Holy Spirit

In Paul's letter to the Romans, the Spirit fulfils the purpose of the Law in the new covenant. The Spirit enables obedience and right worship, marks out the boundaries of the people of God, and brings the covenant blessing of eschatological life and inheritance. This purpose corresponds to Paul’s goals for his letter and ministry; to bring about the obedience of faith , that through his gospel both Jew and Gentile might glorify God through Jesus Christ ‘with one heart and mouth’ , and to encourage the Roman believers in their faith .
Paul’s teaching about the Holy Spirit in Romans defends, outlines and encourages the obedience of faith brought about through his preaching of the gospel. The Holy Spirit Spirit is the Spirit of holiness , that enables obedience and right worship, in fulfilment of the original purpose of the Law. After Paul has outlined the mutual culpability of both Gentiles and Law observers (1:18-3:20) , and the free gift of justification by faith in Jesus Christ apart from Law observance (3:21-5:21) , Paul raises four rhetorical accusations of anti-nomianism against himself . What role is there for obedience, if the Law is not the basis for justification? Paul answers these questions in two parallel passages, 6:1-23, in relation to Christ, and 8:1-17 primarily in relation to the Spirit. In 8:3-4 the righteous requirements of the Law are fulfilled, not by observance of the written code, but by the sacrificial death of God’s Son and by those ‘walking in the Spirit’. Already in 2:28-29, the Spirit is presented as the agent circumcising the heart, the very basis of fulfilling the Law in the Mosaic covenant.( Deut 10:16) The agency of the Spirit makes this a reference to the promises of a new covenant, the new eschatological age. (Deut 30:6, Jer 31:31-34, Ezek 36:26-27)
“They are now given as their guide, not indeed the law, which, although given by God, is unable to do more than condemn them for their sin, but the Spirit, so that the Mosaic covenant is replaced, as Jeremiah and Ezekiel said it would be, with the covenant written on the hearts of God’s people by God’s own Spirit”
Nicholas T. Wright , ‘ New Exodus, New Inheritance: The Narrative Structure of Romans 3-8’ . in Romans and the People of God: Essays in Honour of Gordon D. Fee on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday. 1999, 29
Dunn in his theology of Paul (643) however cautions us from seeing both 2:29 and the reference to the Spirit in 7:6 as a simple antithesis and replacement to Israel’s Torah ethic. The new covenant did not envisage a new law, but a more effective keeping of it. The problem of the Law is the weakness of the written code against sin and the flesh14 to circumcise the heart and bring about right living, rather than a defect in the Law itself. Paul's use of nomos touv pneumatos thvs zwhvs is “more than a clever turn of phrase” , but denotes continuity between the two ages. Paul’s antithesis is not between Law and Spirit, but the written code and the Spirit, or as Tobin notes (Paul's Rhetoric), flesh and the Spirit.




I, II, III