Job 9:2
. . . how should a man be just with God?
In what is probably the oldest Book in the Word of God, Job asks the question, 'How should a man be just with God?' In the end, Job discovered that he himself had no righteousness and had to confess, 'I am vile ...I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.' Job had discovered that righteousness is only of God. When Job finally spoke that which was right of God, then righteousness was given to him.
Next, in time, we find these words concerning Abraham, 'And he believed in the Lord; and He counted it to him for righteousness' Gen 15:6. Abraham was justified by faith, and Paul quotes this passage in Romans 4:3. Paul says that if works had justified Abraham, then he could have boasted about it, and then quotes this verse to prove that Abraham was justified by faith.
Both these examples are concerning Gentiles and happened before the giving of the law at Sinai. So we must conclude that justification by faith is not an administration or dispensational truth. It is foundational truth or truth for all time.
Again we find it set forth in Habakkuk 2:4, 'Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.' The apostle Paul quoted this passage, each with a different emphasis, three times in his writings; Rom 1:17; Gal 3:11; Heb 10:38. See notes in the Companion Bible.
In ignorance of the Scriptures, many have caused the error of the thinking and teaching that Paul originated justification by faith and that it was a part of The Mystery, which had been hidden in God for ages and generations. But the foregoing paragraphs will soon dispel such an idea. Furthermore, when we reference the concordance, we discover that in the proclaiming of The Mystery in his Epistles after Acts 28:28, Paul mentions justification just once in connection with believers, and that is in Titus 3:7. So we must conclude that justification has to do with life, a future life (Hab 2:4) and not with dispensational truth.
Justification is by grace and not by the deeds of the law, as Paul insists over and over. It was a part of his Gospel of the Grace of God, but it was known ages before that Gospel was made known. The Gospel of The Grace of God was the Good News that Gentile Christians from Acts 10 to 28 could partake of the blessings and hope of Israel without keeping all of Israel's laws. That was no mystery, for Paul goes on to some length to show that it was not unknown in former ages (see Romans Chapters 10 and 11). Now since the law was given to the Jews and they have been off the picture for close to 2000 years, just where is the law today?
Paul declared before Agrippa in Acts 26:22 that from the beginning of his ministry to that point, he had said none other things than what could be found in the prophets and Moses. And he goes on to outline his Acts ministry up to that point by stressing the fact that he had preached the sufferings and resurrection of Christ (the Jehovah of Israel) and that He would show light unto the People (the Jews) and the Gentiles.