Abraham’s body was as good as dead, yet he trusted in the God who gives life to the dead.  If Abraham is the archetype of faith, we now see what faith (trust) looks like.  He had no child, and God promises him that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars of the heaven.  Likewise, according to Paul, Jesus has inaugurated the fulfilment of God’s promised restoration of the covenant (even while the Temple is still under foreign control).  Looking around, it was easy to see that the fulfilment is not yet complete, but like Abraham, we trust God’s promise.  This is the faith that was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness, and will be to us.  This is the faith that make us members of the covenant people.

If we trust that the God who raised Jesus from the dead has intended this mixed family as the fulfilment of the promise, that faith will be reckoned to us as righteousness, as membership in that family.  It was this Jesus who was handed over to death for our trespasses, and raised to make us members of the covenant people.

Because Abraham’s faith was reckoned to him as righteouness (which in Paul’s thought means membership in the covenant) before the circumcision, then circumcision can not be a requirement for covenant membership.   So Abraham is the father of the uncircumcised, who, like him, trust God, and the circumcised who follow his example of trust.  Also, the promise comes to Abraham before the giving of the law, so the law can not be a requirement for covenant membership (righteousness).  Indeed, the law makes clear how those who are supposed to be the light to the Gentiles have failed to keep the covenant.  This is how Abraham is found to be the father of all the faithful.

In fulfilling the promise to Abraham that he should be the father of many nations, God has made the promise rest on faith (on God’s faithfulness and on human trust in that faithfulness), rather than on the law, so that all the descendants of Abraham should share in the covenant.  Now, he can boast in the presence of God, whom he trusted.  This is the God who gives life to the dead (Abraham and Sarah were “as good as dead, and of course to Jesus), and calls into existence what was not, namely the new family of God made of both Jews and Gentiles.

Paul now gets to the meat of his argument.  He will here lay out the specifics of what he summarized in 3:21-31.  Here it becomes clear that the covenant he has in mind is the Covenant with Abraham.  The first sentence is hard to translate.  It might go something like this:  “What then shall we say?  Has Abraham been found to be our forefather according to the flesh?”  This would be a nice way of stating the argument — if Abraham is found to be the forefather of the Gentile Christians as well, then the point is settled.

If Abraham was justified on the basis of the law, then he would have reason to boast, just as the sense of Jewish vocation led to boasting.  Even if Abraham was justified because of the law, he would not have reason to boast before God, because God reckoned Abraham’s trust as righteousness, that is, God included Abraham in the covenant people because Abraham trusted God that God would fulfill the promise to make him the father of many nations, even when he had no children, when as yet there was no covenant people.  Paul then calls in David as a testimony that it is by God’s verdict that the sin which prevents the fulfilment of the covenant is overcome.  David, rather than serving as the archetypal pious Jew here is adduced as the archetypal failure, whose shortcomings God has forgiven, covered over.  God must forgive the sins of Jews and Gentiles both to establish the covenant family.

Therefore, this passage begins, refering back to what just came before.  Therefore, boasting is locked out.  Boasting on the basis of a “chosen” status.  Paul, of course, is refering to the Jewish sense (in his time) of special vocation for the restoration of the glory meant for humanity.  It would do us well to apply that to Christians in the present — we have no special status.  God’s justice, God’s faithfulness to God’s covenant with humanity alone has any effect in restoring humanity to its intended glory.  If there remains a favored status for Jews in Paul’s audience, then there must be a distinction between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, which he cannot allow.  God is the God of all humanity.  Monotheism was and is a central tenet of Judaism and Christianity.  God will justify the circumcised on the basis of God’s faithfulness to the covenant, and the uncircumcised on the basis of that same faithfulness.  Wright points out that Paul has in mind the covenant with Abraham, by which God would call together a family of both Jew and Gentile (Abraham would be the father of many nations), so that God justifies both Jew and Gentile on the basis of God’s own faithfulness to the covenant with Abraham.  In this way, the law is fulfilled or established.

Here, we reach the statement of Paul’s overall argument.  The first part of the letter, up to this point, has been to show that our understanding of God’s righteousness has been mistaken.  If Paul’s Jewish Christian hearers thought that being Jewish somehow was to their advantage, he has argued otherwise.  Gentile Christians likewise can claim no special favor from God.  3:19-20 summed up the verdict to this point:  every mouth has been silenced and the whole world is held accountable to God.  All flesh will not be justified in his sight by works of the law. 

But now, outside the law, God’s righteousness has been revealed, though attested by the law and the prophets.  God’s covenant with Abraham and Israel was meant to deal with the sin of Adam and restore humankind (or at least a family of them) to God’s glory, but because of Israel’s sinfulness, that covenant has failed.  Now, apart from that covenant, God has revealed God’s own faithfulness to that covenant.  And God has revealed it in the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.  Where Israel failed to remain faithful to God’s covenant, Jesus has remained faithful (as in Philippians, even to the point of death).  All who believe are justified by God’s free gift, by God’s graciousness through the ransom which is in Christ Jesus.

