In that day (the time
of Jesus and Paul), these marks of the covenant people would be generally referred
to as the “works of the law.” Their
purpose was to mark them off from the Gentile nations that stood against Israel,
and therefore, according to the way of thinking maintained by the larger part
of the people of Israel, did not deserve their God’s blessings. Paul
insists that with this way of thinking, Israel did was not submitting to the
Creator God’s plan of covenant faithfulness, which was that all peoples would
be blessed through His chosen people, beginning with Abraham, with whom the
covenant had originally been struck.
Rounding out this
line of thinking, Paul then writes, “For Christ is the end of the law, with the
result that there is righteousness for everyone who believes” (10:4).
What the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ would accomplish would be the
tearing down of those boundaries of the “works of the law” (circumcision, food
laws, Sabbath-keeping). Having torn those things down, He would set up in
their place, a new standard for entering in to the blessings of the Creator God’s
covenant faithfulness. That way of
entering into the covenant, and so being able to share the blessings (as
outlined by Israel’s self-defining narrative), would be that of believing upon Jesus
as Lord.
As one reads through
this letter to the Romans, it must be continually borne in mind that Paul is
writing to a mixed group of both Jews and Gentiles. There would have been
a faction of the Jews, as is to be found repeatedly throughout the New
Testament, that did not want to see the Gentiles come under the blessings of their
God’s covenant. There would have been a faction that would have insisted
that Gentiles, in order to truly be a part of the Creator God’s covenant
people, would need to undergo circumcision, and along with that, would need to diligently
keep to the prevailing dietary restrictions and Sabbath laws.
In addition to those
factions of Jews (who could certainly be counted as committed Jesus-believers),
there would have been Gentiles (also Jesus-believers) that held to the thought
that the covenant blessings had passed completely from the Jews to the
Gentiles, as they could point to Israel’s nearly wholesale rejection of Jesus
as Messiah as evidence in favor of such a verdict. One could presume that
these various factions could have eyed each other suspiciously, seeking to draw
boundaries where none should rightfully be allowed to exist, and Paul can be
seen dealing with these things throughout this letter.
Thus, Paul’s talk of “righteousness
for everyone who believes” (right standing in the covenant and access to the covenant
faithfulness of the Creator God) also serves to address any Jewish
provincialism, along with Gentile high-mindedness, as Paul makes it a point to
inform them that all can be saved. The
implication that all can be saved would also seem to imply that all need to be
saved, which further implies that all, Jew and Gentile, are in the midst of
cursing and exile and in need of salvation from such. For the Jew, the
curse and exile was associated with their violations of the law delivered to
them through Moses. For the Gentile, if one considers the whole of the
Scriptural narrative, the cursing and exile would go all the way back to Adam, and
his purported actions that resulted in the bringing of the curse of death and
exile from God’s presence into the creation (which would naturally apply to the
Jew as well).
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