New Perspective and Works

... One feature of Wright’s interpretation that seems particularly helpful is his recognition of the role that works play for Paul in the ongoing life of someone in Christ. Key texts in this regard are Romans 2:6-10, 12-16 and 2 Corinthians 5:9-10, both of which seem to indicate that God will take into account the deeds of a believer in the judgment. [1] If I read Wright correctly, he believes that those who are truly justified by faith in the present will live, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the sort of life that will result in justification by works in the future. That is to say, "the verdict already announced is indeed a true anticipation of the verdict yet to be announced." [2]

Of course, Paul is less than explicit about any certain connection of this sort between justification by faith in the present and a future justification that takes deeds into account. [3] The best we can do is suppose that Paul would generally, although not certainly, expect the two to correspond. Nevertheless, it is also difficult to deny Wright's conclusion about the role works play for Paul in the final judgment. Romans 2:6 indicates that God will repay each person, both Jew and Gentile, for what they have done. While interpreters have often considered these verses as a sort of hypothetical, 2 Corinthians 5:10 presents the same idea in a context that has no hint of the hypothetical. Paul tells believers in Christ that they will give an account for what they have done while in their bodies.

It is hard for Pauline scholarship to kick against these conditional pricks. Nevertheless, Paul considers even his own place in the resurrection to be contingent on his faithfulness (e.g., Phil. 3:10-11; cf. 1 Cor. 9:24-27). We are not suggesting that Paul really felt insecure about his final salvation any more than most Jews felt insecure about their membership in the people of God. We are simply suggesting that Paul expected those in Christ to produce a life of righteousness, a life of striving for "glory, honor, and immortality" (Rom. 2:7). God would evaluate those in Christ in relation to their works. It would matter, just as it mattered in general to Jews that they act in faithful response to God's covenant with them.

Paul does not clarify the details of great interest from the perspective of later theology. At least on a surface level, his language speaks in synergistic terms. He did not know the future in order to guard himself against accusations of Pelagianism. He did not produce a passage where he explained how justification by faith and judgment that includes consideration of works might fit together. So the disciplined exegete will leave it at that and not try to fit his thought together more than his writings themselves seem to warrant...

[1] Key places where Wright discusses these passages include, “The Law in Romans 2” (1996), now in Pauline Perspectives, 134-51; Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision (London: SPCK, 2009), 158-68; and Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 1086-90.

[2] Justification, 198.

[3] I am assuming here that, at least at some points, Paul's justification language is forensic in the sense that word has normally had in Pauline scholarship, contra J. L. Martyn, Galatians (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2004) and D. A. Campbell, The Deliverance of God.