Righteousness

RIGHTEOUSNESS

Rectitude, justice, holiness; an essential perfection of God’s character, Job 36:3 ; Isa 51:5-8 ; Joh 17:25 ; and of his administration, Gen 18:25 ; 1Ch 3:21,22 ; 10:3. It is the wonder of grace that as the righteous guardian of the law, he can acquit the unrighteous. “The righteousness of Christ” includes his spotless holiness, his perfect obedience the law demands; and “the righteousness of faith” is that imputed to the sinner who believes in Christ. With reference to personal character, righteousness is used both for uprightness between man and man, and for true religion, Gen 18:23 ; Lev 19:15 ; Isa 60:17 ; 1Ch 14:17 ; Zep 5:9 .

Fuente: American Tract Society Bible Dictionary

Righteousness

The term righteousness does not convey a very definite or even a very attractive meaning to the reader of modern English, and the meaning which it does convey is only part of the full significance which the Greek term () would carry for a Christian reader in the Apostolic Age. In ordinary speech, a man is not usually called righteous; the term has a certain formality and archaic flavour about it. But when he is, it means that he is just, that he will observe the moral code strictly, or that he will be punctilious in the discharge of such obligations as are incumbent on a man in his position. A righteous man will be high-principled, but the adjective suggests limitations. It does not necessarily follow that he will be kind or affectionate. As a matter of fact, we speak of a man as just but not generous, and righteous has come upon the whole to be associated with just in this connexion. A person who is righteous is estimable rather than attractive. It is curious that once at least in the NT we come across a similar use of the Greek equivalent, in St. Pauls remark: Why, a man will hardly die for the just ( )-though one might bring oneself to die, if need be, for a good man ( , Rom 5:7). Here there certainly seems to be an implied distinction between the righteous or just man and the good man; the former lacks those qualities of human kindness and affection which enable the latter to inspire enthusiasm and devotion in others. It is one thing to be scrupulous in respecting the rights of others, or even, as perhaps St. Paul meant, in fulfilling ones religious duties; it is another thing to have an instinctive sense of helpfulness and beneficence. The godly man may not be particularly human or humane. Even when he is, his beneficence sometimes lacks the warmth and heart which the good man puts into his relations with others.

He that works me good with unmoved face,

Does it but half: he chills me while he aids,

My benefactor, not my brother man.

(Reflections on having left a place of retirement, 49 ff.).

What Coleridge describes in these words resembles the character of the righteous or just man as distinguished from the good man. If we take Ciceros definition of the good man as he who assists those whom he can, and hurts nobody (vir bonus est is qui prodest quibus potest, nocet nemini [de Officiis, iii. 15, 64]), we get a similar stress upon the positive and active interest of the good man in his fellows, as opposed to the more negative attitude associated with righteous. [Note: There is an excellent note on this in Lightfoots Notes on Epistles of St. Paul, London, 1895, p. 286 f. In Rom 7:12 -the command is, holy, just (), and for our good ()- has the same sense of beneficent.]

But this is merely one of the meanings of righteousness in the literature of the Apostolic Age. The Greek term is employed by St. Paul in a technical sense, and by him and other writers in a variety of non-technical senses. One of the latter has just been noted, and, before passing on to the technical Pauline sense, it will be well to survey the other passages in which it is employed by him and later writers of the Apostolic Age without any specific theological reference.

1. Non-technical use of the term in apostolic literature (including St. Paul).-The usage of the term in 2 Cor. is particularly instructive. The verb justify does not occur in this Epistle, hut, as we shall see, one of the profoundest passages on righteousness in its technical application to the doctrine of justification falls within the scope of this letter. Yet side by side with this lie two non-technical meanings of the term.

(a) One of these is in the sense of almsgiving, which it had already began to acquire. In urging the Corinthians to be prompt and generous with their contributions to his fund for the relief of poverty among the Palestinian Jewish Christians, he quotes the Septuagint version of Psa 112:9 and applies it to the situation of his readers (Psa 9:9): as it is written, He scatters, his gift broadcast to the poor, his charity () lasts for ever. He who furnishes the sower with seed and with bread to eat will supply seed for you and multiply it; he will increase the crop of your charities ( ). In this use of the term we can overhear the meaning which it had begun to gather in the religious ethic of Judaism (as early as the period of Sirach), where almsgiving or charity was regarded as so characteristic an expression of the truly pious life that could be used as an equivalent for it upon occasion. Rabbinic piety now and then made this a feature of the imitatio Dei, as in the well-known saying [Note: Quoted in S. Schechters Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, London, 1909, p. 202 f.] of Rabbi Chama ben Chaninah (Sota, 14a): As He clothes the naked (Gen 3:21), so do thou clothe the naked; as He nurses the sick (Gen 18:1), so do thou nurse the sick; as He comforts the mourners (Gen 25:11) so do thou comfort the mourners; as He buries the dead (Deu 34:5), so do thou bury the dead. In other directions, it fitted in with the stress on charity as one of the surest means of acquiring merit before God, Almsgiving is a strong mediator between the Israelites and their father in heaven; it brings the time of redemption nigh (Baba Bathra, 10a). This still prevails in popular Islm. C. M. Doughty, speaking of his hospitable host Maatuk, observes that if the camels came home be milked a great bowlful for the stranger, saying, it was his sdaka, or meritorious human kindness, for Gods sake, [Note: Arabia Deserta, 2 vols., London 1888, ii. 278.] As the context indicates (see 2Co 9:6 : he who sows generously will reap a generous harvest), St Paul thinks of here in the sense of an action (or rather, a character in action) [Note: the splendid description of in Job 29:14 f., as social justice and goodness. The mere fact that often came to be rendered by in later Judaism shows that, us a social virtue was far removed from our modern association of righteousness.] which is pleasing to God, because it harmonizes with the Divine nature; bountiful, generous actions done to others will enrich a man with Gods bounty as nothing else will. St. Paul would have been the last to teach any doctrine of charity as a merit, on which one could base some claim to Gods approval. But he is free to recognize that such spontaneous expressions of kindness and mercy between man and man are inspired and rewarded by God.

(b) The other general sense is reflected in 2Co 6:7; 2Co 6:14. In the former passage St. Paul, speaking of his methods in the Christian propaganda, claims that he employs the weapons of integrity for attack or for defence, where , as the preceding words indicate (the holy Spirit, unaffected love, true words, the power of God), is opposed to foul play, misrepresentation, and rancour; in evangelizing and in controversy, even when controversy is personal, he professes to be clean and honest. The second reference opposes to iniquity or unregulated conduct, almost as goodness to wickedness; What have righteousness and iniquity in common, or how can light associate with darkness? Morality would be inadequate here, for what St. Paul has in mind is the religious life, but it is the religious life as expressed in conduct; he is certainly not using in the technical sense in which he employs it elsewhere. Conduct is the word of common life, says Matthew Arnold, morality is the word of philosophical disquisition, righteousness is the word of religion (Literature and Dogma, ed. London, 1883, p. 16). It is in this sense, or in the allied sense of integrity, that it occurs in the Pastoral Epistles [Note: In Tit 3:5-7 God saves us in sheer pity, not for anything we had done , and justifies us (the only reference to justification in the Pastorals) by His grace.] (e.g. 1Ti 6:11, 2Ti 2:22; 2Ti 3:16; 2Ti 4:8), as well as in Eph 4:24; Eph 5:9; Eph 6:14. Similarly, the technical usage in Philippians is accompanied by the non-technical expression in Eph 1:11, where the Apostle prays that the life of these Christians may be covered with that harvest of righteousness Jesus Christ produces to the glory and praise of God. This is equivalent to the harvest of the Spirit (Gal 5:22), the good character produced by the influence of Christ or of the Spirit.

We have, indeed, no exact equivalent in English for what meant to a Greek or to a primitive Christian, especially if he had been born in Judaism. Righteousness is too formal and abstract in its associations for a modern mind; justice, again, is too narrow and, like integrity and morality, it is insufficiently charged with religious feeling. The technical Pauline content of the term especially spills over when it is emptied into any of these modern words. They occasionally reproduce the sense of the Greek word in non-technical passages, but even in its restricted sense of political virtue, as applied to the man who obeys the law or who is a good citizen of the Sate, the term had impressed Aristotle, four centuries earlier, with its variety of meaning (Nic. Eth. V. i. 7), [Note: He regards as (a) complete virtue, in the general sense or obedience to law, and (b) as a special part of virtue, viz. fairness or equity.] and when it passed into the vocabulary of Judaism and of early Christianity its range became still wider, stretching from justice across a broad field of meaning to piety or goodness. It may sound like a confession of defeat to say that we cannot reproduce the word precisely in English. But it is something gained, at any rate, to realize that the conception, even in St. Paul, is not stereotyped, and that the Apostle uses it in more senses than one. Much of the investigation into the Pauline usage has been vitiated by the assumption that the term invariably represented a single, well-defined idea in the writers mind. St. Paul was not the slave of words, even of a great religious word like . If his arguments on righteousness are sometimes puzzling, it is rather because he overtaxed this term and its family; he forced them to serve a variety of purposes, some of which were not obviously relevant to their original object and contemporary employment.

Like Jesus, though more often, he uses righteousness for the religious ideal, the relation to God in which all devout persons seek to stand. Thus, in Rom 9:30-32 he writes: Gentiles who never aimed at righteousness have attained it-that is, righteousness by faith; whereas Israel who did aim at the law of righteousness [i.e. at some code or rule which would lead to righteousness] has failed to reach that law, And why? Simply because Israel has relied not on faith but on what they could do. Similarly in the next section (Rom 10:3-11): They would not surrender to the righteousness of God [i.e. to the righteousness which alone God will have and give], because they were ignorant of his righteousness [their zeal was not according to knowledge, Rom 10:2] and therefore essayed to set up a righteousness of their own. Now Christ is an end to law, so as to let every believer (emphatic, as opposed to the man who relies on what he can do in the matter of obedience to law) have righteousness. Moses writes of law-righteousness: anyone who can perform it shall live by it. [Note: The original implies that this is quite possible (Lev 18:5; cf. Bar 4:1 f. this is the book of the commandments of God, and the law that endureth for ever; all they that hold it fast are to live, but such as leave it shall die), but the present writer translates as above in order to suggest St. Pauls meaning, viz. that it had been proved impossible.] But here is what faith-righteousness says: Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, [Note: This cardinal note of saving faith, viz. belief in Jesus as the Risen Lord, was what St. Paul found already adumbrated in the faith of Abraham (Rom 4:17; Rom 4:24). In the OT, as in the NT, faith is elicited by, and directed towards, a God who makes the dead live.] and you will be saved; for with his heart man believes and is justified, with his mouth he confesses and is saved. No one who believes in him, the Scripture says, will ever be disappointed.

These passages bring out two features of St. Pauls conception: (1) the contrast between Gods righteousness and the religion which men make sincerely, and passionately for themselves, and present as their own to God (a righteousness of their own here is equivalent to a legal righteousness of my own in Php 3:9); and (2) the remarkable substitution of Christ for the Torah as the means of establishing a right relation to God, involving so supreme and novel a conception of faith that St. Paul speaks of devotion to the Torah as though it really did not make faith count at all. [Note: g. Gal 3:23-25, where the coming of faith, faith in Jesus Christ, marks an epoch after the regime of the Law.] But, over and above these characteristics, it is noticeable that, probably owing to the particular argument he has in hand, he retains the classical term righteousness for the great end which men sought by right and wrong ways of religious discipline.

Even in more general passages, righteousness is the direct opposite to sin (cf. Act 13:10, 2Co 11:15). Thus in Rom 6:13, you must not let sin have your members for the service of vice; you must dedicate yourselves to God as men who have been brought from death to life, dedicating your members to God for the service of righteousness (and similarly in Rom 6:18-20). The expression in Rom 8:10 is less obvious. When St. Paul says that the human spirit is alive , does he mean, as in ch. 6, for the sakeofrighteousness (i.e. to practise righteousness) or as the result of righteousness (i.e. of the new, vital relation to God which the Divine righteousness has created through Christ-the thought of Rom 5:17 f.)? Probably the latter is uppermost in his mind. In Rom 14:17, however, we have the term used in what is apparently a more restricted sense: the reign of God is not a matter of eating and drinking; it means righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. As peace is defined Immediately to mean harmony and good feeling between members of the Church (Rom 14:19), the likelihood is that righteousness denotes primarily either integrity or just dealing as an expression of the Christian spirit (so Clem. Rom. lxii. 2), the very opposite of injuring your brother (Rom 14:15). The larger interpretation of the three terms is not, of course, to be ruled out, especially as all three have been already conjoined in Rom 5:1, and as the distinctively religious basis would never be far from St. Pauls mind. But the context (Rom 14:18, he who serves Christ on these lines) suggests that the stress falls upon what may be called, for the sake of convenience, though inaccurately, the ethical bearings of righteousness and peace at any rate. (It is quite unlikely, however, that St. Paul had in mind the saying of Mat 6:33, Seek Gods reign and his righteousness.) Matthew Arnold has somewhere described this verse as one of the texts in shadow, which ought to be brought into prominence to correct materialistic, popular views about the Kingdom of God. But this was not St. Pauls point, even on the ethical interpretation of his words; he was not opposing conduct to supernaturalism in thus defining the nature of the reign.

