On the Law and Doing It

This week's Epistle reading is from Romans 2:10-16. Here St. Paul comments on the difference between hearing the Law and doing it, and how God shows "no partiality", that the judgment is "first to the Jew then to the Gentile". In his reflection on this Fr. Joel explains that in the doing the person chooses to live and act in a certain way, acknowledging that God's way in Christ through the Holy Spirit brings freedom, while hearing only and doing something different leads to a different life, one of slavery and bondage. This is the point of the Law, sin means communion with other gods, the "powers and principalities of darkness" St. Paul speaks of elsewhere, and that kind of communion is unto death.