Paul and Justification by the Faithfulness of Messiah (N. T. Wright)

we are therefore the people of the renewed covenant I could talk about this all night and I went the line that runs from Jeremiah and Deuteronomy through into the New Testament which speaks in Deuteronomy particularly of a covenant which has a forward look it's not just here you are Israel steady-state do this this and this and then you be all right and watch out if you do that and that and that it's not quite like that it's more you are a people whose story is going somewhere the worrying thing is where is it going and if you misbehave and if you break the covenant then ultimately you will go into exile read Deuteronomy 27 28 and 29 but then when you're in exile if you return to the Lord with all your heart and soul he will circumcise your heart so that you'll be able to love him with all your heart and then you will hear a word saying that the word that you will hear the word that the word is near you on your lips and in your heart you will say don't say who will go up into heaven and get it who will go across the sea this covenant this law it's so difficult how can we do it no the word will be near you on your lips and in your heart so that you may do it and Paul picks up exactly that not only in Romans 10 where he quotes it explicitly but by implication in Galatians 3 in Romans 2 in Romans 7 and 8 and says again and again you are the people of the renewed covenant the long story of Israel has had its explosive fulfillment in Jesus Christ as Messiah take away the idea of Jesus as Messiah make Jesus Messiah ship simply that's his proper name Jesus Christ no not you know I've met some people who think it's his surname as though his parents were called Joseph Christ and Mary Christian and Christo's means Messiah and the Messiah is the one who sums up Israel in himself so that what is true of him becomes true of them and now the new covenant has been inaugurated and the people who are in Christ discover that when they confess with their lips that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in their heart that God raised him from the dead they are in fact doing the Torah in the sense the deepest sense that God always intended and therefore they are also the renewed humanity through whom God will put the world to rights we often screen out this stuff but have you noticed that odd little bit at the beginning of first Corinthians 6 when Paul saying you shouldn't be having lawsuits among yourselves says casually offhand don't you know that we will judge angels and we want to say art no Paul actually we didn't know that sorry and where do you get that idea from I think he gets it from Jewish apocalyptic from Daniel and elsewhere where the people of God will be exalted to be under God the rulers of the world we talk about reigning with Christ but I suspect it's a dead metaphor for us because we haven't thought through our eschatology but it comes again in Romans 5 just when you expect him to say as sin reigned in death so grace or whatever and he's coming to that later he actually says those who receive the gift of grace will reign will reign basil you Susan that's they will be Kings Paul lived in a world where there was a Bazza you sir King Caesar no we will be Kings what does that mean first Corinthians 15 the kingdom of God which is over all the powers of the world and will defeat them we are the human beings who are designed to play the key role in God's renewal of all things don't so stress the doctrine of your own salvation that you fail to see what we are saved for and in and through all of this we are the people of God in the Messiah we are people who have been radically redefined and transformed in our very existence status and everything else by his death and resurrection I am crucified with Christ nevertheless I live yet not i but the Messiah lives in me and the night life I now live in the flesh I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me the faithfulness of the Messiah I know this been controversial but let me just explain very briefly what I mean by it in Romans 3 Paul says in the beginning of chapter 3 that it looks as though all Israel has failed but what is Israel failed acts just believing just being people who God likes or wants or whatever no Israel was given a commission Israel was given like supposing I was to give one of a letter and say will you deliver this letter to the person who's out there for me and if you were to be faithful to that Commission it would mean that you wouldn't keep the letter for yourself you would go and take it to the person for whom it was destined Paul says Israel is greatly privileged to begin with they were entrusted with the Oracles of God they were not given them for themselves they were entrusted with those Oracle's to take to the world that's what the Abrahamic promise was all about so when Paul says Israel has been faith less he doesn't just mean they didn't have faith in some abstract sense they have failed in that commission and I have good Jewish friends including some deeply Orthodox Jewish friends who will admit that the Jewish people have not actually been the light of the world in the way they were called to identity out of the slightest degree of anti Judaism far from it rather the opposite actually out of grief for the plight but then Paul's said she what is God going to do faced with that is God going to say as many theologians and schemes of imagine God is going to say oh well that was a first attempt nevermind let's forget that let's just do it differently let's send my son Jesus he will die for the sins of the world and we can forget all that is real stuff there's a whole amount of Western theology which has implicitly said exactly that and then of course they miss read Romans Paul says instead now God's covenant faithfulness has been unveiled through the faithfulness of the Messiah for the benefit of all who are faithful the one doesn't cancel out the other he is Israel in person and we if we have faith that's why faith is not an arbitrary badge of the people of God it is the Messiah badge we are to be the faithful people in the one who was faithful and so come full circle to Galatians 2 again all who believe in Jesus the Messiah belong at the same table and this then and now is the challenge to the powers Lesly Newbegin said it we heard it quoted earlier and this is the full context of the doctrine of justification do it like this God will put the world right one day he's promised to do so he's launched that project in Jesus Christ he's going to do it how through human beings creation is longing for the revelation of the sons and daughters of God because God has subjected creation to futility not of its own will but the will of him who created it because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to get to decay to share the Liberty of the glory of the children of God what does that mean that when the children of God are glorified then creation will give a huge sigh of relief and say I'm really glad you lot have finally got your act together because creation is longing to be wisely stewarded by the gentle wise governance of human beings and therefore God puts human beings in the right against the day when he will put the world right justification is not to take you out of the world it's to qualify you to be God's putting right people for the world that's why between present justification and future justification comes the entire theology of justice and unless you make those connections you not thinking Paul's thoughts after him but how does that happen it happens because he sends his son as the faithful Israelite who takes the weight of the world's sin upon himself in order then once it's been defeated and dealt with to launch new creation

Channel: Glenn Packiam

Views: 40,990

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Keywords: N. T. Wright, Paul, Justification, Jesus, Messiah, People of God, New Creation

Id: Z2vwkMvEvAU

Length: 8min 51sec (531 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 06 2010