In the cognate sense of justice, i.e. of the moral goodness which makes an authority act fairly and impartially, for the Greeks was not only a human but a divine virtue. There is a remarkable passage in Plutarchs Life of Aristides (6) which brings out this usage of the term. Plutarch observes that the justice of Aristides was what impressed his contemporaries most, and won for him that most royal and divine title or the Just. He then proceeds to moralize upon the disinclination of men to imitate and reproduce this quality of the divine nature. The quality of incorruption () and eternity ( ) they envy and felicitate God an possessing; the quality of power ( ) they dread and fear; they love and honour and revere the deity for his and yet, Plutarch sadly reflects, the first of these three emotions the passion for immortality (of which our nature is not capable), is the strongest, while the divine , i.e. justice which alone of the divine excellences is within our reach, commands least interest.

Plutarch is thinking specially of men in authority, and his language illustrates the use of the term in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb 1:9), where the writer quotes Psalms 45 as a description of the Messianic king, [Note: Similarly, in the only reference to a Divine in Revelation (Rev 19:11), the Messiah discharges the two-fold function of a Semitic king-he rules and makes war justly ( ). God is righteous in the Apocalypse (e.g. Rev 15:3; Rev 16:5; Rev 16:7; Rev 19:2), in the OT sense of vindicating the saints and punishing the wicked persecutors.] Thou hast loved justice and hated lawlessness, and later on (Heb 7:2) recalls the meaning of Melchizedeks name as king of justice.

After St. Paul, the idea of righteousness ceases to occupy any special position in the apostolic literature; the term either echoes his technical usage, though this is rare, or is employed in one or other of its general meanings. The sole occurrence in the Fourth Gospel (Joh 16:8-10) is remarkable, because it gives a turn to the word which is unfamiliar even to St. Paul. One of the three converging lines along which the Spirit, acting through the Church, confounds and condemns the unbelieving world is the witness to the Resurrection, which proves that Christ was not a blasphemous Messianic pretender, as the Jews held, but innocent, just, acting according to the Divine will. He will convince men of righteousness, because I go to the Father and you see me no more. The overcoming of death by Jesus, which is testified by the presence of His alter ego, the Spirit, in the Church, is a convincing proof that He was right in His claims, and that Christians who believed in Him, not the Jews who murdered Him, were righteous, i.e. fulfilling the Divine will. The obscure line from the primitive hymn quoted in 1Ti 3:16, he was vindicated by the Spirit ( ), probably is an allusion to this point of view. [Note: This does not corroborate the hypothesis that St. Paul regarded Jesus as Himself justified by His resurrection, i.e. that the latter proved Him to be vindicated as sinless by God, so that Christians who identify themselves with Him by faith show and appropriate the same justification. Had St. Paul conceived the matter thus, he would have spoken of Christians being justified with Christ. But he never uses this phrase.] It is singular that this is the only [Note: Unless we group with it 2Pe 3:2-3.] NT application of the OT sense of the phrase, which meant the open vindication of Israel, by some signal act of Divine favour, before the nations who had been scoffers and persecutors.

The justification of Jesus came up, however, not long afterwards in different from. Trypho told Justin (Dial. 67) that if Christians could prove from Scripture that Jesus really was the Messiah, it would be better to argue that He deserved this honour on account of His dutiful obedience to the rites and regulations of the law than that He owed it to a legendary virgin-birth. Justins reply is that Jesus was circumcised and obedient to the other ordinances of the Mosaic code, but not us if he were justified thereby.

Justins position is practically that of Mat 3:15; Jesus fulfils every religious requirement ( ) of the Law, but only as that is part of His obedience to the Father. It is noticeable, in this connexion, that St. Paul never speaks of Jesus Christ as righteous, nor of His righteousness, although this was a familiar predicate of Messiah not only in the OT but in the later Judaism, especially in the Enochic Parables, where righteousness is one of the leading characteristics of Messiah as well as of the saints. Messiah as Son of Man is born to righteousness (lxxi. 14) and possesses it as an essential quality of His nature; it is primarily the virtue of a conqueror, who establishes the right and vindicates the faithful by over throwing the strong anti-Divine powers of earth; but it is beginning to be more than the equipment of the Divine champion or law-giver, and (cf. Test. Judah, xxiv. 1) it is associated with sinlessness as well as with wisdom or knowledge. Even when St. Paul speaks in terms of this militant Messianism (e.g. 2 Thessalonians 1-2), he refrains from calling Jesus The Righteous One. [Note: Luke makes him use the term in Act 22:14 : otherwise, it is confined to Stephen (Act 7:52), Peter (1Pe 3:18), and John (1Jn 2:1).] Otherwise, be describes Him as born under the law and as serving the Jews un earth in fulfilment of Gods promises; in Php 2:6 f. he does not suggest that the obedience of Jesus under the Law amounted in any sense to Justification, or even to the maturing of character outlined In Heb 5:8 f. His large use of righteousness did not include any reference to the sinlessness which he presupposed in the Son of God.

The crisis of the Pauline struggle with the Law is so far behind that the author of 1 John feels at liberty (cf. Rev 22:11) to use a legal phrase like doing righteousness (cf. Pss.-Sol. 9:9: he who does righteousness is treasuring up life for himself with the Lord). Its associations were as old as the Greek Bible, and evidently it could no longer be misunderstood (cf. Clem. Rom. xxxi. 2, etc.). Thus in 2:29 and 3:7 the doing of righteousness is a synonym for the doing of Gods will; [Note: When Mat 7:21 is quoted in 2 Clem. iv. 2, righteousness is similarly substituted for the will of my Father in heaven.] it is at once the expression and the evidence of regeneration, and consequently the antithesis to committing sin. It is possible that the stringent tone of these sayings about the ethical bearing of righteousness was called out by some antinomian movement which disparaged mere morality in the interests of a Gnostic superiority, or by a local abuse of the Pauline teaching. Certainly the latter is the case in the Epistle of James, e.g. 2:23. The idea that belief justified by itself would not have been suggested, so far as we know, by any Jewish type of piety. The formalism [Note: Thus Clem. Rom. xxx. 3 can even say, we are justified by deeds () not words.] against which the writer feels it necessary to warn his readers arose from an exaggeration and misapprehension of the Pauline antithesis [Note: For a different view, cf. B. Bartmanns paper on St. Paulus and St. Jacobus ber die Rechtfertigung in Biblische Studien, ii. [Freiburg i. B., 1897] 30 f., 146 f., and S. Harbents discussion in J. M. A. Vacant and E. Mangenots Dictionnaire de thologie catholique, lii. [1913] 70 f.] between faith and works-an antithesis which was coined by St. Paul. Hence faith in St. James is closer to a confession of monotheism (cf. Jam 2:19) than to the Pauline conception. This is not affected by the reference in Jam 2:1. St. James can conceive the existence of a faith which is devoid of any practical element, requiring the breath of works to vitalize it: As the body without the breath of life is dead, so faith is dead without works (Jam 2:26), From the Pauline standpoint, the reverse would be more true; it is faith that vitalizes works. But works are moral actions for St. James, not legal observances. The entire omission of any reference to the Law in this section of his Epistle is significant. It corroborates the impression that justification means for him Gods recognition of moral conduct, not the free forgiveness of sins, which according to St. Paul made any Christian character and conduct possible. The only allusion to is in the OT quotation (Jam 2:23), from which he draws the inference that Abrahams righteousness rested not on his faith alone but on his act of practical obedience in being prepared to sacrifice Isaac. When he says elsewhere that human anger does not promote divine righteousness (Jam 1:20), i.e. the religion of which God approves, and that peacemakers reap righteousness (Jam 3:18) as the harvest of their quiet efforts in the Church, he is illustrating the wrong and the right ways of promoting the religious life; is employed in its familiar and normal sense to denote the devout life of goodness as that is lived under the standard and scrutiny of God (cf. Act 10:35 : he who reverences God and lives a good life- -in any nation is welcomed by him), and the writer urges that wrangling and angry controversy are not a soil which can be expected to foster the growth of spiritual religion ( = cet tat normal auquel Dieu prend plaisir et auquel le chrtien doit tender [E. Reuss, Les ptres catholiques, Paris, 1878, p. 139]). The second of these phrases is paralleled by the expression in Heb 12:11, where those who are trained by the discipline of God reap the fruit of it afterwards in the peace of an upright life ( ); here includes participation in the holiness of Gods nature (Heb 12:10) as the characteristic of personal religion, and the peace is primarily harmony with His purpose, an absence of friction and fretting, although the further thought of harmony within the community is soon developed (Heb 12:14), Neither here nor elsewhere in Hebrews do we find used outside the non-technical range of meaning. In Heb 11:33 wrought righteousness means administered justice, and in Heb 5:13 the term is not far from what a modern would call moral truth, [Note: The present writer prefers this interpretation of to the interpretation of von Soden (richtiger Rede) and Reuss (lenseignement complet), though the latter can also support itself on Greek usage.] as the context proves (Heb 5:14). Similarly in Act 24:25 when St. Paul made Felix uneasy by preaching about and self-mastery and the future judgment, it was not the of Rom 1:17 but the morality demanded by God (cf. Rom 2:3 f.). The only exception is the isolated echo or adaptation of the Pauline phraseology in Heb 11:7, where Noah is said to have inherited the righteousness that follows faith ( ). Noah is passed over by St. Paul, but Philo had already noted that he was the first man to be called in the OT, and although the writer of Hebrews carries back this title of honour to Abel (Heb 11:4), he signalizes the faith of Noah as the reason why he obtained the position of before God. The non-technical use of Pauline language here tallies with the fact that the writer does not work elsewhere with the Pauline categories of faith and justification, Noah had faith, acted on it, and thus was entitled to the position of . The idea is closer to St. James than to St. Paul.

In Rev 19:8 the white linen in which the Bride of Messiah is allowed to array herself for the marriage is defined as the righteous conduct () of the saints, i.e. of the faithful who are personified as the Bride. The plural is curious; it recalls the plural use of , e.g. in (the Greek of) Sir 44:10 and Pss.-Sol. 9:6 (cf. 2Es 7:35), as acts of righteousness (charity). But St. Paul uses the singular in Rom 5:18 of a righteous act, and the plural actually occurs in Bar 2:19, the famous protest against the doctrine of the zecuth of the Fathers (see below). The absence of the doctrine of justification by faith from the Apocalypse made it less difficult for the writer to adopt such language without fear of being misunderstood. He emphasizes as usual that moral purity and activity are the conditions of future bliss, but no one who read his pages could suspect him of reducing the religious life to moralism. The figure of speech is as old as Job 29:14, Isa 61:10, Pss.-Sol. 11:8, and Sir 27:8, but the words of Bar 5:2 f. (O Jerusalem cast round thee the tunic of the righteousness that is from God) are a specially apt parallel. The last-named passage, which predicts that in the Messianic Age Jerusalems name is to be the peace of righteousness, illustrates the original background of allusions like Heb 12:11; vindicated Israel, triumphantly justified by God over her persecutors, will enjoy peace. It was a short step to the moralization of this, and to its application to the religious experience of in the present.

In 1 Peter, the just judgment of God brings out the thought of the moral order as a warning against careless conduct on the part of Christians (1Pe 1:17) and as a consolation for the innocent who may have to suffer unjustly, like Jesus (1Pe 2:23); but the term righteousness [Note: In Act 17:31, the only place where it occurs in St. Pauls speeches, it is in a quotation from the Psalter (Psa 9:8)-he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world justly ( ) by a man whom he has defined for this (i.e. Jesus).] is employed only in its general, non-technical sense (1Pe 2:24; 1Pe 3:14), as repeatedly in the Apostolic Fathers (e.g. Barn. iv. 12, etc.). The same is the case [Note: Noah is the herald of righteousness (2Pe 2:5), as in the Jewish tradition of Jubilees (vii. 20 f.) and Sibylline Oracles (cf. p. 483) e.g. he preaches to his wicked contemporaries.] in 2Pe 2:5; 2Pe 3:13 (apocalyptic sense), but in 2Pe 1:1 it denotes the equity of God in granting the same privilege and quality of faith to Gentiles as to Jewish believers, or to ordinary Christians as to apostles. Justin Martyr (Dial. 93 f.) quotes Gen 15:6 for the same purpose as St. Paul does in Rom 4:9 f.-to prove that Abrahams faith was prior to his circumcision-and concludes that God cannot be shown to have acted capriciously or unfairly in history, since the condition for righteousness has been the same (as Clem. Rom. xxxii. 3 f.) from the first. But, when he comes to define righteousness, he echoes the definition of Jesus rather than that of St. Paul, quotes Mat 22:37, and adds: since all righteousness is divided into the two branches of love to God and love to ones neighbour, whoever loves God with all his heart, and with all his strength, and his neighbour as himself, is truly a righteous man. This is precisely the definition of The commandment of given by Polycarp (ad Phil. iii. 2).

