For far too long now Christians have told the story of Jesus as if it hooked up not with the story of Israel, but simply with the story of human sin as in Genesis 3, skipping over the story of Israel altogether. —N.T. Wright
The concept of covenant often-times gets overlooked by modern interpreters of scripture. The role and function of covenant within the meta-narrative, however, must be properly accounted for in order to correctly interpret Paul (and a great deal more in the Scriptures as well, especially the Old Testament prophets) in particular. Simply put, the covenant is the means through which God’s World Renewal Plan is fulfilled. Redemption comes to the world because of God’s (and Jesus’) faithfulness to his covenant with Israel. Without God’s faithfulness to his covenant with Israel, there is no Jesus, there is no Cross, there is no Resurrection, there is no redemption, and there is certainly no holiness; not for Israel nor the world.
God’s covenant with Israel, then, is essential. More specifically, what is absolutely central for Paul is the fact that the Cross and Resurrection is the culmination of God’s faithfulness to Israel and simultaneously to the creation at large. That is, salvation comes both to the world and to Israel, because of God’s covenant faithfulness to Israel. We will explore this in detail in just a moment. Let’s simply point out for now that Paul was especially interested in this particular dimension of the Redemptive work of Christ because of his ministry as a Jewish Pharisee to Gentiles. Paul’s world centered on this concept. Deviation on a single detail of this issue could make or break Paul’s raison d’être. This is why Paul was more passionate about this particular point of theology than most others (the strength of language in his epistle to the Galatians alone is proof of this). For Paul, removing the banner of “God’s covenant faithfulness to Israel” from above the Cross is to do away with redemption altogether.
Not only is the issue at hot topic for Paul, but also for the New Perspective. The New Perspective has championed the point that if we don’t get this bit right, the rest will be askew and our thinking about the Cross and Resurrection will run amuck (which is precisely what it has done in so many cases). But in what way? What does wrong theology of the Cross do to us? It gives us latitude to grossly misinterpret the Cross as giving the world license to sin (mē genoito!) as opposed to offering the world the means for a renewed nature. The Cross is to be a means to stop sinning (i.e., holiness), not justification to continue sinning. More on this below.
At this point of introduction, what I am saying is that if we remove the fact that the redemptive work of Jesus is first and foremost the manifestation of God’s covenant faithfulness to Israel then we lose sight of the fact that the goal of the Cross is holiness. This, at least for me, means that the renewed emphasis the New Perspective has put on the Cross and Resurrection as the manifestation of the covenant faithfulness of God, has strongly bolstered the case that proponents of holiness theology have been making for centuries. We must read the New Testament in light of the Old and vice-versa. This is precisely what the church fathers were telling us when they authorized the two testament Christian canon.
The point that I am arguing for here is the same as that N.T. Wright is talking about in the quote at the beginning of this chapter. As interpreters of Paul’s writing who are far removed from the original context of Paul and his worldview, we have the tendency to emphasize the more global dimension of Paul’s soteriology (solving the Genesis 3 problem) and at the same time tend to neglect the Jewish dimension of God’s covenant faithfulness (solving the Israel problem). Along with this, as western thinkers who are conditioned by culture to think in terms of the individual over and above the community at large, we also tend to neglect the corporate nature of salvation. These are some of the issues that we will address in this chapter, especially as they impact Paul’s thinking about holiness.
As we make our way in addressing these issues in this chapter, I believe that a solid, biblical doctrine of holiness should also be reinforced through a consideration of the following items that we will also treat in this chapter: (1) a clear view of the Ancient Near Eastern concept of fictive kinship as being at the core of the Old Testament concept of covenant the role, and (2) an explanation of the role and function of the Torah (as “Mosaic Law”) within God’s World Renewal Plan.
With these items collectively before us, our goal is to come away with a clearer idea of how Paul understood holiness in light of the covenantal framework for salvation. We will see that for Paul, covenant is (1) the means for revealing the holy character of God, (2) the means for revealing the sin problem, and (3) the means for solving the sin problem within Isreal, and finally (4) the means for solving the sin problem that pervades the cosmos (i.e., all of the created order). In sum, with no covenant, there is no salvation, nor holiness.
—Excerpt from Holiness in Fresh Perspective: Covenant, Cross, and Kingdom (Wipf and Stock)
