Introduction
Scholars and expositors have been mangling Paul’s message in his epistles (particularly Romans) for centuries. If we are to see Paul’s true message, we’re going to have to dig much more deeply into the text, and then unlearn nearly everything we thought we knew. No small undertaking.
But in so doing, we will also see revealed the true Gospel message of not only the entire New Testament, but the Hebrew Bible as well, as one grand story. And once you’ve seen this story accurately, its doctrine- and theology-upending message, you will never again read your Bible the same way. Most of the material in this piece is derived from Jason Staples’ revolutionary book[i] “Paul and the Resurrection of Israel”, which we will quote extensively.
The Nature of Israel’s Restoration Eschatology as Understood by First Century Jews
In order to understand Paul, we have to understand the cultural (theological and political) zeitgeist of his time, the subject of our current section. And the cultural touchstone of first-century Israel was their redemption by their God from the oppression of their oppressors (then Rome).
In the first century Israel, the consensus view among Jewish religious leaders was that both Israel and Judah had ignored and violated God’s covenant with them from the beginning, and so had abrogated their standing with God as ‘righteous’ or ’just’. They had continuously violated God’s expressed standards of piety and morality. Being found impious and immoral (as Staples describes them), they were now in a state of exile (from God’s care and provision) and so ‘dead’; living in a state of God’s wrath, from which they desperately needed, and looked forward to, His redemption.
Israel’s Redemption as Foreseen by Its Prophets
A critical fact that many moderns lose sight of is God’s affection for the Northern Tribes of Israel, referred to as “Ephraim”, after the favored son of Joseph/Jacob.
Je 31:20
20 Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he my darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I do remember him still. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I will surely have mercy on him, declares the LORD.
Ho 11:8-9
8How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. 9I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.
God had not only not forgotten Ephraim since the 8th century of His prophets, but had promised to rejoin his people to Judah, as we will see. To the prophets, the nation’s eschatological restoration looked like a multi-step transformation of its people.
In the first step of the process, the people were to be cleansed from their impurities. “I will sprinkle clean water on you… I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols” (Eze 36:25)[ii].
Next, God replaces their “heart of stone” with a “heart of flesh” and puts His Spirit within the people (Eze 36:26–27). This Spirit (“pneuma”) paradigm was pervasive among the prophets:
- “Until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness becomes a fertile field…” Is 32:15-18
- “For I will pour water on the thirsty land… I will pour My Spirit on your offspring…” Is 44:3-5
- “I will put My Spirit in you and you shall live…” Eze 37:1-17 (Dry Bones and Two Sticks)
- “They rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit… Where is He who put His Holy Spirit in their midst?” Is 63:10-11
- “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh…” Joel 2:28-29
- “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.” Ps 51:10-11
- “The LORD your God will circumcise your heart… so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul…” (Dt 30:6)
This eschatological spiritual renewal imagery of the prophets is impossible to miss or to misunderstand. To Israel, this was their expectation for redemption (in addition, of course, to their political expectations).
The consummation of this transformation was to result in obedience and covenant faithfulness:
The result of this renewal was presumed to be that the people would be enabled to live a life of faithfulness to, and love of, their God in obedience to His will (as summarized in Moses’ Decalogue) — that they would be His people, and He would be their God. This is the first hint that we get of a transformative redemption – one that would fundamentally change people’s hearts to seek and obey God, thus becoming “righteous”.
Israel’s Redemption as Viewed by the Qumran Community
Many scrolls from Qumran echo these same redemptive images.
Cleansed — 1QS III–IV: “He shall be cleansed of all his sins by the spirit of holiness…” (Compare Eze 36:25)
New Heart & Spirit — 1QS IV: “He will create a new spirit within him…” 1QHa (Hodayot): “You have strengthened my heart with your spirit…” (Compare Eze 36:26)
Enabled by the Spirit to Walk in Obedience — 4Q511 Frag. 35: “Blessed is the one who walks in the way of the Lord…” (Compare Eze 36:27) 4Q416–418 (Instruction): “He will guide him with the spirit of understanding…” (Contrast Is 44:18-20)
Israel’s prophets had agreed that both Israel (the Northern Kingdom) and Judah (“treacherous Judah” – Jer 3:11-12) had violated God’s Sinai covenant (Jer 31:32) and so incurred the curses of that covenant – death (exile from the life of God[iii]). Corporately, they were transgressors. Their apostacy had made them, in God’s eyes, “under wrath”, no better than “the nations” (Jer 3:8, 2 Kgs 17:15) – but they nevertheless could yet be redeemed (Ho 2:23). In terms of “righteousness,” they were in a state indistinguishable from gentile pagans.
This, then, was the eschatological mindset of most Jews in the first century when Jesus showed up.
The Role of Torah
To Paul, the function of the Torah was to convict Ro 3:5-6, Ro 7:7 people of their sin, and be the basis of their judgment Ro 2:12, Ro 2:21-24.
Because for Paul the law is “good”, it is in a position to expose the source of its violation – the sin-tainted nature of human “flesh”. Israel (and Judah) were not under wrath because of some failing of the Torah. It was because of themselves – their nature (Ro 7:7)
Israel refused contact with God at Sinai (Ex 20:18-19), recoiling from the direct exposure to His glory that Moses experienced. At that moment, they declined God’s commission to become a “nation of priests” – mediators between God and the nations – and instead deferred to Moses to fulfil the role of mediator(/priest), with themselves in the position equal to all the other people of the nations.
Had they been willing to experience God’s presence, there would have been no need for a written Torah. God would have directly communicated His will to His people. But their refusal not only forced God to write down His Torah, but was a watershed moment for Israel that pointed to their ultimate apostasy, exile, and judgment. Nevertheless, God continued His ongoing care and provision of them, well into their history in the land.
It’s important to understand that at no time did the Hebrew Bible portray the Torah as conferring spiritual favor on Israel. As noted, Israel refused God’s presence and “spiritual favor,” resulting in the need to give them written instructions. On the contrary, these instructions (as Paul notes) served to inform them when they did something outside of the will of God, and so had a “convicting” role.
The Understood Means of Redemption
The foundational principle of Israel’s eschatological restoration was the role of the Holy Spirit (Eze 36:26–27) in equipping its recipients with the ability to obey God’s law, which under the written law they did not experience. The Torah was not looked to for redemption or restoration. It was simply the tool to define right and wrong. When wrong was done its role was to convict the offender of disobedience and place him under the covenant’s curse until, by some means, that sin was remediated.
