The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown (125 page)

However, several important features of Paul's discussion of justification show that he viewed justification as an acquittal and not moral transformation. First, Rom 2:13; 3:20 show that justification relates not to the moral nature of the individual but to his standing “before God.” Second, in 8:33 the verb “justify” is contrasted with the verb “condemn.” Since the verb “condemn” means “to declare guilty,” the contrast implies that the verb “justify” means “to declare innocent.” Moreover, the verb “charge” that immediately precedes the verb “justify” is also a forensic term, which supports the conclusion that Paul's use of “justify” was likewise related to courtroom imagery. Third, the use of the verb “justify” in 3:4 associates “justification” with the courtroom. In this context it appears to refer to
God's being declared righteous in a lawsuit in which men accuse him of injustice in his judgments.
⁹⁹
A similar usage in 1 Cor
4:4
confirms that the courtroom scene was prominent in Paul's mind when he used the term. Finally, Romans 4 equates justification with faith being “counted” as righteousness. As will be seen, the verb translated “counting” or “calculating” is related to the activity of the divine judge. In light of this evidence, the verb “justify” describes the action of the judge who acquits or “declares righteous.” God has deemed believers to be “not guilty” because of Christ's sacrificial death.

Justification Is Not Granted Based on the “Works of the Law”
Paul insisted that justification is not based on the “works of the law” (3:20) and that God justifies sinners “apart from works of law” (3:21,28). Some recent scholars have claimed that the “works of the law” as well as the abbreviated reference “works” are primarily the “boundary markers” that clearly distinguish Jews from Gentiles.
¹⁰⁰
These boundary markers included circumcision, OT dietary laws, and calendar observances. Thus Paul's polemic is against Jews who trusted their identity as Israelites in light of God's promises to Israel for their salvation rather than against those who attempted to earn God's favor through obedience to the law in general as Protestant interpreters have traditionally claimed.
¹⁰¹

A concern for boundary markers in Romans is evident in numerous texts. Paul treated the issue of circumcision repeatedly (2:25—29; 3:1,30; see 15:8), and he even explored the relationship of circumcision to justification (4:9—12). He later dealt with the issues of diet and calendar observance (chap. 14). These texts, especially coupled with explicit references to pride in one's Jewish identity and to boasting in relation to circumcision (2:17; 3:27-30), clearly indicate that Paul was at least partially countering a soteriology that insisted that “all Israelites have a share in the world to come”
(m. Sanh.
10:1).
¹⁰²

But contrary to many recent scholars who have been influenced by the New Perspective, this view was only one of several soteriological views current in Paul's day.
¹⁰³
Other Jewish teachers insisted that Jewish identity was not enough to ensure salvation and that a righteous life was necessary to satisfy the demands of divine judgment. These teachers basically debated this question: Did divine judgment merely weigh the majority of one's deeds and lead to salvation for those who obeyed more laws than they transgressed, or did
it require complete and total obedience to the law? Paul clearly argued that neither one's righteousness before God nor his Jewish identity was established through boundary markers. If the Israelite did not “practice the law,” he dishonored the law, and his circumcision was regarded as uncircumcision by God (2:17—29).
¹⁰⁴
This affirms that the law demanded obedience to requirements beyond the typical boundary markers. Romans 2:27 demonstrates that obedience to the law involved “the letter” and not merely circumcision. The “letter” included all of the regulations of the law that were inscribed in the old covenant and not just ritual acts.
¹⁰⁵

What is more, Paul argued that “no flesh will be justified in His sight by the works of the law” (Rom 3:20) by citing a catena of OT texts (Pss 14:1-3; 53:1-3; 5:9; 140:3; 10:7; Isa 59:7—8; Ps 36:1), which describe the Jews’ failure to do good, their dishonest and profane speech, their murderous ways, their violence, and their refusal to reverence God. Paul's argument is clearly that salvation through the law requires fidelity to the moral prescriptions of the law and not just teachings regarding boundary markers. Yet no one has satisfied the law's prescriptions. Thus justification through “works of the law,” which includes both ritual and moral prescriptions, is not possible for anyone.

