We gratefully acknowledge exclusive permission from the author,
Raymond Franz, to reproduce this chapter from his book,
Insearch of Christian Freedom©, on BEACON web site. Information
for purchasing the book may be found at the end of this chapter.

Chapter 9 from the book, In Search of Christian Freedom© by Raymond Franz Blood and Life, Law and Love

The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
--2 Corinthians 3:6, New Revised Standard Version.

WHAT IS now discussed is not to imply in any way that the use
of blood is not without its serious degree of risk. That there is
risk is a simple fact. Nor does it in any way imply that the person
who makes a personal, uncoerced choice to avoid transfusions (or any
acceptance of blood components and fractions, for that matter) on
purely religious grounds is acting improperly. Even acts that are proper
in themselves become wrong if done in bad conscience. As the apostle
puts it, "Consider the man fortunate who can make his decision without
going against his conscience. . . . every act done in bad faith is a
sin."1 Whether, in view of the evidence that will be presented, certain
scruples regarding blood reflect a weak or a strong conscience, I leave
to the reader to judge.
_At the same time, the seriousness of an organization's responsibility
in imposing its views on an individual's personal conscience in such
critical matters should never be underestimated. What has happened
with the Watch Tower Society in the field of blood illustrates forcefully
how legalism can lead an organization into a morass of inconsistencies,
with the possibility of its members suffering whatever unfavorable
consequences result.
_Starting in the late 1940s, the organization initially declared an
outright ban on the acceptance of blood in any form, whole or
fractional. Then, over the years, it added on new rulings that have
entered into more and more technical aspects of the issue. The
following chart basically presents the current position of the organiza-
tion on the use of blood:

1	Romans 14:22, 23, JB

2	These positions are spelled out in the Awake! magazine of June 22, 1982, which carries a reprint of an article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (November 1981 issue). The article was prepared by the Watch Tower Society and sets forth Jehovah's Witnesses' position on blood.
3	Comment made by Dr. Lowell Dixon, former staff physician and author or co-author of various articles on the subject of blood published in Watch Tower publications.

4	An inquiry to the Atlanta Red Cross on January 22, 1990, revealed that only about 6 percent of all blood donated there goes out to hospitals as whole blood, the other 94 percent being divided into component parts.
5	The Encyclopoedia Britannica, Vol. 3 (1969), page 795; The Encyclopedia Americana, International Edition, Vol. 4, 1989, page 91.
6	Interestingly, the water, composing most of the plasma, freely "moves in and out of the bloodstream with great rapidity" and exchanges with water of the body cells and extracellular fluids. So it is never a constant component of the blood stream. Encyclopoedia Britannica, Macropoedia, Vol. 15,1987, pages 129,131 .)

_Leukocytes, often called "white blood cells," are also prohibited.
In reality the term "white blood cells" is rather misleading. This is
because most leukocytes in a person's body actually exist outside the
blood system. one's body contains about 2 to 3 kilos of leukocytes
and only about 2-3 percent of this is in the blood system. The other
97-98 percent is spread throughout the body tissue, forming its defense
(or immune) system.7
_This means that a person receiving an organ transplant will simul-
taneously receive into his body more foreign leukocytes than if he had
accepted a blood transfusion. Since the Watch Tower organization now
allows organ transplantations, its adamant stand against leukocytes,
while allowing other blood components, becomes meaningless. It
could only be defended by use of convoluted reasonings, certainly not
on any moral, rational or logical grounds. The arbitrary splitting of
the blood into "major" and "minor" components is also seen to be
without sound basis. The organization evidently prohibits plasma--
though mainly water--because of its volume (55% of the blood), yet
it prohibits leukocytes which compose less than one percent of the blood!"8
_The absence of either moral or logical grounds for the position is
also seen in that human milk contains leukocytes, more leukocytes, in
fact, than found in a comparable amount of blood. Blood contains
about 4,000 to ll,000 leukocytes per cubic millimeter, while a
mother's milk during the first few months of lactation may contain up
to 50,000 leukocytes per cubic millimeter. That is up to five to twelve
times more than the amount in blood!9

