Continuing this series from the last post, here is my response to the first question (I have footnotes in the paper that do not transfer into this post):
1. What does it mean that the Gentiles have attained righteousness (Rom. 9:30)?
Some think that “attained righteousness” means that the Gentiles gained entrance into the covenant community of God by faith in Jesus the Messiah and apart from the distinctively Jewish works such as circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath. The emphasis is not on how individual sinners are made right with a holy God but rather on how the locus of God’s covenant people is redefined around Messiah and faith. James D.G. Dunn notes, “Justification means acceptance into a relationship with God characterized by the grace of Israel’s covenant.” According to this view, initial entry into the covenant blessings is what the Gentiles gained. A once-and-for-all forensic verdict of right standing with God is not in view in Rom. 9:30. This view sees the “attained righteousness” in 9:30 as primarily horizontal (joining the people of God without having to perform the distinctively Jewish works) rather than vertical (securing right-standing with God).
This orientation seems to place undue emphasis on what Paul treats as a less than major theme. The social implications of Gentile incorporation are indeed of interest to Paul (Rom. 14; Acts 15), but the major concern of Romans is with the wrath of God revealed from heaven against all mankind because of sin. A crisis in man’s vertical relationship with God is of primary importance to Paul.
Another perspective is that the righteousness in view here is an individual’s right standing with God (unlike Dunn or Wright), but one that is equivalent to the right standing that comes from keeping the law. According to this view, “Rom. 9:30 is speaking about the Gentiles who are doers of the law and hence are justified as the righteous (cf. Rom. 2:13).” The Gentiles are hereby brought into the remnant of faithful Israelites, since they too now have the law written on their hearts. The obedience of faith results in right standing with God. This perspective is more vertically (and individually) oriented that the first view. It seeks to maintain unity between law and gospel. Specifically, it claims that the Gentiles, by faith, lay hold of God’s grace and hence keep the law, resulting in justification. They observe that the law, rightly understood, is a law of faith.
The problem with this understanding is that Paul has labored to show in Rom 4 that man is justified by faith apart from (and prior to) covenant obedience. Sinners do not attain righteousness by law keeping (Rom. 3:20; 4:4-5). Our right standing with God is not a function of our actively cooperating with God’s grace (though such cooperation is the inevitable result of right standing with God). The aforementioned perspective seems to confuse biblical categories of justification and sanctification.
The third and most persuasive sense of the phrase “attained righteousness” in Rom. 9:30 is found by first recognizing that διώκοντα (to pursue) and κατέλαβεν (to seize or obtain) are both derived from the analogy of a race course. They refer to the pursuit of a goal and the seizing of that goal. When Paul says that Gentiles did not pursue righteousness, he was not implying that every Gentile was morally reckless. Many Gentiles may have sought to maintain moral rectitude, but they were not striving for a right relationship with God. So how did they attain righteousness? Having been brought to repentance, they responded to Christ in faith (human response, Rom. 9:30), and, given Paul’s previous discussion, such faith was ultimately the result of the electing mercy of God (Rom. 9:14-23).
The Gentiles gained right standing with God by the instrumentality of faith (as the rejected views also acknowledge). But we can say more, because of Paul’s sustained argument in Rom. 1-8. Paul showed how the law brought about the knowledge of sin (3:20), such that Jew and Gentile alike stood condemned on the basis of their deeds (3:9). The righteousness of God, revealed in the gospel (1:16-17), has now been manifested apart from the law (3:21). Abraham was counted righteous by faith in the Old Testament (4:3), and this was written for our sakes also, because we are likewise counted righteous when we place faith in the death and resurrection of Christ (4:23-24). Though beyond the scope of this report, I take this λογίζομαι word group (repeatedly used in Rom 4) to refer to the forensic declaration of a right standing with God on the basis of a perfect righteousness that has been provided by another. The latter phrase, describing the basis of right standing, is important, because “right standing with God” is itself vague, as it does not specify whether this right standing is based on a forensic judgment or some sort of moral transformation.
Thus, the righteousness that Gentiles attain is due to individual Gentiles placing their empty-handed faith in Jesus Christ and thus having been united to Him, with the result that they have received His merit transferred to their account (or imputed) to them by virtue of this union. Consequently, they have been counted righteous in Christ. All of their righteousness is the alien righteousness of Christ, and the verdict of God in declaring them to be righteous is entirely forensic in nature. It is a future, final verdict being read back into their present experience, in an example of what Moo calls “inaugurated eschatology.”