Mark A. Seifrid - Christ, Our Righteousness: Pauls Theology of Justification

1 Possessed by God, David Peterson

2 Gods Unfaithful Wife, Raymond C. Ortlund Jr

3 Jesus and the Logic of History, Paul W. Barnett

4 Hear, My Son, Daniel J. Estes

5 Original Sin, Henri Blocher

6 Now Choose Life, J. Gary Millar

7 Neither Poverty Nor Riches, Craig L. Blomberg

8 Slave of Christ, Murray J. Harris

9 Christ, our Righteousness, Mark A. Seifrid

10 Five Festal Garments, Barry G. Webb

11 Salvation to the Ends of the Earth, Andreas J. Kstenberger and Peter T. OBrien

12 Now My Eyes Have Seen You, Robert S. Fyall

13 Thanksgiving, David W. Pao

14 From Every People and Nation, J. Daniel Hays

15 Dominion and Dynasty, Stephen G. Dempster

16 Hearing Gods Words, Peter Adam

17 The Temple and the Churchs Mission, G. K. Beale

18 The Cross from a Distance, Peter G. Bolt

19 Contagious Holiness, Craig L. Blomberg

20 Shepherds After My Own Heart, Timothy S. Laniak

21 A Clear and Present Word, Mark D. Thompson

22 Adopted into Gods Family, Trevor J. Burke

NEW STUDIES IN BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 9

Series editor: D. A. Carson

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Mark A. Seifrid 2000

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Material from Mark A. Seifrids Natural Revelation and the Purpose of the Law in Romans, Tyndale Bulletin 49 (1998): 11529, appears here in slightly revised and corrected form, and is used with permission from the journal.

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ISBN 978-0-8308-2609-4 (print)

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Therefore the Christ who is grasped by faith

and who lives in the heart

is the true Christian righteousness,

on account of which God counts us righteous

and grants us eternal life.

According to his own testimony, Pauls coming to faith in Christ involved the surrender of the heritage and piety which he once treasured:

If anyone else supposes that they might boast in the flesh, I far more: circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, according to the law, a Pharisee, according to zeal, a persecutor of the church, according to the righteousness which is in the law, blameless (Phil. 3:4b6).

We may therefore properly describe his encounter with the risen Christ as his conversion. He clearly did not cease to be a Jew, to love his kinspeople, and to cherish the hope of their salvation (see e.g. Here we can give only a brief overview of this topic as a sort of prologue to our investigation of the message of justification in his letters.

Over the past twenty years or so, a significant change has taken place in the way most scholars assess first-century Judaism. From the beginnings of critical biblical study until well into the twentieth century, Protestant scholarship often was guided by a misleading image of Paul and his Jewish contemporaries. With this study a new perspective on Paul emerged among biblical scholars (Dunn 1983: 95122).