Re: [TruthTalk] Romans 2:12-16

[Knpraise]

Slade, these words taken from another forum.   What do you or all think?

John






The Jews of Paul's day were not legalists.  They didn't believe that they entered covenant with God on the basis of merit or through "human source".  They believed, as the Torah indeed taught, that God was full of grace and mercy.  To suggest that the Jews were legalists even though their reference point was the temple, and the temple meant a personal God full of grace seen in His willingness to forgive (sacrifices were constantly being offered) is to read a Reformation prejudice into the text.  Light from the Dead Sea scrolls, Apocrypha, and 2nd Temple Rabbis all show that salvation for the Jews was by God's election and His grace, not a result of merit.  

The Jews of Romans 10 were attempting to establish their own righteousness.  As the text shows, they were refusing to submit to the righteousness of God.  The righteousness of God was His willingness to vindicate all who would put their faith in Christ as Messiah.  The Jews refused to submit to this as the remainder of the chapter points out.  The Jews were accustomed to covenant relationship based on flesh (election as part of the seed of Abraham), and their badge of good standing within the covenant--the way they could tell someone else was a good Jew--was circumcision, dietary regulations, and Sabbath keeping.  Those are the "works of righteousness" they wanted to hang around the necks of the Gentiles.  Notice none is a moral precept.  Not a single moral law, from Moses to Christ, has changed.  The Jews didn't think themselves saved based on their ability to keep moral law perfectly--such a thought would make temple sacrifice laughable.  Again, they saw themselves as vindicated based on election and grace; the "works of the law" was the wall that separated them from everyone else.  Paul says, No, no, vindication, covenant relationship, comes by trusting the Messiah even apart from the works of the law because there is none righteous (no Gentile nation, nor the Jewish people).  In Christ all the prophecies were coming together, and the Jews should have been ready to accept it.  Usually they weren't.  The Jews were being challenged to accept Gentiles at the table after centuries of incredible prejudice.  That was the heart of their problem. It wasn't easy, and the thing they were clinging to was "works righteousness," because it gave value to their Jewishness, it appealed to their pride, though it was necessary for them to give it up.  Their problem was not works in the Martin Luther sense of the word, but works in the 1st century, 2nd Temple Jewish sense.  

Ben Overby