An immediate objection to this line of thinking would be simply to quote 2:19a: “For I, through the Law, died in relation to the Law so that I might live in relation to God [ἐγὼ γὰρ διὰ νόμου νόμῳ ἀπέθανον, ἵνα θεῷ ζήσω]” (my translation). The antithesis of the Law and God would seem to rule out any implicit reference to the new covenant, which is said to re-inscribe the Law on people’s hearts. But if, as Paul later says, the fundamental issue about the Law has to do with relying on it once the Messiah and faith (or faithfulness) have arrived and the written Law’s function has ceased (3:23–24), then it is not impossible to think that Paul would allow for the existence of a reconfigured Law that is not the basis of justification, but the expression of it, Law summarized in the words “faithfulness” issuing in “love” (5:6)—what we might call the “Law [νόμος] of the Messiah” (as Paul does in 6:2) associated with the presence of the Spirit. We, of course, struggle with how to translate the νόμος of 6:2 into English, but Paul is not engaged in dealing with a source and a target language. Rather, his use of νόμος in 6:2 indicates that there is continuity with his overall argument about νόμος in Galatians, but his specific usage of the word—in connection with the Messiah and in the context of discussing the work of the Spirit—implies as well a certain discontinuity with previous under-standings of νόμος. Paul is singing νόμος in a new key.
Accordingly, when Paul speaks of “the Law of the Messiah, he is likely once again speaking about the indwelling of Christ, not in terms of the internalized Spirit promised by Ezekiel, as in 4:6, but in terms of the internalized Law promised by Jeremiah. Yet, for Paul, I would argue, these two promises and their fulfillments are one and the same. Richard Hays rightly suggested that we understand this “Law” as the “pattern” of Christ, a normative pattern (or “life-pattern”) of self-giving love that gave expression to the faith, or faithfulness, of Christ.[37] It is important to stress that this is the pattern of both the dying and the indwelling Messiah, the latter continuous with the former. The primary point is that the presence of the living crucified Son of God, the presence of “the Spirit of the Son,” will shape people into Christ-like faithful and loving individuals and communities (5:6). This is clearly for Paul the work of the Spirit, as the context of 5:6 makes plain (5:16–6:8).[38]
I suggest, then, that Paul has interpreted the complementary prophetic promises that God would place “my” πνεῦμα and “my” νόμος (i.e., the Spirit and the Law of God) within the people of God as having been fulfilled in the indwelling presence of the πνεῦμα τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ (4:6) and the νόμος τοῦ Χριστοῦ (6:2)—the Spirit and the Law of the Messiah Jesus. To be sure, Paul only explicitly says that the Spirit of the Son—not the Law of the Son—has been sent “into our hearts” (4:6). Nonetheless, there is an implicit theological link between the indwelling Spirit and the indwelling Law: love.
The fruit of the Spirit’s presence is love (5:22), which can only mean Christ-like, cruciform love (2:20). But love is also connected to Law in Galatians. Those who, by the Spirit, practice Christlike servant-love (5:13) are, ironically, embodying the very νόμος that could not justify them (3:11) because the whole Law is “fulfilled” in the love command (5:14). Furthermore, since the syntactically and semantically similar phrases about serving one another in love (διὰ τῆς ἀγάπης δουλεύετε ἀλλήλοις; 5:13) and bearing one another’s burdens (Ἀλλήλων τὰ βάρη βαστάζετε; 6:2) have to do with the fulfillment of νόμος—either “the” νόμος (5:13) or “the Messiah’s” νόμος (6:2)—it also stands to reason that, in some fundamental sense, the presence of the love-enabling Spirit of the Messiah implies the presence of the Law of the Messiah. Thus, Paul makes a tight connection between those who “have received the Spirit” (οἱ πνευματικοί; 6:1) and those who practice the Law of the Messiah (6:2). Moreover, although Paul does not say that this νόμος of the Messiah is inscribed on the Galatians’ hearts, such a claim may be implied, for Paul can clearly conceive of a textually indwelt heart. In Romans, for instance, he will quote and interpret Deuteronomy 30 (which refers to heart-circumcision): “‘The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart’ (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim)” (Rom. 10:8). Kyle Wells has argued convincingly that this “eschatological Torah” written on people’s hearts means, for Paul, the “presence and agency” of Christ that comes with union with him, to which Gal. 2:20 bears witness.[39] The Messiah and his νόμος are, for Paul, inseparable.