The language of the Odes of Solomon recalls partly the OT and partly the NT, though it never quotes from the latter. The Divine righteousness succours the elect (viii. 22) and their righteous cause triumphs over spiritual evil (viii. 6f.); in this OT sense, righteousness can be spoken of as mans as well as Gods. It is even personified, like Victory, and represented as conferring the everlasting crown of truth upon the pious (ix. 7-10). The allusion in xxix. 5 is obscure; if verse 6 (For I believed in the Lords messiah ) is a (Christian) interpolation, then the words He brought me up out of the depths of Sheol: and from the mouth of death He drew me; and thou didst lay my enemies low, and He justified me by His grace might denote, as in viii. 6, the vindication of the Christian or of Messiah (cf. above, p. 373), but probably the Ode is a unity and refers to the experience of spiritual victory (see Rendel Harriss ed., Cambridge, 1911, p. 61, and E. A. Abbotts Light on the Gospel from an Ancient Pcet, do., 1912, p. 247 f.), like the still more obscure reference to justification in xxxi. 5. The singer, in xvii. 2, is justified in my Lord, i.e. freed from the bondage of vanity and error; the expression is Pauline but not the content, and in xxv. 10 the more congenial OT significance recurs (I became holy by thy righteousness; and all my adversaries were afraid of me and I was justified by His gentleness), righteousness being the saving strength of God exerted on behalf of His own. One of the repeated sources of ambiguity in the interpretation of the Odes is the uncertainty as to who is the speaker-the soul of man, Truth, or the Christ. In xli.13 Christ is distinctly described however, as exalted by His own righteousness, and the Divine title of The Righteous One occurs in connexion with the Crucifixion in xlii. 3 (though not in Frankenbergs reconstruction of the text), but it is not so clear whose Heart pours out as it were a gushing stream of righteousness (xxxvii. 7). In the only ethical allusion (xx. 3), the OT colouring leaves it uncertain whether the hymn-writer, in saying that the sacrifice of the Lord is righteousness, and purity of heart and lips, meant by righteousness works of mercy and charity (see above, p. 371), or, in the more general sense, goodness inspired by the Golden Rule.

Ignatius quotes Mat 3:15 in Smyrn. i. 1, but the term and the idea have no place in his theology. [Note: The phrase in ad Phil. viii. 2 (that I may be justified by your prayers) seems to refer it martyrdom.] Polycarp uses the word more frequently; he quotes Mat 5:10, ad phil. vii. 2 and 2Co 6:7 in 2Co 4:1, he employs to bring out the general idea of Christian goodness (2Co 3:1; 2Co 3:3, 2Co 9:1 f.), he echoes St. Paul in speaking of Christ as our righteousness (2Co 8:1 : let us hold fast by our hone and the pledge of our righteousness, that; is, of Christ Jesus who bore our sins in his own body on the tree, who did no sin, neither was guile found in his month, who endured all things for our sakes, that we might live in him), and once speaks of Gods righteousness, though not in the Pauline sense (2Co 8:2 : likewise the deacons must be blameless, before his righteousness, [Note: En. liii. 7, before his righteousness (i.e. his holy presence).] servants of God and Christ, not of men). Gods righteousness here probably means His searching presence, before which Christians must eschew sin, just as in En. ci. 1-9 it denotes the Presence which ought to inspire fear and reverence in men (Observe the heaven, ye children of heaven, and every work of the Most High, and fear ye him and work no evil in his presence. If he sends his anger upon you because of your deeds, ye cannot petition him; for ye spake proud and insolent words against his righteousness: therefore ye shall have no peace. And see ye not the sailors of the ship, how their ships are tossed to and fro by the waves, and are shaken by the winds, and are in sore trouble? Do not the sailors of the ships fear the sea? Yet sinners fear not the Most High!). On the other hand, St. Pauls very language is echced, and his ideas reproduced, in the Epistle to Diognetus, 9-one of the passages in the so-called Apostolic Fathers which send the surge of genuine religious feeling straight into the mind of a modern reader. So, having himself planned everything together with his Son, he permitted us during the time before to be swept along by disorderly impulses just as we chose, carried away by pleasures and passions-not at all because he delighted in our sins, but because he was forbearing [; cf. in Rom 3:26; below, p. 388], not because he approved of that period of iniquity, but because he was fashioning [] this present period of righteousness in order that we, whose very actions then proved us unworthy of life, may now be [made? counted?] worthy of it by Gods goodness, and may be enabled by Gods power to enter the Kingdom of God after we had made it plain that by ourselves we could not. When our iniquity was full, and when it had become perfectly plain that the recompense of punishment and death was awaiting it [this corresponds to the Pauline philosophy of history in Gal 4:4, Rom 5:6; see below, p. 389], and when the time came which in Gods purpose was to manifest his goodness and power (O the surpassing kindness and love of God!), instead of hating us, rejecting us, or bearing malice against us, he was long-suffering, he bore with us, he took our sins upon himself in pity, and gave his own Son to be a ransom for us, the holy for the wicked, the innocent for the evil, the just for the unjust, the incorruptible for the corruptible, the immortal for the mortal. What else but his righteousness could cover our sins? By whom, save only by the Son of God, could we be justified [: either made just or acquitted], wicked and impious as we were? Oh sweet exchange! O inscrutable creation []! O benefits unlooked for! That the wickedness of many should be hidden by [] a single righteous One, that the righteousness of One should make many wicked righteous [ as above]! The use of in this fine outburst of faith recalls both senses of the term. On the one hand, it denotes generally the Christian religion, and this is repeated at the close of the nest chapter, where the writer tells Diognetus that, when he sees what the real fire of hell is like, he will count Christian martyrs blessed who endure the temporary fire for the sake of righteousness. On the other hand, we find the term used specifically in a Christological sense. The latter usage reaches back to St. Paul, and to it we may now turn, i.e. to , as something more than a particular virtue or grace of the Christian life, or even than a generic term for Christian goodness.

2. Technical Pauline use of the term

The small group of words connected with righteousness in the specific sense of the term is as follows: or righteousness is the state or those who are (just) [Note: But St. Paul prefers to call them rather than . He does not even call Abraham .] because they have been justified (the verb is , -) by God, and their acquittal or Justification is . The declaration of this verdict is sometimes taken to be the meaning of , but in Rom 5:16 it is probably equivalent to , and in Rom 5:18 it means the act of redress which makes acquittal possible. The latter sense develops the Greek usage, which, according to Aristotle (Nic. Eth. v. vii. 7), employed as the opposite of and reserved for the rectification of an unjust action ( ).

The phrase righteousness of God occurs in 2Co 5:21, Rom 1:17; Rom 3:5; Rom 3:21-22 (twice) Rom 3:25 f. (twice) Rom 10:3 and Php 3:9 ( ) The phrase righteousness of faith occurs in Rom 4:11; Rom 4:13; Rom 9:30 ( ) Rom 10:6 ( ) and Php 3:9 ( ). The former is an OT expression, although some of the Septuagint translators seem to have avoided it as far as possible. St. Paul stamps it afresh, and he coins the cognate expression, righteousness of faith. In neither case is there any subtle difference of meaning suggested by the addition of ; it merely emphasizes the tact implied in the simple genitive, that the originates, with God. The life He possesses, He imparts to men, and therefore may be said to be His in either sense. Whether we start from the idea of in itself or from that of faith, it is plain that St. Paul could have neither thought nor spoken of any such standing or relationship except as one of experience, a position of life resting on the attitude of God to sinful men in Jesus Christ.

Instead of discussing seriatim the succession of conflicting views of righteousness in St. Pauls theology, we shall prefix some characteristic definitions and descriptions, in order to indicate the main outlines of debate, and the various attempts which have been made to extricate a meaning from the labyrinth of this problem.

(i.) This is the adequate relation founded in Gods Own nature, in which, as the idea of religion requires, man has to stand towards God (F. C. Baur, Paulus, Eng. translation , vol. ii. p. 136). It is the way opened up by God for this purpose (ib. footnote).

(ii.) The true relation between God and man, which, being ordained by God, presents itself to the consciousness of man as a new religious principle, as a new regulator of his religious behaviour, and to which man has to submit himself, by allowing his attitude towards God to be determined by this divinely ordained principle (O. Pfleiderer, Paulinism, Eng. translation , London, 1877, vol. i. p. 175).

(iii.) The highest religious-ethical ideal, the realization of which every religion must ultimately strive after, because it is only in consequence of its realization that man knows himself to be standing in that right relation to God which guarantees his salvation (B. Weiss, Lehrbuch der biblischen Theologie des NT, Eng. translation , vol. i. p. 317 n. [Note: . note.] ).

(iv.) Righteousness is nothing else than moral goodness regarded in its intrinsic worth or acceptableness viewed relatively to Gods Judgment or approval of it (J. H. Newman, Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification3, London, 1874, p. 107).

(v.) This righteousness which comes from God by faith is not a more or less relative perfection which God realizes in man, hut consists in this, that God, as the consequence of faith, replaces man in normal touch (rapport normal) with himself (Gogul, LAptre Paul et Jesus-Christ, p. 29).

(vi.) This righteousness obtained by man through Christ is designated the righteousness of God, not merely to denote that it is valid in His sight, or that He recognizes it as equivalent to the fulfilment of the law but to show that this righteousness is produced and constituted by God as a state which He Himself can alone impart (C. von Weizscker, Apostolic Age, i.2 [London, 1897] 167).

(vii.) This righteousness exists already in God as an attribute and active force: It is transferred to man, and realized in him by the action of Divine grace. It is more than a simple acquittal of the guilty; it is an actual power ( ), which enters into the world and is organically developed there,-like the power of sin, but in opposition to it (A. Sabatier, The Apostle Paul, Eng. translation , pp. 298, 299).

(viii.) Pauls starting-point, it cannot be too often repeated, is the idea of righteousness; the righteousness of God; a sense of conformity with the divine moral order, the will of God, a sense of harmony with this order, of acceptance with God (Matthew Arnold, St. Paul and Protestantism, London, 1887, pp. 44, 41 f.).

(ix.) The righteousness of faith is the divine righteousness which a man receives when he receives Christ. It is not a mere declaration by God that the sinner is justified or forgiven for his past sins and accounted righteous without regard to his actual character; it is not a mere status into which he is introduced by such declaration, but it is at bottom the real righteousness or the righteous nature which is bestowed upon the believer by God (A. C. McGiffert, History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age, Edinburgh, 1897, p. 142 f.).

(x.) Righteousness is an objective condition of mankind transferred into this condition by an act of God an objective righteousness which by the grace of God is imputed to the man who believes in Gods grace in the cross of Christ, although he is actually still sinful (C. Holsten, Das Evangelium des Paulus, vol. ii. p. 65).

(xi.) Gods righteousness is not only judicial righteousness but also the righteous attitude of God, corresponding to his nature, which in virtue of his faithfulness to his promise is made accessible to men in the gospel, so that they too share in his righteousness (P. Feine, Theologie des NT2, p. 343 f.).

(xii.) There are two great facts which correspond to the doctrine of righteousness by faith, which is also the doctrine of the universality of the Gospel: first, the vision which the Apostle saw on the way to Damascus; secondly, the actual conversion of the Gentiles by the preaching of the Apostle. Righteousness by faith, admission of Gentiles, even the rejection and restoration of the Jews, are-himself under so many different points of view (B. Jowett, The Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, Galatians, and Romans, London, 1894, ii. 258).

(xiii.) It is unbiblical, then, to assume that between Gods grace or love and His righteousness there is an opposition, which in its bearing upon the sinful race of men would lead to a contradiction, only to be solved through the interference of Christ. The righteousness of inexorable retribution, which would be expressed in the sentence Fiat justitia, pereat mundus, is not in itself a religious conception, nor is it the meaning of the righteousness which in the sources of the Old and New Testaments is ascribed to God (A. Ritschl, Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Vershnung, Bonn, 1882-83, Eng. translation , ii. [1900] p. 473).

(xiv.) The Pauline conception of righteousness is not juristic but ethical, and he does not recognise as proceeding from Gods nature of holy love any contradiction of righteousness and grace which must be removed by a satisfaction of the former (W. Beyschlag, NT Theologie, Eng. translation , vol. ii p. 137).

(xv.) The righteousness of God its intrinsic meaning is Gods own eternal righteousness, revealed in Christ for reconciling the world to himself, rather than (as commonly interpreted) the forensic righteousness (so-called) imputed to man (J. Barmby, on Rom 1:17, in Pulpit Commentary, London, 1890).

(xvi.) I know that by the righteousness of God is sometimes meant that of which God is the author, and which he bestows upon us; but here the only thing meant is, that being supported by the expiation of Christ we are able to stand at the tribunal of God (Calvin, on 2Co 5:21).

This catena is representative so far, that it illustrates the two-fold tendency, since Baur, to re-state the older Reformed idea of an objective righteousness, and on the other hand to moralize the conception. But the more recent movements of criticism (see Literature) have been specially swayed by an emphasis on the eschatological element and an attempt to establish some organic connexion between the Pauline and the OT conceptions. Cremers monograph is of special value, in both directions, for its independent re-statement on the lines of Ritschl.

3. Technical Pauline use of the term Gods righteousness

(a) Origin and meaning.-The phrase Gods righteousness or a righteousness of God is one which St. Paul has charged with a special meaning. The Greek words are sometimes employed in another sense-e.g., as we shall see, in Rom 3:25, where they denote His justice or moral equity, and in Rom 3:4 f., where they similarly express the thought of His justice or faithfulness to His word. [Note: In relation to the special problem (resumed afterwards in 9-11) of Gods attitude towards Israel. The rejection of Christ by individual Israelites means their rejection by God, but not any refusal of God to fulfil His word and obligations to Israel as a whole. Again, no one (Jew) has the right to plead that because his wrong-doing serves to bring out the Divine consistency and faithfulness, it is unfair of God to punish him (cf. A. Robertson in The Thinker, iii. [1893] 429 f.). Here the Divine , , and are all practically synonymous. The quotation in Rom 3:4 is the nearest approach, in St. Pauls Epistles, to the idea of God being justified, which is so characteristic of the Psalms of Solomon (e.g. 9:3), where the saints humbly acknowledge that He is just even as He chastises them.] But in a central group of passages they bear a technical meaning. One set of passages within this group connects the Divine righteousness closely with the Person of Christ (1Co 1:30, 2Co 5:21, Rom 3:22; Rom 3:26); another set presents the thought in a less definite connexion (Rom 1:17; Rom 10:3). What is common to all, however, is the presupposition that this righteousness, this state of acceptance with God, this right relationship between the righteous God and sinful men, is brought about by God. It is not the goal of a laborious quest of man for God. The initiative is with Him. That is what the genitive signifies. He wills, He creates, He bestows, this bliss. It is all the doing of God (2Co 5:18). When St. Paul speaks of righteousness as Gods, in opposition to a righteousness which is mans (their own, my own, see below), he has the same religious interest as the Johannine theology in speaking of the new birth. The origin of the Christian life lies in the will of God as a will of life for man. The righteousness which consists not in what we do but in what we are, is the righteousness of faith, and what we are, we are by the grace of God. It is He who sets us in this new, vital relationship, by pardoning us for Christs sake.

