Paul’s Testimony to the Doctrine of Sin 27 recognizes that his readers were “once dead in trespasses and sins” ( 2 : 1 ) , and exhorts them to lay aside certain sins (4:25ff). In Colossians, he does the same. In Philippians, he says less about sin, or sins, but in 3:3-9 he tells his ex perience of failure to attain righteousness with all his ad vantages of birth, training, culture, and circumstances. In the pastoral epistles, he rebukes certain sins with no uncertain voice. P a u l ' s e x p e r ie n c e t h e p sy ch o lo g ica l proo f to h im o f HIS DOCTRINE OF SIN Paul was a Pharisee. Righteousness, or right relation with God, was his religious goal. As a Pharisee he felt that he could and must, in himself, achieve righteousness by keep ing the whole written and oral law. This kind of (sup- posable) righteousness he afterwards describes and re pudiates. “For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no con fidence in the flesh: though I myself might have confidence even in the flesh: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as touching zeal, persecuting the church; as touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. Howbeit, what things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ. Yea, verily, and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom I suffered the loss of all things and do count them but refuse, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith” (Phil. 3:3-9, Am. Rev.). His experience as a Pharisee in trying to work out a righteousness of his own showed him to be a moral and religious failure. This experience he reflected in Rom. 7 :7-25 (So Origen, Tertullian, Chrysostom, Theodoret, and most
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