7	The New Encyclopoedia Britannica, Macropoedia, Vol. 15 ( 1987), page 135, points out that "Most of the leukocytes are outside of the circulation, and the few in the bloodstream are in transit from one site to another." To categorize them as a "major blood component" is somewhat like saying that passengers riding on a train are a constituent or integral part of the railroad system personnel. Dr. C. Guyton, in The Textbook of Medical Physiology (7th ed., Saunders Company, Philadelphia), page 52, explains that the main reason leukocytes are present in the blood "is simply to be transported from the bone marrow or Iymphoid tissue to the areas of the body where they are needed."
8	There is evidence that the figure shown in the Awake! chart is inaccurate and that the percentage of leukocytes may approach as much as 1% of the total volume of the blood. At any rate, the fraction is so small that Awake! makes no attempt to show it in the chart's test tube, and it is included with the platelets which, it may be noted, themselves constitute only about 2/l0 of 1 percent of the total of the blood. They are also on the prohibited list.
9	The New Encyclopoedia Britannica, Macropoedia, Vol. 15 ( 1987), page 135; J. H. Green, An Introduction to Human Physiology, 4th ed. (oxford: oxford University Press, 1976), page 16). on the amount of leukocytes in human milk, see Armond S. Goldman, Anthony J. Ham Pong, and Randall M. Goldblum, "Host Defenses: Development and Maternal Contributions," Year Book of Pediatrics (Chicago: Year Book Medical Publishers, Inc., 1985), page 87.

_A major factor to keep in mind is that the Watch Tower
organization's argumentation seeks much of its support in provisions
of the Mosaic law commanding that the blood of slaughtered animals
be poured out, this being cited as though justifying the organization's
objection to any storing of human blood.10 Remember also that it
presents the blood components it allows as constituting only a negli-
gible amount of blood. Then consider these facts with regard to the
components the organization classes as permissible:
_One of these is albumin. Albumins are primarily used in connection
with burns and severe bleeding. A person with third degree burns over
30 to 50 percent of his body would need about 600 grams of albumin.
Watch Tower policy would allow this. How much blood would be
needed to extract this quantity? It would take from 10 to 15 liters
(from l0.6 to 15.9 quarts) of blood to produce that quantity of
albumin.11 This is hardly a "small amount." It is also obvious that the
liters of blood from which it is derived were stored, not "poured out."
_Similarly with immunoglobulins (gamma globulins). To produce
sufficient gamma globulin for one injection by syringe (a vaccination
persons, including Jehovah's Witnesses, traveling to certain southern
countries may take as protection against cholera) close to 3 liters of
blood are needed as the source of supply.12 This is still more blood than
is generally employed for a common blood transfusion. And again, the
gamma globulin is drawn from blood that is stored, not "poured out."
_Hemophiliac preparations (Factors VIII and IX) remain. Before these
preparations came into use, the average life span of a hemophiliac in the
1940s was 16.5 years.l3 Today, due to these blood-derived
preparations, a hemophiliac may reach a normal life span. To produce
preparations that could keep a hemophliac alive over that period of time
would require extractions from an estimated 100,000 liters of blood.14
Even though the hemophiliac preparations themselves represent only a
fraction of that total, when we consider their source we must ask how
this could possibly be viewed as involving a "small amount" of blood?

10	Genesis 9:3, 4; Leviticus 7:26, 27; 17:11-14; Deuteronomy 12:22-24.
11	There are about 50 grams of albumin in one liter of blood. To get 600 grams of albumin, therefore, some 12 liters of blood are needed.
12	This figure has been arrived at by dividing the amount of gamma globulin in one syringe with the amount found in one liter of blood.
13	In 1900 it was only 11 years.
14	This estimate is very conservative. The true figure is probably much higher in most cases. The June 15, 1985, Watchtower (page 30) states that "each batch of Factor VIII is made from plasma that is pooled from as many as 2,500 blood donors ."

_The use of any of these blood components obviously implies storage of
large, even massive, amounts of blood. on the one hand the Watch
Tower organization decrees as allowable the use of these blood
components--and thereby the storage involved in their extraction and
production--while on the other they state that they are opposed to all
storage of blood as Biblically condemned. This is the sole basis they
give for prohibiting the use of autologous blood by a Witness (that is,
the person's having some of his own blood stored and then returned to
his blood stream during or following surgery).15 Clearly, the positions
taken are arbitrary, inconsistent and contradictory. It is difficult to
believe that the formulators, and also the writers of explanations and
defenses, of such policy are so ignorant of the facts as to fail to see the
inconsistency and arbitrariness involved. Yet that alone could save the
position from also being termed dishonest.

