We establish law 4

3. What law had Paul kept prior to Christ?
It is now over forty years after Stendahl's classic article called into radical question the claim that Paul felt like a miserable sinner before he came to Christ. The key text is Philippians 3:4-6:

"Although I have confidence even in flesh. If someone else thinks to have confidence in flesh, I have more.... according to the righteousness that comes by law, I was blameless."

It is at this point that we must consider that Paul the pre-Christian Jew--indeed most Jews--believed God would find them acceptable because of His grace even though it was impossible to keep the Jewish law with absolute perfection.

I now find it surprising that Sanders could not consider Paul's statement: "All have sinned..." (Rom. 3:23) as something to which any Jew might subscribe. Nor is it surprising to find Paul saying that all are "justified freely by His grace" (3:24). What seems unique to Paul and the early Christians is the rest of the verse: "through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."

I conceptualize this current issue in terms of two standards of righteousness:

1. Absolute Standard Time
2. Jewish Standard Time

With regard to the first, Judaism in general assumed without question that God's favor toward Israel and those individuals within her as a matter of His graciousness. No one earned their way into God's people. To use Sanders' famous line: "keeping the law was about staying in, not getting in." Keeping the covenant was in response to God's graciousness, not a matter of earning His favor.

So on the surface I'm not sure that there is much that is ultimately too controversial in Paul's claims that all have sinned or that the Law gives knowledge of sin or that the Law is powerless to justify in itself. It is in relation to the second standard that Paul is in serious disagreement. I believe some of the Thanksgiving Hymns in which the Teacher of Righteousness expresses his sinfulness bear out this point.

My claim with regard to the first, however, seems to distinguish my position from Sanders (who I think lumps the first in with the second), Stendahl, Gaston, Stowers, and Gager (who all limit Paul's comments on sinfulness to Gentiles).

The point where Paul differs from his contemporaries is in relation to Jewish Standard Time. While Jews believed they did not earn God's grace, they nevertheless believed that God had set up any number of "counter-mechanisms" that God found acceptable. There was repentance, prayer, acts of righteousness, temple sacrifices, etc... Many scholars have pointed out how striking Paul's writings are for the absence of emphasis on repentance.

So what's going on with Paul? First, the point at issue is primarily the inclusion of the Gentiles into Christ. Paul's Christian opponents have pointed to Abraham to argue that circumcision is necessary for inclusion in God's people. Paul turns to Abraham and argues on the contrary that it was Abraham's faith in God that was reckoned as righteousness. Paul broadens out the principle: faith is the only thing that ultimately can justify a person before God, whether a person is Jew or Gentile. And at this point of God's relationship with the world, only faith in what God has done in Christ will do.

But Paul probably did okay at the "works of law" thing before he came to Christ. With regard to what law was Paul blameless according to the righteousness in the law? I suspect it was the "works of law" that Paul was blameless at. But to claim that such acts of righteousness might justify you was to give God an apple when He was asking for an orange. God may like apples like works of law. But when it comes to justification, he wants the orange of faith. And in particular, He demands faith in what He has done through Jesus Christ.