By calling this series “Traveling with Paul,” I mean to picture for us a way to better read, hear, and respond to his New Testament letters. The first principle is that he was Jewish before and after encountering the risen Jesus in Acts 9. The second principle is that we must grasp the implications of that encounter.
The third principle of learning from the man and his mission follows logically.
When we read the Apostle Paul’s letters, we must strive to look at them through his 1st-century Jewish eyes.
Forsaking the historical context of Paul’s life has led to misunderstanding him and misconstruing the implications of what he said about Judaism and the Torah.
The standard Protestant, evangelical view from the time of Martin Luther forward, is that we are justified not by human effort or good works but by faith. So far, so good. We just looked at Galatians 2:16, particularly: We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. (We’ll tackle the phrase “works of the Law” later.)
My point is this: from Luther forward, it has always been assumed that the Judaism of which Paul was a part taught that one is justified by his works. That keeping and observing the Law of Moses is the means to salvation.
Here is the problem.
In actuality, that was not the teaching of Second Temple period Judaism or what Saul/Paul believed. What Luther, the Augustinian friar, attacked in his early sixteenth-century European setting was medieval Catholicism in the guise of Judaism. Luther was reacting to the theological perspective of Augustine and Aquinas that grace must be joined by works or self-effort to gain salvation.
Martin Luther grew up in a Catholic world that took the “justification by works” view and corrupted it even further. He rightly discerned and proclaimed the priority and sufficiency of God’s antecedent grace in our salvation—with faith in Jesus as our solely acceptable response. But he took his cultural context and read it into Paul’s letters, written over 1500 years earlier in a different place and time. The result was a caricature of Paul’s Judaism, the Old Testament, and ultimately even the God of the Jews.
In 1977, scholar E.P. Sanders wrote a book called “Paul and Palestinian Judaism” that changed everything. Sanders presented an idea that should seem obvious now but was novel at the time. Rather than write and talk about Judaism from the viewpoint of Christianity—particularly the Protestant Reformation—let us go back and study Judaism on its own terms, in its historical context.
What does Judaism itself teach with respect to salvation?
That was one of the key questions Professor Sanders researched. He painstakingly investigated and extensively documented Jewish writings from before, during, and after the time of Jesus of Nazareth. He came to the clear conviction that Judaism held to Covenantal Nomism, a phrase he himself coined.
The first word speaks of covenant and the second is the Greek word for law, nomos. What Professor Sanders discovered was that the Jewish view has always been that God’s grace saves you. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob enters into covenant with his people not because of any meritorious acts on their part, but simply out of his love and grace. Once he enters into covenant, then that covenant has obligations.
A covenantal relationship has responsibilities and obligations. That is where the Law comes in. Yet I hasten to remind you that the Greek word Law is a translation of the Hebrew word Torah. Torah means teaching and instruction. The commandments that flow out of a covenant relationship are for the good. And so good works follow God’s grace; they do not earn God’s grace.
This should have occurred to us ages ago; it is plainly obvious. It is also a sobering reminder that when your perception is tilted, twisted, or distorted by your culture, you see things through cultural, not biblical, eyes.
Are you still on the fence? Well, I have a question for you. Let’s go to the Bible’s archetype of salvation, the Exodus from Egypt. What deeds merited, what good works earned Israel’s redemption out of slavery?
“You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex 19:4-6).
Israel was saved by grace through faith, becoming the paradigm, the model for all salvation and redemption.
Then, and only then, at Mt. Sinai, he says, “I am going to give you my Torah. As your good Shepherd I am going to guide and direct and instruct you how to live so as to honor the covenant and enter into the blessing of life as my redeemed people.”
So redemption, dear friends, always precedes ruling. Then, God’s saving grace instructs you on how to obey. Is that what Paul believed and taught? Yes!
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works (Titus 2:11-14).
His saved ones now bear his holy name, even his holy presence, in the world. With that privilege comes responsibility. You have been saved to serve.
If the Old Testament God is, indeed, a God of Law in contrast to Grace—the caricature by which he is typically presented week in and week out in a preponderance of Protestant churches—then how do you explain the fact that within the Torah itself the LORD God provides an ongoing means for the atonement of sins?
He knew people would always fall short of the mark. He is not a God who holds you to absolute standards and makes it impossible for you ever to be declared righteous. He is a God who abounds in grace. Not only does he give you guidance, direction and instruction, he actually gives you the whole sacrificial system so that your sins can be atoned. Including the Day of Atonement itself to cover whatever sins were not covered elsewhere.
“I know this kind of deep study is challenging you, but can I get a witness?” [Audience says, “Amen!”] “Ok, ok. I just wanted to know if you were still with me” [laughter].
You did not choose God so much as God chose you. Can anybody here say I was saved because of my merits, because of my accomplishments, because of my good looks, because of this or that? Of course not. Paul says God has elected you by grace, and you should subsequently honor him from a thankful heart with your obedience of faith. He is Faithful. Now you be faithful.
All of this is simply another way of stating the truth that the Father is the same; he changes not (Mal 3:6). The same is said of his Son: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever (Heb 13:8).
This is the Jewish Gospel, now centered on Jesus, that the apostle Paul preached to the Gentile world and that E.P. Sanders termed “Covenantal Nomism.” Sanders discovered that Judaism was not a degenerate religion devoid of any understanding of God’s grace. Which raises the question: What was Paul so worked up about, particularly in Galatians? If Paul was not responding to the misguided teaching of earning salvation through good works, what was he arguing?
That leads us to principle number four.
