The Christian life is an eschatological life, lived in the power of the Spirit. It is resurrection life, the life of the future already breaking into the present. We have been delivered from an uneschatological moralism. The Christian is called to Pneumatological obedience, fulfilling the law in the power of the Spirit. Note that word “fullfill,” used repeatedly in the NT: Christians do not merely keep the law we fulfill it, and “fulfill” is a term that has decidedly eschatological overtones. “Morality” is of the world, and worldly. The world can do morality. But Christians are not called to mere morality; we are not under the law (Torah) but under grace. The risen Christ lives in us, and we live in him. We have died to morality, even as we have died to immorality. We walk in the newness of the Spirit (Rom. 8:1-16). We fulfill the law of Christ in the power of Christ’s Spirit.
Living in accord with this resurrection power at work in us is really the fulfillment of our “natural” humanity, that is, it’s what we were really made for from the beginning. The Spiritual man is the true natural man in this sense. The fulfillment of the law in the power of the Spirit is also the fulfillment of our humanity; it brings to realization God’s original design for humanity. The true moral order of the universe is revealed in Christ and his church. Van Ruler put it this way: “We become Christian in order to become fully human.”
As we walk in the Spirit, we have to continually discern how God’s Word applies to a variety of situations. We do not have a Torah in the way Israel did, governing everything from dress to diet. But we do have the principles God taught us under the law in our corporate childhood. And we have the completed canon of Scripture, illumined by the Spirit. And we have an endless supply of wisdom on tap, as James 1 reminds us. Thus, as our minds are transformed, we are able to “discern what is the acceptable and perfect will of God” (Rom. 12).
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