Justification by Faithfulness – Paul the Interpreter of Jesus (Part 1)
There are many questions that inevitably confront the person who reads Paul’s letters and attempts to keep up with his dizzying trains of thought. Three of those questions concern us here. The first, which provokes the second and third, asks what the word “justification” means to the Apostle. Is it, for instance, mostly a present or mostly a future reality? And what, according to Paul, is the requirement for one to be justified? Seeking an answer to this question, the word “faith” then emerges and demands a definition of its own. Should we see the Greek word pistis through the multiple lenses of post-Reformation, Enlightenment and Existentialist thought, or was Paul’s meaning something other than the most fashionable understandings today? But to answer both of these questions one must ask what Paul thought of the law; whether he, like Jesus, approved of it and believed it was God’s eternal standard, or whether he saw it as basically outdated and overruled by the New Covenant. Addressing these three questions makes up the focus of the next few posts.
It is often thought that Paul has an overall negative view of the law. When he speaks of a person outside of Christ as being “under the law,” he means that that person is under the demands of the law and that coming to Christ delivers him from those demands. So we see the contrast he creates between law and grace like so: law = taskmaster / grace = freedom from law. Support for this is seen in verses such as Romans 6:15, where Paul has to guard against the notion that it is now okay to sin because of the truth that “we are no longer under law but under grace”. Why would such a question even come up, it is asked, if it were not the most natural reaction to what Paul has said of the grace of God thus far? There must be some truth in it, for if the law is a condemning taskmaster and grace means forgiveness and freedom from that taskmaster then it must be true that sin is in fact permissible for the one under grace. At most (or perhaps I should say at worst), then, Paul’s lengthy response is seen as a big frown upon sin, but still not as an exhortation of any real eternal consequence.
The student of the Word must always guard against the tendency to “miss the wood because of the trees” when interpreting specific texts within larger contexts of thought. This is especially important when it comes to Paul, for he is always on his way to somewhere and we must make sure we are going the same direction. If our interpretation of any given point in his argument does not reach the same conclusions as his, or if it does not provoke the same questions as the ones he asks, then we know we have got off track somewhere and should abandon that path altogether. The problem with the law/grace contrast described above is that it completely misses the flow of Paul’s argument in Romans, choosing to focus on one verse at the expense of the whole letter. When we compare what Paul says of the law in 6:15 with where he has been and where he goes next, the notion that he could be anything but wholly approving the law’s standard is seen to be ridiculous.
In as early as his introduction Paul establishes that the whole purpose of his Gospel is to produce “obedience” (1:5). Obedience is not a nebulous concept to this Jewish theologian, it’s not a relative standard; there is only one type of obedience and that is Torah-obedience. This is confirmed right away by his indictment both to the pagan world on the one hand (1:18-32) and to unsaved Israel on the other (2:1-29), as he charges the former with “ungodliness” and “unrighteousness” and the latter with “breaking the law,” something which he interprets as failing to give God the honor that is His due (2:23). His description of Torah as the “embodiment of knowledge and truth” verges on the mystical in 2:20; and yet in case we are still in doubt he then goes on to explicitly approve of it’s standard in 3:31. Whereas the correlation between faith and obedience to the law is easily subject to misinterpretation in 1:5, this is unmistakable: “Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law.” Many in the Reformed tradition simply cannot handle this explicit approval of Torah’s standard, however, and so they must interpret the appearance of “law” (nomos) here as something other than what he has been speaking of all along. But we know “the law” must be the same law here as elsewhere, i.e., the Torah, because he qualifies it with the definite article, “the law,” not just “a law”.
Yet still, all this talk in chapters 6 and 7 about being delivered out from under the law could definitely be taken as antinomian, or anti-law, so it is no wonder that many accused Paul of that very thing (3:2; 6:1; 6:15). But again, if we follow the Apostle through to his own conclusions, instead of making our own prematurely, it becomes clear again that he is not at all blaming the law, still much less shirking off its demands. Quite the opposite, he heaps up praise upon praise for Torah throughout 7:7-25, thus freeing it from any charge which might be brought against it: “Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law… Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good… For we know that the law is spiritual… I agree with the law that it is good… For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man…” Torah, according to Paul, is holy, just, good, spiritual, to be delighted in, and, above all, it is God’s. Far from an abstract list of do’s and don’ts, it is the transcript of God’s holiness – revealing, in a burning light of truth and purity, His nature and character and how we need to live in order to participate with Him. And being reflective of God’s character, these standards do not change; therefore it’s absurd to suggest that God would rescind it.