_To rule in matters of health and medical treatment--prohibiting this,
allowing that--is to tread on dangerous ground. In the one case we may
prove guilty of creating an irrational fear, and in the other we may
create a false sense of security. The course of wisdom--and humility-is
to leave the responsibility to decide on such distinctions where it
belongs in the first place, with the conscience of the individual.
_Watch Tower articles on the subject of blood stress the
"uncompromising" position taken on blood by the organization,
frequently praising its own policies as safeguarding the health and life
of its members. Rarely if ever does one read any data or experiences
unfavorable to those policies.
_Recent articles claim that the organizational policies have protected
members from contracting AIDS. An Awake! article in the October 8,
1988, edition, makes this claim. The same article points out (page 11)
that "by early 1985 most of the l0,000 Americans with severe
hemophilia had been infected with the AIDS virus." The October 22,
l990, issue of Awake! (page 8), updates this saying: "Hemophiliacs,
most of whom use a plasma-based clotting agent to treat their illness
were decimated. In the United States, between 60 and 90 percent of
them got AIDS before a procedure was set up to heat-treat the medicine
in order to rid it of HIV." Similarly the June 15, 1985, Watchtower in
an article titled "Britain, Blood and Aids" states on page 30 that "some
70 million units of concentrated Factor VIII" were imported from the
United States to treat British hemophiliacs and goes on to say, "It
seems that by importing this blood product the AIDS virus was
transferred to the British supply."

15	The organization's position on this is spelled out, with much technical detail and reasoning, in the Watchtower of March 1, 1989, pages 30 and 31.

_While containing much praise of the protective power of the
organization's policies on blood, there is one thing that all these articles
fail to point out to their readers. It is that those hemophiliacs thus
infected got their infection primarily from a blood source that the
Watch Tower Society had officially declared as permissible: Factor
VIII hemophiliac preparations extracted from plasma.l6 As the October
22, l990, Awake! (pages 7 and 8) shows, some incidents of AIDS
infection have also come through "tissue transplants," which are
similarly pronounced "allowable" by the organization.
_All of this illustrates both how foolish and how utterly wrong it is for
an organization to assume to have the wisdom and the divine authority
to embark on the development of a complicated set of standards and of
technical distinctions and then impose this as an obligatory moral rule,
deciding for others in what case and in what circumstances a matter can
be counted as either outside or within the realm of personal conscience.

_The risk inherent in transfusion of blood and blood components or
fractions is real. At the same time it is also true that people can die in
surgery due to massive hemorrhaging. The use of one's own blood,
stored until time of surgery, would logically appeal to persons
concerned about the possibility of blood-related infections. Yet, as has
been seen, the organization assumes the authority to declare this outside
the realm of personal decision, prohibiting even an "intraoperative
collection" of blood (where, during the surgery, some blood is drawn
off into a plastic container and later returned to the body).l7 And many
thousands of persons are willing to relinquish the right to make their
own decision in such crucial matters, allowing an organization to decide
for them, even though its history is one of unwillingness to
acknowledge its responsibility for damage that its policies may produce.
Fed almost entirely only those statements and experiences that are
favorable, they are rarely, if ever, told of negative factors.
_Consider just one example, taken from an article in Discover magazine
of August, 1988. Beginning at age 42, a Witness woman had had
surgical removal of recurring bladder tumors over a period of several
years. This last time she had waited overly long to see her doctor, was
bleeding heavily, and was severely anemic. She insisted that she was
not to receive a transfusion and this refusal was respected.

16	See Awake!, June 22, 1982, page 25; the Watchtower, June l5, 1978, page 30. This ruling was made during the time that the risk of AIDS--though then not --was high; since that time, screening tests and heat treatment have greatly reduced risk of this blood- related infection.
17	See Awake! June 22, 1982, page 25.