This Spirit-indwelling mechanism was articulated (by metaphor) in the Latter Prophet’s New Covenant prophecies – the writing of God’s law on the people’s hearts, changing their “hearts of stone” into “hearts of flesh”, circumcising their hearts (“so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.”), imbuing the people with the knowledge of God so that “all will know Me”, pouring out God’s Spirit “on all flesh”. Israelites always interpreted this last prophecy as referring exclusively to them (as Joel’s context clearly implies, despite his use of the word “all”).
In short, under His New Covenant, God was no longer going to simply look away at Israel’s and Judah’s continued apostasy with mercy. God’s requirements for His people required them to live faithfully to His Decalogue, or perhaps just the “Bible in the Little” (Mi 6:8). These requirements were simple. However, they were just impossible for the natural man.
Therefore, He was, in grace, ultimately going to change them so that they could live in fidelity[iv] to Him and thereby be judged “just” on the last day. This was the plan for “Israel’s” regathering and redemption as far back as Moses’s speech in Moab (Dt 30:6), even before Israel entered the land.
The importance of this last point of Israel’s restorationist eschatology can’t be overemphasized. God wasn’t merely going to mercifully ignore Israel’s sin so that they could continue their business as usual. How would that create righteousness? How would that produce His righteous family? No, He was going to transform them so that they could and would live just lives – lives that He would judge “just”/”righteous” on the last day by separating them from (ἀφίημι aphíēmi – usually translated “forgive”/”forgiving”) their sinful natures (“flesh”). (This verb is hugely important in ultimately helping us understand how Jesus’ death and resurrection actually led to a path to life. The gift of the indwelt Spirit, which He purveyed (Jn 16:7), was one’s sin resistance system, “separating” [“putting off/away”] sin from us to enable our righteousness. This is not your father’s Gospel!)
The State of First Century Jewish Understanding of Their Future Hope for Redemption
Despite acknowledging their apostasy, the Jews understood their scriptures to predict their redemption/restoration to righteousness and its salvation. These prophecies included the rejoining of both the northern Israel/Ephraim tribes and the southern tribes of Judah – now “Jews” (Eze 37:14-20), though they had no idea how the northern tribes would be regathered 750 years after their dispersal, nor the missing Judahites from the Babylonian exile after 600 years. This reformation would mark the end of the era of judgments (exile/death) and the wrath of God from the curses of the Sinaitic covenant.
They understood that this redemption would be characterized by God reforming them so that they could, and desired to, live in obedience to Him (Dt 30:6, Dt 4:29, Ezk 36:26-27). And they certainly understood that the prophets had indicated that this reformation would be achieved through God imparting His Spirit into them. (Of course, they also had additional political expectations for their redemption. But in terms of being restored to covenant faithfulness and its blessings, this was the common understanding of how that would be accomplished.)
Notably, despite their awareness of the foundational promise made to Abraham that his progeny would become a “blessing to the nations”, they seemed not to expect that promise to be realized (that we’re told of). They were looking, perhaps understandably in Roman Judah, exclusively for their own salvation through the realization of their New Covenant prophecies. Certainly, they were not looking for their Roman oppressors to be blessed by their God.
But what they all must have known as the era of the Hebrew scriptures closed is that the promise to Abraham had not been fulfilled, the New Covenant prophecies had not been fulfilled, and Judah had not been rejoined with the house of Israel. Things weren’t finished.
Paul’s Apocalypse
We now turn to Paul, himself. We’re introduced to Paul through some brief biographical passages in his epistles and some historical material in Acts.
From these, we learn that he was a well-respected Pharisee steeped in Israel’s scriptures, a “Hebrew among Hebrews” and a descendant of the tribe of Benjamin. He tells us that he was a persecutor of Christ-followers: “the Church of God” (Gal 1:13), sometimes called the “followers of the Way” (Acts 22:4), with “zeal” (Phl 3:6).
Paul experienced his famous revelation of the risen Christ while on his way to Damascus to persecute the Christ-followers there.
This revelation (ἀποκάλυψις apokálupsis) featured Paul’s “mystery” (Eph 3:3, μυστήριον mustḗrion): the inclusion of the gentiles in God’s redemptive ingathering. This was new to Paul (as it was to everyone in Judah), and a source of push-back from his Jewish contemporaries – even the Christian church in Jerusalem (Acts 15:1, 5). So, he had to figure out how it fit within the New Covenant promise that he well knew focused exclusively on Israel. NOTICE: To the brilliant and scripture-soaked mind of Paul, this was an exegetical imperative. Christ had revealed to him its truth. He had already seen its reality among the Gentiles in his churches. So, he didn’t need to prove it to himself or his Jewish brethren. He could simply show them. The question to him was: “Where do our scriptures prophecy this?”
Paul found his first scriptural hyperlink to his revelation in the “promise” of Abraham (Gen 22:18), which he took pains to point out not only to his churches, but also to his fellow Disciples:
Gal 3:14 “…in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.”
Eph 1:13 “…you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit…”
Rom 4:13-16 “For the promise to Abraham… was not through the law but through the righteousness of faith…”
Acts 13:32-33 “We tell you the good news: What God promised our ancestors He has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus…”
Rom 9:8 “It is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.”
But this was only one of several such connections Paul would uncover. For example, he surely would have known Isa 49:5-6:
5And now the LORD says,
he who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him;
and that Israel might be gathered to him—
for I am honored in the eyes of the LORD,
and my God has become my strength—
6he says:
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
Paul’s Case for His Gospel Made to the Jews
Romans, as with virtually all of Paul’s epistles, is filled with controversial statements of doctrine, liturgy, prescriptions for daily living, etc. We’ll survey just a sampling of his contentious positions, and look a bit at complaints against them (both then and today by scholars and theologians).
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28)
Though this famous verse is found not in Romans but Galatians, it deserves to be the lead doctrinal issue in any discussion of the book of Romans. What is contentious about Paul’s position, as we noted earlier, is that in thinking about their eschatological future, Jews[v] never (so far as we know) entertained the thought of Gentiles being admitted to God’s family. Certainly not Romans!! YHWH was exclusively theirs (and eventually their reunited northern brothers’).
So, Paul spends the first few chapters of Romans laying out his position that Jews are as guilty of sin as are the Gentiles – perhaps more so because Jews had the Law by which sin is judged, and the Greeks didn’t. In fact, he lays one of the first planks of his platform in Rom 1:18-32. Many expositors interpret this passage as referring to our (as gentile humans) natural knowledge of the glory of God’s creation – life, Sun, Moon, Stars, etc. That is not what Paul’s talking about here.
