N. T. Wright’s The Day the Revolution Began, Romans Reconsidered, Part 31 (the promise given to Abraham is for all with faith)

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplish our salvation.

Rom 4:23-25

(Rom. 4:23-25 ESV)  23 But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone,  24 but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in[/trust/are faithful to] him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord,  25 who was delivered up [sacrificed on the cross] for our trespasses [sins] and raised for our justification [so that we would be declared members of the covenant community].

Wright explains,

Christian faith is thus, for Paul, irrevocably resurrection-shaped. Like Abraham’s faith, it is by no means simply a general religious awareness or trust in a remote or distant supernatural being, but gains its form, as well as its content, from the revelation of God’s covenant faithfulness in the events concerning Jesus … . “Faith,” for Paul, is never a thing in itself, but is always defined, as Rom 4:16–22 makes clear, in relation to the God in whom trust is placed. The purpose of a window is not to cover one wall of the house with glass, but to let light in and to let the inhabitants see out.

N.T. Wright, “The Letter to the Romans,” in The Acts of the Apostles-The First Letter to the Corinthians, vol. 10 of NIB, Accordance electronic ed. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), 502.

In the popular mind and among some academics, salvation is found in having “faith” in something — but not necessarily in the resurrected Jesus. It’s the act of believing in something bigger than yourself that “saves,” they argue. Paul disagrees. You have to believe in YHWH, the God of the Jews, and not God in the abstract, but the God who raised Jesus from the dead. “Faith” under the new covenant includes faith in the resurrected Jesus or else it is not adequate — because if you don’t recognize God in Jesus, you’re not worshiping the true God.

Paul is careful, therefore, to speak of Christian faith as “believing in the God who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.” God, not Jesus, is the primary object of Christian faith (one of many reasons why πίστις Χριστοῦ [pistis Christou], “the faith of Christ,” is more likely to mean the faithfulness of Jesus himself than the faith people put in Jesus).

This description of God is important for Romans, being echoed at another memorable point, 8:11; for Paul it is axiomatic that the resurrection took place by God’s initiative and power (see, e.g., 10:9; 1 Cor 6:14; 15:15; 2 Cor 4:14; 13:4; Gal 1:1. 2 Cor 4:14 is very close to the present phrase and to 8:11), so that the meaning of the event is the meaning God intends (1:4), namely, that Jesus is thereby marked out as God’s Son, the Messiah, Israel’s representative, the one in whom God’s promises of redemption have finally come true.

N.T. Wright, “The Letter to the Romans,” in The Acts of the Apostles-The First Letter to the Corinthians, vol. 10 of NIB, Accordance electronic ed. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), 502.

Many commentators avoid the obvious question: if Abraham’s faith saved him, and Abraham never heard of Jesus, then why doesn’t faith in God without faith in Jesus save today? Why aren’t the Jews who deny Jesus just as saved as Abraham?

But it’s only through Jesus that the Exile of the Jews ends, the new covenant of Jer 31:31 ff is initiated, the Kingdom comes, the Messiah is enthroned, and the Spirit is outpoured. Deny Jesus and the Exile continues and the opportunity for repentance unto “forgiveness of sins” has not yet been provided to the Jews.

I would add that if Jesus doesn’t look like YHWH to the “believer,” then he’s so badly misunderstood God that he’s really worshiping an idol.

Wright further responds —

Confessing that Jesus is Lord, therefore, and that God raised him from the dead (10:9), means sharing the faith of Abraham; and that faith, as Paul has now argued, is the one and only badge of membership in Abraham’s family. Paul does not in this passage spell out the implication, but the rest of the chapter, along with 3:27–30, should still be echoing in the mind. Because there is only one badge of membership, all those who share this faith are members of God’s redeemed and forgiven people, no matter what their ancestry. 

Paul is not making a substantially new point at this stage in the chapter. Rather, he is for the first time putting himself and his readers on the map he has drawn. It is the map of the Abrahamic family, created by the revelation of God’s righteousness in Jesus the Messiah, the family in which the distinction between Jew and Gentile, maintained by Torah in particular, is set aside once for all, the family whose sole identifying badge is Christian faith.

N.T. Wright, “The Letter to the Romans,” in The Acts of the Apostles-The First Letter to the Corinthians, vol. 10 of NIB, Accordance electronic ed. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), 502.