With respect to 2:20, then, de Boer is partly right to say that ἐν ἐμοί means “in Paul’s current apostolic ministry,” which is public and visible.[40] But because Paul is not merely speaking autobiographically, this life of faithfulness and love is also meant for all who are inhabited by the Messiah (i.e., by the Spirit and the Law of the Messiah) and who live in him.[41] The cosmic, apocalyptic, new-world-creating and new-covenant-creating event must and does become an intimate, apocalyptic, and new-person-creating event. The knowledge that Christ gave himself for our sins to liberate us from the present evil age (Gal. 1:4) must also become the personal knowledge that he loved me by giving himself for me (Gal. 2:20).[42]
Moreover, the death of Paul and of all believers has a starting point, but no ending point in this life. The perfect verb συνεσταύρωμαι (“I have been crucified”) suggests an ongoing reality. The paradox is that the resurrected self is always also the crucified self, just as the resurrected Jesus remains the crucified Jesus. This ongoing crucifixion is not, however, something that kills but something that gives life, for it is nothing other than a life of Messiah-like faithfulness and love. It is a death that brings about life for both self and others, as Paul will say especially in 2 Cor. 4:10: “always carrying in our body the dying of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible [φανερωθῇ] in our bodies” (my translation). That is, Paul, speaking with and for others, has become the apocalypse that has claimed his life and set him free. Christ is being revealed in his body, his life. Paul likely implies the same thing in Galatians itself: in his ministry, “Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified” (3:1; Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς προεγράφη ἐσταυρωμένος), and he “carr[ies] the marks of Jesus branded on [his] body” (6:17; τὰ στίγματα τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ἐν τῷ σώματί μου βαστάζω).
This discussion now points us back to Gal. 1:16 and Paul’s claim that God was pleased to reveal his son ἐν ἐμοί.
Galatians 1:16, in Conversation with 2 Corinthians
As noted earlier, there is significant debate about what Paul means when he speaks of God’s pleasure in revealing his Son “in me.” It seems clear, however, from our study of later texts in Galatians, that Paul was convinced that whatever precisely happened at that moment of revelation to or in him, its immediate impact could be narrated as an experience of death and resurrection, indeed a co-crucifixion and co-resurrection, and its long-term effect on him could be described in terms of ongoing Christ-like dying and rising to new life enabled by the Spirit of Christ and shaped by the Law/pattern of Christ. This sort of language appears not only in Galatians, but also in Romans 6 and 8.
Moreover, similar language appears as well in 2 Corinthians, and not far from the occurrence of the important terms “new covenant” (2 Cor. 3:6) and “new creation” (5:17). As we saw in 2 Cor. 4:10, the ministry of the new covenant/new creation is a ministry of paradoxical, Christlike, life-giving dying, enabled by the Spirit (“the Spirit gives life”; 3:6), but conveyed through the agency of weak apostles such as Paul. They are powerless in themselves (4:7), and their difficult, deathlike existence is the manifestation of Jesus’ life (φανερωθῇ, 4:11), and thus the means of life for others (4:12), only by God’s power.
