The Righteousness of God
The purpose of the covenant, in the Hebrew Bible, was never simply that the Creator wanted to have Israel as a special people, irrespective of the fate of the rest of the world. The purpose of the covenant was that, through this means, the Creator would address and save His entire world. The call of Abraham was designed to undo the sin of Adam. But, as the exile made clear, Israel needed redeeming; the messenger needed a message of salvation - deliverance. The people with the solution had become part of the problem.
Most first-century Jews did not believe the exile had ended. The Temple had not been rebuilt properly; the Messiah had not yet arrived; the general resurrection had not occurred; the Torah was not being observed perfectly; the Gentiles were not flocking in to hear the word of the Lord on Mount Zion. Until these things had happened, god's purpose and promises had not come to pass. The Jewish eschatological hope was hope for justification, for God to vindicate His people at last.
Paul had imagined that YHVH would vindicate Israel after her suffering at the hand of the pagans. Instead He had vindicated Jesus [the representative man of Israel] after his suffering at the hand of the pagans. The resurrection demarcated Jesus as the true Messiah, the true bearer of Israel's God - sent destiny. So if Jesus was the Messiah, and his death and resurrection really were the decisive heaven-sent defeat of sin and death and vindication of the people of YHVH, then this means that the Age to Come had already begun, had already been inaugurated, even though the Present Age, the time of sin, rebellion and wickedness, was still proceeding apace.
The death and resurrection of Jesus were themselves the great eschatological event, revealing god's covenant faithfulness, His way of putting the world to rights: the word for 'reveal' is apokalypso, from which we get 'apocalypse'. Paul realized that he was already living in the time of the end, even though the previous dimension of time was still carrying on all around him. The Present Age and the Age to Come overlapped and he was liberated in the middle, liberated to serve God in a new way, with a new knowledge to which he had before been blind to. If the Age to Come had arrived, if the resurrection had already begun to take place, then this was the time when the Gentiles were to come in.
Saul's vision on the road to Damascus equipped him with an entirely new perspective, though one which kept its roots firm and deep within his previous covenantal theology. Israel's destiny had been summed up and achieved in Jesus the Messiah. The Age to Come had been inaugurated. Saul himself was summoned to be its agent. He was to declare to the pagan world that YHVH, the God of Israel, was the one true God of the whole world, and that in Jesus of Nazareth He had overcome evil and was creating a new world in which justice and peace would reign supreme. He was now to be a herald of the king. What never changed was his utter and unswerving loyalty to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who made promises to Abraham, the God who gave the law, and the God who spoke through the prophets, including THAT PROPHET JESUS. Paul proclaimed that when YHVH set up His own king as the true ruler, His true earthly representative, all other kingdom would be confronted with their rightful overlord. Paul knew that because of Jewish monotheism that there can be 'no king but God'. The proclamation of the good news message about the coming Kingdom of God is an authoritative summons to obedience, in Paul's case, to what he calls 'the obedience of faith', because Jesus is lord.
The announcement of the 'crucified Messiah' is the key to everything because it declares to the rulers of this age that their time is up; had they realized what was going on, 'they would not have crucified the lord of glory' (1 Cor:1:18 2:8). The death of Jesus, seen as the culmination of his great act of obedience, is the means whereby the reign of sin and death is replaced with the reign of grace and righteousness (Rom:5:12-21). The good news included the announcement of a royal victory
When we ask how it was that Jesus' cruel death was the decisive victory over the powers, sin and death included, Paul at once replies: because it was the fulfilment of God's promise that through Abraham and his 'seed' [Jesus] He would undo the evil in the world. God established His covenant with Abraham in the first place for this precise purpose.
Paul's exposition of God's faithfulness to His covenant (in technical language, His 'righteousness'), is explained in terms of the fulfilment of the promises to Abraham (Rom: 3:21 - 4:25), and then explored in terms of the undoing of Adam's sin (5:12-21) and ultimately of the liberation of the whole creation (8:17-25). In Galatians the full exposition of the covenant with Abraham, and how it has reached its dramatic climax in Jesus the Messiah, points ahead to the message of 'new creation' (6:15). In 2 Corinthians, similarly, new covenant (chapter 3) leads to new creation (chapter 5). And always the fulfilment focuses on the death of Jesus, the covenant-fulfilling act, the moment when God executed judicial sentence on sin itself (Roma:3:24-26; 8:3), the moment when God's astonishing love was unveiled in all its glory (Rom:5:6-11; 8:31-39). When Paul declared that 'the Messiah died for our sins according to the scriptures' this is the beginning of his official summary of 'the gospel' in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, he means that the entire scriptural story, the great drama of God's dealings with Israel, came together when the young Jew from Nazareth was nailed up by the Romans and left to die. The shameful death of Jesus was the centre and starting-point of what 'the gospel' was all about. It was the fulfilment of the Isianic message. It was the proclamation of the ultimate royal victory. It was the Jewish message of good news for the world. Without the resurrection of Jesus, the crucifixion carries no gospel, no announcement of royal victory over the rebellious creation, when the forces that have enslaved humans and the world are defeated once and for all. Since Jesus had defeated sin, death could not hold him. His resurrection from the dead meant he indeed had dealt with sin on the cross - in other words, that God through His son Jesus had achieved at last what He had promised to Abraham and the prophets. As far as Paul was concerned, the most important eschatological event, through which the living God had unveiled (apocalypsed) His plan to save the whole cosmos, had occurred when Jesus rose from the dead! God's righteousness is vindicated.
At the heart of 'God's righteousness ' is His covenant with Abraham/Israel, the covenant through which He will address and solve the problem of evil in and for the whole world.
