As we read and discovered through Paul’s words in Romans 3:21-26, God is offering to justify us by His grace alone, through Christ's death alone, by our faith alone.
Some people, including Paul's opponents in Rome, have a problem with this message. Does it not contradict the Old Testament? Its emphasis is on law and works and consequences for disobedience. What if God accepted Old Testament people on a different basis? That would turn the "good news" into bad news. Take your pick:
Either Paul's gospel would be contradictory to previous revelation, and therefore false. Maybe he is just making it up because it is appealing.
Or, God is capricious, changing His mind about how to accept people. If He switched from law to grace, He could switch back from grace to law!
This is why Paul has to demonstrate that this gospel is rooted in the Old Testament. He alludes to this in Romans 3:21 by saying, "...being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets…", and he develops this further in Romans 4:1-16.
How was this good news witnessed by the Law? One of the most important features of the Old Testament law was its regulations for worship. It was very detailed — full of priests, festivals, washings, sacrifices, and rituals. Here, we will focus on the high points of Old Testament worship.
It took place in the Tabernacle — which was always situated in the center of their camp — to emphasize God’s desire to dwell in them. Later, when Israel settled in Palestine, they built a permanent structure, the Temple. Everything in it was made according to God's exact specifications (see Exodus 25:9), because it pictured God's problem with them and His solution to that problem. All human innovation was therefore prohibited, because it represented human attempts to approach God on their own terms, rather than in the way He graciously provided.
The center of the Tabernacle was the Holy of Holies, in which the presence of God dwelt among the Israelites. This large space was separated from the people by a series of curtains. People who tried to come into God's presence in any other way besides that which God specified would die (see Leviticus 16:2).
The only piece of furniture inside the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant, or the "box of the evidence." It contained articles that represented Israel's sin — manna, the rejection of God's provision, Aaron's rod, the rejection of God's leadership, and the tablets of the Ten Commandments, the rejection of God's law. Situated on top of the ark were statues of two cherubim, which are angels associated with the execution of God's judgment. Their faces were pointed downward, looking at the evidence of Israel's sin against God.
Can you see what God is communicating through all of this? He wants to dwell among His people, He wants them to be able to commune with Him, but there is a problem that makes this impossible. Because He is righteous, their sins separate them from Him and bring them justly under His judgment. This is exactly what Paul argued in Romans 1 and 2.
There was another article on the ark, and that article was the "good news." It was called the "mercy seat." It was a lid that covered the top of the ark, and what happened on this lid once each year allowed God to withhold His judgment from His people without violating His own righteousness and justice. You can read about it in Leviticus 16.
Once each year, on the Day of Atonement, which is called Yom Kippur by the Jews, the High Priest selected two goats without any physical defect. He slaughtered one of them and took its blood, the symbol of its life poured out in death, into the Holy of Holies and smeared it on the mercy seat. This was said to "cover" their sins because the goat's death satisfied God's righteous judgment against their sins. Then the High Priest came out of the Holy of Holies and, laying his hands on the head of the other goat, he confessed the sins of Israel for that year. Then they drove the goat out into the wilderness. This was to symbolize the carrying away of their sins.
Do you see what God was teaching Israel through this ritual? He would not compromise His penalty of death for sin, but He would provide a way to forgive them in spite of their sins — through the death of His chosen, blameless substitute. This is what theologians call substitutionary atonement, and it was the central element of Old Testament worship.
This was a marvelous picture of how God accepts sinful people, but it was only a picture. When you think about it, it has some serious short-comings.
It had to be repeated over and over again, year after year. This suggests that it was not really solving the problem of their guilt before God.
The use of animals was inadequate, since they were not moral agents. A substitutionary death for human sin would require a special, blameless human.
Additionally, it was only for Israel. What about the rest of the world?
It was a temporary picture of how God would one day solve the sin problem through a perfect Sacrifice. This is why God not only foreshadowed His solution through the Law; He also predicted it more specifically through the Prophets.
There is one Old Testament passage that the New Testament quotes or alludes to over 80 times. It is the song of God's Servant in Isaiah 52:13-53:12, written over 700 years before Christ. Although it concerns something that will happen in the future, known as predictive prophecy, it is written in the "prophetic past tense" to indicate its certain fulfillment. It is full of tragic irony, describing how Israel's rejection of God's Servant will result in the fulfillment of God's plan of salvation.
