FULFILLMENT OF THE LAW'S DIKAIOMA: ANOTHER LOOK AT ROMANS 8:1-4, THE

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Sep 2009 by McFadden, Kevin W

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.)

Among the majority of scholars who work on "Paul and the Law," there is an assumed interpretation of Rom 8:4a today - Paul refers to the new Christian obethence that fulfills the "righteous requirement" of the law.1 Many recent commentators have argued for this reading as well.2 Historically, however, the majority of Protestant interpreters have read the verse as a reference to Christ's obethence which fulfills the law's requirement,3 primarily because of an objection to the Christian obethence interpretation: Since Christians do not perfectly fulfill the law, Paul must be referring to the imputation of Christ's righteousness. My article will answer this objection after arguing that the context of 8:4a strongly favors the Christian obethence interpretation. It will also observe, however, that a corrected reading of 8:4a does not support a shift in certain aspects of the Protestant understanding of Paul's soteriology as some interpreters now claim.4 I shall begin, then, with an argument for the Christian obethence reading of Rom 8:4a followed by a discussion of the nature of Christian obethence in 8:1-4.

I. CHRISTIAN OBEDIENCE IN ROMANS 8:4A

How is the "righteous requirement of the law" fulfilled in us? To answer this question, we must first step back and ask "what is ..." All scholars argue for some variation of the definition "righteous ordinance."5 But this definition may be further subdivided: First, there is the righteous ordinance that decrees punishment as in 1:32, that is, the decree that "those who practice such things are worthy of death."6 Second, there are the righteous ordinances that decree the law's requirements as in 2:26. Recently, N. T. Wright and Mark Seifrid have both explained 8:4a with a third gloss, as the opposite of 1:32 - rather than the decree of death, it is the decree of life. Thus, Wright declares:

The meaning of ... is best explained as "the just decree," i.e., the decree that gives life in accordance with the covenant [e.g., Deut 30:6-20]. 7

This is the "just decree" which belongs to Torah, corresponding to the "just decree" which is issued negatively and referred to in 1.32: they know the ..., that those who do such things deserve to die.8

And again: "It is . . . the opposite of ... in v. 1 [i.e. 8:1]: the decree that gives life, set over against the decree that gives death."9

While Seifrid does not affirm Wright's connection between the covenant and the ... word group, he takes a similar position on this verse:

It is best to understand this "righteous ordinance" as the "life" which the law offered on the condition of obethence. . . . [Paul] now speaks of the resurrection from the dead as the "fulfillment of the righteous ordinance of the law." We have here a counterpart to 1:32, where Paul uses this term to refer to the sentence of death.10

Simon Gathercole, following Wright, now adopts this view as well.11

This suggestion is certainly intriguing, but it is not clear that Paul is setting up ... in a rhetorical parallel with ... in 8:1 as he does in 5:16. 12 In 8:1-4, ... is an action in itself whereas the ... is something that is "fulfilled" - that is, it is not a corresponding action. Further, if the ... is the ordinance of the law that gives life, we must be careful to observe that word does not refer to life itself (as both Wright and Seifrid seem to indicate at certain points)13 but the decree that promises life to those who do the law (cf. Lev 18:5). It is possible, of course, that Paul now has this decree in mind and argues that God will now give to those in Christ "the life which the law promised (7.10) but could not itself produce."14 But one would expect Paul to spell out such an obscure reference as he does in 1:32, where he makes the contents of the ordinance clear with a ... clause. In such a terse reference, it is more likely that Paul uses the word in the same sense as in 2:26, following the typical usage of the lxx, where the plural ... is frequently used to indicate the "righteous requirements" or "statutes" or "ordinances" which Israel was to keep.15 The use of the singular in 8:4a is unique, and we will comment on this below.

We return, then, to our original question: How is the "righteous requirement of the law" fulfilled in us? Here I will argue that the context of 8:4a strongly indicates that the righteous requirement of the law refers to Christian obethence by the empowering Spirit. My case will be established along four lines.

1. The flow of the argument in 8:1-4. First, the flow of Paul's argument in 8:1-4 points to Christian obethence in 8:4a. These verses are difficult, but I hope to demonstrate that my reading makes the best sense of the general flow of Paul's argument, even if some of the details are disputed. Paul begins with a declaration of the Christian hope: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus" (8:1). This conclusion follows on the heels of all that precedes it. It elaborates the cry of victory in 7:24-25: "Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" It also expands 7:6 - both verses speak of a new situation in salvation history, the present (...) condition in which Christians are freed from the law to serve in the newness of the Spirit.16 Further, as Dunn notes, "if in 8:1 the thought skips back to 7:6 ... it does not stop there" because the verdict of "condemnation," the result of Adam's one trespass, is now cancelled for those "in Christ Jesus."17