So then, the question comes again, if Paul really approved of Torah’s standard, what then does it mean for one to be “under the law,” why is it a negative thing, and why does he contrast law with grace? Ironically, Paul gives us the answer during his defense of the law in 7:7-25: “But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead… And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me… Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful.” In other words, the law is not the problem, sin is, and sin exploits the law to its own gain by arousing desire in the human heart to overstep the natural boundaries made clear by the law.
Being wholly good, Paul presents the law like a great flashlight that shines on every area of human depravity which may otherwise have remained hidden, showing it for what it truly is. The problem, however, is that though the law does its job perfectly, uncovering sin and pointing toward a higher life, it can do no more. It remains completely impotent to overcome our depravity and help toward the renewal of creation. This is the point Paul is making in chapter 7 through the emotional scene he creates of a man in captivity to sin yet striving to live according to God’s law. The subject therein wills to do good, but being in bondage to sin he is unable to do what he wills. He is powerless to overcome his fallen state, and the law, being, as Paul says later, “weak through the flesh,” is equally as powerless. The one who possesses the law then finds himself, in one sense, in a worse position than those who don’t, for he is held accountable by it but cannot perform it, so the only real purpose it serves is to irritate the situation by pointing the finger.
Now, if the law is a wholly good and righteous reflection of God’s character, yet is simply powerless to affect the change it demands, then the law/grace contrast in 6:15 must now be reexamined. If law, when set by Paul in a negative light, equals impotency more than taskmaster, then grace must mean empowerment more than freedom from law (that is, if by “freedom from law” one means liberation from its righteousness standard). Throughout Romans 5-8, “grace” is synonymous with the resurrection power of the Spirit, as the result of the faith that Paul expounded upon in chapters 3 and 4. Through identification with Christ in baptism into death, the Spirit of Him who raised Christ from the dead now dwells in us, uniting us to Him and empowering us to be like Him. Where the law was weak, unable to free us from sin and death, the Spirit is strong, able to do what the law could not. This is the point Paul has been working towards since chapter 5, now climaxing in 8:3-4: “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh [of His Son], that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
Paul then goes on quite appropriately to talk about the long-anticipated renewal of creation, for that is the ultimate end of God’s whole redemptive plan; an end to which the law by itself could not come, but which the Spirit – through the power which raised Christ from the dead and now brings to life all who come to him – is well able to bring about. God’s Spirit is the Spirit of holiness, the power of the resurrection, and in us the firstfruits of a whole new created order (1:4; 8:11, 23). So we can see that grace does not usurp the law in Paul’s mind (just as faith does not usurp the law – 3:31), but instead it establishes the law so that what was previously impossible is now possible; what was before a heavy burden and a futile grasping at the wind is now a short reach and a light load. The self-proclaimed purpose of Paul’s Gospel was to produce, by grace through faith, that which the ambitious observance of Torah could never by itself produce, namely obedience.
So again, we conclude that Paul, like Jesus, approved of the law and its standard; he did not see that standard revoked by the cross, but rather met by Christ, and, because of Christ’s death and resurrection, able to be met in us “who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit”.
“But to answer both of these questions one must ask what Paul thought of the law; whether he, like Jesus, approved of it and believed it was God’s eternal standard, or whether he saw it as basically outdated and overruled by the New Covenant.”
“At most (or perhaps I should say at worst), then, Paul’s lengthy response is seen as a big frown upon sin, but still not as an exhortation of any real eternal consequence.”
“Many in the Reformed tradition simply cannot handle this explicit approval of Torah’s standard, and so they must interpret the appearance of “law” (nomos) here as something other than what he has been speaking of all along.”
“And being reflective of God’s character, these standards do not change; therefore it’s absurd to suggest that God would rescind it [the law].”
