In Corinthians Paul says, ‘…hand over one from of this sort to close beside Satan, penetrating towards the aim of the ruination of the flesh in order that the breath is being delivered to safety within the Day of the Lord’ (I Corinthians 5 v 5). Paul places his focus on the Day of the Lord which is associated with the fair Judgement of God by means of His Messiah, when secret matters of the heart and things done in darkness will be revealed. For the Apostle the Day of the Lord is in many ways the time of completion and fulfilment for Christians. It is the time of rousing up from out of the dead, standing up again, full redemption and the allotment of divine rewards and inheritance to Christians as sons and heirs in God’s house.
The ‘breath’ being delivered is often interpreted by commentators to refer our ‘soul’, by which they tend to mean an immortal incorporeal ‘true self’ sheathed by our physical body. That’s according to orthodox Christian tradition anyway. I am proposing that our ‘breath’ is our inner ‘direction and movement of energy’, related to life, sensitivity and responsiveness to God.
I suggest that if Christians are regarded and treated as an ‘outsider’ as a result of their excommunication, then this leads them to ‘necessary proportionate recompense of their wandering off course’ (Romans 1 v 27b). This recompense, this proportional and appropriate payment for wandering off course, may take a number of forms. Such an individual may become materially wealthy and/or successful – but lose their breath – their energy and sensitivity to the Lord and thus suffer loss within the Day of the Lord. Or they may suffer illness, or loss of their favourable situation or reputation, or experience adversity, regret, a sense of abandonment or isolation, or any number of such things. By experiencing such adverse circumstances the aim is that they come to see that they have turned to ‘broken cisterns’ instead of the ‘water of life’. The hope is that as a result they may turn back in repentance towards obedient trust in and sensitive responsiveness to God and His Messiah, thus delivering their breath now, at this present time, and thus receiving the beneficial future consequences of this within the Day of the Lord.
There we are, Paul is quite consistent. He was no legalist, nor was he a permissive liberal. Nor was he anti-law in the sense of opposing or negating the principles and aims of divine law. Christians are placed under the free gift of God by means of the Messiah, who fulfils the requirements of divine law on their behalf and pays the price required by law for their self-forfeiture. Paul was therefore against Christians referring to the external written codes of Levitical law as a means of godliness, arguing that Christians are not under Levitical law, or any written system of law for that matter. Rather, Christians have been transferred into a royal priesthood of the order of Melchizedek with Jesus the Messiah as their High Priest. The principles of divine law are written in the Christian’s deep inner core, and borne witness to by the indwelling Breath. So Christians are exhorted to walk around day-by-day within the sphere of the Breath. In other words, in this respect, the locus of the dynamic of the Christian life is within, rather than by reference to and imposition of external written codes. The focus is on union with the Messiah as their Lord and Saviour, and on the Breath enlightening and illuminating the Christian’s perception of unseen realities. It is on Christians co-working with God by exercising their mind, such that they reason things through to their proper conclusion. It is on carrying these enlightened principles and conclusions across from within into their speech and behaviour in practical beneficial love, especially to fellow Christians, so that they speak and behave consistently with their calling, and bring forth the primary Fruit of the Breath. In the process they are being transformed into the image of the Messiah as the Breath opposes the impulses of the Christian’s fleshly constitution.