P. Wernle, who laments St. Pauls doctrine of justification by faith as one of his most disastrous creations (Beginnings of Christianity, Eng. translation , London and New York, 1903-04, i. 309), admits that its misleading husk contains the great and profound thought that God is our Father, who freely gives to us whether we deserve it or not, and that we men, just as we are, are His children, living by His love. Jowetts essay on Righteousness by Faith (The Epistles of St. Paul to the Thess., Gal, and Romans 3, ii. 247-272) is not one of his strongest pieces, but it equally penetrates to this thought as one of the ethical contributions of the doctrine to the religious life. In Expositor , 8th ser., iv. [1912] 252-262, J. Oman emphasizes the same aspect. It is one of the points at which St. Pauls subordination of the or malcuth doctrine to that of the zecuth turns out to be a real parallel to the teaching of Jesus, who subordinated the zecuth idea to that of the malcuth. St. Pauls category is closer to the Rabbinic standpoint, but the conception of God as the gracious Giver breaks through until it answers to that of the Father, in the teaching of Jesus, who takes the initiative by sending the Son and setting up the Kingdom for men on earth. For some other aspects of this parallel, see W. Sandays article on St. Pauls Equivalent for the Kingdom of Heaven, in Journal of Theological Studies i. [1899-1900] 481-491.

It is this interest that made the legal phraseology about faith being reckoned as righteousness by God so attractive to St. Paul. The status of being right with God was something which men owed to Him, not to themselves; it depended on His verdict, on His gracious assurance that He was prepared to treat them as righteous. But in several ways the Apostle shows that the status was more than a legal fiction. In itself, the idea of righteousness as dependent on a divine judgment () could only have arisen on the basis of legalism, while at the same time it points beyond it (Skinner, International Critical Commentary , Genesis, Edinburgh, 1910, on Gen 15:6). [Note: Barnabas (xiii. 7) quotes this verse as .] It points beyond legalism in St. Paul from various aspects. The God who thus reckons men righteous is a Giver, not a Judge, not even a Lawgiver. The basis for His reckoning is a Divine self-sacrifice, due to Divine love for men, the death of Christ, Gods Son, who breaks the power of sin and death in the flesh for the doomed race of men. And the reckoning is interpreted as equivalent to forgiveness, a blissful experience (Rom 4:5 f.). To be treated as righteous is to be pardoned and reconciled. The status is a relationship to God which means life, as opposed to the condemnation and death which are the fate of sin, i.e. of those who refuse this reconciliation and therefore have their trespasses still counted against them (2Co 5:19 : In Christ God reconciled the world to himself, instead of counting mens trespasses against them). Just as sin means to fall short of the Divine glory (Rom 3:23), so to receive Gods righteousness is to participate in that glory-and glory, in this connexion, [Note: The conception of glory as the immortal, sinless life enjoyed by Adam and Eve in Paradise, and to be enjoyed by the faithful, underlies the Pauline usage of the term; cf. H. A. A. Kennedy, St. Pauls Conceptions of the Last Things, London, 1904, pp. 92 f., 301 f.] is associated (cf. 2Co 3:6-18; 2Co 4:1-6) with life. The terminology of righteousness and justify was not quite so well suited to bring out this positive, personal relation to God as some other phrases and conceptions [Note: g. consecration or , which also meant primarily a religious relation to God in which men stood as , but readily suggested (e.g. 1Th 4:3 f.) the moral implication of such a position (p. 387).] which St. Paul employs, but even here he reveals now and then the deeper religious interests to which the juridical conception pointed. Thus, while the old debate whether righteousness, in the phrase righteousness of God, meant an attribute of God or some quality which He imparted, whether God was subjective or objective-while this was largely a philological rather than a real issue, and while or justify certainly denotes (as its opposite, , indicates) to consider or pronounce righteous, not to make righteous. [Note: The latter view is still held by some, on exegetical grounds (cf. McGifferts History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age, p. 143f.; E. P. Gould in AJTh i. [1897] 149-158) or for more theological reasons (cf., e.g., R. C. Moberlys Atonement and Personality, London, 1901, p. 335 f., and J. Drummond in HJ i. [1902] 83 f., 272 ff.). But, while the protest against an extravagant interpretation of St. Pauls language is justified, the forensic element is too fundamental to be ignored (cf., e.g., W. A. Stevens in AJTh i. 443-450) in favour of a factitive sense for (F. W. Mozley In Exp, 7th ser., x. [1910] 481-503). Much of the strife and confusion arises from the tendency either to exaggerate or to ignore the distinction between a religious relation to God and a moral state, which Orientals did not find it difficult to understand.] nevertheless when St. Paul could write to the Christians of Corinth, Some of you were once like that (immoral, vicious, criminal), but you washed yourselves clean at baptism, you were consecrated, you were justified () in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ [Note: There is a verbal parallel, at any rate, in the Pharisaic En. xlviii. 7, where the righteous are said to have hated and despised this world of unrighteousness, and have hated all its works and ways in the name of the Lord of Spirits: for in his name they are saved.] and in the Spirit of our God (1Co 6:11), when he could speak of Christ being made our righteousness by God, or of our becoming Gods righteousness in him, it is plain that the juridical sense of a change in the position of men towards God is shading off into that of a change in the character of men, [Note: J. Weisss notes on these passages in 1 Corinthians9 (Meyers Kommentar, Gttingen, 1910, pp. 41 f., 155).] and that the righteousness in question is not simply formal and forensic but real. It is a status, but a status in Christ-which makes all the difference in the world. Justification is not followed by sanctification, in the technical sense, but accompanied by consecration; it is a transformation in the attitude of God to sinners, which not only frees them from the power and penalties of sin but makes them Gods very own people-not righteous as He is righteous, for (as Hring admits) that is an un-Pauline and (cf. 1Jn 3:7) almost an unbiblical turn of thought, but in possession of His eternal life through Jesus Christ. The objective righteousness which He has realized and revealed through the sacrificial death of His Son implies a subjective righteousness, in men, and the decisiveness with which St. Paul states the former as fundamental to the gospel must not be allowed to obliterate the fact that he recognized the latter, even in his use of juridical formulae which lent themselves specifically to the prior truth.

What does obscure this occasionally is the undue emphasis laid on the retributive or penal element in Gods righteousness as the Apostle employs that form of expression. But this is merely one element. The acquittal, for example, which is the result of Christs death for men (Rom 5:16), is opposed to doom or the condemnation of death, i.e. exclusion from the presence of God, and it therefore looks to life, [Note: How naturally St. Paul assumed this may be seen in his remark (Gal 3:21), had there been any law which had the power of producing life, righteousness would have been really due to law. But it is written over all his letters. means , and this comes out (e.g. in Col 2:13 f.) even where the idea is replaced by another.] glory, or salvation. It is not enough to say that these are further stages in the process initiated by the justifying verdict; they are implicit in it. St. Paul often speaks of the latter by itself, no doubt, concentrating attention upon the Divine act of grace which inaugurates the new standing of men, but we are drawing distinctions which lie never drew when we confine this initial stage to the forgiveness of sins, as if that were merely or mainly a negative boon, or to a verdict which does not carry with it the instant admission of the believing man to the life of God through Jesus Christ. Take his own explanation, e.g., of what is meant by having faith counted as righteousness. To us that is apt to sound formal and forensic. There is a ring of unreality about it, in modern English. But just as to have ones trespasses counted against one (2Co 5:19) means the definite exclusion of the sinner from God and his relegation to doom and death, so he who has his faith counted as righteousness (Rom 4:5 f.) is thereby admitted to the inward experience of forgiveness, i.e. to a positive and real relationship with God. It is not simply God opening the door of the prison, though it is that; it is God bringing us out into the sunlight beside Himself. That is what righteousness means, as His free gift through Jesus Christ. Similarly-to look at the same truth from another angle-the faith which justifies at the outset cannot be regarded as apart from some experience of the Spirit. Faith and revelation correspond to each other, and both are conditioned by the Spirit. The Galatian Christians, who bad the Crucified Christ placarded before the eyes of their mind when St. Paul preached the gospel, began with the Spirit (Gal 3:1 f.). Their belief in the gospel message of the death of Christ started with an experience of the Spirit. Justification by faith cannot, therefore, be regarded as a preliminary stage which has a more or less negative character. The faith which mediates it for the sinner is Gods action upon him, and initiates him into the new standing of grace; it is his reception into that ideal relation between God and His people which St. Paul describes from one point of view as righteousness. It is called righteousness because that denotes the saving, gracious relation between the two parties, and it is called Gods righteousness not only because He, and He alone, has the right to create it, upon the ground of Christs death, in view of human sin, but because it is His will of love to establish it. This being so, it means life with God, life in Jesus Christ His Son. The antithesis to is (Rom 5:21; Rom 6:15), and it is impossible to overvalue the significance of this. It would be un-Pauline to say that nothing remains to be done; the justified man has a great deal to do for God, and God has a great deal still to do for him and with him. But it would be still more un-Pauline to say that anything remained to be done, even by God, in order to fill this relationship with intimate fellowship and an experience of the Spirit. As we are justified by faith, let us enjoy the peace we have with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have got our access into this grace where we have our standing. Gods love floods our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us (Rom 5:1 ff.). These are the words of a man to whom justification was not a pale, formal preliminary, but a real experience which transformed the relations between himself and God, and in so doing transformed his own life into a shining light which was to shine more and more unto the perfect Day.

It is imperative, at the outset, to realize this vital character of the Divine righteousness in Paulinism. But it is easy to misinterpret it. Righteousness and righteous are already OT terms for the action and character of God, and the suggestion has been made [Note: By Ritschl in Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Vershnung2, Eng. tr., ii. 473 f., and after him, on independent lines, by Cremer, Sabatier, and C. Bruston (Revue de Thologie, ix. [1900] 299 f.; ZNTW vii. [1906] 77 f.) especially.] that St. Paul employs them as the psalmists and prophets did, that by righteousness in God, e.g., he means not inexorable retribution but the self-consistent and undeviating action of God on behalf of the salvation of His community, and that he posits no opposition between grace and righteousness, [Note: In Gen 19:19 (thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shewed unto me in saving my life), Exo 34:7 (keeping mercy for thousands), and other passages, the usage of by some LXX translators is significant.] the two being for him as for the OT essentially identical. As righteous, God champions the interests and vindicates the character of His own people against threats and accusations. Probably this is the sense in which the Johannine theology occasionally applies the term righteous to God, e.g. in Joh 17:25 and 1Jn 1:9, where it denotes, not any rigorousness, but, on the contrary, the gracious loyalty of God to His people. [Note: With 1Jn 1:9 compare Wordsworths apostrophe:

The best of what we do and are,

Just God, forgive!

(Memorials of a Tour in Scotland, iii. 65 f.).] But it is less easy to agree that such a meaning covers the entire range of the special usage in St. Paul. Its reality for OT religion is veiled from the reader by the misleading associations of righteousness in English. In Deutero-Isaiah, particularly, the Divine righteousness and salvation are closely associated: There is no God beside me-a God who is righteous and saving (Isa 45:21); I bring near my righteousness, it shall not be far off, and my salvation shall not tarry (Isa 46:13); My righteousness is near, my salvation is gone forth my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished (Isa 51:5-6). Righteousness here means active aid; if there is any punishing to be done, it is not Israel but her enemies that are punished. But what of St. Pauls position? These passages, it is said, seem to have made a deep impression upon St. Paul. [Note: Sanday-Headlam, ICC, Romans5, Edinburgh, 1902, p. 35.] Perhaps they did. But we have no evidence for it. He never quotes any of them, never even alludes to them-a fresh proof, according to Holtzmann, of the slighter emphasis laid by St. Paul the ex-Pharisee, as compared with Jesus, on this great prophetic section of the OT. The truth is, that the sharp factor of human sin reset for St. Paul the older idea of righteousness as a Divine characteristic. In the OT, it denotes Gods consistent adherence to his revealed line of action, which involves deliverance to faithful or at least repentant Israel, and destruction to those who thwart his all-wise purposes (T. K. Cheyne, The Prophecies of Isaiah 5, London, 1889, ii. 29, note on Isa 51:5). He vindicates His own people openly; if He did not, He would be unjust. But in the central passages of St. Paul, the two parties are God and sinners. St. Pauls problem starts from the time when we are still enemies. [Note: e. exposed to the Divine wrath. In Rom 5:10 (when we were enemies) it is Gods hostility to us, not ours to Him, that is meant by (as in Rom 11:28).] It is no longer a people who are faulty but still in touch with Him and requiring vindication before the hostile world; it is humanity, people who even as Jews have no claim on God. Those who need Gods righteousness are not wronged but wrong. [Note: It is a different matter when St. Paul appeals to Gods moral equity (2Th 1:6 f.) in punishing the persecutors of the loyal Church. This is a further stage, not the initial stage of making it possible for such a church to exist at all.] When St. Paul is at the heart of his argument on sin, it is not to Gods righteousness as loyalty and faithfulness that he appeals; his gospel is addressed to men who need to be delivered not from their enemies but from themselves, to men who are enemies of God, alienated from Him, by their disobedience; and it is a gospel, not because it reveals the Divine righteousness as a spontaneous force diffusing itself among men, or as a vindication such as is contemplated even in Psalms 73, but because it reveals that righteousness as God in Christ reconciling unfaithful men to Himself and enabling them, when they have nothing to say for themselves (Rom 3:19), to be right with Him. Ritschls interpretation is correct in protesting, against any exclusively punitive view of the Divine righteousness, which would oppose it to grace, and in bringing out the positive, life-giving element in the Pauline conception. But it fails by transferring language from the OT situation to a situation which differed materially and formally.

