Quotes about Faithfulness

This idea of God being faithful to the covenant clearly seems to be Paul's meaning here in Romans 3.

Romans 2:17—3:9 is concerned, first, with the worldwide purpose of Israel's divine vocation (2:17—20); second, with Israel's covenantal failure (2:21—24; 3:2—4); and third, with the problem that this poses for God's dikaiosyn?, his "righteousness" (3:5). How is God to be faithful to the covenant—to rescue and bless the world through the Jews—if Israel is faithless?

The divine purpose through Israel for the world is the subject of the passages both before and after 3:21—26. There is every reason, therefore, for taking "God's righteousness" in 3:21 in its normal biblical sense of "covenant faithfulness.

There is every reason too to understand the display of that "righteousness" as connected with God's somehow rescuing the world from idolatry and sin, through Israel, in order to create a single worldwide family for Abraham. The actual arguments Paul advances on either side of our passage, in other words, strongly support a reading of dikaiosyn? theou and cognate ideas in 3:21—26 as "covenant faithfulness.

The question Paul faces in 3:21—26 is then the double problem of human sin and idolatry, on the one hand, and the divine faithfulness, on the other.

God's faithfulness to the covenant with Israel, even granted the large-scale failure of Israel as a whole, will result in the rescue of the whole sinful world.

the word the early Christians used for "faith" can also mean "loyalty" or "allegiance.

These assumptions will not let us down. The covenant is indeed the context; the restoration of true worship is indeed the goal. The passage is indeed about God's dealing with sin. But the way God does this is, first, by fulfilling his ancient covenant promises and, second, by thereby addressing idolatry, the underlying problem of all human faithlessness. In other words, God is unveiling his "righteousness" through the faithfulness to death of Israel's Messiah, Jesus.

obvious Greek term for "loyalty" is one of Paul's favorite words, pistis, regularly translated "faith," but often carrying the overtones of "faithfulness," "reliability," and, yes, "loyalty.

Jesus, as Israel's Messiah, is the place where and the means by which God's covenant purposes and Israel's covenant faithfulness meet, merge, and achieve their original object.

His point is that the cross has liberated people from sin, so that they can be God-reflecting, image-bearing, working models of divine covenant faithfulness in action.

make sure we are doing justice and honour to scripture itself, rather than simply using it within schemes of our own making.