As Staples painstakingly documents[vi], Paul is talking about Israelites/Jews having been given the Torah, which reveals knowledge of God. “…God has shown it to them.” It’s these that exchanged this knowledge of God’s glory for “images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” Gentiles made no such exchange – they never had Torah to give up in the first place. (Despite this, many scholars continue to see Paul’s legal case here as condemning Gentiles.)
Because of this behavior, Paul says “God gave them up to a debased mind” (1:28) and even more devastatingly, “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.” Paul accuses them, echoing the Hebrew Bible[vii], of exchanging ”the truth about God for a lie”. This is the state of impiety and immorality which Paul directs squarely at the Jews, not, as long-argued, at Gentiles.
God’s Judgment of Sin
In chapter 2, Paul builds his case that the only righteous treatment for those whom he has been excoriating is to be judged by God as in the wrong, presumably on the “last day”. (2:5) This is his introduction to the following passage (2:6-11) in which he drops a bombshell whose interpretation has been corrupted for centuries, up to the present.
In v7, he says: “to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life;” The question interpreters have argued over is “who is Paul referring to?” Are these hypotheticals? Are these “good”/”obedient” Jews? It seems not. He is going to go on to distinguish between those who have been given the law, the “circumcised”, and those who have not – the “uncircumcised”.
His main point in this passage is that everybody is going to be judged for what they have done in their lives – “He will render to each one according to his works…”. And, his point in referencing those who “seek for glory and honor and immortality” is to establish the contrast between those under the Torah, and those represented by his Gentile converts, who have shown “patience in well-doing” in the absence of the Torah. This, I believe, is a stage-setter for a later exposition.
It should go without saying, but perhaps bears mention, that part and parcel of Israel’s Restorationist Eschatology was their understanding that on the last day they would be judged by YHWH. The whole point of this Eschatology, featuring judgment for what they had done in their lives, was to be saved from being found to have been “unrighteous”. This was the eschatological event to which the New Covenant prophets were responding with their path to restoration/redemption. We see their characterization of that event throughout the Tanakh (e.g., Joel 3:2, Dan 12:1-2, Isa 66:15-16, 24, Mal 3:16-4:3, Eccl 12:14).
Staples delves in detail into Paul’s rhetorical allegations (v21-22 – the “three traps of Belial”) which we won’t get into here other than to observe that his research on the applicability of the “crimes” in these allegations to Israel is well-established not only in the prophets (Jer 7:8-11, Mal 1:6-14, 2:10-12, 2:14-16, 3:8-10 as indicative of historical allegations against Israel) but also in extra-biblical sources, specifically the Damascus Document (4:15-18 p55) of the DSS.
To his Jewish brethren, he says (in so many words) “you’re fine as long as you keep the law, but if you break the law, you’re essentially the same as a Gentile without the law” – (v25) “but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision.” He concludes the chapter by saying “a Jew is one inwardly”, by which he surely means through his fidelity to God, “and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter.”
Staples points out to us that:
“Indeed, a central premise of traditional Jewish restoration eschatology is the conviction that due to its own idolatry and rejection of God’s revelation and failure to keep the command to love YHWH, Israel is no longer separate and distinct from the rest of humanity but rather stands under the same judgment. Paul simply builds on this principle, arguing that all humanity is therefore in the same situation, under sin and curse of death, with God’s mercy the only hope.”
One of Staples’ principal insights into Paul’s message is that not only to Paul, but to first century Jewish authorities in general, the New Covenant ideas of being given a new heart, a “circumcised heart” (by the Spirit), God’s Spirit poured into our hearts, the Torah written on our hearts, “all shall know Me”, etc. had been conflated into a single eschatological event of redemption. They all had become synonymous. And to Paul’s thinking, those who have experienced this meta-event by God’s grace are members of the New Covenant, whether physically circumcised or not. These are those who ‘can and do “keep the just statutes of the Torah”’.[xxi] To Paul, all that matters is “keeping the commands of God” (1 Cor 7:19). (How critics assail him for espousing the abandonment of the Torah for a “law-free” gospel, even associating him with the Marcion doctrine, is quite absurd and lacking in serious scholarship.)
But there is an interesting corollary of meaning in God’s act of giving/grace (χάρις cháris) to the one seeking to be faithful to God, and that corollary is that to ancient Greek speakers/writers, the concept of cháris was a reciprocal event: one gave something (in this case God’s gift of His Spirit) in exchange for which He expected a reciprocal gift – the receiver dedicating his life to being faithful to God’s will. This is the common understanding of cháris in all of ancient Greek literature and so would have been Paul’s. Yes, it was an act of unilateral giving by God (not of us earning it, as a “wage”), and thus “not your own doing”. But it was far from a “no strings attached” transaction.
Staples likes to use the analogy of us today being asked to assist our friend in his move. We do, and when the truck is all loaded at the end of the day, we expect something – maybe some pizza or a can of beer. And, importantly, when we need to move, we expect that same friend to come and help us out when asked. If he doesn’t, he’s not our friend. The relationship has been severed. This was the Greek notion of cháris in Paul’s mind when he described the New Covenant event (e.g. Eph 2:8). (It is quite damning that there is virtually no mention from today’s pulpits of such a reciprocity in God’s gift. Today, it is described as simply “free”, by which we hear “no cost” and “obligation-less”.)
The message of Paul that Staples interprets re: that God by his “grace” (χάρις cháris) endows the one seeking fidelity to Him with His Spirit, is that apart from this gift, “works of the Torah[viii]” do not justify. But through the reception of this gift, living out the “just statutes of the Law” is the expected normal response. Paul is a) not schizophrenic (i.e., “do the law…freedom from the law…?), and b) not confused about the recipient of God’s gift’s obligation under the terms of His New Covenant. In other words, contrary to much of Christian (soteriological) teaching today, God doesn’t gift someone “eternal life”. What He does most assuredly do is gift them with the means to live a just/righteous life that, on the last day, will be judged to have been righteousness in God’s eyes yielding eternal life. We still have to “walk by the Spirit” (Gal 5:16).
God is Righteous; We Aren’t
Then in chapter 3, after quoting David’s Psalm (“there is none righteous, no not one”), Paul drops the hammer with his statement that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” In saying there are none righteous, Paul uses the contrast with God’s righteousness to underscore his claim. He introduces his principal message here that the gift that was Jesus was a proof of God’s righteousness. Because, as he asserts, the Torah never had the ability to transform its adherents, a solution external to the Torah was needed. And that solution was to come from God Himself.
