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  • From: "John Wilking" <johnwilking AT hotmail.com>
  • To: corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Romans 10:1-4
  • Date: Sun, 02 Apr 2000 14:40:12 PDT


I mentioned earlier that one of the differences between Rom 10 and Jeremiah 8 is that Jer. speaks of God's ways and Rom. uses the phrase God's justice or righteousness, but that the words aren't very different, since they are used somewhat synonymously a few times in the OT.

However, there is a difference, and I think it deserves some consideration. The OT sometimes says that people don't know God. Jeremiah says that they don't know his ways. These are pretty general terms: people don't know or understand him or what he does. Paul uses a more restricted term, justice. It seems that he could just as well have used another term like goodness since all that God is and does is good. But he doesn't. Perhaps he is speaking of God's justice because that is the particular point he is making.

It wasn't uncommon in the OT for God to be questioned about the "rightness" of what he was doing: Jer 12:1 "Yet I would speak with you about your justice...." Jer 14:9 "Why are you like a man taken by surprise?" Ezek 18 and Hab 1:2;2:1 "And I will keep watch to see what he will speak to me."

God's justice is also an issue in Rom. 9:14 "There is no injustice with God is there?" His justice was questioned because so much of what was happening didn't seem to fit with what the Jew understood the OT to mean. Paul seems often in Rom to be explaining or defending God. For example, it's not what you know but what you do that delivers from judgment because God is impartial. It's inner circumcision that makes a true Jew. It's Abraham's faith that God regarded as good. It's the promised ones that God regards as "the seed."

Perhaps the Jews didn't understand God's righteousness as they should have. God didn't want obedience just in certain things, but he wanted them to do everything that he said, including trusting in the rock that would make men stumble.

John C. Wilking

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