Here's more from PFG, here on the Jewish background of Paul's "justification" doctrine: "He began, as a Pharisee, in the line of zealous Jews indicated in passages such as 1 Maccabees 2. He believed that those who were zealous for Torah would , like Phinehas, have 'righteousness reckoned to them', that is, that they would be marked out in the present as true covenant members in advance of the coming new age. But the fact of the crucified and risen Messiah, and the gift of the spirit, indicated that the new age had already been inaugurated in the present, and with an unexpected character. And part of that character was the recognition that the new age could be brought about only if the creator God dealt, more radically than had been imagined, with what now appeared as the full and awful plight of the human race, Israel itself included...
Then comes the radically new answer. If the Messiah's death has indicated that the problem was deeper than previously imagined, the Messiah's death will unveil the deeper solution as well. The divine covenant faithfulness is revealed in the gospel. The covenant is indeed the answer to the forensic problem - but it is the covenant as fulfilled in the faithful obedience of the Messiah and the outpouring of the spirit. The radicalization of the 'plight' which we studied earlier, itself the result of Paul's reflection of the 'solution'. In the language of 'righteousness' and 'justification', already implicit in the covenantal train of thought, Paul found the perfect vehicle to explain how the covenant God, through the Messiah and the spirit, had dealt with the deeper problem of human sin, including Jewish sin. (Wright, PFG, 933).
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