Read Isaiah 53:5-6 and 10-11. Using the language of the Old Testament sacrificial system, Isaiah says this Person will lay down His righteous life as an atoning sacrifice for Israel's sins. This confirms what the sacrificial system implied, that God's ultimate atonement would require the voluntary death of a unique Person, not animals.
Because He is God's perfect sacrifice, His death will purchase full forgiveness of sins. Therefore, it will not have to be repeated over and over again like the animal sacrifices. In fact, this perfect sacrifice will make animal sacrifices no longer necessary. This Person's death will provide not only for Israel's forgiveness, but also for the rest of the world (see Isaiah 52:15).
This particular passage reads so much like an overview of the Christian gospel that many skeptics asserted that it was a Christian forgery inserted back into the Old Testament. No one says this today, because among the Dead Sea scrolls was a complete copy of Isaiah, dated to 150-200 BC — and containing this passage in its entirety.
This is why John the Baptist announced Jesus as "the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sin of the world" (see John 1:29). This is why the veil of the Temple was torn when Jesus died (see Matthew 27:51) — to announce that the way to God is now open to all who come to Him through Jesus' death for their sins. This is why Paul says the gospel is "witnessed by the Law and the Prophets."
So, the Law and the Prophets taught that God offered His forgiveness as a gift of His grace through the death of His chosen Substitute. But how were people justified in Old Testament times? Certainly this required good works, circumcision, or law-keeping on their part. Using Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, Paul answers this question decisively:
Most rabbis taught that Abraham earned God's acceptance through his good works. Jubilees 23:10, a Jewish book that retells many stories from Genesis and Exodus through other perspectives, says "Abraham was perfect in all his dealings with the Lord and gained favor by his righteousness throughout his life." But that is not what the Old Testament says.
God gave Abraham a promise that He would make him the father of a great nation, and that from this nation would come One through whom God would bless all the nations. When Abraham simply took God at His word, apart from any works at all, God "credited him as righteous." This means God declared Abraham to be in right standing with Him. What is this? This is justification by faith, apart from works!
Paul goes on to point out that David was also justified by faith apart from works. Even after he committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband Uriah murdered to cover his sin, David could rejoice that God would not hold his sins against him. God justified him even though he was "ungodly" (see Romans 4:5), because he trusted God's promise of forgiveness. What great news!
As we saw earlier, rabbis taught that circumcision gave Jewish people the exclusive ticket to heaven, and uncircumcised Gentiles were out of luck. But is that what the Old Testament taught?
Read Romans 4:9-10. Paul's point is that God justified Abraham 14 years before he was circumcised. Therefore, circumcision had nothing to do with being right with God.
Read Romans 4:11-12. This chronology was no accident. God orchestrated the sequence of events to indicate that all who follow Abraham in his faith become God's children, whether they are circumcised or uncircumcised. As we saw in Romans 2, circumcision has no power to exempt anyone from God's judgment, nor to confer God's acceptance on anyone. The same is true of water baptism. They are simply to be outward symbols of the internal reality of faith in God's promise. If you do not have this faith, having the symbol will never get you God's acceptance. And if you have this faith, God accepts you even if you do not have the symbol.
Rabbis taught that God gave the Law to Israel to be the means by which they earned His acceptance. But Paul sees serious problems with this. Read Romans 4:13-16. This sounds complicated, but his point is pretty simple.
His point is that God revealed the terms of His acceptance through his dealings with Abraham long before the Law was ever given. Abraham lived around 2100 BC; the Law was not given until around 1400 BC, which was 700 years later. Therefore, whatever the purpose of the Law is, it cannot contradict God's original way of acceptance (see Galatians 3:17-18). The Law, which was given later than the promise, cannot invalidate the way God offers His acceptance to people. The irony is that Paul's opponents were accusing him of changing the way God accepts people, but they were the ones doing this.
Why then did God give Israel the Law? It was a lease contract that stipulated the terms for the use of the land. If they worshiped God and followed His instructions, He would protect them from their enemies and allow them to prosper materially. But if they went after other gods, He would remove their prosperity and protection. This is exactly what happened to them.
God has always accepted people the same way — not by works, ritual observance, or law-keeping — but by simple faith in His promise.
The only difference between people before Christ and after Christ is that they looked forward in faith through the symbols and prophecies to what God promised about Jesus' substitutionary death, while we look backward in faith through the New Testament accounts to what He has already done. Have you done this? Have you made the decision to put your faith in Jesus' death alone to give you God's acceptance?