Paul uses the example of his church members (v21-22) to substantiate his claim of God’s ongoing righteousness, despite their starting from the same spiritual position as the apostate Jews he has been criticizing up to this point: “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it — the righteousness of God through faith in[ix] Jesus Christ for all who believe.”
Abraham’s Faith
In chapter 4 Paul lays out the concept of πίστις (pístis i.e. trust, fidelity, allegiance, reliance on — unfortunately translated “faith”) as the key characteristic in people that God looks for to add to His family, using Abraham as the exemplar, and claiming that the Jews don’t have an exclusive franchise on such faith (nor exclusive membership in His family) – it applies to all of Abraham’s children who rely on God as Abraham did.
God’s Love Has Been Poured Into Our Hearts Through the Holy Spirit
To Paul, expressing πίστις in God, as exemplified by Abraham’s trust of God’s promise, is the basis of God declaring one “just” or “justified”. As he says in the opening of chapter 5, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” And it is important in understanding Paul’s gospel to understand what, to him, “justified” meant. It is God’s declaration that He deems one “in the right” – a decision, a pronouncement, using terminology of the law court. If God deems one justified, that means that that person is deemed adopted by God into His family (His primary goal). It is this person to whom God extends the cháris of His Spirit.
What we have no evidence of it meaning (to Paul or anyone else), is that such a one was elected into God’s household forever. As adopted, he experiences receiving his portion of the inheritance of God – His New Covenant Gifts (the Spirit, knowledge of God, a new heart), which he will spend more time on later. (This recipient of God’s gift is thus in the same place as the Prodigal Son, who, despite the blessings he enjoyed, could and did elect to abandon his favored position.) Paul concludes this passage with (v5:5) “and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Here, Paul reminds us that part and parcel of the traditional Jewish/Israelite restorationist paradigm is the expectation that God would repair the breach in His relationship with the covenant-breaking disobedience of the people without changing His standards. Rather, He would transform those who wanted life with Him (by changing their hearts through His Spirit) so that they could, and would desire to live the life He willed for them in love. This is Paul’s profound eschatological message, though it is not uniquely his, having been forecast by the Prophets for centuries (see the Prophetic citations, above).
I’ve thought and written a bit about the meaning and purpose of Christ’s death[x]. Paul’s interpretation of it is expressed in a number of terms. For example, he says (v10) that we were “reconciled to God by the death of His son”. Reconciled here is:
καταλλάσσω katallássō[xi], καταλλάττω katalláttō; fut. katalláxō, from katá (2596), an intens., and allássō (236), to change. To reconcile.
The image here is of the one being reconciled to the other by changing or being changed so as to resolve the cause of the estrangement between the two parties. It certainly seems as though those expressing trust in or fidelity to Christ in Paul’s churches were reconciled by God’s declaration of “just” (stemming back to Abraham) and then subjected to change/transformation stemming from Christ’s death. So, two steps or components: 1) trust, 2) transformation by the indwelling of God’s Spirit, enabled somehow through Christ’s death to reconcile us to God, i.e., to change us so that we can be in right relationship with YHWH (i.e., can obey in fidelity), thereby being reconciled to God.
Dead to Sin
Romans chapter 6 introduces several new and important ideas, perhaps foremost of which is the idea that the one now trusting Christ, following His instructions and example, and endowed with God’s Spirit, is to remove his self-interest from his life. Paul calls it “put off your old self which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires” (Eph 4:22), and here describes it as (v6) “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.” This ‘enslavement’ condition is what he will later call “the law of sin and death” (Ro 8:2).
As Staples notes:
“In Rom 6, Paul then argues that those who have pledged to follow Israel’s messiah and have received the spirit are reckoned as having already died through participation in Messiah’s death and are therefore no longer under the jurisdiction of the Torah or its curse. And because they have already died, they are no longer subject to the inclination to sin rooted in the (now dead) flesh – the very thing that had led to disobedience in defiance of Torah – and have the freedom to obey God fully.”
As far as I am aware, this appears to be a thoroughly un-Jewish concept (dying to oneself and one’s inclination to sin that is shown by one’s failure to obey Torah), yet it is thoroughly Jewish/Israelite when viewed in the context of the New Covenant professed by the prophets. It might not be perceived as un-Jewish in its effects, as these were culturally esteemed (i.e., righteous living, humility, extending care to one’s neighbor at one’s own cost, etc.). But the way Paul characterizes it as, effectively, human self-sacrifice, must have struck his readers as quite shocking. As far as they knew, the New Covenant itself was to solve their problems of infidelity and impiety. They would be cleansed and renewed, and that would be it.
However, Paul had first-hand experience with the indwelt Spirit of God, both personally and in his churches. He had seen (and perhaps experienced) that the gift of the Spirit can, like other gifts, be rejected. Paul is threading the needle here between what the Holy Spirit accomplishes in the one in whom He takes up residence, and that person’s response and responsibilities in the arrangement (as we read of elsewhere, e.g., 2 Cor 6:17, Gal 6:14, Eph 5:11, Phil 3:20) following his acceptance of the gift.
My understanding of the tension in this arrangement is that the one in whom the Spirit has taken up residence can nevertheless completely overrule the Spirit’s direction (“grieving” the Spirit, as it were – Eph 4:30), thereby remaining ensnared by “the world”[xii], and so becoming our metaphorical wayward Prodigal Son.
Given that this is the dynamic of the arrangement, Paul should be thanked for taking this uncomfortable subject head-on; the requirement to metaphorically die – i.e., get their self-interest out of the Spirit’s way — though it must have been difficult for his first-century audiences to hear and understand, especially the Jews (and perhaps us moderns?[xiii]).
Israel’s Eschatological Restoration
By the time we get to Rom 9-11, Paul has asserted that a) both Jews and Gentiles failed in living righteously, though both could now be enabled to do so, b) Abraham, the father of both Jews and Gentiles, demonstrated how one received God’s favor – by his trust of and fidelity to God’s instruction, leading to the declaration of his “righteousness”/”justification”, c) It was the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that had made this righteousness available to all, through His inauguration of God’s New Covenant and its outpouring of His Spirit, d) this Jesus-initiated outpouring of the Spirit (Jn 16:7), and the Spirit’s work in the believer would accomplish what the Torah by itself could not: the transformation of the faithful into those enabled to follow God’s instructions and so live righteously. Such a person, when in agreement with the Spirit, is defended from sin by the Spirit, which is his “righteousness”.