This interpretation is supported by Paul's remarks in Rom 4:4—5 where works of the law are described in terms of working for a reward. Paul insisted that justification was a gift, not a payment. He also maintained that God declared righteous “the ungodly.”
¹⁰⁶
God's justification of the “ungodly” in 4:5 suggests that justification “apart from works of law” (3:28) means justification is not granted on the basis of the requirements of the law, including both moral and ritual requirements.

This interpretation is further supported by Paul's argument in 9:11—12 that Isaac was not chosen by God based on “works” since he was chosen before he was born and before he had “done anything good or bad.” The context shows that “works” here relates to “good works” as opposed to “bad works.”
¹⁰⁷
Romans 10:5 also confirms that the law required “doing” the things prescribed in the law, the things Israel had failed to do.

Consequently, when Paul insisted that justification is not “by works of the law,” he meant that all have failed to live up to the standards of the law and that no one can attain righteousness before God by means of obedience to the law. This is precisely the point of Paul's extended description of the sinfulness of Gentiles and the hypocrisy of Jews in 1:18-3:18.

Closely related to the denial that justification is based on “works of the law” is Paul's insistence that justification is a gift. In 3:23—24, Paul explained that, due to the universality of sin and man's failure to manifest the glory of the divine image as he was created to do, God justified sinners “freely” or “as a gift”
(dōrean)
and that this justification occurred “because of his grace.”
¹⁰⁸
The theme resurfaced in Paul's statement that justification was granted “according to grace” (4:16) and not “as something owed” in 4:4—5. Romans 5:15- 17 uses three different Greek terms to describe justification as a “gift of grace”
(charisma)
and a “free gift”
(dōrea; dōrēma).

The fact that justification was granted as a gift and apart from the works of the law had several practical consequences. First, this completely eliminated any legitimate human boasting about one's righteousness before God. Paul argued that justification by works promoted human boasting rather than divine glory while justification by grace as a gift excluded human boasting and promoted God's glory (3:27). In an abbreviated statement Paul wrote: “If Abraham was justified by works, then he has something to brag about—but [he does] not [have anything to brag about] before God” (4:2).

Second, justification by grace apart from the works of the law assured the sinner that his enmity with God had ended. He had been reconciled to God and enjoyed peaceful relations with him. The one who had been alienated from God now had “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (5:1), having “obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand” (5:2), so that “therefore, no condemnation now exists for those in Christ Jesus” (8:1).

The Law and the Prophets Bear Witness to the Doctrine of Justification
Paul was emphatic that the doctrine of justification by faith was not a novelty of his own invention. God's gracious justification of believers had been clearly attested in the OT. “The Law and the Prophets” witnessed to “God's righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ” (3:21—22). This theme is also prominent in the programmatic statement of the letter. Romans 1:17 confirms the claim that God's justifying righteousness was revealed “from faith to faith” by citing Hab 2:4 and introducing the quotation with the words “just as it is written.”

In chap. 4 Paul added to this citation from the Prophets a confirmation from the Pentateuch (4:3) to which he referred no less than three times in this single chapter and a citation from the Writings (Ps 32:1—2). Paul appears to have been using a rabbinic method of proving an argument by demonstrating that all three major portions of the OT—the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings—affirm a particular truth (see also 1:2).
¹⁰⁹
This same affirmation is probably implied by the perplexing prepositional series “from faith to faith” in 1:17. The phrase may mean that God's revelation of his justifying righteousness through the gospel extends from the OT saint to the NT believer, or that it reached first to the Jews (to whom justification had already been revealed in the Law and the Prophets) and then to
the Gentiles (who together with the Jews received the revelation of justification by faith in Christ in the gospel).
¹¹⁰
Alternatively, “from faith to faith” may refer to the expression of God's covenant-keeping faithfulness (see 3:3) in Christ to believers, “God's righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ, to all who believe” (3:22).
¹¹¹

Justification Requires Faith
After denying that God justifies sinners on the basis of their works, Paul adamantly affirmed that justification required faith. In 1:5 Paul presented faith as the essence of obedience to the gospel. This same description appears at the conclusion of the letter (16:26). In the programmatic statement of the letter in 1:16—17, Paul argued that the saving power of the gospel was operative specifically and exclusively “for those who believe.” The prepositional series “from faith to faith” implies that justification had always been granted on the basis of faith throughout every era of salvation history, which Paul demonstrated through his citation of Hab 2:4 that speaks of those made righteous by faith.

