“7 What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. 12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. 13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. 14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. 15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” (Romans 7:7-25 ESV)

Probably the most trying experience the Christian soldier walks through, is the way that law mocks our better senses. Law creates its opposite. It is a rare soldier who is found still tough-as-nails around Basics; instead, he or she loses traction around fact one: that the Devil uses the Law to create tempting scenarios. Why does Law increase the temptation? Because we have misused the law in terms of writing diatribe after spiritually-written diatribe asserting that, “Oh, of course” we adhere to the law. To the absence of tempting what-ifs. To the plain gosh-I-got-it exasperation with the reminders.

Each day is new, and what we walked through gracefully in a former time, the Healthy calm disposition and reluctant engagement with nonetheless willing indulgences, now makes a mockery of our efforts. If we boast of our credentials, that boast itself musses up, frightfully redesigns, reworks and Creates Temptation anew.

The “in touch” soldier directly addresses the tempting scenario, willing to joke and laugh at his or her own complicity. More, the “in touch” soldier knows the bedrock pin to the mat, lance through the heart, constant Fight against Sin. Yes, O man, there was a time you were walking a more graceful walk. Yes, there was a time when scarcely did you worry. But now the blood has fallen not into the sand where it is absorbed, but has landed on the rock (Ezekiel 24:7). Plain for all to see.

The Law creates its opposite. This is because it confuses end things. It confuses our need to worship and the childlike innate dissatisfaction with gods who cannot save. Out of some innate rejection of lifeless Law, we rebel. The law fails as a counselor, and we fall in way over our heads. The law mocks us and we, needful of a Christ, we lose all respect for a Jesus who hasn’t tasted sin like us only remaining sinless. We need that Jesus. We need the one who mocked religiosity by dying on a Cross. The one who gave of His own morality to heal our flawed nature.

The soldier, therefore, is rapaciously seeking plain Deeds of Healing. Plain things deftly handled in pop art, perhaps, if not in the climes of theological astuteness. Plain things urgently ministered to. That He will always become the surpassing spirit Above and Beyond the Law of God. He mastered it by showing its inability to give Life. By showing its determined trajectory towards guilt tripping and failure to complete the task. The task as spelt out by Law. The task as engaging some sinful tendency within the soul, if not of lust then of Pride and Social Climbing. We try to out-climb our neighbors. We try… we are laughed at for being Christian and moral. Yet that morality… it is the first thing Jesus abandoned, while being anointed with the perfume and oil. While being in loving circle of fellowship with His plainly needful disciples. While acknowledging His Father in Heaven, whose straight-talk and hiding in the cleft of the rock not to spoil with a vision, made a Jesus on Earth for us approachable and clean-living. Who washed the feet of His disciples. Who immediately lanced any and all thought, that Mary and Martha for example, were not “clean” for Him to approach. To teach. To embrace. To weep with and laugh alongside.

The soldier is therefore immediately become Theologian, wearing that Cap because it takes a sharp Insight, for the busy fighting man and woman, to reject radically the Law. And in passing to know: to do so is to invite Hatred and Excommunication. But Christ… three years in… He was willing to Die for us. And this we accept because He became Sinner to mock the Devil who finger-wags at us. He became Law to show it futile and leading only to Death. No purity could save the Hour: the Hour was fraught with us laughing at Him, “you don’t know what you’re doing!”. The hour was Busy being possessed of untold Beauty, a Beauty we grow into and find bedrock Friendship in His outstretched hand. Because He walks the walk with us. Because He is always appropriate. Because He Makes it Okay to long for communication and for community. He did not despise Sinners, but made His dinner with them, made His rest with them. 

Did Christ secretly prefer the house of the immoral or of the publican? Knowing He fought primarily with the scribes and the Pharisees, perhaps so. Because the sinner and his or her concomitant house, held relaxation or absence of Law, to such an extent as to Heal and Empower our Jesus the next day to go boldly into the temple. And there soon to die for us.