For several reasons, it is difficult to trace the precise lines of this difference, but the broad fact emerges from the apocalyptic literature and even from the sources of contemporary Rabbinic theology, that an alteration had taken place during the 1st cent. b.c.

There are signs that during the period of the later Judaism the old confidence in Gods righteousness as His loyalty to Israels interests and His gracious intervention on their behalf had begun to wane in certain circles, and that the rise of individualism and the deepening sense of personal sin as more or less connected with racial guilt tended to suggest condemnation and punishment when righteousness was spoken of as an attribute of God (cf. W. Boussets Die Religion des Judentums im neutest. Zeitalter2, Berlin, 1906, pp. 358 ff., 435 ff.). [Note: Also H. Cremers Die paulin. Rechtfertigungslehre, p. 95 f., though he fails to differentiate the prophetic current from the legal, which made faith, i.e. adherence to the true cultus and doctrine of the Torah, the basis for Israels assurance of favour.] The Divine righteousness became more forensic and distributive. The pious no longer appealed to it with the same naive confidence. They dreaded it, as their conscience was troubled by transgression. Touching appeals to Gods mercy and compassion fill the religious literature of the period; the pious plead their weakness, acknowledge that He is just in punishing them for their offences, and beseech His gracious favour on various grounds, but not usually on the score that He is a righteous God in the sense of primitive Israel. [Note: The devout confidence in the Divine as protecting favour and guidance is voiced, however, in the combination of mercy and righteousness (Jub. xxxi. 24-25 and Bar 5:9) most expressively.] It is possible to over-estimate the extent of this change of mood, but not to deny its reality. And unless we are prepared to take the short and easy method of excluding the apocalyptic literature from a historical appreciation of Jewish popular piety during the NT period, we must take this factor into account in estimating the contemporary significance of a term like righteousness for St. Paul and his age. As he found it and used it for his special dialectic on justification, it bore traces of the later as well as of the earlier connotation; neither exactly corresponded to the significance which he attached to it, but the change of meaning through which the term had passed helped to mould it for his purpose. He did not regard Gods righteousness as a dread attribute which had to be supplemented by His grace, but he was still further from the older view that the Divine righteousness could be counted upon to succour and deliver the faithful people. The contemporary expression of this reliance assumed a certain right on the part of the pious, which was more or less modestly urged, to receive the benefits of Gods justitia distributiva, on the score either of what they were able to do in the way of keeping the Law, or of their reverence for the Lawgiver. Even in the apocalyptic eschatology, a certain moral rectitude, as compared with the Gentiles, is assumed. Only thus did the justitia distributiva become justitia salutifera. [Note: Sokolowskis Die Begriffe von Geist und Leben bei Paulus, p. 173 f.] This is what was anathema to St. Paul; it is the position that he attacks in his criticism of righteousness by works. As against the tendency to make repentance and amendment deserve forgiving grace, [Note: See, e.g., Jub. v. 17: If they [i.e. the children of Israel] turn to Him in righteousness, He will forgive all their transgressions and pardon all their sins. It is written and ordained that He will show mercy to all who turn from all their guilt once each year [i.e. at the Day of Atonement].] he revived the phrase about justifying, which had ceased to be used commonly of men, and he turned it into the utterly un-Jewish [Note: A Jew would have quite agreed that God if meant, as it seems occasionally to have meant in Attic prose, punishes. What St. Paul means by the ungodly is, of course, the man who, in spite of his sins, has a desire for God and the godly life.] expression, justify the ungodly, pleading that God was righteous in treating men so, because the death of Christ enabled Him at once to punish sin justly and to justify sinners, i.e. freely to forgive them as a gracious God. In the Cross of Christ, God shows that He has the right as well as the will to pardon the ungodly. The Atonement is, therefore, not a compromise between righteousness and love in God, unless righteousness is taken in its narrower sense. St. Paul recognized its broader sense, and usually expressed the punitive element otherwise, e.g. by the conception of the Divine anger, just as he sometimes expresses the action of the Divine righteousness by the more positive term grace, and its effect by the warmer term reconciliation.

Two features in the current Rabbinic view of righteousness are conspicuous by their absence from St. Pauls re-statement. (1) One is the combination of Gods gracious favour with His judicial verdict on a mans record, the beautiful idea that when a mans good and bad actions left his status doubtful before the justitia distributiva of the Lord, He threw His mercy into the scales. Contemporary Judaism must not be dismissed off-hand as a merely legal, bargaining religion. The religious consciousness was far too large for any theory of personal righteousness simply on the score of works, and demanded this recognition of a God who was at liberty to favour and forgive, in doubtful cases, a God whose mercy did not require any prompting [Note: Sometimes it is the prayers of the righteous which are able to make His mercy overpower His anger (e.g. T. B. Succah, 14a, Berachoth, 7a).] to season His justice. But St. Paul did not conceive of Gods righteousness in such a way that it required His grace to temper it for sinful man. Neither could his view of justification as a synthetic verdict, on what man is, not on what he does, admit the allied notion that a mans faith might be taken generously as the guarantee, supplement, or equivalent of righteousness. The remark in the Mechilta on Exo 12:28 is characteristic: Have they fulfilled the Passover command already? No, but from the instant that they undertook to perform it, God reckons it to them as if they had fulfilled it. It is erroneous to understand St. Paul as valuing faith thus in justification, although ethical interests have led some interpreters to this conclusion. What faith means in this connexion for the Apostle is not any intention which God, who takes the will for the deed, may be pleased in His mercy to accept. The Pauline view of righteousness, no less than the cognate view of faith, rendered it impossible for such a conception to enter into his theology. (2) The other element ignored by St. Paul is akin to this. It was occasionally felt that the Divine mercy at the Judgment might be set in motion by the intercession of the righteous-an extension of the principle of solidarity, by which the righteousness of the living saints was considered to have merits availing for the erring members of the nation. But the idea that the righteous could intercede on behalf of the ungodly at the Last Judgment is entirely ignored by St. Paul, [Note: The nearest approach to it is the passing allusion (in Rom 11:28) to Israel as beloved (by God) for the sake of the fathers.] and expressly repudiated not long afterwards by the author of 4 Ezr. (7:102-105): And I answered and said: If I have found favour in thy sight, show this also to thy servant-whether at the day of Judgment the righteous shall be able to intercede for the ungodly or to entreat the Most High on their behalf, fathers for sons, sons for parents, brothers for brothers, kinsfolk for their nearest, friends for their dearest. And He answered and said: None shall pray for another on that day, neither shall one lay a burden on another; for then everyone shall bear his own righteousness or unrighteousness (cf. G. H. Boxs note in his edition of The Ezra-Apocalypse, London, 1912, pp. 153-156). In the contemporary Apocalypse of Baruch, which Charles describes as a good representative of the Judaism against which the Pauline dialectic was directed (Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the OT, Oxford, 1913, vol. ii. p. 470), a similar view is urged (lxxxv. 12): When the Most High will bring to pass all these things, there shall be there no place of supplication for offences, no intercession of the fathers, no prayer of the prophets, no help of the righteous (see, further, Charless note on Slavonic Enoch, liii. 1 [ib. p. 462]). The 2nd cent. Testament of Abraham (cf. M. R James, in Texts and Studies ii. 2 [1892]) contains a , or weighing of souls by angels, which is singular in Jewish apocalyptic; but even more singular is the fact that one poor soul whose fate literally hangs in the balance, since his sins and good deeds () happen to be exactly equal, is saved by the intercession of Abraham and Michael. It has to obtain one more in order to be saved. Abraham proposes to Michael to try what prayer to God will do, and when they rose from prayer, they did not see the soul standing there. Then said Abraham to the angel, Where is the soul thou west holding in the midst? and the angel said, It has been saved by thy righteous prayer., The absence of any allusion to this, in St. Paul, is the more striking as he was familiar with the ideas of imputed righteousness and imputed sin in current Judaism.

(b) The eschatological background.-The primary conception of righteousness in the earlier prophetic literature naturally pointed to the end, when God would make the issues clear by establishing the triumph of His cause and people over the ungodly. The final world-judgment would be the vindicating of Israel by her righteous, loyal Lord, who then would do justice to His own in the sight of pagans. This prevails through the later Judaism as well. The idea of a present justification, especially for individuals, is not absent, as we can see from 1Ki 8:32 (Hear thou in heaven and judge thy servants, condemning the wicked and justifying the righteous, to give him according to his righteousness), or from the background of an allusion like that in Luk 18:14 (cf. Jub. xxx. 17 f.). But the specific interest of the righteousness-craving was focused on the Last Day, the impending crisis when the Lord would intervene in favour of His folk and exhibit openly their right position, which for the time being had been obscured. This predominates not only in the OT, where righteousness is a Messianic boon (e.g. Isa 11:4, Jer 23:6; Jer 33:16, Bar 5:2) promised by God, but in the apocalyptic piety. [Note: It reappears in the liturgy of the Shemoneh Esreh (10-11): Sound the great born for our freedom; lift up the ensign to gather our exiles, and gather us from the four corners of the earth reign thou over us, O Lord, thou alone, in loving-kindness and tender mercy, and justify us in judgment (see, on this point, J. Kberles Snde und Gnade im relig. Leben des Volkes Israel, Munich, 1905, p. 639 f.).] Even where the Law is prominent, the reward of loyalty to the Commandments is steadily regarded as life, to be conferred at the close of this world-age, when the lawless pagan powers will be annihilated or reduced to abject submission. To get a footing in the Messianic order, to ensure life or righteousness in the world to come, the essential condition was to keep the Commandments, for the reign which God was to set up would be over the dutiful and law-abiding.

When we pass into the Pauline view of righteousness, this eschatological background is still behind both the terminology and the cardinal ideas, however radically the latter are modified by the faith that Jesus had inaugurated the first stage of the Messianic order on earth. The imminent return of the Christ will complete this saving work. And, meantime, what are the factors in the situation which make this return so decisive? Primarily, we may say, the traditional conception holds true. It is still sin which furnishes the need for righteousness and the occasion for justification, and sin, as or or or or , is conditioned by the Law; it disqualifies for the status of blessing and reward, to be assigned at the end for obedience. The terminology retains its OT associations. Righteousness implies a standard of character and conduct which is appointed by God. The ideas of right and wrong among the Hebrews are forensic ideas; that is, the Hebrew always thinks of the right and the wrong as if they were to be settled before a judge. Righteousness is to the Hebrew not so much a moral quality as a legal status. In primitive society the functions of judge and lawgiver are not separated, and reverence for law has its basis in personal respect for the judge. So the just consistent will of Jehovah is the law of Israel, and it is a law which as King of Israel He Himself is continually administering (W. R. Smith, The Prophets of Israel, London, 1895, p. 71 f.). The repeated violations of the Law, which the weakness of the flesh produces, result, according to St. Paul, in a state of guilt which calls out righteousness as the punitive duty of the Lawgiver. He speaks of this less often than of sin, but the outcome is the punishment of death as the supreme expression of the Divine wrath for wilful transgressions of the Divine Law. The Law works out in wrath (Rom 4:15); the thunderclouds of doom are ready to break over those who take that path. In one place, he attributes moral perversity (Rom 1:24 f.) to the working of the Divine wrath. But this is merely one expression of it, and (Rom 2:3; Rom 2:5 f.) the stress falls on the eschatological visitation of Gods wrath. The of God, like its opposite, , is for St. Paul [Note: Like John the Baptist (Mat 3:7 = Luk 3:7), but unlike Jesus; in the Synoptic record of His teaching, it is introduced by St. Luke only once (Luk 21:23), while Mat 24:21 and Mar 13:19 simply speak of .] originally and especially eschatological (cf. 1Th 1:10, Rom 5:9); it is an accompaniment of the Day of Judgment, the punishment of those who wilfully disobey God. [Note: This is reiterated in Rom 2:5 f., and St. Paul puts the reverse side in Rom 2:13; Rom 2:16. To be just before God, or acquitted, or delivered from His wrath, is the supreme boon of the Messianic order. Christ has already inaugurated this order by His death and resurrection, and He is sure to complete it at His return, when the Day of Judgment will decide the fate of men. The conditions of that decision are stated by St. Paul, but he denies that believing men need have any fear of the result; their present relation to God through Christ, in the new order, enables them to anticipate the future with confidence (Rom 5:1 f., Rom 8:31 f.). We can feel the alteration of emphasis from the contemporary Jewish faith, which drew its passion for law-righteousness largely from its interest in the future final hope of glory and recompense.] To St. Paul the history of the world is a drama of disobedience, and the fifth act of the tragedy is being played out; the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ prove that the final scenes are imminent. Accordingly, the primitive Christian eschatology viewed justification as the anticipation of salvation at the end, the guarantee that he who is justified will be right with God at the Final Judgment. The decision of God will be in his favour. He will be inside, not outside, the Messianic realm of bliss and life. By faith we wait in the Spirit for the righteousness we hope for (Gal 5:5), [Note: Contrast the contemporary Apoc. Bar. xiv. 12 (the righteous justly hope for the end because they have with thee a store of works treasured).] i.e. the final acceptance and freedom (1Co 1:8, Rom 8:33) from condemnation. But Gods wrath is not exclusively eschatological for St. Paul, neither is His righteousness. As in Judaism [Note: Particularly, though by no means exclusively, in apocalyptic circles, where the heavenly powers and realities were believed to be already moving in human life, instead of remaining hidden in heaven until the epoch of consummation. The fast of Christs death and resurrection having recently taken place increased the Christian tendency to realize that the new age had already begun in the existence of the Church whose experiences of justification and fellowship rested on Christs sufferings and risen glory.] already, so, and much more so, in St. Paul, justification ceases to be a mere hope. It is not simply the assurance of being acquitted at the end, but becomes a present, definite attitude of the soul towards God. Here and now there is a valid status before God. St. Pauls word is, We are justified, not We shall be justified. Gods righteousness is a revelation in the present order, a reality of experience here and now. In Rom 1:17, e.g., it is not wholly eschatological any more than wrath is; the term salvation tends to retain its predominantly eschatological meaning, but righteousness increasingly bears upon the immediate position of the soul towards God, largely because it was so definitely associated with forgiveness. The eschatological hope usually came to be expressed by St. Paul in other terms; righteousness was so bound up with the sacrifice of Christ and the present fellowship into which faith ushered the Christian, that it gradually became concentrated upon the experience and standing of the believing man. It is needless to multiply proofs of this obvious Pauline position. A sentence like that in Rom 5:9 clinches the matter: Much more, then, now that we are justified by his blood, shall we be saved by him from wrath. The present experience of Gods righteousness (Rom 1:17) becomes the ground of assurance that we are freed from condemnation and that we shall not be exposed to the final doom of His wrath (Rom 1:18, 1Th 5:9) which is imminent and eschatological. The eschatological background to St. Pauls theory of righteousness [Note: Sketched, e.g., by Klbing, R. Mller, Titius, and Shailer Mathews (see Literature).] and justification is real (cf., e.g., Rom 2:13; Rom 2:16), but it may be exaggerated, as it is by those who fail to see that justification, like , the alternative conception, deepens into a present moral and spiritual experience, involving a career as well as a hope, or rather a hope which implies a career of goodness. Because the Christian is sure of final acquittal, he is to live up to it. Or, to put it in an antithesis: he is not to be saved because he is good, he is to be good because he is justified. It is a short interval till the final crisis arrives, but the Christian can await the Judgment with confidence, on the strength of his justification by faith and (Rom 13:11 f.) readiness for salvation.

