This covenant relationship was regulated by the law, not as a way of entering the covenant, or of gaining merit, but as the way of living within the covenant; and that included the provision of sacrifice and atonement for those who confessed their sins and thus repented.… This attitude Sanders characterized by the now well known phrase “covenantal nomism”—that is, “the maintenance of status” among the chosen people of God by observing the law given by God as part of that covenant relationship.9 In
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