This brings us to Paul’s arguments for how this cosmos-shaking transformation was to result in the fulfillment of God’s long-standing prophecies of the restoration, redemption, and reunification of the nation Israel. (The only texts in Romans where Paul uses the term “Israel” are chapters 9-11. We have to note this and the distinction Paul is clearly making between “Jews”, that he has been critiquing in the first half of his book, and “Israel” which to him is a wholly different concept, a distinction Staples points out has failed to have been noticed by most students and scholars of Paul over time.)
Paul had, at the initiation of chapter 9, claimed that the New Covenant was already at work. But those familiar with the prophecies looked not only for these transformational blessings, but also the regathering and reestablishment of the nation of Israel, which problematically included those long-ago exiled northern tribes of Joseph/Ephraim. And, so far (at Paul’s writing), people had seen virtually no one claiming descendance from these ancient northern tribes showing up to claim their eschatological inheritance with their southern brothers. So, they questioned Paul’s premise – were they in the period of the end of the age, the eschatological restoration that would end the age of God’s wrath, or weren’t they?
Paul’s Problem: Explaining the Inclusion of Gentiles and the Absence of Regathered Israelites in His Restorationist Eschatology
Likely the most counterintuitive aspect of the New Covenant restoration kicked off by Jesus, was the inclusion of non-Jews experiencing transformation and turning to live for Israel’s God, in Paul’s phrase, “through… Christ Jesus” (Ro 5:11). This was because the New Covenant prophecies clearly applied only to Israel and Judah, nowhere mentioning “the nations”.
The other problem he was challenged with was more minor, but no less important to his Jewish brethren, and that was the failure of most Jews of the day to accept Jesus and, as a result, position themselves for redemption. This problem was more minor in the sense that it was a common assumption among Jews of the day (including the Dead Sea sectarians at Qumran) that many would be left out of God’s redemption as they had “made their bed”, so to speak, of apostacy, and weren’t particularly interested in leaving it. The Jews were, therefore, simultaneously hopeful, but also fatalistic about their chance of redemption, let alone their regathering.
This attitude explains Paul’s defense of God’s faithfulness (e.g., Ro 3:3, Ro 9:6). Here Staples breaks from the single motif of Gentiles-as-those-now-given-the-promised-blessing-to-Abraham to call out his profound insight from his first book[xiv], that God was in the process of redeeming “all Israel” (Ro 11:26).
It’s at this point that Paul begins to put a fine point on who “Israel” is. Notice that in 11:26, he didn’t say “all Israelites”. He says “all Israel”. He has in mind a definition of “Israel” that is those of Abrahamic/Israelite descent who have expressed the trust of Abraham in God/Christ whoever, and wherever they are, “to the Jew first, but also the Greek”.
Not All Israelites Are “Israel”
We have to pay attention to Paul’s language in Ro 9:4-5:
4They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. 5To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.
Paul here is bemoaning his brethren who have refused God’s[xx] offer of transformation into people who live righteously. Notice he calls them “Israelites”, not “Jews”, inferring that they are among those subject to the promised final redemption. But they have so far refused it.
Working With Clay
Paul then uses the long-misinterpreted metaphor of God’s work with His created humanity as that of a potter molding clay into vessels. I’ve already written[xv] about this metaphor as analyzed by Staples, and so I won’t repeat myself here. Suffice it to say that translators and interpreters have completely missed Paul’s points and, in so doing, have completely libeled God’s character, not to mention Paul’s heart and eschatology.
If you’ve been confused by a passage suddenly popping up characterizing God as arbitrary and capricious after having read Paul build his case for eight chapters that God is gracious, merciful, and long-suffering in guiding His people, I encourage you to read the referenced piece. Paul’s (and Staples’s) key insight is that God, in patiently working His clay vessels, does not fire them in His kiln until the last day. Until then, He works with them in the expectation that they will agree with His shaping and so become vessels of honor.
“Not My People”
Lots of Paul scholars have protested that Paul’s cooption of Hosea’s prophecy (Ro 9:25-26) of the Northern Kingdom’s judgment by God (the Assyrian Exile), but nonetheless then promising their ultimate redemption as “children of the living God”, is inappropriate. The context, they say, just doesn’t fit. They simply see no basis for employing the symbolism of Hosea’s prophecy on Paul’s Gentiles[xvi]. As it turns out, they’re wrong.
As he so elegantly has worked out in his first book x, through Israel’s (Ephraim’s) assimilation into the nations to which they were exiled, over the course of many centuries of intermarriage and acculturation, they became, themselves, Gentiles. As Hosea (8.8) says, they have been “swallowed up”; a “useless vessel”.
Now we have Paul and other Disciples evangelizing those same nations with the message of Christ to which many of them respond with trust in God through Christ, leading to their “justification” – their adoption as God’s children. So, these Gentiles – in some part the descendants of the northern Kingdom of Israel — are being regathered to their God, once again becoming “my people”.
Jumping ahead a bit, this, of course, is the explanation for the scenario Paul lays out in Ro 11:25-26:
25 Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. 26And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written,
“The Deliverer will come from Zion,
he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”;
When as many Gentiles as ultimately will have “come in”, then all Israel (i.e., the spiritual, faithful assembly of the descendants of Jacob/Israel) “will be saved” (Zec 10:9, Hos 2:23). I think one should sit back to ponder this restorational miracle and be simply awed by its elegance. Not only are God’s restoration promises to the northern tribes being faithfully carried out, but so too, simultaneously, are His promises to reunify to Himself “Israel” (Eze 37), and His much more ambitious promises to Abraham to bless the nations (Gen 22:18).
We also must be careful, however, to not allow ourselves to be sloppy in our interpretation of Paul’s meaning of “gentiles”. He’s not talking about a people group – some ethnically-based collection of individuals. He’s talking about the ἐˊθνος éthnos – people of the “nations”, a category to Paul not unlike his term “Israel” to refer to those faithful within the descendants of Abraham. These are the to-be-faithful adoptees other than “Israel”. Therefore, he doesn’t speak of “all the Gentiles” coming in but rather the “fullness of the Gentiles”, meaning all of those of the nations who by faith will come in.
In training ourselves to unlearn our old understanding and adopt this new interpretation of God’s redemptive and restorational plan, I find it very helpful to first return to the theological premise of the consequence of the apostacy of both the house of Israel and of Judah: through their actions they became spiritually indistinguishable from people who had no connection with Israel’s God or His covenant – the nations. This is a substantial part of Paul’s foundation constructed in the first three chapters of his book. So, in a sense, God is working with a homogenized population (“not my people” – Amos 9:14) while not losing sight of the fact that He had promises to the house of Israel (and by implication, Judah, re: the reunification) that He had yet to fulfill.