This is the paradoxical modus operandi of the apocalyptic new covenant: the power of God is reveal
ed in the weakness of the cross (cf. 1 Cor. 1:18–25) and of those who enslave themselves to others for Jesus’ sake (2 Cor. 4:5) and in the mode of Jesus (cf. Phil. 2:1–11). The glorious ministry of life comes through suffering and death—Christ’s death on the cross, and the ongoing suffering and even dying of Paul and his team that are an ongoing revelation of the death of Jesus himself (2 Cor. 4:10; cf. Phil. 3:17). What we find developed at length in 2 Corinthians, we see also in Galatians: Paul’s “crucifixion” and suffering are part of his participation in the new creation and evidence of it (Gal. 6:12–17; cf. 5:11). At the same time, if, as it seems, the Galatian believers also suffered (Gal. 3:5, ἐπάθετε; cf. 4:29), it was because of their apocalyptic participation in the new-covenant gifts of Messiah and Spirit (3:1–5).[43]
According to Paul, therefore, life in the Messiah, and specifically ministry, is a kind of revelation, or apocalypse. He does not use ἀποκαλύπτω and ἀποκάλυψις to describe that ministry in 2 Corinthians, however, but φανερόω and φανέρωσις (esp. 2:14; 4:10–11; cf. 4:2; 7:12; 11:6). Paul explains and defends the peculiar narrative shape of his ministry to the Corinthians as one means by which the gospel is made visible or manifest to the world. Without such a revelation, the gospel cannot be known, for it must be proclaimed not only in word as audition, but in life as vision.
This is not to say that ἀποκαλύπτω and ἀποκάλυψις are necessarily precise overlapping synonyms with φανερόω and φανέρωσις. Contrary to the general thrust of scholarship on this question, Dominika Kurek-Chomycz has recently argued that they are not.[44] Rather, she contends, φανερόω and φανέρωσις refer to mediated rather than unmediated revelation.[45] Paul uses this word-family to represent himself as “the medium of divine revelation.”[46] We might say that Paul is the necessary public face of his revelations, both initial (such as mentioned in Gal. 1:16) and ongoing (such as narrated in 2 Cor. 12:1–10), to which ἀποκαλύπτω and ἀποκάλυψις refer.[47]Revelation becomes manifestation.[48]
If Kurek-Chomycz is right about the vocabulary of revelation, then that which occurred ἐν ἐμοί according to Gal. 1:16 should be understood as a direct, and perhaps even private, revelation to Paul, not in (or through) him in any public way. I am not convinced, however, that the verb alone should determine the force of ἐν ἐμοί. Paul’s use of the same phrase in 2:20 suggests that the initial revelation of the Son “in” Paul was, or at least organically became, an ongoing mode of existence shaped by the Son/Messiah “in” him.[49] However, even if the revelation of 1:16 is not a specifically public event (because it is not described in terms of φανερόω or φανέρωσις), my main contention remains intact: Paul’s apocalypse is complete only when it is embodied, when it has a public (“mediated”) manifestation. Rowland agrees: no matter the interpretation of 1:16, “there is other evidence in Paul’s letters of an intimate link between the human medium (the apostle) and the message about, and even the person of, Christ.”[50]
The medium, however, is greater than the apostle himself, even if (at times) he and his colleagues constitute the focal point of the Christ-medium for rhetorical purposes.[51] The apocalyptically revealed new covenant is, and must be, revealed for what it is by being made visible in human lives and communities that are being transformed by the Spirit to bear testimony to the paradoxical reality of the nature of God’s apocalypse and new creation in the crucified Christ. To put it in new-covenant language, new covenant, reception of the Spirit, and Spirit-enabled obedience are inseparable.
Our consideration of Gal. 1:16 in connection with parts of 2 Corinthians means that the divine apocalypse is that which inaugurates the new covenant, and the evidence of the presence of the new covenant is life and ministry that correspond to the apocalypse—to the death and resurrection of Jesus. The common factor in each (the apocalypse and the new covenant) is the activity of the Father and the Son by the Spirit. Our inquiry into 2 Corinthians reinforces precisely what we see, in less developed form, in Galatians itself. The apocalypse of the apocalypse, according to Galatians, means the crucified Messiah alive and active (2:20); it consists of both the apostle who exhibits Christ crucified, bearing the marks of Jesus the crucified, and the community that shares in the faithfulness and love of the crucified and in all the “fruit” his Spirit produces. Of course, Paul also exemplifies faithfulness and love, and the community also, more than likely, suffers. Each manifestation of the new covenant/new creation is due to the activity of God in sending the Son and the Spirit (4:4–6).
