What St Paul Really Said

Keeping the law within Judaism always functioned within a covenantal scheme.8 God took the initiative, when he made a covenant with Judaism; God's grace thus precedes everything that people (specifically, Jews) do in response. The Jew keeps the law out of gratitude, as the proper response to grace not, in other words, in order to get into the covenant people, but to stay in. Being 'in' in the first place was God's gift. This scheme Sanders famously labelled as 'covenantal nomism' (from the Greek nomos, law). Keeping the Jewish law was the human response to God's covenantal initiative.

Let us be quite clear. "The gospel' is the announcement of Jesus' lordship, which works with power to bring people into the family of Abraham, now redefined around Jesus Christ and characterized solely by faith in him. 'Justification' is the doctrine which insists that all those who have this faith belong as full members of this family, on this basis and no other.

What time is it?' is radically different from the Jewish answer. As a Pharisee he would have answered: we are living in the last days before the great act of God within history to defeat the pagans and liberate Israel. As a Christian he answered: we are living in the first days after the great act of God within history to defeat sin and death and liberate the whole cosmos.

The gospel itself is neither a term of thought, nor a set of techniques for making people Christians; it is the personal announcement of the person of Jesus.

For Paul, 'the gospel' creates the church; 'justification' defines it. The gospel announcement carries its own power to save people, and to dethrone the idols to which they had been bound. 'The gospel' itself is neither a system of thought, nor a set of techniques for making people Christians; it is the personal announcement of the person of Jesus. That is why it creates the church, the people who believe that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead. Justification' is then the doctrine which declares that whoever believes that gospel, and wherever and whenever they believe it, those people are truly members of his family, no matter where they came from, what colour their skin may be, whatever else might distinguish them from each other. The gospel itself creates the church; justification continually reminds the church that it is the people created by the gospel and the gospel alone, and that it must live on that basis.