Secondly, since our working definition of Paul’s term “Israel” in Ro 9-11 is the faithful remnant of those who had some kinship with the house of Jacob/Israel (Ro 9:27), and that Gentiles were also being transformed into that assembly (Gal 3:14), it is hardly the case that Paul is painting a picture of Gentiles replacing that “Israel”. Rather, they (as an inversion of the traditional supercessionist position) are actually those being subsumed into that “Israel” – the faithful remnant – not replacing it (“grafted in” to use Paul’s metaphor in Ro 11:17). Paul is expanding his first-century audience’s interpretation of “God’s family” by including Abraham’s “all the families of the earth” promise of blessing (Gen 12:3). And, he’s trying to make it painfully clear that there won’t be two standards at work on the last day. There will be one, by which everybody will be judged (2 Cor 5:10).
Enter the Messiah
Romans chapter 10 historically has been difficult to decipher. Paul opens with a contrast, using the imagery of Dt 30:11-14, between obtaining righteousness (the prize) via Moses’ Torah, for the one who “does” the commandments, or now, according to Paul, through the redemption and empowerment provided by Christ’s death and resurrection through the provision of God’s indwelt Spirit into the one who (like Abraham) trusts. Paul writes – Ro 10:5-8:
5For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. 6But the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) 7“or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 8But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim);
Paul apparently sees parallels in the mediation of both Moses and Jesus. Both “descended” – Moses through the Red Sea, Jesus into death. And both ascended – Moses onto the mountain of God to retrieve His Torah, Jesus to God in exaltation of His faithful victory over sin and death, and to purvey God’s gift of His Spirit. As Staples notes, apparently Paul thought that Jesus was a (if not ‘the’) “prophet like Moses” (Dt 18:15). And in both cases, the people hadn’t done anything to receive their path to righteousness, either through Torah observance, or through transformation. Each was simply a gift given by God.
Paul is pointing out here that both he and Moses are talking about the same epoch – the time when the New Covenant (e.g., Dt 30:6) has been initiated with the result of the faithful being infused with the knowledge and Spirit of God (“The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”). Paul’s new insight is that it has taken the death and resurrection of God’s Messiah (who Paul already identified in 9:33 as the foundation stone of Is 28:16) to initiate that covenant (Ro 10:9).
Paul’s Complex Understanding of the Relationship Between Messiah and Torah
Staples then goes into a twenty or so page analysis of Paul’s arguments for Jesus’ messiahship exposed in the scriptures, His relation to the Torah (and vice versa), the Torah’s purpose, and its relationship to fidelity to God’s will. (A good part of the reason for this digression by Staples is apparently that many Biblical scholars have incorrectly interpreted the verses involved, and he, as scholars do, is attempting to explain to them their error.)
Of first concern is Paul’s referencing of Habakkuk 2:3-4 (Ro 1:17) and Leviticus 18:5(b) (Ro 10:5), which follow (Staples’ translations):
“3For the vision is still for the appointed time: he groans toward the goal and will not fail. If he delays, wait for him! For he will certainly come and not be late. 4If it is puffed up, his breath is not upright in him. But the just one by his fidelity will live.”
“5bthe human (adam) will do them and will live by them”
After justifying his translations, Staples builds up his arguments that both of these verses are, in fact, messianic (contrary to much opinionated scholarship). Concerning the Habakkuk verse, Staples’ point is that Paul’s use elsewhere of the terminology “justness of God”, that he sees as being demonstrated by Christ’s resurrection, as well as extensive “just one” images throughout, e.g., the book of Jubilees describing the expected Messiah, makes it quite clear that Paul’s reference to Hab 2:4 is one designed to substantiate his case that Jesus was the one predicted by “the scriptures”.
The Leviticus citation (with its important leading definite article, “the”, not “a” as is typical) leads to a more nuanced conclusion. That is that the one predicted in Israel’s restoration eschatology would be one who perfectly kept all the law – “the one who does these things” (in “justness”) and “fulfilled” the Torah (Ro 10:4 – “the end of the law for righteousness” – the “telos” of the law) through his living in perfect fidelity (Ro 10:5). To Paul this seems to have been a key credential possessed by Jesus validating his “Moses” (Lev 18:5) reference. Staples also postulates that since the Torah promised life to the one who “does (all) these things”, Jesus’ death had to be redeemed through His resurrection to fulfill that Torah promise.
So, we have the Torah being confessed as inadequate to transform its adherents into ones who are, in fact, just. Thus, those that attempted to maintain obedience to it regularly failed, creating sin (Gal 3:12). To Paul, then, the Torah mandate on Israel within the Sinai Covenant was a sin-generator, though it was and is “good” (Ro 7:12). Why this state of affairs? As he tells us, because the law was “weakened by the flesh” (Ro 8:3). And Israel’s failure to obey the law led to their incurring the curse of the covenant. (Note: there is no reason that we should assume that Paul’s identification of Israel’s failure to “keep the law” was simply their idol worship which, by his time, had been significantly eliminated. He more likely had in mind its “covetousness”, “stealing”, “deceit”, and other moral admonitions that continued to be violated by otherwise seemingly observant and pious Jews, just like us today.)
The solution brought by Christ’s death and resurrection was the initiation of the New Covenant for those who placed their trust in and allegiance to Him in obeying His commands. Now, paradoxically, to those who trust and follow Christ, the curse of the covenant is lifted, they are separated from God’s wrath, and they are empowered to live just (righteous) lives of fidelity to God’s will (= Mose’s original moral/ethical covenant at Moab, = the commands of Jesus; “love God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your everything, and your neighbor as yourself”.) So now they can live as God always wanted them to.
In other words, they now had the ability (through the power of the Holy Spirit) to follow (Moses’ original) Torah obediently (a characteristic Paul identifies as the “obedience of fidelity/faith” — Ro 1:5) without even needing it to be written down.
This is hardly the message of a first-century Jew looking to establish his own “law-free” religion. And, it seems to be 100% consonant with Jesus’ ministry, whose main objective was to describe the post-New Covenant life that He was here to make available to all, which He called the “Kingdom of God”.
Paul says that for those now empowered by God’s Spirit, they have “died to the law” (Ro 7:4-6) in the consequence of having that law written on their hearts. It is in their hearts directing their affections to pursuing it! Paul nowhere says (as he is charged) that now that Christ has come, the law is rescinded. This is simply the argument of ignorant people who haven’t spent adequate time with the text to understand it.
