Insights from F.F. Bruce on the Apostle Paul's Theology

In the Reformed tradition derived from Geneva, it has frequently been said that, while the man in Christ is not under law as a means of salvation, he remains under it as a rule of life. In its own right, the distinction may be cogently maintained as a principle of Christian theology and ethics, but it should not be imagined that it has Pauline authority. According to Paul, the believer is not under law as a rule of life—unless one thinks of law of love, and that is a completely different kind of law, fulfilled not by obedience to a code but by the outworking of an inward power. When Paul says, “sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (Romans 6:14), it is the on-going course of Christian life that he has in view, not simply the initial justification by faith—as is plain from the point of the antinomian retort which Paul immediately quotes: “What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?” (Romans 6:15) . . . But the law of love is a different kind of law entirely from that which Paul describes as a yoke of slavery. Love I generated by an inner spontaneity and cannot be enforced by penal sanctions . . . So far as Paul is concerned, guidance for the church is provided by the law of love, not by the “law of commandments and ordinances” (Ephesians 2:15). In his letters he himself lays down guidelines for his converts and others, often couched in the imperative mood, but these guidelines mostly concern personal relations. Food sacrificed to idols, for instance, is ethically and religiously indifferent; what does matter in this or in ay other activity is the effect of my conduct and example on others. If I ignore their true interests, he says then I am “no longer walking in love” (Romans 14:15). The same principle may be discerned in his instructions about such diverse matters as sexual life or behaviour in church. (F.F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1977], 192, 201-2).