backtrack: pursuit, non-pursuit, and tripping (Romans 9.30-10.2)
In Romans 9.30ff, Paul explains that the Gentiles, who were not in fact pursuing righteousness, have attained (katalambano - apprehended, come upon, obtained, overtake) it. Is Paul talking about “the righteousness of God,” or the right standing of human beings before God (justification)? Well, if we’ve been following Romans from the get-go, we would realize that these two sides meet together: the righteousness of God is revealed ek pisteos eis pistin – from faith unto faith (1.17). That is, from the faithfulness of God to the righteous response of faith which God requires. When God’s pistis and our pistis meet, the righteousness of God is revealed, and our righteousness is adjudicated, i.e. we are justified. (Romans 4 deals with this at length.)
Gentiles were not pursuing (dioko) righteousness. But nonetheless, they overtook it. They caught up to something (faith-righteousness) they were not chasing (9.30).
Israel, on the other hand, were pursuing. Well, they were pursuing nomon dikaiosunes – the law of righteousness. And the result was that they did not reach (phthano) the law (9.31).
As we can recognize, Paul is expressing a paradox. The chasers did not catch; the non-chasers caught. The Gentiles weren’t chasing anything, and they got the right thing. Israel wasn’t quite chasing the right thing, and they didn’t even get the thing they were chasing.
The paradox is more than that the non-chasers caught and the chasers didn’t. The paradox is also that Paul says that Israel did not reach the law. For few observers would have had that thought. The law, after all, was Israel’s possession. And it won’t do simply to say that Paul means they didn’t keep the law perfectly, for the simple reason that the law never said they had to, and in any case, Paul never hints at anything like that being in his mind.
But the real reason Paul says this is that, as so often, he is anticipating himself; he will complete the thought much more fully in 10.4.
For now, Paul asks why Israel did not reach their goal (the law of righteousness). “Because not from faith, but as if from works” (9.32a). (The Byzantine text adds nomou, “of law,” but that doesn’t alter the sense.) Now, there’s an elliptical statement that takes us from paradox to conundrum and back again. What would one expect from law but works? Of course, if you pursue law, you’re doing so by works, no?
But again, Paul is leaving us hanging for 10.4.
“(For) they stumbled at the stumbling stone; just as it is written, ‘Behold, I set in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and whoever believes upon Him shall not be put to shame’” (9.32b-33).
Here Paul kind of leaves us wondering which came first, the chicken or the egg. Did they pursue the law of righteousness as if by works because they stumbled at the stumbling stone? Or did they stumble at the stumbling stone because they were pursuing the law of righteousness as if by works?
Yes.
Whatever else may be said, some things are very clear. First of all, Christ is a scandal to a “law of righteousness as if by works.” Second, the conflict is not between one impersonal set of doctrines versus another. It is a conflict between the offensive Christ (who is God’s righteousness) and the “law of righteousness as if by works.”
Paul now goes on to say that his heart’s desire and prayer is Israel’s salvation. They indeed have zeal for God, but “not according to knowledge” (10.1-2). Which reference to knowledge brings us back to the ignorance mentioned in 10.3, where we began our previous post: they are “ignorant of the righteousness of God.” Not of course that they plain don’t know about it, but that they have stumbled over it, or shall we say Him.