Many Bible students and scholars have (and have had over the centuries) opinions as to what the Apostle Paul is saying in his epistles. Only a handful have invested the years of study that are required to have a well-researched explanation for what he says and why. Fortunately for all of us, Dr. Staples is one of the latter.
Saving Israel
We jumped ahead earlier to comment on Ro 11:25-26:
25 Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening (“insensibility”) has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. 26And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written,
“The Deliverer will come from Zion,
he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”;
To Staples, Paul’s vision here is that by calling (through evangelizing) all of the Gentiles into whom the house of Israel had been exiled, when all of those who were to hear the message and trust its truth and its Christ had done so — “come in” (i.e. accepted this Gospel), then at that moment “all Israel” which had disappeared into those people (i.e. had become “not my people”, “dead”) “would be saved”.
This subject takes up the penultimate chapter in Staples’ book. We won’t dive into the depth of his argument for this interpretation here, as I have already written elsewhere about it[xvii]. However, he offers some additional insights here that are worthwhile for us to mentally file away in association with these verses.
Staples notes that the sequence of events in Paul’s statement is inverted from the traditional eschatological sequence anticipated by the prophets: first, the redemption and restoration of the nation of Israel, and only after that, the “nations” streaming to Jerusalem to make their offerings to and worship Israel’s God and King. Paul seemingly has the Gentiles “come in” first. But that’s a misunderstanding. Paul wasn’t describing a sequence of events; he was describing an event.
Staples says the key to decoding Paul’s meaning of this otherwise obscure phrase, “the fullness of the Gentiles”, is to recognize it as a verbatim quote from the famous scene of Jacob blessing Ephraim and Manasseh — Ge 48:19
19But his father refused and said, “I know, my son, I know. He also shall become a people, and he also shall be great. Nevertheless, his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his offspring shall become a multitude (“the fullness”) of nations.”
(He first explains to his reader the discrepancies in our English translations [here “multitude”; “nations”] with Paul’s Greek [πλήρωμα plḗrōma; ἐθνῶν ethnōn] and Genesis’ Hebrew [מְלא melō; גּוֹיִם gôyim], noting that Paul’s words (πλήρωμα plḗrōma; ἐθνῶν ethnōn) are, in fact, the way the cited Hebrew words are translated into Greek in the vast majority of cases (e.g., in the LXX).)
Obviously, Paul has in mind those ethnōn / gôyim /Gentiles/nations that have descended from the “swallowed up” northern tribes associated with Ephraim as those that “come in”.
Reading the juxtaposition of bringing in “the fullness of the Gentiles” and “all Israel” being saved, in fulfillment of God’s promise of His eschatological restoration of His people, Israel, causes us to confront the question: “Why are any Gentiles being joined to Paul’s metaphorical Olive Tree (Ro 11:16-24) and given the gift of God’s Spirit?”
The inescapable conclusion we have to draw is that, from Paul’s point of view, while he is well aware of the Abrahamic promise of blessing for “the nations”, he does not come across as having that blessing as top-of-mind in describing the redemption of Israel. Rather, to Paul, the issue appears to be preeminently God’s faithfulness to His promises to Israel and their ultimate redemption and restoration. That, having had the house of Israel swallowed by “the nations”, those nations needed therefore to be reclaimed to God to regather that house – Ezekiel’s “For Joseph (the stick of Ephraim)” stick — into “all Israel” (including the “For Judah” stick).
God’s overarching objective was Israel’s restoration. The collateral effect of that process was that Gentiles were called to God, justified, and empowered by His Spirit. No doubt God understood when He made the promise to Abraham how He would ultimately fulfill it. But the humbling message of Paul is that the principal reason Gentiles were being joined into his metaphorical Olive Tree at all was because God was being faithful in honoring his eschatological pledge to restore Israel.
Perhaps you’re not as completely stunned by this epiphany as I was when I first understood it. But I would like to suggest, perhaps you should be. This understanding not only undoes centuries of traditional Christian dogma concerning Christian status vis-à-vis the status of Israelites as seen by God, but it makes Jesus’ focus during His ministry on “the lost sheep of Israel” make so much more sense! In fact, regathering the lost sheep of Israel was His preeminent purpose, just as He said (Mt 15:24).
Obviously, during His ministry, Jesus was primarily teaching and calling Jews – Judahites (with few exceptions — the “Canaanite woman” in Mt 15:21-28, the centurion’s servant (Lk 7:1-10)). But having done so during His life, it also explains why, after His resurrection, He abruptly shifts focus and sends His disciples to carry His message to “all nations” (Mk 13:10) as a fulfillment of God’s faithfulness to His promises to Israel.
The other reason for seeing this understanding as a kind of apocalypse “of Biblical proportions” is the extent to which it unifies the storylines found in both Testaments into one grand narrative of God’s enduring, patient love for His created humanity – in particular His unruly, yet nevertheless beloved Israel, from the Genesis garden to the Exodus redemption, the Sinai catastrophe, the exiles and destructions, through to Jesus’ ministry and sacrifice, and His Disciples’ Acts.
One needs to simply consider the beauty and elegance of this over-arching love story to experience the complete awe of, and reverence for, its Author.
Summary
There is so much insight in Staples’s revelatory book that trying to summarize it is almost an insult to him. Luckily for us, he has written his own version of the core of his understanding and argument, which we use here.
This[xviii] is the emphatic concluding statement to which Paul has been building from the very beginning of the book. The physically uncircumcised people displaying the “work of the Torah written on their hearts,” (Rom 2:14-15) are God’s way of resurrecting the house of Israel, which must be united with the faithful from the house of Judah. Dishonored and useless vessels previously cast among the nations (Hos 8:8; Jer 22:28) are becoming vessels of mercy (Rom 9:23). God is redeeming “not my people” from among the nations as promised, but in a surprising twist, that redemption involves calling vessels of mercy “not only from Jews but also from gentiles” (9:24). Israel is being resurrected through those who are literally “not my people” – gentiles outside of the covenant people – becoming “children of the living God” (9:26). Branches were broken off from the olive tree of Israel due to infidelity (Jer 11:16-17), but now wild olive branches are being grafted into the tree by fidelity (Rom 11:17-24). Israel was rendered partly insensible[xix] (11:7, 11:25) but only until Ephraim’s seed (“the fullness of the nations”) comes into the assembly of YHWH (11:25). This is how Israel is brought to its fullness (11:12 το ηττημα αυτων) – and “what is their acceptance,” Paul asks, “if not life from the dead” (11:15)? In keeping with Ezekiel’s prophecy, the resurrection of the “whole house of Israel” (πᾶς οἶκος Ἰσραήλ Ezek 37:11) from the dead through the indwelling of the spirit (37:14) also means uniting the “stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel, his companions” together “with the stick of Judah,” making them “one stick in [YHWH’s] hand” (Ezek 37:19). This is how all Israel will be saved as promised.
