The Righteousness Based on Faith: Deuteronomy 30 in Romans 10

At the center of questions surrounding the nature of the New Covenant and biblical theology is the relationship between the Old Testament and New Testament, including how the NT authors understood and used the OT.

In Romans 10:5–13, Paul cites two Old Testament passages—Deuteronomy 30:11–14 and Leviticus 18:5—to ground his assertion that Christ is the purpose or telos of the law for righteousness in Romans 10:4. The second citation, Deuteronomy 30:12–14, has caused no little consternation for interpreters.^[1] Those slow to call into question the methods and motivations of an Apostle writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit will exercise patience in understanding Paul’s use of Deuteronomy in Romans 10. But why does Paul turn to Deuteronomy 30:12–14 in Romans 10:5–10, and what does it have to do with the ministry of Christ in the New Covenant? That’s what I plan to address in this article.

1. These realities have led many interpreters to conclude that Paul cannot be quoting from Deuteronomy 30:12–14 in Romans 10. Sanday and Headlam argue for a tenuous proverbial allusion, not a quotation, in Rom 10:6–8. Sanday and Headlam, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 289. Cf. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, 153–55; Longenecker, The Epistle to the Romans, 853–54. Others have accused Paul of being willfully arbitrary. Richard Hays calls this quotation “deliberately provocative” as “[i]t would not be easy to find another text in the Old Testament that looks less promising for Paul’s purposes.” Richard B Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 79. Still others accuse Paul of using a “drastic and unwarranted allegorizing” that “must have exposed him to attack” (Kirk, “The Epistle to the Romans,” 225) or of employing an especially crass typological method of interpretation (Cf. Gaugler, Der Epheserbrief, 214). But as Anthony Hanson has wisely noted, “[P]roof texts that have been arbitrarily tampered with are ineffective as proofs” (Hanson, Studies in Paul’s Technique and Theology, 14).

When Paul quotes Deuteronomy 30:12–14 as the content of the message of the righteousness based on faith over against Leviticus 18:5 and the righteousness based on the law in Romans 10:6–8,^[2] I am convinced that he understands this text to be fulfilled in the mission of Christ. More precisely, Paul reads Deuteronomy 30:11–14 as an extension of the after-exile restoration foretold in Deuteronomy 30:1–10, which points forward to the New Covenant experience of faith-empowered obedience, or heart circumcision, which is a work of the Holy Spirit enabled by the mission of Christ.

This New Covenant reality includes the internalization of the Word of God by the Spirit of God. What Paul finds in Deuteronomy 30:11–14 is a promise of righteousness that he knows is fulfilled in the gospel of the Lord Jesus. This is the message of the righteousness of faith, which is a message about the finished work of Christ on behalf of believers.^[3]

Deuteronomy 30:11–14 in Context

In my book In Your Mouth and In Your Heart, I argue that Deuteronomy 30:11–14 is grammatically and structurally related to Deuteronomy 30:1–10.^[4] Most English translations render the verbless clauses in Deuteronomy 30:11–14 in the present tense, which confuses interpreters trying to discern why Paul appeals to these verses in his argument in Romans 10. But if these verses are read as a continuation of the future-oriented promise of Deuteronomy 30:1–10, which is the case I make in my book^[5], this would relate Deuteronomy 30:11–14 to the divine promise of heart circumcision in Deuteronomy 30:6 and the post-exilic restoration of God’s people in 30:1ff. If this is so, Paul’s appeal makes perfect sense—Christ has inaugurated this restoration under a New Covenant, which is the message of the “righteousness based on faith.” As I argue in my book^[6], Deuteronomy 29 and 30 hint at the limits of the Mosaic covenant and the necessity of a New Covenant, a theme developed in the rest of the Old Testament. This theme is picked up explicitly by Christ when he institutes the Lord’s Supper, which prefigures his death on the cross for believers: “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20b). This is why he has come: to initiate a New Covenant in his blood.

