If Paul’s
understanding of justification and righteousness comes from the Law and the
Prophets and not from the criminal law court, then it must affect how we
understand Romans 4:3. The law and the Prophets provide a distinctly conventual
framework for Paul’s argument. What Paul is saying is that Abraham
believed that God would make his son his
heir and that he would become the first of millions of offspring. He was
effectively believing that God would be faithful to the promise he had made, and God responded by crediting
to him righteousness, i.e., accrediting to him the status of what he was to
become, the head of a redeemed covenant community. If this understanding is
correct, then both Genesis and Paul see that the primary issue with which Genesis
15:6 is dealing is Yahweh’s acceptance of Abraham, God committed himself
to Abraham in covenant, saying that he would act righteously toward Abraham, always
keeping faith with his promise. Abraham’s faith was his response to the promise
that Yahweh had given him; it was his ‘Amen, I want to be part of your covenant’.
The matter of Abraham’s sin and its forgiveness is secondary, even though still
very important. No covenant with Yahweh could be established without a proper
dealing with sin. For the covenant to be established and ratified it is implied
that the sin of Abraham has been dealt with. But again, to make that the
primary issue of the passage is to miss the clear covenantal significance of what
is happening.
The emphasis on the criminal
legal setting that has dominated the traditional understanding of ‘counted
righteousness’ has left its own problems. Terms like sacrifice, redemption,
inheritance, Spirit etc. have no part in such a model. The growing appreciation
that Paul stayed within the framework of Old Testament covenantal theology,
developing it in the light of the Christ event that had brought to completion
the covenant promises, suggests that this is the correct paradigm for
understanding Paul’s thinking. Within the covenant framework, of course, was
the law, which made demands that had to be satisfied. When the terms of the covenant
were broken, there was only one way back into fellowship with God, and that was
on the basis of the law’s demands being satisfied. Thus the law is covenant law.
Justification is not modelled on criminal law, but covenantal law. (Tom
Holland, Contours of Pauline Theology: A Radical New Survey of the
Influences on Paul’s Biblical Writings [Ross-shire, Scotland: Mentor, 2010],
214-15)