For those of us who are modern, Western, Christ-followers, one can only be left in a state of stunned humility and a deep gratefulness that YHWH’s commitment to His people Israel was so profound that it ended up changing us and giving us life.
[i] Staples, Jason A. (“Staples”), “Paul and the Resurrection of Israel”, Cambridge Press, 2024
[ii] I have developed a theory of the purpose of Christ’s death as providing just this cleansing in Why Jesus? – A Pilgrim’s Search
[iii] In the Hebrew Bible, the judgment of “death” equaled exile, as every ruler in the Ancient Near East understood that if you wanted to “kill” a people, you exiled and spread them out into your cities and villages and quite quickly, their culture and religion and unique “gods” would be assimilated into oblivion within the surrounding, dominant culture. Today we call this practice genocide.
[iv] Please note that Staples chooses to render πίστις pístis as “fidelity” [sometimes “trust”] rather than “faith”, which I agree with and have preserved.
[v] Jews, NOT Israelites. Staples spends a good part of the introductory material in his book documenting that first century Jews called themselves “Jews”, not “Israelites”, because they thought of themselves as distinctly NOT associated with the northern (“Israel”) tribes exiled into Assyria 750 years prior. There had always been, since the split of the Kingdom of Israel in 930 BC, disdain held by both sides for the other, though realizing that their scriptures predicted the eschatological reunion of all the tribes into a reunited nation of Israel (which is the exclusive subject of Eze 37:1-17). Jews had the Temple. Jews (once had) the scriptures (Law). Jews obediently made sacrifice at the single site ordained (according to them) by God – the Temple. So, they had a certain cultural hubris and pride.
[vi] Staples uses extensive references to not only OT texts (e.g. Dt. 29:29) but extra-biblical texts such as the Wisdom of Solomon, the book of Baruch, Philo’s “On Rewards and Punishments”, etc.; many contemporary scholarly authors (e.g. Kathy Gaca [“Paul’s Uncommon Declaration”], Jonathon A. Linebaugh [“God, Grace and Righteousness in Wisdom of Solomon and Paul’s Letter to the Romans”], NT Wright [“The Law in Romans 2”], Stanley K Stowers [“A Rereading of Romans”], etc., etc. to substantiate his case that Paul in 1:18-32 is talking not about pagans but about Israel the nation who has been given the knowledge of God and nevertheless practices impiety and immorality. (Staples’ Bibliography is 52 pages long!!)
[vii] This “exchange of the true God for other gods” idea we find in Ps 106:20 and Jer 2:11-13, linking their behavior not only to the molten calf incident at Sinai (Ex 32:4, Ne 9:18), but to all manner of the worship of other images, as in Dt 4:16-18 and “worship of every form of creeping thing and animals and abominations” (Eze 8:10).
[viii] See What Did the “Law of Moses” Mean to — Paul? – A Pilgrim’s Search
[ix] I dispute that this was Paul’s wording here (nothing to do with Staples). God’s righteousness is independent of our faith in Jesus Christ or anything else. It just is – immutable. A more accurate translation I believe is “through the faith of Christ”, or even better, “through the faithfulness of Christ”. That faithfulness demonstrated God’s enduring righteousness in fulfilling His ancient promise. “Faith in” and “believe” seem, in any event, to be redundant ideas. (This is the debate on an objective genitive interpretation vs a subjective genitive interpretation. I’ve written a bit about that here: The Law of Faith – A Pilgrim’s Search)
[x] Thinking About Jesus and the Crucifixion – A Pilgrim’s Search
[xi] The word is used in describing a marriage separation in which the wife leaves the husband due to his dishonorable behaviors but then the husband reforms (changes) himself to abandon those behaviors. In such a situation the wife should “reconcile” herself back to that husband who has been reformed.
[xii] Many critics of Christianity have no understanding of this fact, though it is there in black and white in the text for them to learn. As a consequence, they have a pernicious habit of disclaiming Christianity and Christ when what prompts them are people who have rejected God’s transforming offer, but who nevertheless claim membership in the “club”. These, they say, nullify much of what Paul proclaimed and the Gospels. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Ignorance has profound effects, especially when it is held and pontificated upon by those who are, mistakenly, esteemed for their “knowledge” and “insights”.
[xiii] An apologetic note: This “dying” is exactly the reciprocal action in response to God’s cháris that God is hoping for/expecting. But he doesn’t dictate it, and most refuse Him. Paul calls out its practical application through submission in Ro 10:9. The Spirit enables obedience to the Law, but its recipient must endeavor to allow the Spirit to direct him into it. It is not a once-for-all “Zap” (although its change is dramatic). It becomes an ongoing give-and-take relationship. AW Tozer, in “The Pursuit of God”, puts it like this:
“The ancient curse will not go out painlessly; the tough, old miser within us will not lie down and die obedient to our command. He must be torn out of your heart like a plant from the soil; he must be extracted in agony and blood like a tooth from the jaw. He must be expelled from our soul by violence as Christ expelled the moneychangers from the temple. And we shall need to steel ourselves against his piteous begging, and to recognize it as springing out of self-pity, one of the most reprehensible sins of the human heart.”
[xiv] Staples, Jason A., “The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism: A New Theory of People, Exile, and Israelite Identity:”, Cambridge University Press, 2021
[xv] Does Paul’s Potter/Clay Metaphor Say What Christians Think It Says? – A Pilgrim’s Search
[xvi] This despite the fact that to the majority of first century Jews the phrase “not my people” could refer to nothing other than Gentiles.
[xvii] What Paul Meant by “all Israel” – A Pilgrim’s Search
[xix] Most translations use “hardened”
[xx] It’s worth noticing here that Paul calls Jesus “God” (2316. Θεός Theós). Now some will excuse this saying something like “the Greeks called a lot of things Θεός. Sometimes it was even plural. So, the term doesn’t necessarily mean the God, YHWH.” Oh? Do you think it is plausible that Paul, the self-professed “Hebrew among Hebrews”, would suddenly create a plurality of Gods overseeing “Israel”? That possibility seems remote. It is far more plausible, in my opinion, that based on his Damascus Road revelation, he was simply reporting what he now understood to be true — that God could manifest Himself as He wished. And He had wished to manifest Himself as Jesus of Nazareth. This is the simplest clearest explanation that makes sense.
[xxi] Staples, p172