Here, Paul uses sacrificial language for the first time, and in a dense way.  God put Jesus forward (language of offering, as in the show bread) as a hilasterion.  In the LXX, that word denotes the “mercy seat” over the ark of the covenant, where the high priest sprinkled the blood on the Day of Atonement, so the meeting place between God and humankind.  In other contexts, it is the gift that propitiates a deity.  Most puzzling here is what the phrase “through faith in his blood” means.  A literal reading of the Greek means something like, “by means of the faithfulness which is in his blood.”  N. T. Wright suggests that Paul has in view here something like the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 40-55, and the story of the Maccabean martyrs.  It certainly fits with what follows:  God in God’s forebearance, overlooked sins previously committed.  According to II Maccabees, God forebears the sins of other nations putting off punishment until the future, while because of its chosen status, the sins of Israel must be dealt with immediately.  Israel’s punishment is brought into the present in the suffering of the martyrs.  Paul here could tie an essential Greek idea (martyrdom) with a Jewish one (the blood sprinkled on the mercy seat), and both halves of his audience would have a point of reference.

God has done this (passed over the sins of the nations, but put Jesus forward as a hilasterion by means of the faithfulness which is in his blood) to point out his own righteousness at the present time (not at some point in the future), and to justify one from the faithfulness in Jesus.  God has restored the covenant people now, and God’s own covenant righteousness, in the existence of a people justified in Jesus, namely the Jewish/Gentile Christian audience to whom Paul is writing.

Paul doesn’t really answer the questions he raised in 3:1-8, except with the expression, “By no means.”  The problems remain.  So, if the Jews’ unfaithfulness causes God’s name to be blasphemed in all the world, and by that fact, the Gentiles have come to be included in God’s covenant, which was God’s intention from the beginning, how can God judge the Jews?  So, some accuse Paul of saying, “Let’s do evil so that good may come of it.”  He just says, “No way!” at this point, and leaves the real answer till later.

In 3:9-20, he starts that answer.  The law, the covenant, speaks only to those under the convenant, and quoting Psalm 14:1-3, Psalm 53:1-3, (possibly Ecclesiastes 7:2), Psalm 5:10, Psalm 140:4, Psalm 10:7, Proverbs 1:16, Isaiah 59:7-8 and Psalm 36:2 Paul lays out God’s charge against Israel.  The Gentiles have been indicted in Chapter 1, and now, after steering his Jewish Christian hearer into recognizing the problem with God’s chosen people, who have failed to be the light to the nations  God called them to be, he makes sure they understand that the law, on which they rest their confidence, in fact, indicts them, and not just in one place, but essentially from cover to cover.  The whole world then is accountable to God, or liable for punishment, because all flesh will not be justified in his sight by works of the law, because knowledge of sin comes through the law.  His phrasing is important here.  We tend to think of the Jews as “legalistic”, trying to claim God’s grace by observing the Law.  Observance of Torah was rather, in Paul’s time, a response of gratitude to God for giving the covenant in the first place.  Despite the usual translation, Paul does not say, “No one will be justified by works of the law,” but rather, “All flesh will not be justified by works of the law.”  Claiming membership in the covenant people on the basis of flesh, circumcision, and observance of halakah will not be enough.  The covenant is now extended beyond any limitation that flesh can impose:  eating only what is allowed, circumcision, etc., — claiming these fleshly indicators of membership in the covenant will not suffice, because the Law (trying to observe it) only brings knowledge of failure to be faithful to the covenant.  Anything one can do in the flesh is only an indictment — claiming status on the basis of gender, for example, or color or class; all of these bring knowledge of failure of justice.  The Law makes it clear that God’s justice won’t be brought about by any such claim of membership in the covenant people.  The covenant people extends beyond fleshly identification.

So, now Paul has devastated the second half of his audience.  Gentile Christians in the list of things the Gentiles are known for:  homosexuality, wickedness, evil, murder, strife and the whole long list, which are the punishment for idolatry.  The Jewish Christians are certainly not guilty of idolatry, but Paul finds among the Jews the same list of evils he ennumerated among the Gentiles.  So, neither half of his audience can be feeling very good at this point of the letter.

 So, what good is being Jewish?  Surprisingly, he answers, “Much in every way.”  Paul is clearly responding to criticisms of his teaching that had circulated through the Mediterranean world.  Later, he will take up distortions of his teaching (we are accused of saying), but here, in general he addresses the Jewish Christians that he by no means has abandoned preaching to them, even though he is the apostle to the Gentiles.  The whole content of his gospel, the idea of the covenant and the righteousness of God (God’s covenant faithfulness) comes from the Jews.  This does not let them off the hook, however, as the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon would have it (”Us therefore you chastise [to correct], while our enemies you punish with a thousand blows, that we may think of your goodness when we judge, and when being judged, may look for mercy” 12:22).  Even if the Jews are faithless, God remains faithful, and their faithlessness serves to reveal God’s faithfulness.  So, we should get off easy, right?  By no means!  If anything, we (whoever we are — the church) will be held to a higher standard.