Over a period of a week urologists tried unsuccessfully to stem the
bleeding. Her blood count continued to drop. The doctor writing the
article describes what took place:

_Gradually, as her blood count dropped further, Ms. Peyton became short of breath. The body's organs need a certain amount of oxygen to function. That oxygen is carried from the lungs to the periphery by hemoglobin molecules in the red cells. . . . The medical team gave Ms. Peyton supplemental oxygen through a mask until she was breathing virtually pure O2. The few red cells she had were fully loaded--but there just weren't enough vehicles left to transport the fuel her body needed. _Her hunger for air increased. Her respiratory rate climbed. She became more and more groggy, and finally--inevitably--the muscle fibers of her heart declared their desperate need for oxygen. She developed crushing, severe chest pain.

The doctor writing the article relates her feelings on arriving at the
patient's room:

_As I walked into the room. . . I was awed by the scene in front of me. At the center of everyone's attention was a large woman with an oxygen mask, gasping for air, breathing faster than seemed humanly possible. At the head of the bed were three friends, fellow church [witness] members, coaching her. . . . At her side were several doctors--one monitoring her falling blood pressure, another coaxing some blood from an artery. The fluid that slowly filled the syringe had the consistency of Hawaiian Punch; tests on the same revealed a red cell count of only 9 [normal would have been 40]. Hanging from the bed rail was a bag of cherry-red urine. The woman was dying. Her cardiogram tracings showed the deep valleys that signal a heart in pain. Within a matter of hours the damage they represented would become irreversible.

_The woman went into cardiac arrest. A team of doctors and nurses
began cardiopulmonary resuscitation, administered epinephrine and
atropine, then an electrical jolt to the heart. It fluttered into activity,
then stopped again. More CPR, more epinephrine and atropine, another
electrical jolt, more CPR. This went on for one hour until there was no
longer any hope or purpose. The patient was dead beyond recovery.
_The physician describing this did not characterize the woman as simply
a fanatic. She writes:

_She was an intelligent woman, I was told, who totally understood the implications of her decision. But her judgment, it seemed to me, arose from a blind spot imposed by her faith. l8

18	Elisabeth Rosenthal, article titled "Blinded by the Light," Discover magazine, August, 1988, page 28-30.

20	Roman 6:14; 10:4; Hebrews 8:6, 13.

_Undoubtedly the principal Biblical text employed in the Watch Tower's
argumentation is that at Acts 15:28, 29. These verses contain the
decision of a council at Jerusalem and include the words, "keep
abstaining from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from
things strangled and from fornication." The Scriptural evidence that this
was not stated as some form of legally binding declaration is discussed
later in this chapter. This matter is crucial since it is the prime basis for
the Society's argument that the ordinances in the

23

As a friend pointed out, to place the importance of blood as a symbol over that of life itself is somewhat like a man's placing more importance on his wedding ring (symbolic of his wedded state) than on his marriage itself, or on his wife. It is as if, faced with either the sacrifice of his wife or the sacrifice of his wedding ring, he would opt in favor of saving the wedding ring. It may also be noted that Christ made clear that the law was made for man, not man for the law. (Mark 2:27) Thus, if life was at stake, Israelites were not obliged to hold to Sabbatical rules if doing so would work against their saving a life, even though that life was the life of a sheep or bull. (Luke 14:5; Matthew 12:11,12) It seems logical to conclude that the same principles would also apply as regards Mosaic laws on blood.

24

Romans 3:27; 6:14; l0:4; Galatians 3:10, 11, 23-25; James 2:8, 12.

25	The Watchtower of Sepember 15, 1958 (page 575), states that "Each time the prohibition of blood is mentioned in the Scriptures it is in connection with taking it as food, and so it is as a nutrient that we are concerned with in its being forbidden." This still seems to be the basic position and so the Society still argues that a blood transfusion is the same as eating blood, taking it into the body as food.
26	Awake! October 22, l990, page 9. In endeavoring to claim medical support for their view of transplanted blood as a "feeding" of the body, Watch Tower publications have always resorted to quotations from some medical source of an earlier century, such as the Frenchman Denys of the 17th century. (See, for example, the Watchtower, April l5, 1985, page 13.) They cannot quote a single modern authority in support of this view.
27	The Watch Tower Society has at times compared a transfusion with infusing alcohol into the veins. But alcohol is a very different liquid, already in a form that body cells can absorb as a nutrient. Alcohol and blood are completely different in this respect.

28

See, for example, the Watchtower, March 1, 1989, page 30; April 15, 1985, page 12.

