If we probe Paul’s metaphor of wage-earning labour in Rom
4.4-5, we begin to see how he connects doing work to having works.
The everyday reality of a person working for wages provides Paul with his
starting point (4.4): the worker has ‘wages’ (ὁ μισθὸς) credited to his account
(λογίζομαι) as a ‘debt’ or ‘obligation’ (κατὰ ὀφείλημα), not as a gratuity (κατὰ
χάριν). The contract of hire stipulates that when the worker performs his
designated labour, his employer is obligated to pay him wages. These wages are
the worker’s due; they are not a gift from the employer. There is a fine
balance: the actual work undertaken by the employee places the employer in his
debt (ὀφείλημα); it has to be repaid in the form of wages (ὁ μισθὸς). Wages
constitute something owed to the worker – not a form of credit freely given in
advance as it were – but something merited by the worker as a ‘reward’. These
are the basic terms for the contract of employment familiar to first-century
readers. (Ruth Sheridan, The Figure of Abraham in John 8: Text and Intertext
[Library of New Testament Studies 619; T&T Clark, 2020], 263)
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