I’ll stop here, but there are more similar quotations in this post and others. Who are you arguing against? Who believes God’s law is “basically outdated”? Who believes Paul’s exhortations have no “real eternal consequence”? Who, exactly, in the Reformed tradition disapproves God’s law? Who wants to “rescind it”? Seriously, I have no idea who you are arguing against. I have never heard a single Reformed teacher/preacher propose or defend any of the above notions. I think they call this strawman…
In all seriousness, you should brush up on the actual content of a Reformed theology before you critique it.
“Being wholly good, Paul presents the law like a great flashlight that shines on every area of human depravity which may otherwise have remained hidden, showing it for what it truly is. The problem, however, is that though the law does its job perfectly, uncovering sin and pointing toward a higher life, it can do no more.”
Agreed. I know of no Reformed folk who would disagree with this.
“In as early as his introduction Paul establishes that the whole purpose of his Gospel is to produce “obedience” (1:5). Obedience is not a nebulous concept to this Jewish theologian, it’s not a relative standard; there is only one type of obedience and that is Torah-obedience.”
Rom. 1:5 – “…through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith (hupakoē pistis) for the sake of his name among all the nations…”
Context, context… Paul’s aim is to bring about the “obedience of faith”.
Matt, does God demand perfect obedience to the law?
Jim B.
Saturday, April 12, 2008 at 2:32 pm
“Far from an abstract list of do’s and don’ts, it is the transcript of God’s holiness – revealing, in a burning light of truth and purity, His nature and character and how we need to live in order to participate with Him. And being reflective of God’s character, these standards do not change; therefore it’s absurd to suggest that God would rescind it.”
Beautifully said, Matt.
Impotent is such a good way of describing the New Testament’s treatment of the Old. It is the same idea presented in Hebrews 10:4 – The blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sins even though it was the prescribed method in the OT.
Lauren
Sunday, April 13, 2008 at 10:22 am
Jim,
Well I do believe I could go virtually anywhere to validate my caricature of Reformed theology, but I think one example should suffice. The following is from a teaching on Romans 6 by your man John Piper, whom you know I respect very much in spite of my disagreement in this and other areas of Protestant belief.
“Before we give Paul’s answer [as to why Christians should not continue in sin], be sure you see what his answer is not… He didn’t say, What I really meant was that justification is really based on your behavior after all. He did not say that justification won’t lead to lawlessness because law-keeping is part of what you have to do to get justified.” (Are We to Continue in Sin That Grace Might Increase?, John Piper)
Mr. Piper goes on to explain what, in his view, Paul’s answer to the antinomian question is through interpreting Paul’s rhetorical question, “How can we who died to sin live any longer in it?” That sentence, in Piper’s estimation, is another way of simply saying, “We can’t!” And what he means by “We can’t!” is that someone who has truly been saved by grace apart from works through the credited righteousness of Christ is actually physically unable to return to sin. Simply put, he says, “Dead People don’t sin.” He goes on to elaborate that “the believer’s union with Christ not only means that we died when he died, but that in his resurrection our new life to God was secured.”
All is by the grace of God through the merits of Christ; nothing of our own “law-keeping” is necessary for justification. But oh, if you’re truly justified by grace you just won’t sin. It’s against your new nature to do so. Obviously, to ward off any thoughts of perfectionism, Piper then must qualify that we really aren’t entirely free from sin in the present age, and that, in straining paradox, we must “become what [we already] are.” But while he sees our freedom from sin as an “already but not yet” reality – answering quite conveniently for the contradiction of saying justified people can’t sin in the face of a whole congregation who obviously aren’t living up to that statement – he does not connect the dots by seeing justification as an “already but not yet reality” in the same token, but rather insists that we already are, in the present, fully justified and eternal life has already been “secured” fully by our faith, which as he has said is wholly separate from law-keeping.
This is quite simply incoherent. How can we, by virtue of our union with Christ in baptism, (a) be dead to sin and therefore unable to sin, thereby (b) validating our true conversion, and yet (c) simultaneously “serve the law of sin with the flesh,” and in that functional contradiction (d) still be fully secure in the present, seeing justification as a past event? And how is saying that law-keeping is not at all necessary for justification any different than saying the law is overruled by the New Covenant?
matthartke
Monday, April 14, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Jim,
Thanks for checking out Matt’s blog and taking time to respond. I’ve been looking forward to the two of you interacting.