29

See, for example, the Watchtower, June 1, 1990, pages 30, 31. The apostle Peter states that Christ "bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed." (1 Peter 2:24; NRSV; compare Isaiah 53:4, 5; Acts 28:27.) But this certainly does not justify implying that one's seeking to heal wounds or other physical ailments by medical means is tantamount to showing a lack of appreciation for Christ's healing power in these vital spiritual respects.

'Abstain from Blood'
The letter sent out by the apostles and older men of Jerusalem, recorded
at Acts chapter fifteen, uses the term "abstain" in connection with things
sacrificed to idols, blood, things strangled and fomication.30 The Greek
term they used (apékhomai) has the basic meaning of "to stand off
from." The Watch Tower publications imply that, with regard to blood,
it has a total, all-embracing sense. Thus, the publication You Can Live
Forever in Paradise on Earth, page 216, says: "'abstaining from blood'
means not taking it into your body at all." Similarly the Watchtower of
May 1, 1988, page 17, says: "Walking in Jesus' footsteps would mean
not taking blood into the body either orally or in any other way." But
does this term, as used in the Scriptures, actually carry the absolute
sense these publications imply? or can it instead have a relative sense,
relating to a specific and limited application?
_That it may apply, not in a total, all-embracing sense, but in a limited,
specific way can be seen from its use in such texts as 1 Timothy 4:3.
There the apostle Paul warns that some professed Christians would
introduce teachings of a pernicious nature, "forbidding to marry,
commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be partaken of
with thanksgiving." Clearly he did not mean that these persons would
command others to abstain totally, in any way, from all foods created
by God. That would mean total fasting and lead to death. He was
obviously referring to their prohibiting specific foods, evidently those
prohibited under the Mosaic law.
_Similarly, at 1 Peter 2:11 the apostle admonishes:

_Beloved, I exhort you as aliens and temporary residents to keep abstaining from fleshly desires, which are the very ones that carry on a conflict against the soul.

_If we were to take this expression literally, in an absolute sense, it
would mean we could not satisfy any fleshly desire at all. That certainly
is not the meaning of the apostle's words. We have many "fleshly
desires," including

30	Acts l5:20, 29.

31 32 33 34

Acts l5:5. Acts l5:10. Acts 15:19-21. Compare Acts 13:44-48;14:1; 17:1-5, l0-12, l5-17; 18:4.

35	Compare Acts 18:1-4, 24-28.
36	Here, again, if one assigned an absolute sense to the expression to 'abstain from blood, ' viewing it as a some kind of blanket prohibition, this would mean that one could not submit to blood tests of any kind, could not undergo surgery unless it were of a bloodless kind, and in other ways would have to "stay away from" blood in every respect. The context gives no indication that such a blanket prohibition was intended and indicates instead that the injunction was directed specifically to the actual eating of blood.
37	As far back as April l5, l909, the Watch Tower recognized this as the intent of the letter, saying (page 117): "The things here recommended were necessary to a preservation of the fellowship of the 'body' composed of Jews and Gentiles with their different education and sentiments "

Preferential Rulings
While on the Governing Body I could not help but feel that there is a
measure of discriminatory application of policy, one favoring those in a
professional position. Teachers may teach evolution as a subject, doing
so from "a purely objective viewpoint" and preferably initially
explaining to the class their differing viewpoint.39 As has been seen,
attorneys are allowed to serve at political election centers. Perhaps
most notable of all, however, is that doctors may not only belong to
medical organizations which approve of such practices as blood
transfusions and abortion, but they are also told that they themselves
may administer a blood transfusion to a patient who is not a Witness
and who requests this.40 This is rationalized on the basis of the Mosaic
law's allowing Israelites to sell to foreigners meat from animals that
had died unbled!41 Yet the blood in those animals was still in their
bodies where it had been all along, it had not been extracted and
stored--a process which the organization condemns as showing
contempt for God's law.42 All the intense urging to show "deep respect