This explanation makes sense of why the message of the “righteousness based on faith” in Romans 10:6ff begins with an allusion to God’s warning to Israel in Deuteronomy 9:4. Paul begins Romans 10:6 with language that comes verbatim from the beginning of Deuteronomy 9:4, where God warns Israel against looking to their own righteousness: “Do not say in your heart . . . ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has [acted].’” From here, Paul stitches Deuteronomy 9:4 to 30:12–14, with some interpretive commentary interspersed. According to Paul in Romans 10:6–8,

⁶ The righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down) ⁷ “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). ⁸ But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim).

Allowing Paul to be our guide to the proper interpretation of Deuteronomy 30:12–14, we can ask how the word is near, “in your mouth and in your heart”? It is because of the work of Christ, as Paul says in these verses. The Word has come down from heaven in the incarnation and been raised from the dead in the resurrection for sinners — which is the content of the word of faith proclaimed by Christ and the Apostles. This Word is the basis of righteousness in the New Covenant, as Paul goes on to say directly after in Romans 10:9:

⁹ because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved

A unified, future-oriented reading of Deuteronomy 30:1–14 serves to undergird interpretations such as the one Luther intuitively took with respect to Deuteronomy 30:11–14. He rightly sees these verses as fulfilled in the mission of Christ and the future preaching of the gospel:

But why does he say, “in the mouth” before he says, “in the heart,” since it is in the heart before it is in the mouth and is loved before it is taught? He does this to indicate that the manner of fulfilling the commandment of God will be through the Word of the Gospel, which is first preached by the mouth and then believed as a result of hearing. So by this text Moses directs the people to another Word to come, which, when received in the heart, causes His commandment to be loved. It is as if he said: “You will not fulfill My commandment when you hear it, but only if you love it with the heart. This you will not do unless the Word has been preached with the mouth and believed in the heart. So My commandment will become neither too difficult nor too distant.^[7]

7. Luther, Lectures on Deuteronomy, 9:278.

Romans 10 and Deuteronomy 30

In my view, this New Covenant connection is why Paul turns to Deuteronomy 30:12–14 in Romans 10. He could have quoted from a number of different Old Testament passages to support his argument for the righteousness based on faith. Why does Paul turn to Deuteronomy 30:12–14 to contrast the “righteousness that is based on the law” as represented in Leviticus 18:5?

I am convinced that what attracts Paul to Deuteronomy 30:12–14 is the New Covenant context of Deuteronomy 30:1–14, which he understands to be inaugurated in the mission of Christ. Paul cites Deuteronomy 30:12–14 to call attention to the fountainhead of the promise of New Covenant restoration, which is picked up and developed by the Prophets and the Writings and ultimately fulfilled in the mission of Christ. This is the message of the righteousness based on faith: Christ’s life, death, and resurrection inaugurates the New Covenant, and those who believe the good news of what Christ has accomplished on the cross are sanctified by his blood (Heb. 13:12) and by the Spirit have the Word “in their mouth and in their hearts to do it.”

If this is the case, one consequence of the internalized Word being so closely related to the New Covenant is the contrast between the externality of the law under the Old Covenant and the internality of the law in the New Covenant. Interestingly, in his treatise “On the Spirit and the Letter,” Augustine makes this observance when he argues that the law written on the heart is a feature of the New Covenant:

As then the law of works, which was written on the tables of stone, and its reward, the land of promise, which the house of the carnal Israel after their liberation from Egypt received, belonged to the old testament, so the law of faith, written on the heart, and its reward, the beatific vision which the house of the spiritual Israel, when delivered from the present world, shall perceive, belong to the new testament.^[8]

8. Augustine, De spir. et litt., 24.41 (NPNF 1/5:100).

Augustine goes on to elaborate on the difference between the Old and New Covenants, including the necessity of the work performed by the Holy Spirit:

