you, and Aaron with you: but let not the priests and the people break through to come up unto the Lord, lest He break forth upon them’ (Ex 19:24).

Thus, the people of Israel did not meet with God except through Moses and the prophets. The link between God and the people was limited to a set of moral and ritual commandments (the Law) which had to be carried out to the smallest detail, while anyone who broke even one of them would die by death.

However, this law

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was not able to set right what had been corrupted. Instead, all it did was reveal the corruption within, just as when the sun enters a dark room filled with dirt and reveals the dust, uncovering the filth in the room. This is what the Apostle indicates in Romans: ‘the law entered that the offence might abound’ (Rom 5:20). In another place he says, ‘I had not known sin except through the law. For I had not known covetousness unless the law had said, “Thou shalt not covet:” but sin, finding occasion, wrought in me through the commandment all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin is dead. And I was alive apart from the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died’ (Rom 7:7–9). His meaning is that all the Law did, being spiritual, good and holy, was reveal the corruption in man’s nature. The commandment ‘You shall not covet’ shed holy light upon the corrupt nature in the depths of man, and revealed the desires of the heart and its wicked movements and inclinations, even those that never had the chance to be acted upon. In this way, sin is revealed by the commandment to be exceedingly sinful (Rom 7:13). The Apostle explains his own state, that he was

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formerly, before he encountered the Lord Jesus, living according to the Law. And though he had the letter of the law, he did not have the righteousness of God which we attained afterwards in Christ. When the commandment came it became clear through its power that sin, in all its corruption and pollution, was clearly alive [in him] all his days, while all the good works and sound opinions to which he used to hold (i.e. his personal righteousness) were dead to him. The Holy Spirit also affirmed that without Christ, he was dead: sin lived and he died. This is the great usefulness of the Law: it reveals, just as it also disciplines and instructs, refining the soul and preparing it to receive the life according to the Spirit, the new life in which it is the righteousness of Christ that lives, rather than the righteousness of man. Many people live according to the spirit of the Jews; even though they received the mystery of Baptism when they were young, they do not live according to the new life and the second birth which was granted freely to them in the great mystery of baptism.

We can picture this kind of religion in the following points:

(i) Fear of God and performance of religious duties not out of love, but out of fear and terror.

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(ii) Operating on the level of ḥarām and ḥalāl (forbidden and allowed). Here, a man always asks, ‘Is this allowed or forbidden’? He runs after anyone who will give him a fatwa that forbids or allows things for him. This is exactly what the Pharisees used to do in the society in which the Lord Jesus lived in Palestine. This psychological and spiritual adolescence remains firmly entrenched in a man’s life because he has not proceeded beyond this stage and into the life of grace, the life of the liberty of glory of the sons of God. (Rom 8:21)

In Galatians, the Apostle Paul identifies this stage with the life of the sons of the bondwoman, rather than the sons of the mother who is a freewoman:

Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman, and one by the freewoman … which things contain an allegory: for these women are two covenants; one from mount Sinai, bearing children unto bondage, which is Hagar. Now this Hagar is mount Sinai in Arabia and answers to the Jerusalem that now is: for she is in bondage with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is our mother … What does the Scripture say? ‘Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the handmaid shall not inherit with

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the son of the freewoman. Wherefore, brethren, we are not children of a bondwoman, but of the freewoman (Gal 4:21–31)

(iii) As regards religious piety, it is likely to be formal and superficial, because one’s whole life is tinged with fear, and characterised by the carrying out of duties and obligations, and the performance of formal rituals, while simultaneously emptying them of all the spiritual meaning on account of which they were instituted.