38	Acts 15:5, 23-
39	This is discussed in the proposed Correspondence Guidelines under "Schools, Secular Education."
40	See the Watchtower, November l5, 1964, pages 682, 683; also the Watchtower, April 1, 1975, page 215, 216, on cross-matching blood for transfusions. The revised Correspondence Cuidelines (as submitted) says the doctor or nurse may administer such transfusion if so "directed by a superior."
41	Deuteronomy 14:21.
42	It should be noted that the same Watchtower of November l5, 1964, also leaves as a matter of conscience a grocer's or a butcher's selling of blood sausage to "a worldly person." It would seem that, having decided to use this portion of the Mosaic law to justify the lenient stand toward medical practitioners, the writer of the material felt also required to add this comment on grocers and butchers. However, once again, this is not selling meat from an unbled animal but the selling of a product made through the collecting and storing and processing of blood--elsewhere condemned by Watch Tower policy

Why Do People Accept This?
In the apostle Paul's day he spoke of those "who want to be under law."
(Galatians 4:21) Many today still do. Unlike the Judaizers of Paul's day,
men may not advocate submission to Mosaic law, but by a legalistic
approach to Christianity they convert it into a law code, a body of rules.
They create a form of bondage to regulations, traditional policies, and
these govern people's relationship to God.
_But why do others submit to such imposition? What is it that causes
people to relinquish the precious freedom to exercise their own moral
judgment, even in the most private areas of their lives? What causes
them to submit to the interpretations and rulings of imperfect men, even
at the risk of losing employment, suffering imprisonment, placing
marriage relationships under great strain, even risking life itself,
whether it be their own or that of a loved one?
_Many factors enter in. There may be social and family pressures, with
conformity as the way to avoid disagreement, even conflict. There can
be the sheer, paralyzing fear of divine rejection and eventual
destruction if one should wind up outside the organizational "ark." But
there is another reason that is perhaps more basic, one that is often more
at the very root of the matter.
_Most people like things spelled out in black and white, like to have
issues neatly catalogued for them as either right or wrong. Making
decisions based on one's own conscience can be difficult, at times
agonizing. Many prefer not to make that effort, prefer simply to let
someone else tell them, be their conscience for them. This is
what allowed for the development of rabbinical control and

43

In the United States, Witness doctors and lawyers meet annually to discuss such matters as "confidentiality and privilege" in their relations with fellow Witnesses, and similar topics. I seriously doubt that any Witnesses engaged in occupations of lesser esteem could hold comparable gatherings without having these frowned upon or discouraged by the organization

44	See Judaism, Vol. II, by George Foot Moore (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1954), pages 31, 32.

rules regarding certain aspects of medical practice. The March 1, 1989,
Watchtower, in the "Questions from Readers" section, discusses the
method of withdrawing blood from a patient some time before an
operation and storing this for re-use during or following the operation.
it then states categorically that Jehovah's Witnesses "DO NOT accept
this procedure." The reason? The blood "is no longer part of the
person." The text at Deuteronomy 12:24, is cited, which says that the
blood of a slaughtered animal must be poured out upon the ground. By
some reasoning this law regarding animal slaughter is viewed as
presenting a parallel situation to the case of storing a living person's
blood as just described.
_But then the article goes on to discuss another method, where, during
the operation, the patient's blood is diverted into a heart-lung pump or a
hemodialysis machine (artificial kidney device) for oxygenating or
filtering before returning into the patient's body. The article informs its
readers that, unlike the other method, this method can be viewed as
acceptable by a Christian. Why? Because the Christian can view it "as
elongating their circulatory system so that blood might pass through an
artificial organ," and thus feel that "the blood in this closed circuit was
still part of them and did not need to be 'poured out."'
_How different is this technical "elongating" of the circulatory system
from the rabbinical legalism that permitted the "elongating" of a
sabbath day's journey's allowable distance through the technicality of an
artificial second domicile? or how is this classifying of the blood as
being technically in a "closed circuit" different from the ancient
legalism of making a "closed circuit" out of a number of houses by
means of an artificial doorway? The same type of casuistic reasoning
and legalistic use of technicalities is employed in both cases, ancient
and modem.
_In their own hearts, many Witnesses might feel that the first method,
that of storing one's own blood, is really no more unscriptural than the
second method, running the blood through a heart-lung pump and
machine. Yet they are not free to follow their own conscience. An
individual's life might lie in the balance, but the Watch Tower's
interpretative reasonings and technicalities must be observed, for they
are part of the "great body of Theocratic law." To fail to obey would be
to risk disfellowshipment.