When the prophet [Jeremiah] promised a new covenant . . . he simply called attention to this difference, that God would impress His laws on the mind of those who belonged to this covenant, and would write them in their hearts, whence the apostle drew his conclusion [in 2 Cor. 3:3],—“not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart;” and that the eternal recompense of this righteousness was not the land out of which were driven the Amorites and Hittites, and other nations who dwelt there, but God Himself. . . . By the law of works, then, the Lord says [in Exod. 20:17], “Thou shalt not covet:” but by the law of faith He says, “Without me ye can do nothing” [John 15:5]; for He was treating of good works, even the fruit of the vine-branches. It is therefore apparent what difference there is between the old covenant and the new,—that in the former the law is written on tables, while in the latter on hearts; so that what in the one alarms from without, in the other delights from within; and in the former man becomes a transgressor through the letter that kills, in the other a lover through the life-giving spirit. We must therefore avoid saying, that the way in which God assists us to work righteousness, and “works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure,” is by externally addressing to our faculties precepts of holiness; for He gives His increase internally, by shedding love abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given to us.^[9]

9. Augustine, De spir. et litt., 25.42 (NPNF 1/5:100–101).

To paraphrase Augustine, under the Old Covenant, man encounters the law externally as a threat; under the New Covenant, man encounters the law planted internally by the Spirit as love-enabled motivation for obedience.

The Temple and the Presence of God

How exactly is Christ’s work applied to the believer by the Spirit? By grace through faith in Christ, yes, but I think we can gain a deeper understanding of Christ’s work on the cross and in the New Covenant by considering the metaphysical mechanics at work that are implicit in the Temple theme in the Bible.^[10]

10. For a comprehensive treatment of this theme, see G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, New Studies in Biblical Theology 17 (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2004).

According the Scriptures, the Temple is the place where God dwells with his people. The Garden of Eden was a type of Temple in the beginning, where God walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden. God’s dwelling presence demands holiness, which is why when sin entered the world through Adam, (animal) blood had to be shed and mankind was no longer allowed to dwell with God—they were exiled east of Eden.

But in his kindness, God once again made a way for himself to dwell with his people through the Tabernacle and then the Temple. These had to be crafted to exacting specifications and design (that evoke Eden). Once built by the hands of sinners, these structures had to be cleansed by the blood of bulls and goats. Even still, the Holy of Holies, where God had his presence, could only be entered by the High Priest, and then only once a year. After the Temple was destroyed in 586 BC by the Babylonians and then rebuilt under Nehemiah, God’s presence returned, but in a noticeably diminished way (Ezra 3:12).

When Jesus the Christ came, he came to “tabernacle” with us (John 1:14) and was called “Immanuel,” which means “God with us.” A biblical-theological understanding of Jesus as God’s Temple—his dwelling-with-man presence—explains Jesus’s confrontation in the Temple with the religious leaders in John 2:18–22. Jesus said if they destroyed “this temple,” he would “raise it up” again in three days. The Apostle John tells us that he was speaking of his own body. Tracing this temple theme through Scripture shows us where God’s special presence was at work through biblical history: in Eden, then in the Tabernacle, then the Temple, then in Jesus.

After his death on the cross, and after his resurrection on the third day, Jesus ascended to heaven and sent the Spirit to dwell with his people—the penultimate installment in this biblical-theological Temple theme (the final “Temple” is the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21). In fulfillment to 2 Samuel 7, as the true Son of David, Jesus builds a Temple for God by uniting believers to himself—God with us—by grace through faith and then giving us his Spirit. The Spirit of God indwells believers who are together are being built up into a “holy household of God” (Eph. 2:19–22).

But temples must be holy if they are to be indwelt by God. The Holy Spirit “gains entrance” to the temple-body of the believer through the precious shed blood of Christ, which “sanctif[ies] the people through his own blood” (Heb. 13:12) thus cleansing us from all defilement as the Tabernacle and Temple were purified under the Old Covenant.

This is what the cross of Christ accomplishes: righteousness based on faith (Rom. 10:5), right standing before God that is not our own but Christ’s to give by virtue of his substitutionary mission, and also purification from sin through Christ’s perfect and final sacrifice of blood, which sanctifies us, making us indwell-able by his Holy Spirit.