“The law is not laid down for the righteous,” says St. Chrysostom, “because he does not wait for the law to teach him what he must do. He has within himself the grace of the Holy Spirit instructing him. Instruction is not needed by one who does not lack an instructor.”
Since he is brought to this, that is, to faith in Christ and His grace, by the law, for this is its aim, it follows that the man who uses the law lawfully is the one who, having reached the law’s aim, lays aside its yoke. He does this with full conviction that it is no longer laid upon him.
In other words, “he uses the law properly who knows that he has no need of it,” as St. Chrysostom says.
On the contrary, upon those who have not yet come to justification by faith and grace, and who remain in sins, the law lies with the whole weight of its yoke: obligation, condemnation, and fear. By the burden of such a yoke it moves them to seek relief and freedom, which are set before them in the Gospel’s good tidings.
One may suppose that St. Paul, when he made his qualification about the goodness of the law under the stated condition, had in mind believing Jews who had not yet succeeded in detaching themselves from the law.
He speaks to them as it were in this way: it is nothing. This will not harm you, if in this matter you relate to the law lawfully. That is, you must hold the conviction that it is not the law that saves you and quickens you unto righteousness, but grace through faith. The law is something external and collateral for you.
Only such a relation to the law is right and lawful, held according to the meaning of the law itself. Those who present the law’s significance as unconditional do not know what they are doing. Do not listen to them.
But one may also take the Apostle as expressing a general proposition about the condition under which the law is good. The very purpose of the law is this: when a man, under its guidance, comes to the place toward which it leads, he leaves it behind. He does so in the conviction that it no longer lies upon him.
Oecumenius writes: “He uses the law lawfully who knows that it is not needed by him for a righteous life.”
And who are persons of this kind? Ambrosiaster answers this: “They are those who, having received remission of sins, have become righteous, so that they no longer live under the law. They have been freed from it by the grace of God through faith in Christ. Fulfilling in the heart what was written there by the Creator, and is now restored and quickened by grace, they await the rest, the day of judgment, when the righteous will receive a righteous recompense.”
There Ambrosiaster also explains that, at first, the form of righteous life was inscribed in man’s nature. Living according to it, men were to appear righteous and well-pleasing to God.
Then, when men gave themselves over to passions and began to trample upon that law of nature, God gave the written law through Moses as a guide. Thus, if the law of nature had remained in force, there would have been no place for the written law.
Therefore, at the present time, when grace through faith restores to force what the Creator inscribed in nature, the law that entered because this inscription was disordered is no longer needed by those in whom it is restored by grace through faith.
Oecumenius writes similarly: “The law was added because of transgressions (Gal 3:19). Thus it is not needed by the righteous man, who lives rightly out of love for virtue and not from fear of the law. It is needed by those who are not drawn to virtue of themselves, but who, if they do it at all, do so only because they fear the law’s threat.”
He says that the law is not laid upon the righteous man because, having believed in the Lord and received grace, he bears the law within himself as fulfilled. It lies upon the unrighteous, for whom the law’s purpose still remains to be fulfilled.
Having said this, the Apostle next indicates who such unrighteous men are. He first uses general names for this, and then passes on to particulars. Yet even in the general names one observes a movement from the more general to the less general.
“For the lawless and disobedient.” A lawless man is one who fearlessly violates the moral law. The disobedient man, ανυποτακοις, is one who does not submit to established civil and social orders.
Such men live according to their own will, being a law unto themselves. In this respect they resemble the righteous, for the righteous also are a law unto themselves. Yet the righteous are a law unto themselves for every good, while these are such for every evil, according to the attraction of self-pleasing and the passions.
The impious and the sinful may be distinguished in this way. The first are transgressors of the commandments in relation to God. They have no fear of God and honor nothing sacred.
The second are transgressors of all the other commandments, in relation to themselves and to their neighbors. In relation to others they violate every righteousness, and for themselves they carry out every self-indulgence in lusts. By this they defile themselves.
The Apostle therefore calls them unrighteous and defiled. According to these two kinds, the following particular lists of lawless men are arranged.
To the first belong abusers of father and mother, murderers, kidnappers, slanderers, liars, and perjurers. To the second belong fornicators, sodomites, and those who lie with beasts.
What these people are is clear from their names. Some names, however, will be understood more clearly if the roots of the corresponding Greek words are indicated.
By abusers of father and mother, πατρολωαις, μητρολωαις, he means persons who strike father and mother violently, as threshers strike the grain they thresh. 'Αλοαις comes from αλοαω, “I thresh.”
By kidnappers, ανδραποδισταις, he means persons who by violence or cunning turn others into slaves.
“And if there is anything else contrary to sound doctrine.” Sound doctrine suggests a more theoretical teaching in which there is nothing false, nothing that should be recognized as error. Falsehood and error are diseases of doctrine. They are alien to sound doctrine.
The Christian teaching preached by the Apostles is sound in its whole composition. Yet although Christian teaching proceeds from theoretical dogmas, it is directed above all to the ordering of a good, holy, and righteous life.
Therefore, understanding sound doctrine as Christian teaching, one may understand it as teaching that sets forth the rules of a holy and righteous life, together with the means of progress in it. What is contrary to sound doctrine is what is contrary to pure and holy morality.
The Apostle uses this expression, “sound doctrine,” in other places also (see 2 Tim 4:3; Tit 2:1). Yet everywhere he uses it either to reprove evil morals or to guide the indication of good ones.
In the present place, after naming several lawless persons upon whom the law lies, he finally sets forth a general proposition (see Blessed Theophylact). In general, the law lies upon all who in any respect live contrary to sound doctrine, or to the sound rules of a holy and righteous life.
Those who follow sound doctrine have a sound soul. In those who live contrary to it there abides “the disease of a corrupted soul” (St. Chrysostom).
For such people a physician and a medicine are needed. The law lies upon them for this reason: by reproving, threatening, and crushing them, it brings them to awareness of their sickness and its danger. Through this it moves them to turn to the one Physician and His healing.
When they do this, the law will become unnecessary for them also. For then, in them as well, it will have attained its purpose and will yield its place to another master and guide.
THEOSIS