Paul has set up his audience for this shift.  He has been speaking, behind his hand, as it were, to the Jewish Christian half of his audience.  We know how bad those Greeks are, don’t we? he asks.  They’ve come along for the ride.  But now, he says, you who call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast of the covenant, are you really the light of the world?  Paul, of course, does not assume that any particular Jewish Christian in his audience does the things he accuses them of:  stealing, adultery, temple robbing or the rest.  But if any Jews are doing these things, then the name of God will be blasphemed among the Gentiles:  they claim to be better than the rest of us, but look at them.  The device is like Nathan’s judgment of David.  There was a man who had flocks of sheep, but took the one sheep his neighbor had to prepare for the visitor.  What do you think should be done?  You are the man.  Bob Dylan’s, “Come, you masters of war,”  works the same way.  If we listen carefully enough, we hear ourselves in the song.  We, as individual Americans, may not do those things, but anyone who has ever traveled knows the reputations of Americans.  For Paul, Israel has failed at its vocation as the light of the world.

If the uncircumcised keep the law, they will judge the circumcised.  Or to say it another way, is the church guilty of the things it teaches against?  Sexual scandal, embezzlement, even the little cheating on taxes, the discourtesy to drivers, cashiers or whomever, how does any of that fit with who we are supposed to be.  Paul could have said, “So, you Christian, who rely on your relationship with God, what about you?”

In this paragraph, Paul now turns the table on his audience.  He has drawn in his Jewish Christian audiece with what has gone before, a standard Jewish criticism of the idolatry of pagan culture (though for that matter, not a few pagan moralists engaged in the same kind of criticism).  Now, he says, to his imaginary Jewish listener, “Do you think you’ll get off the hook for doing the same thing?”  There was a tradition in Judaism which suggested that while Israel might backslide and engage in idolatry like its pagan neighbors, God would again and again punish Israel with the purpose of correcting them.  Israel might undergo punishment, but never perish.

Paul is speaking here to a collective audience.  It is unlikely that any individual in his audience is commiting the lurid vices he has just listed.  He is asking, “Is the Jewish nation any better than the pagan nations?”  vv. 12ff give the answer.  Those who sin apart from the law will perish apart from its promises, while those who sin under the law will be judged by the law.  No one gets off the hook.

This paragraph also contains something a little problematic for the standard protestant way of reading Paul, which states that salvation is by faith alone, and works mean nothing.  In vv. 7-8 suggest that one’s moral actions will be rewarded in the final judgment.  The one who patiently does good, seeking glory and honor and immortality will receive eternal life.  This is a very Stoic theme.  One should be motivated by honor and lasting fame (immortality), rather than by material gain.  Seneca would approve.  Those on the other hand who are self seeking will suffer God’s wrath.  Again, not far off from a Stoic idea of the dissolution of the world in fire.  For Paul, this applies to the Jew first, but also to the Greek, for God shows no partiality.  Coming from a good Jew, as Paul was, addressed to a Jewish audience (with Gentiles listening in, at this point), this is stunning.  What of the whole history of God’s calling of Israel, the Exodus, Exile and Return, awaiting its final consummation?  On that final day, when Jesus, the Christ will judge the secret thoughts of all as God’s judge, God will show no partiality.  Hard to believe.

Here, Paul begins his main argument.  The point is basic:  humanity’s failure to worship the creator results in human injustice.  God’s sentence is being revealed — this is a courtroom scene — against every human ungodliness and injustice, which are the same thing.  Here, Paul is expected the Jewish Christians in his audience to be particularly sympathetic to his argument.  He is using standard Jewish criticism of pagan culture.  Even without the particular revelation of the scriptures, pagans should have been able to discern the existence of a creator from the creation itself, though this knowledge would not necessarily be salvific.  But Paul is setting up his sympathetic Jewish Christian reader for a jolt.  Israel in the wilderness also exchanged the glory of God for the golden calf.  Many times in scripture, God accuses his own people of not listening.

vv. 24-32 sum up the punishment for pagan idolatry.  Human injustice, fragmentation, incompleteness follow on confusion of the creature with the creator — humans become less than what God intended them to be when they fail to worship the creator, or worship the wrong God.  Such damage happens still.  Paul sees homosexual activity as a punishment for idolatry.  Gender confusion, for Paul, is a kind of wickedness, allowing humans to use each other in ways not intended by God.  We can argue with Paul about homosexuality, knowing that there are indeed fulfilling relationships which complete both parties.  But we can certainly agree with Paul that the worship of sex leads many into very damaging relationships, both hetero- and homosexual.  Paul spins off a pretty impressive list of injustices — wickedness, evil, greed, malice, envy, murder, rivalry, treachery, spite, gossip, scandalmongery, insolence, boastfulness, rebellion to parents.  All of us reading the letter are by now saying, “not me, thank God!”  Just where Paul wants us.