The Weakness of Law and the Power of Love
Law often produces an outward conformity that masks what people
are inside. In Jesus' day, it allowed religious leaders, by their
scrupulous'living by the rules,' to "appear to people from the outside

45 46

Matthew 23:27, 28, JB. Romans 13:8-10, NW.

47	1 Corinthians 8:1-12, PME.

How Genuine the Unity Achieved?
It is true that by establishing a legal control over others a form of unity
and order can be achieved. But how genuine is it? Is it not in fact a
unity and order based on uniformity and conformity? on the other hand,
does refusal to allow men to exercise--through their

48

With regard to sexual immorality (or "fornication" in some translations), also listed in the Jerusalem letter, the apostle nowhere presents this as something that might be either right or wrong depending upon whether it might cause stumbling. He evidently viewed it as having no justifying factors. Yet, neither is a legal ruling presented as necessary for the Christian to recognize the need to avoid sexual immorality. As Paul observes at 1 Corinthians 6:13-19, if the person is guided by the law of love, he will find it inadmissible, recognizing it as a misuse of his body which is joined to Christ. (See also 1 Thessalonians 4:3-6.)

49

1 Corinthians 10:29, NW.

The Blessing of Christian Freedom
An incredibly complex set of rules is operative today among Jehovah's
Witnesses and it takes from them the exercise of personal conscience in
a very wide area of life and conduct, makes them subject to an
ecclesiastical legislature and supreme court composed of a few fallible
men.52 As a former member of that legislature and court, I am
convinced that the root of all the problem lies in not recognizing the
truth that, as Christians, we are no longer under law but are under God's
merciful kindness through Christ. Through God's Son we can enjoy
freedom from lawkeeping, rejoice in a righteousness that is the product,
not of rule-keeping, but of faith and love.
_The failure to appreciate this divine provision, the doubt that it is
actually possible for an invisible Person to exercise effective headship
and direction of his followers on earth without some highly organized,
visible authority structure serving as a religious court, and the
reluctance to believe that people can be protected against wrongdoing
without being surrounded by a "fence" of laws, rules and decrees--this
is what causes many, perhaps most, persons to be shocked at the
thought of not being under law, to reject it as not only impractical but
dangerous, pernicious,

50 51 52

1 John 4:20; 1 Corinthians 12:12-26; Ephesians 4:15, 16. Colossians 3:14;1 Corinthians 13:4-7. In a letter by Watch Tower attorney Leslie R. Long, dated March 29, 1987, he refers to a congregational judicial committee as "an ecclesiastical tribunal." If the term applies on the congregational level, it is far more applicable at the uppermost level, where the Governing Body functions as a supreme "ecclesiastical tribunal."

_But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. . . the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithful- ness, gentleness and self control. Against such things there is no law.53

_This is the grandness of Christian freedom, to know that one can enjoy
the free and spontaneous exercise of those divine qualities with no
religious authority having the right to step in and countermand
expressions of love or kindness or gentleness or any other such quality.
They can do this free from anxiety knowing that "there is no law," no
set of rules to hobble them in doing what they are convinced in their
heart of hearts is the right and good thing to do, the kind and loving
thing to do, approved by God, even though disapproved by certain men.
_Surely, then, our not being under law but under God's gracious
kindness in no way minimizes our sense of responsibility as Christ's
freedmen. In reality, it increases it. For we know that we must "talk and
behave like people who are going to be judged [not by some law code
or by a humanly imposed set of standards, but] by the law of freedom,
because there will be judgment without mercy for those who have not
been merciful themselves, but the merciful need have no fear of
judgment."54 That "law of freedom" is the one the disciple James had
just mentioned in his letter as the "sovereign law" or "supreme law,"
namely, "You must love your neighbor as yourself."
_There is a cleansing effect, a heart-strengthening effect, in knowing
that our being pleasing to our heavenly Father will be determined, not
by whether we have lived our lives according to law, a "body of rules,"
but whether we have lived them according to love. God's Son, our Head
and Master, who grants us freedom from lawkeeping--and from human
religious law imposers and law enforcers--exemplified that love for us.
We therefore have no need to focus attention on committing to memory
some complex set of organizational rules and policies or even to think
in terms of law. Rather we focus attention on God's Son and what we
have learned of him through God's Word and faithfully seek to
exemplify his life in our own.

53 54

Galatians 5:22, 23, NIV. James 2:12, 13 JB.

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