Jamin Bradley

“As a free and redeemed Christian, you can no longer sin.” This seemed to be the ultimate takeaway from a book I read when I was younger. It wasn’t the first time I had heard such a statement. Growing up, I had come in contact with less intense varieties of this teaching in church. I had also fiddled around with the idea myself while trying to make sense of Paul’s letters in high school.

But I never bit at this interpretation of Scripture. There are too many other passages in Paul’s letters where right living is of crucial importance. Logic eventually falls apart too. For example, who in their right mind would believe that someone could be a sinless Christian serial killer?

This kind of twist on Paul’s teaching is not new. Indeed, these twists happened in Paul’s time, causing Peter to remark, “There are some things in [Paul’s letters] that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction.” Two of Jesus’ flesh brothers, James and Jude, both had to address misapplications of Paul’s teaching as well. James needed to remind Christians that works are required for real faith, while Jude had to confront a church that had de-evolved into a cult of sorts that believed Christians could live however they wanted. Paul himself even feared such misinterpretations of his teachings and gave warnings against such beliefs.

Paul’s theology gets confused for many reasons, all of which we don’t have time to address here. However, there is an easy way to unify the many angles of his teachings: stop using the word “faith” and start using the word “allegiance.” As scholars are beginning to point out, allegiance is a much better English translation of pistis, one of Paul’s favorite Greek words that we translate as faith. When you understand salvation as faith, you assume you’re saved by what you think or believe. But this is another misunderstood avenue of Paul’s teaching, who believed that pistis changed the entirety of one’s life. When you understand salvation as allegiance, you automatically understand that works are essential and that you can’t live free from the law and morality. Instead, you must live by the standards of King Jesus, who is the law. He writes such laws onto our hearts with the help of the Holy Spirit.