Gifted with Righteousness and Transformed

At the beginning of Romans 9, Paul shares the heart-wrenching desire he has for his Jewish brothers and sisters to know Christ. So strong is this desire for his ethnic family that he says he would willingly be accursed and cut off from Christ if they would be saved (Romans 9:2)! That is a radical level of unrestrained love and patriotism! It also reflects the change in Paul’s post-conversion heart, demonstrating that it had been made more like Christ’s sacrificial heart. At any rate, Paul wrestles with the truth that even though Israel had been given the blessing of being God’s chosen people as well as being made into the repository of God’s glory, law, and spiritual heritage (Romans 9:4-5), they missed the mark completely by pursuing righteousness through works. Meanwhile, members of the Gentile community who did not have those blessings actually hit the mark by attaining righteousness through faith in Christ (Romans 9:30-33). Paul continues with that emotional struggle for their salvation in Romans 10.  But there he introduces an interesting phrase.  He argues that his people have an obvious zeal for God, but their enthusiasm for him is based on a false knowledge. That false knowledge was clueless about the actual righteousness of God, and so instead of submitting to Christ, they attempted to establish their own righteousness through their own works. This meant that they refused to submit to God’s righteousness, or to recognize Christ as the highest example of it (Romans 10:1-4). It also meant they were constantly in danger of a self-serving pride and arrogance that created an appearance of piety, but actually prevented true humility (Matthew 5:20). 

Paul wanted them to understand that righteousness before God did not come from their works, and it didn’t come from following the law, or from doing the right thing, or sinning less, or demonstrating a visible moral purity. And it certainly did not come from their genetic heritage. Instead, righteousness is a gift. Paul had already argued in Romans 3:22-25 that everyone fell short of the glory of God – including everyone who did works of the law or who were born from a particular bloodline. Their works did not justify them, that is to say, those works did not make them righteous or in right standing with God. Rather, it is God who made people right, and those whom he gifted with right standing are those who trusted Christ. In theology, this is called forensic righteousness – which means that God just declares a person righteous. This declaration is not made because of any inherent goodness. It is simply made because of trust, and God then places the righteousness of Jesus onto the one who trusts him. But then after that something powerful happens. God begins to transform that person from the inside out by redeeming them from sin and Satan (Romans 3:24), and he begins to instill them with a genuine transformative righteousness that reflects his eternal, spiritual, life-filled glory. The condemnation intrinsic to the Mosaic law, which had its own kind of glory would be superseded by the glory of life (2 Corinthians 3:7-11). This transformation would make people doers of God’s wisdom, living it out from their heart because their whole orientation would be changed. It would become Holy Spirit guided, and self-correcting (Galatians 5:22-24).

This is why Jame’s famous instruction to Jewish Christians scattered in the diaspora is so important! He tells them to put away filthiness and wickedness, and to receive (or trust) the wisdom of God placed in their hearts, which can save their souls, and to become doers of that wisdom instead of just foolish hearers of it (James 1:19-22).