Justification

The whole point of Abraham in Romans 4, as I have said before in relation to Galatians 3, is not that he is an "illustration" or an "example," as though the saving plan consisted of the simplistic narrative, "Humans sin; God rescues; all is well (and, by the way, God has done this here and there in the past as well)."

Paul has announced in Romans 3:21 that God has been faithful to the covenant; Romans 4, so far from being an "illustration" or "example" of this (as though Abraham could be detached from his historical moorings and float around like a lost helium balloon wherever the winds of ahistorical hermeneutics might take him), is the full

Paul is not primarily talking here about the salvation of "the Jew."

It would have been taken for granted that "God's righteousness" referred to the great, deep plans which the God of the Old Testament had always cherished, the through-Israel-for-the-world plans, plans to rescue and restore his wonderful creation itself, and, more especially, to God's faithfulness to those great plans.

(the "gospel," we note, is not simply "Here's howto be saved"; it is the good news that, through Jesus as Messiah, the Creator God is putting the whole world right).34

"Righteousness" carries the overtones both of "justice"-the Creator's passion to put things right-and of "faithfulness"-YHwx's faithfulness to the covenant which he established so that through it he might indeed put all things right.

Why shouldn't he just toss words around and let them fall in neat sound bites unrelated to the subtle and sustained line of thought he has been following?)

The "works of the law" against which Paul warned were not, he suggested, the moral good deeds done to earn justification (or salvation), but the particular commandments and ordinances which kept Jew and Gentile separate from one another.'

This is not simply a problem for Israel; it is not simply a problem for the world (though it is of course both of those as well). It is a problem for God, as Romans 3:1-8 makes clear. God's single saving plan has apparently been thwarted. How is he then going to be faithful not only to the promises made to Israel but to the promises made through Is