In our churches, we often find people who live on this level, performing all the practices, attending all the worship services with regularity, fulfilling all the ritual requirements, while their heart remains far from God. This sort of worship is hated by God. The fault does not lie in the forms and rituals; the great fault lies rather in the one who hardens his heart against the them and empties them of their spiritual meaning, essence and depth. On this Judaising[4]tahawwud, the same word used in Gal 1:14 for those who compelled Gentile Christians to follow Jewish customs. level of thinking, we relate to people solely by thinking about whether to please them or make them angry, because religious piety at this stage is lacking of its most important depth, namely, ‘the Truth’, and this kind of relationship is a reflection of a corresponding superficiality in religious piety.[5]A difficult sentence to translate, not entirely clear in the original, but the apparent meaning is that just as people in this adolescent stage use rituals and religious duties to keep God at a distance, their relationships with other people are correspondingly shallow: they keep others at a distance and conceive of their relationships purely in terms of pleasing or upsetting others, rather than connecting with them based on a shared truth (see p. 18 in the next chapter).”

The Mosaic perspective towards oneself is filled with personal righteousness, and a sense of the goodness of one’s works. [Such a one] is always

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saying of himself, ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of the evil people.’ Often, he is seeking some advantage from religion, to puff up, draw attention to and exalt himself. He will certainly not permit the sword of truth to come into his inward parts to cast out this puffed-up self, crucify it, put to death its evil lusts and desires, seeing that, often, religious piety serves here as a thick covering and a beautified tomb to conceal rotting bones.

3. The Life According to Christ

This spiritual state is distinguished by the inner life: ‘The kingdom of God is within you’. Here, God is not distant from man — not merely laws, rituals and practices; God is rather light and life in the inner part of man: ‘I in them and You in Me, that they may be made perfect in one’ (Jn 17:23). For anyone who has received the second birth through baptism, and sanctification and confirmation through the mystery of the Myron, and the worthy communion of the holy body and blood of the Lord into their belly and their internal organs, how could God not be living within them? The Lord Jesus transferred man from the Mosaic level to the life of grace and truth, ‘for the Law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ’ (Jn 1:17).

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What is meant by grace? Grace refers to the rich gifts we have received freely, confirmed to us through the Incarnation, Cross, Redemption, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ into heaven.

  • Through grace, the believer is absolved of the sin of Adam and inherits Christ
  • Through grace, the believer is sanctified, which is to say, Christ lives in them and sanctifies their being, making their body into a temple for the Holy Spirit.
  • Through grace, the believer becomes a son. And through grace, they are saved: ‘by grace you have been saved’ (Eph 2:8). Through the means of grace, they receive every heavenly gift through the Holy Spirit who works in the church.

The Apostle Paul speaks of this rich grace in his letter to Ephesians in the greatest terms when he says, ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins

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according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory’ (Eph 1:3–12).

From this holy text, it is possible for us to show that rich grace has indeed been shown us:

  1. We are chosen by the Lord before the foundation of the world.
  2. We are called to be holy and blameless before the Father through the salvation granted us by the Son.
  3. We have redemption, forgiveness of sins, through the blood of the Cross.
  4. We have known, through His divine mysteries, His eternal intentions, and that we have a share in Him according to the purpose whereby He works all things according to the counsel of His will.

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  1. The goal of this grace — which granted us freedom and adoption and redemption and justification and sanctification and all the blessings of salvation — its ultimate goal is to gather all things into Christ so that Christ may be all in all.

In short, St Athanasius says, ‘God became man so that man might become God by His grace.’[6]St Athanasius, On the Incarnation 54 (CCEL)

This partaking in divinity is what Irenaeus wrote about, and what the Apostle Peter is referring to when he says, ‘seeing that his divine power has granted unto us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that called us by His own glory and virtue; whereby He has granted unto us His precious and exceedingly great promises; that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Pt 1:3–4).

But Truth is the second component of true Christian piety, which is why the Lord Jesus granted us His grace so that we might witness to Him: ‘and you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.’ (Acts 1:8).

