The Gospel as the Revelation of God’s Righteousness: Paul’s Use of Isaiah in Romans 1:1-3:26

Paul’s primary scriptural source in Romans 1-4 (and the epistle as a whole) is the prophecy of Isaiah and its redemptive narrative centering in the proclamation of good news . Paul understands the content of this good news to be the revelation of God’s righteousness in the sacrificial death of the messiah as the source of redemption from the power of sin and death and the basis of the everlasting (new) covenant, and hence as that which effects redemptive recreation. Paul employs Isaiah, particularly its intertextual typology of both the plight of Israel and the sacrifice of the Servant of the Lord, to convey a covenantal and revelational continuity that climaxes in the gospel. Robert C. Olson explains how the expansive sweep of this redemptive narrative in Isaiah stretches from its allusions to the fall, to the overthrow of death and the creation of the new heavens and new earth, as Israel and the nations are at last ushered back into the presence of the glory of God. This Isaianic redemptive narrative, therefore, through Paul’s extensive citational and allusive reference to the prophecy, forms the principle scriptural and theological framework for the epistle.