The necessity of faith for justification is prominent in chap. 4, where Paul appealed to the example of Abraham based on Gen 15:6. The OT text clearly demonstrates that Abraham was declared righteous not by working but by “believing on the One who justifies the ungodly” (4:4—5, author translation). Justification thus requires believing from the heart (10:10). In 4:17-25, Paul discussed the nature of Abraham's faith and demonstrated that it parallels the faith required for justification in the Christian gospel. Abraham's faith involved trusting God against all human hopes to fulfill his promise to make him the father of many nations. Since Abraham was 100 years old and, as far as his capacity to produce offspring was concerned, “already dead,” and since Sarah was likewise barren, Abraham's belief that God would fulfill his promise entailed believing God “who gives life to the dead.” Thus Abraham's faith correlates to Christian faith that God raised Jesus from the dead, a requirement for justification attested in 4:24 and again in 10:9.

Also, Abraham's faith involved believing in God who “calls things into existence that do not exist” (4:17). Many commentators see this as a reference to God's creation of the universe out of nothing.
¹¹²
In this context, it refers to the exercise of God's creative power in producing Isaac through the union of the dead Abraham and Sarah.
¹¹³
Perhaps this
reference is intended to parallel the resurrection of Jesus like the immediately preceding description. However, the grammar of the Greek text suggests that Paul may have had another point in mind. Paul described God as one who literally “calls the things which do not exist as existing.” One would expect Paul to have said that God calls the things that do not exist “into existence” rather than “as existing.”
¹¹⁴
Paul probably used this particular construction to evoke a comparison between the birth of Isaac and justification in which God calls those who are not righteous as being righteous, that is, declaring righteous the ungodly.
¹¹⁵
This view seems to be supported by 4:23—24 where Paul explained how Abraham's faith paralleled Christian faith and where he addressed not only faith in Jesus' resurrection but the forgiveness of our trespasses and “our justification.”

But the discussion in chap. 4 is not an exhaustive treatment of the faith required for justification. It only discusses those aspects of faith that are closely paralleled in Abraham's experience. Other statements in the letter demonstrate that the faith required for justification includes not only belief in Jesus’ resurrection and the justification that his death and resurrection accomplished but also belief in important aspects of Jesus’ identity as well.

In the introduction to the letter, Paul described the gospel message as a message
from
God, mediated
through
the prophets, but a message
about
Jesus specifically (1:1—3). He confirmed this by describing the gospel as “the good news about His Son” (1:9) and in a later passage by describing the message that must be believed for justification (10:10) as the “message about Christ” (10:17). Hearers are called to respond to this gospel with the “obedience of faith” (1:5; 16:26), which means that they obey the Christocentric gospel by believing its claims about him. Not surprisingly, Paul described the faith required for justification in 3:26 as “faith in Jesus.”

Paul articulated fundamental claims of the gospel about Jesus in 1:3—4. The gospel claims that Jesus fulfilled OT prophecies about the coming Messiah by being born of the line of David. Jesus is the Messiah, the Son anointed by the Father to receive the nations as his inheritance and to break the wicked with a rod of iron. He is the one to whom all must pay homage, or else they will perish for their rebellion (Psalm 2). Jesus is also the “powerful Son of God”—literally, the “Son of God with power”—by virtue of his resurrection. Since the next reference to “power” in Romans refers to the power to save (1:16), this title identifies Jesus as one with the power to save, the Savior of sinners.