Between the Law and Grace
We would like to speak today about the spiritual life between the Law and Grace…
The Law (Nomos) is a Greek word meaning law or commandment. Thus, the Law in this sense is the sum of the commandments and orders that God gave to mankind.
And the Scripture said: “The law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). So what is the spiritual position of man between the Law and Grace?
Between the Law and Grace
Moses presented laws to the people, but from the beginning it was not so:
God created man with a pure and holy nature that did not need laws to govern or guide it. And after the commandment was known, sin was known with it…
Joseph the righteous refused to fall into adultery, and there was no commandment saying “Do not commit adultery.” This commandment came more than 500 years later.
The person who needs commandments is a witness against himself that he is ignorant and does not yet know the way. But the righteous wise man, the saying of the poet applies to him:
“If you need to send a messenger, send a wise one and do not command him.”
The wise does not need a commandment to guide him, for his wisdom is sufficient.
And when people lost wisdom, the Lord gave them the Ten Commandments, then many very numerous commandments, moral, ritual, and social, filling the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy… a huge collection of orders and prohibitions.
And the Law did not reform the life of man; rather, the Law became a witness against him.
He was in need of the new nature, of the pure heart that loves goodness by its nature, without commands and commandments. And here we ask:
What is our problem in repentance? What are the obstacles?
The problem is that man does not commit sin out of fear of the commandment, but in his depths he loves it, such that if there were no commandment, he would sink into sin to his depths…
Thus goodness comes from outside him and not from within.
Sin possesses his heart and his will. But his mind tells him that there is a commandment and a punishment. Therefore, man enters into conflict with the commandment, because the heart from within has not been purified, and has not reached the love of God nor the love of virtue.
He still needs external restraints…
But the Lord Christ gave us a new commandment, which is love:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind… and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.
If you reach this love, you no longer need a Law.
We live in a vast sea of commandments, of orders and prohibitions, of what is lawful and what is not lawful… And there are those who carry out the commandments in a legalistic, literal, Pharisaic way, caring about the form and not the spirit. Like one who executes a spiritual schedule and marks its items, not for love, but in execution of a Law…
Such a person prays, reads, meditates, attends liturgies, and partakes, and all this without spirit and without love, as the Lord said:
“This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.” This is the life of the Law: commandments without spirit, and execution without heart. This is the Law from which Christ wanted to free us, by grace…
He says: “When you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants.’” All that you were commanded is the Law; you may perform it as servants, but you are unprofitable if your souls are empty of love and grace.
Are you servants or sons? Do you love or do you execute?
Do you love righteousness, or do you submit to its commandment? Do you love righteousness as a nature, or do you enter into a bitter struggle between good and evil?
Christ came to free us from this involuntary submission to commandments.
He came to plant in us love and spirit, so that we no longer live as slaves to commandments. And the apostle spoke truth when he said:
“If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36).
The one who argues about certain foods and whether they are considered breaking the fast or fasting is still in the Law, and has not entered by grace into the spirit of fasting, nor into divine love; he is driven by commands, laws, and fears.
The utmost that human righteousness or self-righteousness can reach is man’s victory in a war within him between good and evil, and this indicates that there are two desires in him struggling, one for good and one for evil.
As long as there is a desire for evil, then the heart has not yet been freed.
The person who lives in grace lives in the love of goodness.
Goodness has become for him a nature or disposition; he does it without struggle, without internal war, without effort. This one has reached the freedom of the heart…
His heart has been freed from the bondage of habits, desires, the body, and matter… There is no sin that binds him or restrains him, no sin that attracts or tempts him. No sin affects him, and no sin overcomes him. There is no struggle within him.
It is a state that the Fathers call “dispassion,” for which a person prays to attain.
In dispassion, there is no sin that shakes a person from within so that he weakens before it… It is the state about which the apostle said: “Whoever is born of God does not sin, and the wicked one does not touch him” (1 John 5:18).
There are sins that the righteous person truly cannot commit, such as theft, false swearing, murder, and deceit… and consequently the rest of the commandments… This person has been freed.
We want to rise above the level of the Law and enter by grace into freedom. We want to pray day and night: “Give us, O Lord, this freedom, the freedom of a heart that is not enslaved, not defeated, not bound by the love of sin, with no desire for it within. A heart with which sin does not agree with its nature.”
We need this inner purity through the love of goodness.
For many care in their worship for the outer man and not the inner.
One of them cares about practices such as fasting, prayer, prostrations, and religious meetings, and the like, and leaves the purity of the heart within. And his life becomes merely practices like those criticized by the book of Isaiah the prophet (1:11–16).
Do not live as slaves to laws and practices, but ask the Lord to free your hearts by His grace. And if you are freed, you will walk in newness of life, and in the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
And trust that if the inner man is freed, the person will walk in the depth of the spirit without effort. He will pray, fast, meditate, and practice all outward matters in a spiritual way, loving God with warmth and depth…
So ask yourself: Has grace freed you from within or not? Are you still a slave to sin? Or are you still struggling with it?! Or have you entered into the taste of the Kingdom, and the taste of dispassion, as a son of God?
Is sin a war outside you, or is it in your heart within? Or has your heart been freed from its authority and become prepared for the dwelling of God?
This pure heart is what the Lord seeks, saying: “My son, give Me your heart.” Give Me your heart, and then do whatever you want… I want this heart, and I want nothing else. I do not want outward righteousness, but the righteousness of Christ which comes from the work of the Spirit in you.
A person may admire bright lamps and chandeliers and all the amazing electrical devices in a place. But what matters is the presence of the current…
Without this electrical current, all the strong lamps are of no use.
This current is the work of grace in you, the work of the Holy Spirit in your heart, and without it all your works are in vain. If you pray and your prayer does not come from this heart, then your prayer is in vain. And the same applies to your fasts, meditations, and prostrations.
All these we call “means of grace,” that is, the means through which the grace of the Lord works for your salvation and your liberation from your sins…
If your heart has not yet reached God, then you are still living in the Law and not in grace, and all your obedience to the commandments is then called “the righteousness of the Law.” But if the grace of Christ works in your heart and pours into it divine love from the Holy Spirit, then you will have the righteousness of Christ.
Ask Christ, therefore, to give you His righteousness, to wash you so that you become whiter than snow. Ask that the Son may free you. Then you will do righteousness automatically, out of love for God and love for righteousness… without struggle.
Ask the Lord to give you the love of goodness, so that righteousness becomes in you a nature or disposition, and you reach the state in which you cannot sin, because sin no longer agrees with your new nature…
Live in grace, in the love of God, and not in a vast sea of commands and prohibitions, and not in an arena of struggles between good and evil…
The Lord Christ came to give you this grace that changes you, justifies you, manifests you, sanctifies you, and grows you in the love of God. And it elevates you into spiritual atmospheres above matter and the world, and thus raises your level so that you become above sin and above the constraints of the commandment.
Ask for this grace with all your strength, with all your hearts, and with all your will. Ask that this grace may free you from all the bonds of the world, matter, and the devil, and give you a new heart freed from all habits and wrong desires: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”
Rise by grace to above… above commands… doing righteousness as sons in the image of their Father in holiness and truth and light, not as strangers or slaves who are commanded and obey…
Rise above the world, and live in a perpetual heaven…
An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – in El-Keraza Magazine – Year Eight (Issue Twelve), 25-3-1977
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