"Faith"—What Does Paul Mean? (N. T. Wright Q&A)

there's a phrase which Paul uses a few times which has come to be quite controversial in recent discussions and this shows up in various new translations of the New Testament in the traditional versions it used to appear as faith in Jesus Christ or faith in Jesus the Messiah and thinking for instance of a verse like Galatians 2:16 where Paul says we have believed or had faith in the Messiah Jesus and then he goes on to say so that we might be justified and here's the critical phrase is it by faith in Christ or by the faithfulness of Christ and not by works of the law now because of the great debates that took place in the sixteenth century about faith versus works everybody in that tradition used to say that what Paul is doing is contrasting our faith with our works but as people have studied the Greek and have thought about the meaning of various other passages in which this phrase occurs another option has come to the fore which on balance I am inclined to take up myself and that is because the Greek can mean this that the word pist is faith can be faith as in our faith in or that something or someone or faithfulness in which case Paul could be referring to the faithfulness of Jesus the faithfulness of the Messiah in other words Jesus own faithful life including particularly his obedient death which Paul describes in terms of obedience in Romans 5 and in Philippians 2 so that we now have quite a finely balanced question in passage after passage in Galatians two and three and in Philippians three and in Romans three is Paul talking primarily about something that God has done in and through the faithfulness of Jesus for our benefit or is it about the faith with which we reach out and grasp what has been done for me the crucial passage is Romans three in Romans 3 Paul is talking about the problem that faces the Jewish people despite the fact that they have been called by God to be the people who bring the light to the nation's and he says what is the advantage of being a Jew what's the value of much in every way because to begin with he says they were entrusted with the Oracles of God that's Romans 3 verse 2 and the word for entrusted is very similar to the word for faith because in English we have faith faithfulness trust loyalty but in Greek it tends all to come down to this word pista s' or the verb this euro and so when Paul says they were entrusted with the Oracles of God he goes on at once well supposing some were untrustworthy in other words he seems to be saying God gave the Jewish people his Oracles for the nation's but they were untrustworthy they didn't pass the message on they were not actually a light to the nation's instead the nation's looked at them and scorned their God as he says in chapter 2 so the problem then is what is God going to do if his plan always involved faithful Israel bearing his light to the nation's and if Israel has said no we're not going to do that or not do it in the way that you wanted is God then going to say we'll we'll forget that plan and do something else instead now here's a problem many many Christians in the Western Church over the years have said yep that's exactly what God has done he's written the Jews out of the plan and he's got a plan B called Jesus instead that's exactly wrong in Romans 3:21 2223 Paul picks up that train of thought and says this is how God's faithfulness to the Covenant has been revealed through the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah in other words the Jewish people were called to be faithful to God's plan and the faithful obedience which Jesus as Messiah has offered instead of being the denial of the Jewish plan and it's God given this is its fulfillment so that now in Romans 3 22 he says God's covenant faithfulness has been unveiled and it's witnessed - by the law and the prophets and it's the covenant faithfulness of God through the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah but this doesn't mean of course that human faith is irrelevant because he goes on to say in the next for the benefit of all who believe here's how it works Jesus has been faithful to God's plan and his death achieved uniquely the salvation which God always purposed for the human race what then is to be the badge which says that somebody belongs to that people and is taking full advantage of what was done for them on the cross the answer is their own faith faithfulness in the God who has acted in Jesus so that faith is not an arbitrary badge as though God just happens to like people who believe things rather faith is what Jesus did in his faithfulness and what we do in believing the gospel and so appropriating what was there achieved for us [Music] you [Music]

Channel: zondervan

Views: 24,949

Rating: 4.8467741 out of 5

Keywords: N. T. Wright, New Testament, New Testament in Its World, Faith, Jesus, Faith in Jesus, Faithfulness of Jesus, Romans 3

Id: fG811LUP8Ek

Length: 5min 27sec (327 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 08 2019