“In the Spirit”
We have seen that it is absolutely critical for Paul that the Spirit of God that is sent into human hearts is the Spirit of the Son. This essay’s title, however, refers to the shape of life in the Spirit,[52] yet our focus has been on the Spirit within. These two ways of looking at the “location” of the Spirit are not contradictory. It is significant for Paul that the Spirit is both internal and external to believers, reflecting, I would suggest, the “Spirit in” language (indwelling, internal) and the “Spirit on” language (anointing, external) of the biblical tradition, as well as the prophetic eschatological expectation that the Spirit would be both put within God’s people and poured out on them.[53]
The result for Paul is the mutual indwelling, or reciprocal residence, of: (a) both the Spirit and the Messiah, and (b) the community of believers (as Rom. 8:1–17 makes most clear)—by which, Paul means the Messiah’s dwelling by means of, or in the person of, the Spirit. This intricate understanding of the Spirit is another aspect of the surprising newness of the new covenant. It is a development from the prophetic expectation, especially in the notion of the Spirit of the Messiah. Paul’s use of the idiom of being “in” the Spirit may well be modeled on his language of being “in” the Messiah.[54] It is perhaps his way of saying that it is in fact the surprising messianic Spirit, the Spirit associated with anointing, and thus with the anointed one (cf. 2 Cor. 1:21[55]), that is revealed and given in the new covenant. In any event, to be in Christ is to be in the Spirit, and to be in the Spirit is simultaneously to have the Spirit within (individuals) and among (the community). This is the result of God’s all-encompassing new-covenant incursion.
Conclusion
As noted earlier, it was Lou Martyn who wrote that God’s apocalyptic divine invasion in Christ is analogous to the prophetic promise of a new, divinely given heart and spirit.[56] The argument of this essay suggests that Martyn was absolutely right. We have encountered evidence from Paul’s letters for the inseparability of apocalypse and new covenant, and have therefore contended that Paul should be described as a proponent of the apocalyptic new covenant, the coming of which is an event of disruptive continuity. Moreover, we have seen that inherent in this apocalyptic new covenant is the need for apostles and all believers to embody, and thus also to manifest, the revelation. By means of the Spirit, the church is to be an apocalypse of the apocalypse, a living manifestation and exegesis of the surprising new covenant.[57] Life in the Spirit of the crucified Messiah will therefore reflect the counterintuitive and countercultural ways of God revealed in that messianic apocalypse. Paul’s own life is an attempt to bear witness to that apocalypse, empowered by the Spirit, and to encourage those who encounter him, whether in person or via his letters, to do the same.[58]
* * *
Scripture translations are from the NRSV unless otherwise indicated. ↵
See, e.g., Christopher Rowland, “Paul and the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ,” in The Mystery of God: Early Jewish Mysticism and the New Testament, Compendium rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum 12, eds. Christopher Rowland and Christopher R. A. Morray–Jones (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 137–65. ↵
I do not mean that Rowland himself is necessarily guilty of such a dichotomy. ↵
See esp. N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), e.g., 2:1013, 1025, 1038, 1071–72, 1262–63, 1513. Wright appears t
o concur (e.g., 2:725, 984) that Paul is speaking of what I am calling the apocalyptic new covenant. See also David A. Shaw, “Apocalyptic and Covenant: Perspectives on Paul or Antinomies at War?” JSNT 36, no. 2 (2013): 155–71. Shaw argues that recent “apocalyptic” interpreters actually unknowingly espouse new-covenant themes. Shaw erroneously maintains, however, that apocalyptic interpreters need to admit “a greater place for forensic categories in Paul’s thought” in order to acknowledge his new-covenant framework (168). Rather, this essay argues that full recognition of a claim made by J. Louis Martyn, which Shaw cites approvingly (160n9), is closer to what is needed: recognizing an analogy between divine invasion and the prophetic promise of a new heart and spirit (J. Louis Martyn, “Afterword: The Human Moral Drama,” in Apocalyptic Paul: Cosmos and Anthropos in Romans 5–8, ed. Beverly Roberts Gaventa [Waco: Baylor University Press, 2013], 157–66, at 164n13). ↵
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