Matt called this thread “Justification by Faithfulness,” Do you think that “faithfulness” is a fair rendering of pistis? very interested in your thoughts on this.
Matt offers that a common approach to 6:15 is to equate law with task-master and grace with a kind of freedom to sin. Then Matt contends that a better corollary would be to equate law with impotency and grace with empowerment. Which do you think is closer to Paul’s intention? Or, would you offer a third possibility?
In a related post, Matt says,” Salvation, according to Jesus, is not merely a forensic transaction, but is first and foremost a relationship, and relationships are held together by the ongoing faithfulness of two individuals, not the verdict of one.” (Aside to the reader – “forensic transaction” refers to law court language – a judge declaring someone righteous was the common way of saying that they won the case). I’m really not sure how to form a question for you here but I wonder if you might interact a bit with this idea.
Blessings,
Wesley
wesleyb
Monday, April 14, 2008 at 6:04 pm
To reinforce the concept Matt was talking about grace as empowerment… just look to it’s definition in Strong’s: “… the divine influence upon the heart, and it’s reflection in the life…”
@ Jim:
I believe the majority of Reformed preachers/theologians do not preach “the law is outdated” (at least I’ve never really heard it from the pulpit, which is I think your point) in such an overt fashion. But that is not necessarily where the battle is. I have personally been in a number of conversations (and witnessed too) people shrug off the law wholesale due to a fundamental misunderstanding of what Paul says here in these passages. It’s a symptom of a general underlying theological foundation, which most people have, when it comes to approaching the law… they see it as irrelevant and not really worth our attentive study – not to mention a wholehearted effort through the grace of God by faith to fulfill it as Jesus did.
Jesus walked in the Spirit, walked by faith and not be sight… though a man, subject to everything we experience, He still dynamically lived in such a close fellowship with the Holy Spirit that made Him transcendent to the sinful passions and desires of this world. This is how we walk in the Spirit, fellowshipping with the Holy Spirit and being filled with the Spirit day by day… grace through faith gets activated in our inner man where our mind is conformed to the mind of Christ and our heart is transformed – to the point where the law is written on our hearts and minds or in other words, the law is written on our thoughts, intentions, passions and desires.
This is the point I dare say Matt is getting to… the law is fulfilled from a place of dynamic relationship with God in the New Covenant. The law is adhered to in the Old Covenant, but it lacks the power to change the inner motives and intentions to passionately pursue God and His righteousness. And until this attitude is the pervading response from most Christians, instead of the knee jerk phrase ‘…we’re not under the law but under grace…’, this topic needs to be discussed as comprehensively and pervasively as Matt is doing now.
Washington
Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 1:32 am
Matt,
Yes, I understand Piper believes Justification is founded on faith alone. I’m not sure why you felt the need to point this out. This again seems like a rather dishonest strawman argument. I never challenged you to prove that Reformed folk believe in Justification by Faith Alone. I asked you to show me where Reformed folk state the law (Torah) is “basically outdated”, having no “real eternal consequence” and want to“rescind it” (among other strange claims).
I think you do your readers a real disservice by pitting your New Perspective against a grossly caricatured Reformed view. I think Christian honesty and charity demand you interact with the actual content of what Reformed theology teaches before you malign it as you have here.
Matt, does God demand perfect obedience to the law?
What did Christ accomplish at Calvary?
God Bless
Jim B.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 8:24 am
First of all, in none of the statements you quoted did I lump the whole Reformed tradition together to pit my perspective against it. I’ve been very careful throughout to qualify by using words like “some” and “many”. Obviously a more puritanistic view of the law would not be included in the “some” and “many” in view.
That said, you missed the gravity and implications of what Piper said, which I clearly pointed out above. I wasn’t merely pointing out that he believes justification is by faith alone, but rather that in saying such, and in also saying that law-keeping is altogether unnecessary for justification, he is necessarily implying that the law itself is overruled by the New Covenant. If the law has no bearing on our being saved or unsaved then how is it not in effect rescinded? Piper is unavoidably implying that Paul’s exhortation in 6:12-23 has “no real eternal consequence”.
