The problems faced by the people of the early Church of Christ were numerous and tenuous; many saw the framework of the new Christian religion collapse upon them. Though Christian fellowship was supposed to provide a means to improve one's life, many were tortured and killed for the very reason that they preached love and peace. All the early Christian fathers, such as Paul, were taking a terrible risk by spreading the Gospel and building up faith communities. Not only were they subject to charges of insurrection and possible treason, they were faced with the fact that the very religion that sparked Christ's Church, Judaism, was itself against them. Christians were also getting mixed messages from the Apostles who claimed authority and, believe it or not, some cultures looked down on the spread of Christianity because they thought the religion sounded like an excuse for pointing fingers and claiming moral superiority. (Bible Belt "fundies" take notice!) This tension, which was found throughout the Roman Empire, led to the many epistle letters found in the New Testament and their circulation, copying, and eventual canonical inclusion. Unfortunately, many thousands were martyred for the faith even though they were only seeking peace and trying to amend their lives.
Paul argues in the letter to the Church in Rome that morality is a very simple path to follow when one is able to clearly see the fork in its road; one path leads to the searing pain of unquenchable fire, while the other leads to the embrace of God. We may recognize today that in these words lies a form of psychological terrorism; threatening eternal damnation upon those who do not accept God's love. Trying to scare people into a life of Christian virtue is still the tactic of some denominations. There were a multitude of cultural and religious obstacles for new Christians to overcome, however, as well as false teachers and prophets; we are also still plagued by these today. The message that was the most important was often overlooked, namely: God is a one-sided judge when Christ is one's defense attorney!
An innate moral sense should guide the actions of all people; sometimes mental illness or disorder can cloud one's judgment, but even perfectly sane people raised in loving homes can do horrendous things. The moral sense within us can lead to doing good, or doing evil. In the strictest interpretation of scripture, good can be said to be that which leads us toward union with God, and evil is, therefore, that which leads away from this union; once more before us is the simple analogy of a fork in the road and the choice one has to make about which way to proceed. Jewish tradition gave the Law of Moses as a covenant with God and the Law was supposed to lead one toward right relationship with God. The majority of Jews, of course, failed to recognize Jesus as the Christ and therefore His mission charged by Him to His apostles to "make disciples of all nations," meant that they had to take the message beyond the walls of Jerusalem and the borders of Israel. Unfortunately, Jewish Law quickly became a stumbling block and a source of great consternation to the process of converting non-Jews to Christianity because some were teaching that to be a Christian you had to first be a good Jew. Too much! All the complicated dietary restrictions, all the "clean" and "unclean" things, all the sacrifice, ritual bathing, keeping away from your spouse during menstruation, etc., was just too complicated and too foreign to the Gentiles; much as the idea of the Isaiah "suffering servant" messiah Jesus turned out to be was just too foreign a concept for the Jewish religious leaders to grasp. So, the early Christians, both Jew and Gentile, needed a new standard of measurement of right from wrong; the answer: let your heart lead you!
In the conversion of one's heart, some of the Law may yet be useful for, as Paul said, exposing sin as sin. Even the most righteous of Jews who claimed obedience to the Law were guilty of transgressing it, and, for Paul, the evidence of this was overwhelming: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind;" basically, this means that it is impossible not to sin for, if your mind strays from the thought of God during the day, you're sinning... Only God can judge sin in the new mindset of conversion of heart, because only God knows the secrets on one's heart. Now, practicing what one preaches has always been a problem since, by nature, even those who preach are sinners. Jewish Christians who argued that Gentile converts must first conform their lives to the Law were, themselves, therefore, guilty of transgressing it. The most important message was, and continues to be, a message of repentance for, in finding forgiveness, the heart may be made to see its transgressions and the "Law" will be "written on one's heart!"
Even in this message, Paul could not escape his Pharisee background, for he backed up his message at every turn with interpretation of "the Law." As a result, he acknowledges the continued, indeed the eternal, covenant the Jews have with God in the Law of Moses. Thankfully, he emphasized the fact that, though the Law be transgressed, mercy and forgiveness exist for the Jews even apart from Christ and His new covenant; this is based on the principle of Christian charity and, from the great theological and philosophical discourse of hypothetical question and answer in Romans 3: 1 - 8, Christians should, even yet today, draw their attitudes towards the Jews and, indeed, all other religions. When faced with the question of God's mercy apart from both the Law and salvation in Christ, one should recognize that all religions offering a key to immortality through morality are worshiping one in the same God! In Romans 2: 8, Paul himself says that these will be given eternal life.
If one truly believes in "the fall" of humankind, one should first take to heart the words: "God created man in His image; in the image of God He created them; male and female." The image of God is a spiritual one; we shared in the eternal life of God from the beginning; we were, are, always have been, and always will be, sharers in the transcendent qualities of God as spiritual beings. Even through his faults, it is obvious that Paul wishes this knowledge to permeate the hearts of all; only in the acceptance of one's unworthiness is the gift of salvation meaningful enough to rend one's heart! Recognizing one's own sinfulness is the first step toward receiving God's grace and, with it, the knowledge of what does or does not lead one toward union with God. For the faithful Christian, the promise is this: God has reconciled us to Himself by His Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection; what He has in store for those who live apart from this faith and how He plans to reconcile them to Himself is reserved unto Him and Him alone! The merciful message Jesus brought us suggests that all who seek after doing good are seeking after reconciliation with God, since God is good and, although "those who do not know the Law will not be judged according to the Law," seeking after morality is seeking after union with God!
