<p>10:2 <i>For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge</i>- Bearing witness is legal language, of which Paul has made frequent usage in Romans 1-8. In the court of Divine judgment, it could be said in mitigation, as it were, that Israel had a zeal for God. But it was not according to knowledge, and the only knowledge worth anything is in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus. The idea of <i>kata</i> knowledge is to be found again in Col. 3:10, where we read that through the activity of the Spirit, we are renewed in knowledge <i>kata</i> the mental image of the Lord Jesus. The tension is therefore between attempted legal obedience, and permitting the work of the Spirit. This is the tension which has been explored in chapter 8; accepting imputed righteousness and our inability to be justified by works means accepting the work of the Spirit to transform us in reality to that which we are now by status in Christ. Paul wrote Romans from Corinth, where he had repeatedly argued the same; the Judaist influence in Corinth was not producing spirituality, because they were not making use of the gift of the Spirit in their hearts to transform them (2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5).</p>