But please, if I’m wrong, if I’ve truly maligned this Lutheran end of the Reformed tradition, then show me why this isn’t so, how I’ve misunderstood Piper and drawn unnatural conclusions, why exactly Paul’s exhortation in Romans 6:12-23 has real eternal consequences, and how the law’s standard has not been effectively rescinded? This would be a helpful and objective way to correct my misguided presentation, instead of leaving me in the dark with an overabundance of ad hominem rhetoric.
In response to your question, “does God demand perfect obedience to the law?”, as I said before, this whole series is itself the answer to that question, so hold tight, and if you want to dialog over anything I’ve said so far that seems incoherent to you, feel free. And if I’m wrong, please explain why.
matthartke
Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 5:46 pm
“…in none of the statements you quoted did I lump the whole Reformed tradition together to pit my perspective against it.”
Really?
“…one must ask what Paul thought of the law; whether he, like Jesus, approved of it and believed it was God’s eternal standard, or whether he saw it as basically outdated and overruled by the New Covenant.”
That certainly looks like pitting your view against some unnamed other. Who, exactly, believes Paul thought of the law “as basically outdated and overruled by the New Covenant”? Your arguments are littered with this kinds of… ad hominem rhetoric.
“I wasn’t merely pointing out that he [John Piper] believes justification is by faith alone, but rather that in saying such, and in also saying that law-keeping is altogether unnecessary for justification, he is necessarily implying that the law itself is overruled by the New Covenant.”
Herein lies the problem, Matt. You’re drawing conclusions from premises that Reformed folk don’t themselves draw. First, Piper & Co. do not believe “law-keeping is altogether unnecessary for justification”. I’m sure you know this, because you’ve devoted an entire study to the topic of Imputed Righteousness. Piper believes law-keeping is altogether necessary for Justification. He simply believes it is Christ who keeps the law perfectly and thus fulfills it. And this leads to your second problem: No one believes or implies that the law is overruled by the New Covenant. Piper & Co. believe Christ fulfilled the law. While I don’t doubt you dislike this view, there is a significant difference between overruling the law and fulfilling it.
You might believe certain Reformed premises ought to lead to certain aberrant conclusions, but it is dishonest and uncharitable to paint Reformed folk as holding to these conclusions when they don’t.
“If the law has no bearing on our being saved or unsaved then how is it not in effect rescinded? Piper is unavoidably implying that Paul’s exhortation in 6:12-23 has “no real eternal consequence”.”
This is gross misrepresentation, indicating either ignorance or malice. Do you really believe a Reformed theology posits that the law “has no bearing on our being saved”? C’mon… The law has everything to do with salvation. The law, while good, separates us from Christ, because we fail to keep it. Christ perfectly keeps the law, thus fulfilling it in His life, death and resurrection. On the Cross, our sin is imputed to Him and His righteousness is imputed to us through faith. Again, I know you disagree with this position, but honest dialogue demands you at least attempt to accurately represent your opponent.
And Paul’s exhortation in Romans 6 is a direct response to your challenge (always a bad sign) of antinomianism! “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means!” Paul then exhorts his readers to holy living. While I understand you dislike Reformed theology, I expect you recognize that biblical exhortations, warnings, admonitions, etc. are held to be genuine means of persevering grace. So yes, in the Reformed view Paul’s exhortations certainly do have eternal consequences – they are the means whereby Christ keeps all those the Father has given Him. Those who do not abide these exhortations and similar, who shipwreck their faith, will ultimately perish. (I don’t regurgitate this, because I think you are ignorant of a Reformed soteriology or to sidetrack us into a debate on eternal security, but because you have failed to fairly represent the substance of the theological system you’re attacking.)
P.S. The more I re-read Romans, the more this “pistis = faithfulness” just doesn’t add up.
E.g. Romans 5:1 – Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We have peace with God through Christ, because we’ve been faithful? Maybe my simple, Protestant, mind isn’t fully grasping what you’re saying, but isn’t this Pelagianism (works-righteousness)?
Jim B.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 9:59 pm
God bless you all, very thoughtful post you have made here…
Waste of time
Thursday, July 31, 2008 at 1:21 pm