This had been the Apostle Paul’s position. He had been a Pharisee of Pharisees, by his own testimony. He had been zealous for the law. He had been zealous for these works of the law, looking to them as that which signaled one’s justification before God (righteous standing/positive covenant status). He called himself a Hebrew of Hebrews. He held vociferously to these covenant markers and persecuted, attempting to destroy and stamp out the movement that, beginning with Jesus, was actively encouraging God’s very own covenant people to set these markers aside. For Paul, nothing good could come from this. Worse than that, not only were these people encouraging the dismissal of these covenant markers, they were also going further and saying that God’s true desire and intention, through His Messiah, was to bring all peoples, even Gentile nations, into His covenant. The pre-conversion Paul would have seen this as contrary to what was necessary and required, and could do nothing more than continue and even extend God’s curse upon His people Israel, with a continued denial of His blessings.
Now, with a radically altered and transformed worldview, owing to what he said was his encounter with the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth, Paul had modified his position in an extraordinary way. Whereas before, he had previously held wholeheartedly to the idea that one is in fact justified by the works of the law (covenant markers which set one apart as a Jew and therefore a part of God’s people and in positive covenant standing before Him), he now contended that “no one is justified by the works of the law but by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:16a). Again, Paul points to the faithfulness of God, which is foundational and key, represented by Jesus the Messiah, and by extension, His crucifixion, His Resurrection, and the fact that His Resurrection proved Him to be God’s Messiah for His people.
Adding to this, Paul writes, “And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by the faithfulness of Christ and not by the works of the law” (2:16b). Here, realizing God’s complete faithfulness to His people and His promises, with that faithfulness represented by what Jesus had been and accomplished on behalf of God’s people and all of mankind, Paul has completed the paradigm shift, and now says that the covenant marker is belief in Jesus as the risen Messiah. That is, one is now justified, or righteous, or in positive covenant status before God and therefore able to experience the blessings that God has promised to His people, by believing that Jesus was and is the embodiment of Israel’s God. The old covenant markers, that being the works of the law, have been set aside and replaced by this new covenant marker of belief.
Paul joins with the group that is dismissive of the works of the law and of Jewish identification markers as that which will bring God’s blessing, and also throws open the doors of the kingdom of God to the Gentiles. He even goes so far as to expand this kingdom principle, based on what he has learned and knows of the life of Jesus, and indicates that not only is there no longer to be a division along the lines of Jew and Gentile, but that in union with Christ---in believing that Jesus is Lord, and with that serving as the covenant marker of the renewed people of God---there is no longer slave nor free, or even male and female. Indeed, in that day, believers in Jesus looked upon themselves as a new and third humanity, understanding themselves to be infused with Resurrection power and eternal life through belief in Jesus, now animated by His Spirit and living in His Kingdom and for His purposes. While respecting earthly powers and offering the respect that was due to them, they knew of no King but Jesus.
This belief, of course, in a crucified and resurrected Messiah, here in the middle of history, was contrary to all expectation of the day. Not only was that unexpected, but the idea that somebody would be physically raised from the dead was completely ludicrous. Quite simply, people did not come back from the dead, but the weight of evidence that this is exactly what had happened, and that it had happened to an individual that had lived and been looked to as a potential messiah for Israel, stirred a convicting belief that that is exactly what had taken place. Because of that, this belief, Paul would routinely point out, could only be brought about by a God-granted faith---a faith implanted and made operational by the Holy Spirit through the grace of God, primarily through the medium of the preaching of the Gospel, and the hearing of that preaching of the message of Jesus as Lord (the Gospel).
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