(i.) This is exaggerated by Wernles thesis [Note: In Der Christ and die Snde bei Paulus, Freiburg i. B., 1897, pp. 22 f., 92 f., 100 f. He is right in emphasizing the fact that justification is the first boon of the Messianic age, and signifies reception into the community of the true worship and the true hope (p. 93).] that St. Paul never thought about the problem of sin in the Christian, or at least, very seldom, since the hope of the immediate End was so vivid that it left no place for any ethical transformation of the believer; the Christian who is justified is thereby guaranteed all the bliss that belongs to the Messianic community of the , but St. Paul does not leave either time or need for dealing with defects of character in the brief interval before the End. Sin belongs to this present world, whereas the Christian life is the beginning of the new age, and therefore is sinless. Such an unqualified estimate of the eschatology implies that faith does not possess any distinctive ethical force or regenerating energy. It is true that St. Paul did say something about faith working by love, and Wernle (op. cit. p. 85) is troubled by this remark (Gal 5:6). However, he reflects that it must be an obiter dictum! After all, we must remember that it does not occur in Romans! The content of faith, in Paulinism, is not to be evaporated into adherence to the Messianic community, however; Paulinism was not a religion of sheer eschatological enthusiasm, which refused to see facts that contradicted its theory; and it is a mistake to regard the doctrine of righteousness as little more than a piece of mission-propaganda, which had no significance for the life of Christians in the Church.

(ii.) Nor is it possible to regard righteousness in St. Pauls theology as the state which qualifies for the final salvation, the condition God appoints and will accept (E. J. W. Williams, St. Pauls Doctrine of Justification, London, 1912); this theory is open to the same objection, that it ignores the ethical substratum of the soteriology and eschatology. God might no doubt be considered free, as we shall see in a moment, to lay down a fresh qualification for acceptance, viz. faith. He might replace the by the , although that would not explain St. Pauls full attitude to the Law. Also, the primary idea of justification was the status of a man before God, not his ethical character. Granted. But in Paulinism we cannot distinguish rigidly between a mans standing and his heart; and faith, the faith which justifies, is more than a special method of enabling men to get out of their inherited status of original guilt and become qualified for the final salvation. Such a theory fails to fit St. Pauls deep sayings about the present position of the believing man. We cannot, e.g., translate the opening words of Romans 5 as if they meant, Being therefore made eligible from faith, we are to have peace before God. It is not untrue to say that, when St. Paul regards God as pronouncing a man righteous on the score of faith, he assumes that He is not pronouncing the verdict of a judge but laying down a legal principle, as He is entitled to do; yet this is not all the truth. The faith in question cannot be left as a mere attitude of mind, unrelated to the moral self; and the experience of the justified man is more than an assurance of being qualified for some future position of bliss. St. Pauls conception of Christs victory over sin, death, and the Law, in the flesh, gave a fresh content to the idea of righteousness alike in God and in human nature, and at the same time it reset the idea of faith.

We must now attempt to define this content more closely.

(c) Apologetic and controversial setting.-Righteousness was a term common to Jew and Christian. What differentiated the two, according to St. Paul, was the method of attaining this religious position of acceptance with God which ensured acquittal and bliss at the end. St. Pauls motto was, righteousness by faith, and he defined his meaning controversially by way of contrast; by faith meant not by the Law, not by works.

The controversy was not simply with Jews, but with Jewish Christians as well. Many in the primitive Church had not thought out their relation to the Jewish Law; they were not alive to the full consequences involved by their faith in Jesus Christ. They were content to rest in a Messianic conception of the Lord, as if His forgiveness availed for such sins as their obedience to the Law failed to cover. His pardon was a welcome and necessary supplement; still, it was a supplement. The Law and Christ were two saving principles. In a word, their position might be summed up thus: justification by the Law plus Jesus Christ. This seemed to offer an indispensable guarantee for morality and to preserve continuity. It was only under the logic of facts, like the conversion of Gentiles, and the stress of St. Pauls arguments, that they admitted that obedience to the Law was not essential to salvation. The admission was hard to make, but it had to be made for the sake of the Gentiles as well as for themselves. We have this put strongly in Galatians, the fighting line of Paulinism against the Jewish Christian propaganda of the early Church. Thus, in Gal 2:15 f., the Apostle starts for the sake of argument from the same premisses as St. Peter and the Jewish Christians (since we know a man is justified by faith in Jesus Christ, and not by doing what the Law commands, we ourselves have believed in Jesus Christ), but he draws a conclusion from these premisses which they did not draw, when he adds. so as to get justified by faith in Christ and not by doing what the Law commands, for by doing what the Law commands no person shall be justified. This is St. Pauls inference. It was he, not they, who made an antithesis between Christ and the Law. Instead of holding to righteousness by the Law plus [Note: In Act 13:39 St. Luke appears to attribute this idea to St. Paul. Remission of sins is proclaimed to you through him, and by him everyone who believes is absolved from all that the Law of Moses never could absolve you from (). But the language does not make it quite clear that St. Luke thought justification by faith came in to remedy the defective pardon of the Law. At any rate it is not so clear as the narrower identification of justification with . St. Paul, on occasion, could speak of a man being absolved from sin (Rom 6:7, ), but he is speaking of a dead man in a contemporary mode of thinking, and using this rather as an illustration.] Christ, the Apostle laid down the thesis: either Christ or the Law. Justification from, not by, the Law. As he put it to them bluntly, You are for justification by the Law? Then you are done with Christ, you have deserted grace (Gal 5:4).

The further development of this thought belongs to the discussion of the Law. All that we require to note at this point, for our immediate purpose, is that St. Paul treats the Law as a whole, instead of distinguishing, as we might expect him to do for the sake of lucidity and logic, between the ethical and the ceremonial sections. In Romans it is possible to feel that the ethical is uppermost in his mind, in Galatians the ceremonial. Yet even in the disparaging references of the latter Epistle, he has room for the great saying, that the entire Law is summed up in the single command to love your neighbour as yourself (Gal 5:14). The fact is, he invariably regards the Law as the supposed way to life, from the Jewish standpoint, and argues that life comes by another way, by faith in Christ. Justification means life, and justification is based on the death and resurrection of Christ, which superseded the Law as a revelation of Gods mind and will for sinful men. Besides, he actually adds, in pre-Christian Judaism the Law did not lead to life; it stirred up evil in a man, and reduced the earnest to despair. Above all, it never elicited faith. Doing, not trust, was its watchword.

This criticism of the works of the Law has been itself subjected to criticism. Was the antithesis fair to Jewish piety? it has been asked. did not St. Paul, in the stress of controversy, exaggerate the position of his opponents? When he criticized them for the place they assigned to works of the Law, what place did he leave for works, or, as we should say, for ethics, in his own system? Does not his own appeal, in non-controversial moments and for practical needs, to the Divine judgment on works indicate that he was not really so far from the Jewish Christian position as his controversial passages would seem to claim? If it is true that the Pharisees almost deified the Law, is it not the case that Paul as nearly caricatured it?

So far as these criticisms are relevant to the special topic of righteousness in the Pauline system, they must be considered from the historical point of view, that what St. Paul encountered was not the OT type of devotion to the Law and righteousness such as is presented in the 119th Psalm, but a Pharisaic type of piety in which he had himself been trained. We can see now that he was really reviving the prophetic spirit of protest against an undue emphasis on the external, which had the unhealthy effect of fostering self-righteousness, and reviving it on a higher level. He insists, with uncompromising rigour, e.g., on the paramount significance of faith, not as one means of pleasing God but as the means, the source and centre of true righteousness. In this, he opposes Jewish legalism, as Jesus did. With Paul as with Jesus, faith is the decisive thing. St. Paul has found the same God as Jesus: he has learnt that God is far greater and His demands far more searching and lofty than the Jew believed. [Note: Weinel, Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments2, p. 281.] The controversy between Jesus and the legalism of the Pharisees is practically reproduced in the criticisms passed by St. Paul, the quondam Pharisee, upon the doctrine of righteousness by works. The religious interest is the same. Faith is conditioned by the character of the God who is revealed to the soul; and our God, says St. Paul after Jesus, though he says it in his own way, is One who gives Himself freely to man in his utter need. The primary thought of righteousness is for him not task but gift. St. Pauls technical phraseology must not be allowed to obscure the relation of his teaching at this point to the teaching of Jesus upon the Father who freely gives to His children, and gives them life with Himself. The Apostles phrase, righteousness by faith, aims at the same idea of life imparted freely by God, for justification is not a formal verdict or declaration-that would not alter a mans nature or create a new personality. Justification is to treat as right or just, no doubt. But this is for St. Paul the action not of a judge but of a Father, and everything depends on the character and purpose of Him who determines to treat thus the erring penitent. How is it right? When is it wise? To Jesus, the character of the Father is a sufficient answer by itself. So it is to St. Paul; only, he looks through the Cross to Gods character, and also interprets the Cross through Gods character, since the Cross is the supreme revealing action of God. The Cross proves that God is a God of love, a God who will have mercy even on the ungodly; it also proves that He does not condone sin. The sinner can trust the love of it, and yet be sure this mercy is not dealing lightly with his sin. Hence faith arises, the faith that justifies. The words differ, but the spirit is akin to the interest which underlay the teaching of Jesus about the conditions which evoked trust in God.

