Sorry for the week-long absence of posts. I was out of town, and it was logistically difficult to get enough Internet time to add posts. But we return to our series on law-gospel issues, addressing the second question from my Romans 9:30-10:13 paper.
2. According to Romans 9:31-33 and 10:2-3, what was Israel’s problem?
The first option is that Israel’s problem is not vertical (i.e., a legalistic pursuit of law-keeping to earn right standing before God) but rather horizontal. Dunn suggests that the Jews “confused the law and the righteousness it speaks of with works like circumcision which serve to make righteousness a function of Jewish identity rather than of God’s gracious outreach to and through faith. This came to eschatological expression and climax in their refusal to recognize Christ as Messiah.” However, as Paul has made plain earlier in Romans, the fundamental problem of Israel is also the fundamental problem of the Gentiles: the wrath of God being justly upon them because of their sin (Rom. 1:18; 2:12; 2:17-24).
Other more conservative protestant approaches to this text also focus on the key phrase, “νόμον δικαιοσύνης.” One possibility is to take “δικαιοσύνης” as an epexegetic genitive: “the law (or principle) which is righteousness.” This translation puts the maximum weight on the word righteousness. There are other occurrences of νόμος in Romans where the best translation clearly is “principle” (Rom. 3:27; 7:23; 8:2). In those passages, Paul is contrasting two diametrically opposing principles (“works” and “faith” in 3:27; “mind” and “sin” in 7:23; “Spirit of life” and “sin and death” in 8:2). Here in Rom. 9:30, however, there is no clear diametrical contrast involving νόμον.
An alternative is to say that “νόμον” in Rom 9:30 has reference to the Old Testament scriptures. The phrase is then interpreted in light of Rom 3:21 where Paul notes that the righteousness of God is “witnessed to by the law and the prophets.” Paul is seen as criticizing Israel for pursuing a good goal (“the law that testifies to righteousness”), but by the wrong means: as if (ὡς) the law could be fulfilled by works and the righteousness to which the law pointed thereby secured. The implication of this view is this: had Israel recognized the call to faith, intrinsically found in the law itself, she too would have attained righteousness.
This view is also problematic. The primary difficulty is that it is anything but clear that Paul would view νόμον as a witness to righteousness by faith. Rom. 3:21 declares that God’s righteousness was manifest χωρὶς νόμου, apart from the law. True, the law and prophets bore witness to the righteousness of God. This simply means that while the Old Testament as a whole anticipated and predicted this new work of God, the justifying activity of God in Christ occurs outside the confines of the Old Covenant. The Mosaic covenant (in view in Rom. 3:21) is that temporary administration set up between God and Israel to regulate their lives and reveal sin until the establishment of the promise in Christ (Rom. 4:13-15; 5:20). The law itself is “not of faith” (Gal. 3:15-4:7). In addition, Paul’s usage of νόμος in association with δικαιοσύνης and its cognates usually bears a negative, not a positive, connotation (Rom. 3:21, 28; 4:13; 10:5; Gal 2:16, 21; 3:11, 21; 5:4).
Another possibility is to take into account the apparently parallel phrase in Rom 10:5 “τὴν δικαιοσύνην τὴν ἐκ [τοῦ] νόμου”, where the word order of “righteousness” and “law” are reversed, and say that “righteousness of the law” is the best sense of νόμον δικαιοσύνης in 9:31 as well. But this perspective fails to address why Paul used νόμον again later in 9:31, as that which was not attained. Paul surely would not have done this if he had meant for us to understand the phrase in 9:31 in the same manner as in 10:5.
So what does it mean that Israel failed to attain the law? How are “law” and “righteousness” connected? They are connected in that the law promises righteousness when its demands are met. Both Rom. 2:13 and Rom. 10:5 reinforce this understanding, as they speak of the righteousness that could be gained by “doing.” Rom. 7:10 speaks of the commandment that “promised life.” Gal. 3:21 seems to contradict, however: If a commandment had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. So is righteousness by the law or not? Yes and no. The law simultaneously taught two things :
1. Trust and obey God perfectly and you will be attain righteousness. (Rom 7:10)
2. Since you (as a sinner) cannot supply the perfect obedience of faith required by the law, look to God by faith (through blemish-free, sacrificed lambs) to the long-term goal of law: Christ (the perfect sacrifice) for righteousness to everyone who believes. (Rom 10:4)
Israel’s failure was not responding to the awareness of sin produced by the law in humble, penitent faith in God to supply for them a righteousness they could not possibly produce on their own. They did not come to the end of themselves – though God had given the law in order to make Israel aware of their sin (Rom 3:20), to increase transgression (Rom 5:20), and to consign all to sin (Gal 3:22). Israel stumbled over Christ by refusing to put faith in him (Rom 9:32). Not only was the manner of Israel’s pursuit of “νόμον δικαιοσύνης” misguided, but also the goal itself was wrong. Sinners were not to find righteousness in the law. Rather, the law was given to teach sinners how abundantly sinful they really were. The Jews were looking to the law as if it contained righteousness – that’s what I mean when I say “the goal itself was wrong.” Westerholm states it well: Righteousness was the goal of the law, but it could only be attained apart from the law (i.e., by faith). Israel sought to find righteousness in the law, (a) even though Christ had come, perfectly fulfilling the laws demands, and (b) even though no Israelite was able to meet the law’s demands and thus secure the righteousness it promises. That is what Paul means when he says that their zeal is not according to knowledge. The law was supposed to have driven them away from themselves and towards Christ in faith. Yet instead they perverted the purpose of the law by seeking to establish righteousness on the basis of their own performance – a “righteousness” which was at best only filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6) in comparison to the perfect obedience which God required and which Christ had furnished.