The true church is called the witnessing church, because she witness to her Bridegroom and Saviour through her life, behaviour, love for her members

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and their purity, integrity, simplicity and longsuffering. She witnesses also to the fact that Jesus lives in her and that He continues to work in history and that His gospel is a living and practical gospel, not just a set of theories, ideologies or customs, laws and sermons: ‘the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life’ (Jn 6:63). The apostolic church has proved through her own life and spirit that the Son continues to work through the Holy Spirit in her. The witness of the early Christians was a zealous, fiery and faithful witness; as it says in the Acts of the Apostles: ‘And with great power the apostles gave their witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all’ (Acts 4:33). This holy verse makes a connection between grace and witnessing to the truth. Witness without grace is rejected; it is the witness of demons and swindlers. And grace without witness is like a light put under a basket and a talent buried in the earth.

What particularly characterises the life of the children of God is their one spirit, one heart, one faith, one love. As the Bible says, ‘Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul; neither

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did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common’ (Acts 4:32).

This external lifestyle is an expression of the depths of inward life: love blossoms into friendship, humility and holiness blossom into a communal life. True Christianity manifests one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.[7]Community and communal life are a consistent theme in Anba Bimen’s writings. See especially his pamphlet published in 1981 titled Communal Life (Ḥayāt al-sharika).

Christian life — viewed through the lens of the Church — is the life of children of God gathered together with one spirit, remembering the Lord’s commandment and the promise of the Second Coming, awesome and full of glory,[8]A phrase from St Basil’s Liturgy (the end of the Institution, leading into the Epiclesis). communing from the Holy Body and Blood, renewing the covenant with the Saviour to live in accordance with the Gospel to which they were called: ‘Only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of your affairs, that you stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel’ (Phil 1:27).

O beloved,

+ If you live according to the flesh, focused on the self

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you will never stop living as a son of the first Adam. This is the life of which the apostle says that all who live in it are children of wrath and vessels of destruction.[9]Cf. Eph 2:3 and Rom 9:22–3.

+ If you live according to the Law, performing all the duties and rituals — not touching, handling or tasting[10]Cf. Col 2:21 — this Judaizing is good for nothing but making yourself seem righteous in your own eyes; it will not give you the righteousness that is in Christ.

+ But if you have experienced Christ in your heart, if you have tasted grace, if you have enjoyed the glorious liberty of the children of God, then hold fast to what you have, strive and persevere in bearing sufferings, and stand firm with your faithful brethren, struggling alongside them in the same faith of the Gospel.

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Notes:

Notes:
↑1 Gen 3:16
↑2 Cf. Rom 7:23
↑3 A reference to Psalm 51:5.
↑4 tahawwud, the same word used in Gal 1:14 for those who compelled Gentile Christians to follow Jewish customs.
↑5 A difficult sentence to translate, not entirely clear in the original, but the apparent meaning is that just as people in this adolescent stage use rituals and religious duties to keep God at a distance, their relationships with other people are correspondingly shallow: they keep others at a distance and conceive of their relationships purely in terms of pleasing or upsetting others, rather than connecting with them based on a shared truth (see p. 18 in the next chapter).”
↑6 St Athanasius, On the Incarnation 54 (CCEL)
↑7 Community and communal life are a consistent theme in Anba Bimen’s writings. See especially his pamphlet published in 1981 titled Communal Life (Ḥayāt al-sharika).
↑8 A phrase from St Basil’s Liturgy (the end of the Institution, leading into the Epiclesis).
↑9 Cf. Eph 2:3 and Rom 9:22–3.
↑10 Cf. Col 2:21

How to cite this text (Chicago/Turabian):

Bimen, Bishop of Mallawi. Grace and the Law [Al-na‘ma wa-l-nāmūs]. Mallawi: Metropolitanate of Mallawi Press, 1984. Translated by Samuel Kaldas. In Archive of Contemporary Coptic Orthodox Theology, Sydney, NSW: St Cyril’s Coptic Orthodox Theological College. https://accot.stcyrils.edu.au/bbim-grace/.

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