We may wonder (i.) why he did not, like the author of Hebrews, employ the sacrificial sections of the Law to illustrate the death of Christ as the means of establishing this righteousness with God; (ii.) why he did not conceive the Law as a preparatory stage for Christianity or the new law of righteousness, as a later age did; (iii.) why he never reckoned with the Jewish [Note: g. in the contemporary Apocalypse of Baruch, where the works of the righteous avail for other generations (xiv. 7, lxxxiv. 10: Pray diligently with your whole heart that the Mighty One may be reconciled to you, and that He may not reckon the multitude of your sins, but remember the rectitude of your fathers). This quantitative doctrine of the zecuth of the fathers, i.e. their righteousness as availing for their descendants, implied that by the grace of God their meritorious goodness was allowed to count in favour of those who were defective in piety, instead of the latter being judged strictly on their own merits (cf. E. G. Hirsch in JE x. 423, and Schechter, Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, ch. xii.).] doctrine of the merits of the Fathers availing to supplement the demerits of living Israel; and (iv.) why he was not driven, as Marcion after him, to deny outright the validity of the Law as a Divine institution. Probably he was too much of a Pharisee, with too strong a sense of the purpose of God in history and in Israel, to break so radically with the past. His attitude towards the Law as a means of righteousness is thoroughly characteristic of his Pharisaic antecedents and his individual experience. To him, the Law is everything or nothing. He sees it as a rival to Christ and strikes at it in unqualified antitheses. From what he saw of Judaism and of Jewish Christianity, he considered it was essential to prove that the Law not only could not justify, but was never intended to justify, by faith. According to his analysis of the tendencies of the contemporary legalism-and there is no historical reason to doubt that his analysis was substantially accurate-the practical outcome of devotion to the Law, as glorified by Pharisaic piety, really resulted in an endeavour to attain righteousness by ones own moral record. This had broken down in his own case, and he argued from that to a general proposition. It was important to do this, for when he looked at the Jews who retained their unbelief in face of the gospel, he was convinced [that] it was not imperfection, but the effort to reach righteousness that kept them away from the gospel. [Note: Weizscker, Apostolic Age2, i. 156.] His criticism of the Law was not a clever, one-sided jeu desprit of dialectic; it was evangelistic as well as apologetic, an attempt to save others from the impasse into which he had himself once strayed in sheer sincerity of purpose. The repudiation of the Law as a method of attaining righteousness sprang from the fact that in his own experience he had felt what he regarded as the fundamental error of Pharisaism. Hence it is possible for J. Weiss to say (Paul and Jesus, Eng. translation , London, 1909, pp. 82-84) that St. Paul saw more deeply into the nature of Pharisaism and rejected it more absolutely than even Jesus Himself. Jesus constantly referred to the inconsistency between outward behaviour and inward motive; the formalism and unreality of this pietism aroused His anger. Paul, on the basis of his personal experience and by means of his entirely religious nature, realised that Judaism was distorted as a system and that its attitude towards religion was from the outset perverted; he regarded as chimerical the theory that by means of works men could force God to deal out reward and salvation in fulfilment of a contractual obligation; moreover, this attitude towards God, which seemed to regard Him as a contracting party with rights and claims not superior to those of man, was recognised by Paul as impious and as a blasphemous misrepresentation of the position of man, in view of his entire dependence upon God. The irreligious aberrations of Pharisaism consisted in this boasting before God, as Paul calls it, or as we may paraphrase it, in self-glorification upon the ground of past achievement, in making demands of God; this mad going up to heaven to bring salvation down from thence, and this unseemly reckoning with God which is entirely characteristic of all Jewish thought, [Note: These expressions are too strong; the evidence of Rabbinic religion must be allowed to modify them, though not to disprove their essential truth.] are the by-products of a pietism which, like heathenism, professed to exert compulsion upon God; heathen magic, sacrifice and prayer, was here replaced by the practice of righteousness to which God was unable to refuse reward. Paul himself had shared this passionate zeal for the law, this painful , ; it was this experience which enabled Paul not merely to conquer certain outposts of Judaism, but to show that the system must be rejected as absolutely incompatible with the gospel.

The negative propositions about righteousness not being by the works of the Law are therefore the reverse side of St. Pauls positive conviction that justification did originate by faith. They represent him coming to terms with Judaism, stating his new faith as against its old rival. His repudiation of legalism finds its strength in his personal conviction of Gods grace in Christ. He does not set up, it has to be noted, any antithesis between faith and works, i.e. moral actions. Only, the latter are regarded as the outcome of faith, and denied any place in winning a state of acceptance with God. The opposite of his doctrine of righteousness by faith is the popular Rabbinic conception of zecuth or satisfaction, [Note: W. O. E. Cesterley and G. H. Box, The Religion and Worship of the Synagogue2, London, 1911, p. 274 ff.] according to which anyone who kept the commands of the Law was in a state of zecuth or grace, and being thus righteous might claim the Divine reward of justification. Such a man is right with God, because he has made himself right, satisfying Gods demands, especially by the study of the Torah, by almsgiving, charity, and the like. He can even swell his credit, and do so of his own initiative. It is this sort of self-made morality, with its tendency to self-righteousness, that St. Paul antagonizes in his polemic against the works of the Law as a basis for righteousness.

Without entering into details on St. Pauls conception of faith, or of justification as compared with contemporary Jewish views (e.g. in the Apocalypse of Baruch), we may notice two items of importance. (i.) One is the triple repudiation of works in the earliest allusion to justification (Gal 2:16). There is a curious misinterpretation of this verse, which takes with , as if St. Paul wrote, a man is not justified by the works of the law unless he believes in Jesus Christ. Newman, e.g., adopted this view for dogmatic reasons in his Lectures on Justification (3rd ed., p. 279). He pleads ingeniously that it does not follow that works done in faith do not justify, because works done without faith do not justify. But it does follow, according to St. Paul. Newmans position is the very position of the Jewish Christians, which St. Paul regarded as ambiguous and compromising to the gospel, viz. that if a man does believe, his moral obedience and actions cooperate in his justification. We know, says the Apostle, that a man is justified simply by faith in Jesus Christ and not by doing what the law commands. He explicitly seeks to lift and free Christianity from the Jewish Christian combination of faith and works which re-appears in New-mans theory.

(ii.) In the second place, we notice that as soon as he speaks of righteousness, he brings in faith (Rom 1:17); from first to last-this seems to be the meaning [Note: Not ex fide legis in fidem evangelii, nor from weak faith to strong faith, nor from the faith of the preacher to the faith of the hearer, nor from belief in the gospel-message to personal trust in Christ.] of -the saving revelation of God is conditioned by faith. Faith is for man its source and sphere. It is not a faith which is itself a work, on which a man might plume himself. It is not but (Rom 10:14), elicited by the revelation of Gods grace in the gospel of Jesus Christ (cf. Gal 3:1 f., Gal 3:5, Rom 10:17, 1Co 2:4 f.). The faith which justifies is called out by this overpowering disclosure of God in the Person and sacrifice of Christ. The Cross, with the love of God in it, exhibits Gods righteousness and elicits faith in man, the faith of which St. Paul says, a man who instead of working believes in him who justifies the ungodly, has his faith counted as righteousness (Rom 4:5). Obviously it is not a meritorious action, any more than it is a legal condition for a legal acquittal. At the same time, it is not an empty state, this faith stirred in the soul. The contrast of not by works and by faith, in the dialectic of righteousness, does not imply that a man believes in Christ by putting out of life henceforth all moral energy. Works of the law mean for St. Paul that a man is constantly thinking of himself, urging himself on, putting moral pressure on himself, striving to please God on his own resources, and inevitably taking some credit to himself; by faith means that a man turns from his moral or immoral self to God, meeting Him who comes triumphing over weakness and sin in Jesus Christ, daring to trust himself to Him who has successfully invaded sin and death in their headquarters in the flesh, ready to live by this faith, because it identifies him with the power and inspiration of the Lord. This is, according to St. Paul, the way to be right with God; and it means a right life, for the end of such a Divine righteousness is to create spiritual personalities, and the faith which appropriates it is not so much an act as a reception of Christ or an abandonment of oneself to Him. Hence, e.g., the explanation that even Abrahams faith implied a reverence for the power of God and a willingness to act upon His word (Rom 4:17 f.). Hence also the association of faith with obedience (Rom 1:5; Rom 6:17 f., Rom 10:21), i.e. submission to the gracious will of God which meets us in the gospel, a willingness, at any cost of pride and prejudice, to take His road to life; you must give in to Gods terms, he declares (Rom 10:3). How hard that was, especially for a man of moral character, he himself knew well-how hard, and yet how glad and fruitful, once the surrender was made.

There are two considerations which have to be weighed in estimating the justice of St. Pauls verdict on contemporary Judaism. One is, that he was diagnosing Pharisaism on the spot-and not across nineteen centuries, from a restricted survey of the earlier OT and the later Rabbinism. The other is, that he was diagnosing the symptoms of a disease from which he had himself suffered. Scattered statements can be disinterred from Rabbinic literature to prove that faith was not ignored by all the leaders of contemporary Israel, that many were conscious of the need of Divine grace in order to obey the Torah, that they found a true religious joy in practising this obedience, that they were not invariably pluming themselves upon their merits, and that the Torah meant for them more than a code of legal enactments. No historical critic has any interest in minimizing such data. Nor has he any hesitation in allowing for the deflecting influence of controversy upon St. Pauls mind; St. Paul was apt to be unconciliatory at times, and this idiosyncrasy would be fostered by the inevitable tendency of dialectic to state a case without qualification, in order to be impressive and telling. But that he knew what he was talking about when he analyzed the practical effects and the underlying spirit of the Pharisaic conception of righteousness, that his religious genius enabled him to detect and expose the cardinal issues which were bound up with the problem of the Jewish Law in relation to Christian faith, there is no sound reason to doubt. History and religious experience have justified the sense of exultation, the thrill, the delight of breaking out into the open air, which throbs through his words on the liberty of the believing man-and this liberty is only another aspect of his righteousness by faith conception.

The conception of righteousness, in this specific sense, is bound up with the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith; in fact, it enters into the Apostles thought upon the Person of Christ, sin, the Law, election, and eschatology. What it conveys, however, is largely a generalization of his own experience. Righteousness is one of the classical terms of OT and contemporary Jewish piety, but St. Paul has stamped it with an original meaning, due to his sense of the inadequacy of moral obedience to the Law, his profound consciousness of sin, and his experience of the forgiveness and fellowship which faith in Christ opened up to him. Further, his use of the term is not only personal but polemical. He turns against legalism with weapons drawn from its own armoury, and the paradoxical element in some of his phrases and arguments is best explained by the fact that these are employed by him to defend a religious position very different from their original object and setting. It is probably for this reason also that the discussion of righteousness by faith is absent from the Thessalonian Epistles. When he wrote these letters, he had already been through the crisis depicted in Galatians. But the theme was primarily of apologetic interest to him, and at Thessalonica the controversy with Jewish Christians and Jews was not raised on this issue. The argument about righteousness was a particular expression of his views on the absolute grace and goodness of God in Christ, but these views could be otherwise expressed. Consequently we find that in the earliest Epistles, as in the later, the righteousness argument falls into the background, and even in the main Epistles it hardly ever appears except in controversial passages-the principal exceptions being 1Co 6:11 and Rom 8:31 f. When St. Paul was not developing his doctrine in opposition to Jewish tendencies, within or without the Church, he generally chose other terms and methods. This does not imply that the fundamental thought in his conception of righteousness is secondary. On the contrary, it is from that central conception that his views on other matters ray out. His doctrine of sin, e.g., is really elicited by his deeper interest in righteousness, and the former is developed in connexion with the latter. At the same time, it must be realized that the doctrine of righteousness or justification by faith, in what we may call its fighting aspect, does not cover the entire range of St. Pauls theology, and that the terms belonging to this particular aspect could be translated into other equivalents for the underlying religious experience. Thus, the conception of righteousness is closely allied to that of life. Only, whereas in the latter idea St. Paul seems to be developing tendencies characteristic of Hellenistic Judaism, whereas his conceptions of the bliss to be are tinged and shaped by Greek thoughts which had filtered into the Jewish mind, in righteousness and justification, despite Reitzensteins plea, we must hold that the Apostle is on a Palestinian basis, even when he is constructing there a fresh, Christian synthesis. His argument on righteousness is neither that of the OT nor that of the mysticism reproduced in the later Poimandres literature. Its specific elements are due to a new religious experience, and its specific terminology is best illustrated from the Messianic categories of Palestinian Judaism.

In Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen (Leipzig, 1910, pp. 100-104), R. Reitzenstein argues that the use of in the Hermetic religious literature on the re-birth of the initiated points to a Hellenistic usage which ought to determine the sense of the term in Rom 8:30 as made sinless (in nature). The verb denotes the deliverance of a person from the of by the Divine powers which deify him (, , ). It is by no means certain, however, that these ideas represent a pre-Christian type of mystical piety on Egyptian lines. Furthermore, as Reitzenstein admits, is not prominent as a Divine , and it seems hazardous to infer that originally it must have played a more important rle, since the parent Egyptian religion expected a verdict of acquittal for the pious dead. It is interesting to find losing its forensic sense and denoting freedom from , but the origin of this type of mystical religion is as yet too unexamined to permit the conclusion that we have here the clue to St. Pauls use of the term, e.g. in 1Co 6:11, or to his conception of the Divine entering a human personality as a power to expel unrighteousness. This may be due to the influence of Christian language on a later Gnostic religious mysticism. Even if it is not, the juristic associations of , as of , define the central thought of St. Paul, without any need of conjecturing the influence of the Hermetic mysticism. Righteousness, like , was capable of suggesting a state or relation to God as well as the initial act which created that state, and St. Pauls faith-mysticism would do the rest.

What is St. Pauls religious interest in this sharp distinction between faith and works as the rival bases for righteousness? Why does he distinguish the one from the other as true and false? The answer depends on an analysis of what he meant by faith in this connexion.