We can say: "Enter not into judgment with your servant, O Lord, for in your sight shall no man living be justified" (Psalm 14:3)
If and when God does act to vindicate his people, his people will then, metaphorically speaking, have the status of 'righteousness'. God's own righteousness is His covenant faithfulness, because of which he will vindicate Israel, and bestow upon her the status of 'righteous', as the vindicated or acquitted defendant.
God has renewed His covenant, and has done so with a community in which Jews and Gentiles belong together, in which the badge of circumcision is irrelevant.
God has been true to His covenant, which always aimed to deal with the sin of the world; He has kept His promises; He has dealt with sin on the stake; He has done so impartially, making a way of salvation for Jew and Gentile alike; and He now, as the righteous judge, helps and saves the helpless who cast themselves on His mercy. What God has done in the Messiah Jesus was all along the meaning and intention behind the promises made to Abraham in Genesis 15, the great covenant chapter in which God promised him a worldwide family characterized by faith. Romans 3:21 - 4:25 as a whole expounds and celebrates God's own righteousness, God's covenant faithfulness, revealed, unveiled, in the great apocalyptic events of the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. Paul declared that the 'righteousness of God' had been revealed in the gospel of Jesus the Messiah, the gospel which declares that God has one way of salvation - deliverance for Jew and Gentile alike. The gospel, he says, reveals or unveils God's own righteousness, His covenant faithfulness, which operates through the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah for the benefit of all those who in turn are faith (from faith to faith). In other words, when Paul announces that Jesus the Messiah is lord, he is in that very act and announcement unveiling before the world the great news that the one god of all the world has been true to His word, has dealt decisively with the evil that has invaded His creation, and is now restoring justice, peace and truth.
In Galatians 3 is a lengthy exposition of the family of Abraham, focused initially on the covenant chapter, Genesis 15, and moving though various other covenantal passages, not least from Deuteronomy 27. In discussing Abraham, Paul is not simply producing a powerful string of proof texts. He is going back to the actual subject, which is not how individual, Abraham then and the Galatians now, come to faith (as we say), but rather the question of who belongs to Abraham's family. This is clear in Gal;3:29, where the conclusion of the argument is not 'if you are Abraham's family, you are in the Messiah', but the other way around. God established the family of Abraham. Paul reaffirms it. What matter is who belongs to it. Paul says that all those in the Messiah Jesus belong, whatever their racial background. When two people share in the faith of Jesus, they can share table-fellowship, no matter what their ancestry. All this made possible by the 'stake' which is the redeeming turning-point of history. Through the stake, 'the world is crucified to me, and I to the world,' so that now 'neither circumcision nor uncircumcision matters; what matter is new creation (6:14-16). This is covenant language. 1 Corinthians 1:30 declares that 'it is by God's doing that you are in the Messiah Jesus'.... It is we who are 'the circumcision' - we, who worship God in spirit, who boast in the lord Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh.
So, the covenant status we now enjoy as followers of the Messiah Jesus, is the gift of God; it is a dikaiosune ek theou, a 'righteousness from God'. God's own righteousness has to do with his on covenant faithfulness, not with the status He bestows on His people. What we have is the status of covenant membership; it is the gift of God, not something acquired in any way by ourselves; and this gift is bestowed upon faith. At that moment that we come to accept Jesus as the one sent from God we become members of Abraham's family,
Paul's conception of how people are drawn into salvation starts with the preaching of the gospel, continues with the work of the Spirit in and through that preaching, and the effect of the Spirit's work on the hearts of the hearers, and concludes with the coming to birth of faith, and entry into the family through baptism. No one can say "Jesus is lord" except by the holy spirit (1 Cor:12:3). When that confession is made, God declares that person, who believes the gospel, is thereby marked out as being within the true covenant family. Justification is not how someone becomes a follower of Jesus, it is the declaration that they have become a Messianic believer (Christian). Our obligation now is to regard Jesus as our Saviour and thus to receive covenant membership in God's people as a gift. When Paul preached the gospel he did not mean 'justification by faith' he meant the message about the soon coming Kingdom of God, the royal announcement of Jesus the Messiah as lord, and soon coming King of kings and Lord of lords.
The gospel - the announcement of the coming kingdom of God and the lordship of Jesus the Messiah reveals God's righteousness, His covenant faithfulness, His dealing with the sin of the world through the fulfilment of His covenant in the lord Jesus the Messiah.. He has done all this righteously, that is, impartially. He has dealt with sin, and rescued the helpless. He has thereby fulfilled His promises.
The point is: who will be vindicated, resurrected, shown to be the covenant people, on the last day? those who will be vindicated on the last day are those in whose hearts and lives God will have written His law, His Torah. God has now done in the lord Jesus by His spirit what the law could not do. God has now revealed His righteousness, His covenant faithfulness, through the faithfulness of the true Jew, the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.
The gospel - not 'justification by faith', but the message of Jesus - thus reveals the righteousness, that is, the covenant faithfulness, of God.
God's purpose in the covenant was to deal with the sin of Adam. Now, in the Messiah Jesus, that is exactly what He has done, and those who believe the gospel of Jesus are already demarcated as members of the true family of Abraham, with their sins being forgiven. The badge of membership, the thing because of which one can tell in the present who is within the eschatological covenant people, is of course faith, the confession that Jesus is lord and the belief that God raised him from the dead (Rom:10:9). It is faith in the gospel message of Jesus, the announcement of the true God through His son as defined in and through Jesus the Messiah.
All quotes will be from N.T. Wright's book: "What Saint Paul Really Said", and edited in places by myself.