(i.) At the close of his argument about justification in Rom 3:27 he asks, Then what becomes of our boasting ( )? It is ruled out absolutely. On what principle? On the principle of doing deeds ( )? No, on the principle of faith. Boasting means relying on ones personal merits, the Pharisaic self-consciousness which feels that it is able to bring God something which deserves favourable consideration. We may call it Pharisaic, not because it was characteristic of all Pharisees in St. Pauls day, nor because it was confined to them, but because the Pharisaic type of theology, as St. Paul knew it from personal experience and observation, tended to develop a religious self-consciousness, a self-satisfaction which was inclined, on the score of moral qualities and achievements, to treat with God and even claim His favour as more or less a due. Such a mood, no doubt, involved faith of a kind, faith in a Divine recompense which was just in its awards. But this was not the faith of St. Paul. Nor was his faith the faith which itself amounted to a meritorious work, on which a man might secretly or openly plume himself as if it entitled him to some credit with God, for his confidence, his insight, his dutifulness, his loyal venture of the soul. [Note: the point of Joh 15:16 : You did not choose me, it was I who chose you.] It was to avoid any such misconception that St. Paul defined faith as the opposite of works, and not as a work or action of which man was the author and on which he could pride himself. There was a place for in the Christian order, but it was not on faith as an achievement; hence the paradoxical use of the term in Rom 5:1-11 : As we are justified by faith, we triumph () in the hope of Gods glory; [Note: A characteristically Jewish expression. But St. Pauls basis is not that of contemporary Judaism. Full recompense does not come until the future world. Then Israel, both as a nation and as individuals, will be rewarded for its loyal fulfilment of the Law by a life of untroubled bliss. Good works, like reverence for father and mother, beneficence, peace-making among ones neighbours, and above all study of the Law, are comparable therefore to a capital sum, whose interest is already enjoyed in the present life, while the principal itself remains for the future life. This hope of a future recompense was the main impetus to zeal for the Law. In fact, the entire religious life of the Jewish people during our period moved round the two poles: fulfilment of the Law and hope of future glory (Schrers GJV ii.4 [Leipzig, 1907], p. 547 f.; cf. Eng. tr., II. [Edinburgh, 1885] ii. 92 f.).] not only so, but we triumph in our troubles not only so, but we triumph in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we now enjoy our reconciliation. Or again, in the proud humility of Php 3:3 : We are the true circumcision, we who worship God in the spirit, we who pride ourselves () on Christ Jesus. There is a legitimate sense, St. Paul would say, in which we Christians can speak of boasting or pride, but what evokes it is the sheer grace and generosity of God in Jesus Christ-the very revelation of Himself which elicits faith. The Pharisaic boasting went back to the conception of faith as a meritorious work, as, e.g., in the Midrash on Gen 15:6, which interpreted the words thus: Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as a righteousness, a meritorious work. St. Paul took faith as the vital spring of life, set in motion by God Himself. When he substituted faith for works as the basis of righteousness, it might seem as though he only meant to make faith the supreme work. On the strict Pharisaic doctrine of the Divine sovereignty, which St. Paul shared (Romans 9-11), God could do as He pleased. He was not bound to obedience to the Law as the condition of righteousness; conceivably (see above, p. 379), He might make faith that condition. But St. Paul did not understand God as exempt from moral consistency (cf. Rom 3:4 f.). He did not adduce faith as selected arbitrarily by God to be the essential qualification for righteousness. On his view, it was organic to the entire order of the Christian religion from the first, and drawn out fully by the gracious revelation in Jesus Christ. Faith is always the correlative to revelation, and saving faith is the response of the entire personality to Gods reconciling love in Jesus Christ. The initiative is with God. Faith, therefore, is not belief or even fidelity, in the primary sense of the term; it is not an act or quality of the soul, but the yielding of the whole nature to Gods appeal and offer in the gospel. There must be no thought of credit in this initial surrender, St. Paul insists. Genuine trust clears every trace of such a mood out of the soul. In the work of mans salvation an unconditioned initiative belongs to God, and all that is required of man is the unreserved abandonment of himself to what God has done. That is faith in the sense of St. Paul. [Note: Denney, Exp, 6th ser., iv. 90.] But there is a tendency in human nature, not simply in Pharisaism, to evade or modify this unqualified demand; it is a tendency which may be due, in part, to conscientious feeling and ethical principle, but none the less it is out of place. St. Paul felt this strongly, and it is from his sense of the religious principle involved, not simply owing to the exigencies of theological controversy, that he sharply reiterates the antithesis between faith and works. For him there was only one way to be right with God, and the only assurance of being on that way was the sense of having risen above the mists of religious self-satisfaction.

(ii.) One special temptation of the Pharisaic was particularism, and therefore faith also swept away the system of ideas which gave the Jew or Jewish proselyte an exclusive or pre-eminent claim on Gods favour. In this aspect, too, faith was not arbitrary. It was bound up for St. Paul with the universal scope of the gospel. Thus, in Romans for example, immediately after the words on which have just been quoted, he adds: We hold a man is justified by faith apart from deeds of the Law altogether. Or, is God only the God of Jews? Is he not the God of Gentiles as well? Surely he is. Well then, there is one God, a God who will justify the uncircumcised as they believe and the uncircumcised on the score of faith (Rom 3:28-30). The argument is that God as One is the same for all, and faith is the one, common method of being right with Him. To have faith, you do not need to have the Law or to be a Jew (circumcised). I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel, said Jesus once of a pagan. St. Paul generalizes the same conviction. He had the palpable fact before him, that Gentiles could be and were being saved apart from the Law. If a man can be right with God apart from the Law, then faith is universal; or, vice versa, as faith is a universal instinct, it implies a universal range for the faith of the gospel. In Romans and Galatians, through the abstruse, winding arguments upon righteousness, two thoughts are constantly before St. Pauls mind: one is that Christianity is a religion of grace which evokes faith, the other is that it is a religion for mankind. These are cognate thoughts, and Galatians 3, e.g., [Note: the present writers Paul and Paulinism, London, 1910, p. 55 f.] is a series of curious illustrations and exegetical arguments on both. Thus, after contrasting the Law and faith, he suddenly goes off in Gal 3:25 : faith has come, and we are wards no longer; you are all sons of God by your faith in Christ Jesus. There is no room for Jew or Greek, there is no room for slave or freeman, there is no room for male or female: you are all one in Christ Jesus. Faith at once suggests to him the catholicity and humanity of the new religious order. It supersedes exclusiveness. Christianity as the redemptive religion, basing righteousness on faith, transcends the divisions of race and class and sex which contemporary religions, especially Judaism, recognized. This is what Jowett [Note: Epistles of St. Paul to the Thess., Gal. and Rom., i. 148.] meant when he declared that the whole doctrine of righteousness by faith may be said to be based in a certain sense on fact, on two great facts especially-the conversion of the Apostle himself, and the conversion of the Gentiles. Again we see the specifically religious interest which underlay the Apostles antithesis between faith and works. It is not a piece of scholasticism, but the interpretation of Gods acts in history and experience, an interpretation which was meant to be as uncompromising as the facts on which it rested were decisive.

Observe, St. Pauls argument is not Have faith like Abraham. That would leave out Christ. He argues You are all sons of God by your faith in Christ Jesus. [Note: In this particular passage (Gal 3:26) it is possible to take by itself, and render, you are all sons of God in Christ Jesus, by your faith; but this is less probable, and even if it were taken thus, there are many other passages where the above-noted principle is implied (e.g. Rom 4:23 f.).] It is not by imitating Abrahams intuition of trust, but by faith in God as revealed in Christ His Son, that you are members of His household. With Christ, faith receives for the first time its proper and full object-the adequate, absolute revelation of the Divine purpose for men. St. Paul does not even call on Christians to have faith like Christ, to believe in God as Jesus believed. Faith such as Jesus had is not a Pauline conception. It is surely impossible to interpret the phrase as if it meant the faith of Jesus; what it does mean is faith in the gracious will of God manifested in Christ, a faith which transforms the personality into His Spirit. The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave up himself for me (Gal 2:20). This is almost the nearest approach (yet cf. Rom 3:22, Gal 2:16) which St. Paul makes to speaking of , as he speaks of . For him, Christ is the object of faith so far, that in him, especially in his death and resurrection, the favourable will of God, which is the real object of religious trust, has been revealed. [Note: Pfleiderer, Paulinism, Eng. tr., 2 vols., London, 1877, i. 163.] This revelation was not made by a legal act; it was shown in devotion to the point of death, and consequently it can elicit devotion from the heart which seeks and finds in it union with the object of its trust and love.

(d) Gods righteousness and human sin.-As the righteousness of God means a status of man before Him, or rather a relationship between Him and man, which He brings into being through the sacrificial death of Christ, and which becomes a reality of experience for man as he believes, St. Paul can speak of it as he could not if it were merely an attribute [Note: The Philonic habit of regarding certain attributes of Gods nature as semi-personified, and therefore capable of being appropriated by man, might form a precedent for the view that St. Paul considered Gods righteousness as emanating from Himself and yet entering into human experience upon certain conditions. But this is not supported by his language. He does objectify or personify sin and death and wrath, but Rom 1:17 is too slender a basis for the idea that righteousness is similarly conceived as a Divine power operating in history. The personification in 2Co 5:21 is irrelevant to such a notion (see below).] of Gods nature. He can say that it is due to faith in Jesus Christ (Rom 3:22), or that it originates with God and rests on faith (Php 3:9). The believing man possesses it as the gift of life to him. These two sides of the truth are always present to the mind of St. Paul, but one is sometimes more prominent than the other, and he freely passes from the one to the other. It is necessary to recollect this, as we go on to analyze the Apostles main statements upon the relationship in question.

Righteousness, on the Pharisaic lines of piety, meant an , fidelity to the Divine Torah as embodying the standard set by God for His people; in other words, all that God requires from man in relation to Himself and to other men. It is a matter of life and death. To be saved, a man must be righteous; and he alone is righteous who conforms to this Law. And God? His righteousness consists in fidelity to His own Law, as the highest norm of life. He is righteous as He rewards and praises those who keep that Law, which as Judge or Ruler He is bound to uphold. Now this was an aspect which, in the strict sense of the term, St. Paul naturally left out of account, since he held that no one, however much care and passion he devoted to legal obedience, could possibly attain a position which entitled him to such praise and reward. [Note: Unlike his contemporary, the author of the Apocalypse of Baruch, who (li. 3 f.) describes in glowing language the glory of those who have now been justified in My law those who save been saved by their works, and to whom the law has been sow a hope. Some lines of the description (they shall be changed into every form they desire, from beauty into loveliness, and from light into the splendour of glory) recall 2Co 4:18.] Sin intervened so powerfully and disastrously that St. Paul was forced to fix his mind upon the other side of the Divine righteousness, viz. the punishment of disobedience. It was axiomatic for him as for the Judaism of his age, though in different degrees, that the just God could not leave sin unpunished; He must maintain the rights of the Law when it was violated. The Divine Law, like human law, involved the praise of those who kept it and also the punishment of transgressors. The old maxim held good: judex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur. It was essential that God should prove Himself just in this restricted sense of righteous, by taking account of evil and transgression. But this punitive attitude, which St. Paul describes as the anger of God, did not exhaust His mind towards a humanity which deserved nothing else. There is the way of expiation or atonement, which enables God to acquit the sinner without condoning the sin. No sacrifice that men can offer has this atoning power; St. Paul never troubles to argue that the ceremonial sacrifices, or even the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, on which probably pious Jews relied for the completion of pardon, did not avail for this purpose. The sacrifice is offered by God Himself; in modern terminology, it is a Divine self-sacrifice for the sake of sinful men; the Cross of Christ reveals the heart of God in its righteousness (or grace) and also reveals his condemnation of sin. Through the blood of the Cross Gods righteousness is revealed fully as the saving power of His love for men. It represents His grace-and grace for St. Paul means the power as well as the disposition of Gods love to sinners-but, as connoted justice in the narrower sense, St. Paul could use the term upon occasion to bring out that punishment of sin which was essential to His nature and relations to men, or, as a modern might say, to the moral order.

The revelation of Divine goodness or righteousness in the gospel is therefore thrown into relief against the revelation of Divine anger which is the only alternative for those who will not have faith to see Gods meaning and purpose in the gospel of Christ. This is the point of Rom 1:16 f. (the gospel is Gods saving power [ ] for everyone who has faith Gods is revealed in it by faith and for faith). It is apt to be distorted for modern readers, who inevitably associate righteousness with an austere, retributive exercise of judicial power. But St. Paul here distinctly connotes it with saving power and opposes it to the Divine wrath, in a way that reminds us of the Psalmists phrase (Psa 98:2): The Lord hath made known his salvation ( ): his righteousness ( ) hath he openly shewed in the sight of the nations. The Apostle, as often, objectifies his thoughts. By the words a righteousness of God is revealed he means that God is revealed as a God who justifies, as a God who, Himself righteous, seeks to have men righteous before Him (cf. Rom 3:26).

Light is light which radiates,

Blood is blood which circulates,

Life is life which generates

(Emerson, Threnody, 242 ff.).

God as righteous is the living God, not one who stands aloof from sinful men, leaving the race to itself, except to brood over its heightening impiety with the anger of outraged justice that ends in punishment and death. The supreme obstacle to His life generating life in men is sin, the sin which has assumed such tyrannical power over humanity. But in the gospel He removes this obstacle, or rather, breaks this hostile power, by the sacrificial death of Christ, His Son, so that His righteousness or vital energy can now come into play.

When the Apostle eventually describes this in more detail (in Rom 3:21-26), he still speaks of the Divine righteousness being manifested, but, by a natural turn of thought and expression, he also uses in Rom 3:25 f. in the narrower sense of justice as opposed to laxity. The atoning death of Christ is put forward as a proof that He did recognize the doom with which sin had to be punished, and therefore that His righteousness bestowed on believing men is consonant with moral justice. If St. Paul could use already in a restricted sense in Rom 3:5 of this chapter, the present writer sees no reason why he should not employ it in this particular sense in Rom 3:25 f., especially as it was a sense which was innate in the term. Whenever righteousness was associated with the thought of sin, its aspect of justice naturally tended to become prominent; the sombre punitive element came to the front, as in the case of the verb (see above).

The use of a word in different senses in the same context may be illustrated from the very next paragraph (Rom 3:27 f.), where St. Paul employs in the special sense of principle (Rom 3:27) and then (Rom 3:28) as Law (see above, p. 384). The Psalter of Solomon furnishes another case of being used in two or three different senses close together:

The works of mercy () of thy saints are before thee

O God, our actions are in our own choice and power, to do right ( ) or wrong in the works of our hands.

In thy righteousness ( ) thou visitest the sons of men (Rom 9:6-8).

Before going further into this passage, however, we must turn to the prior allusion in 2Co 5:21, one of the most startling personifications in the Pauline literature. For our sakes he made him to be sin who himself knew nothing of sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. When did God make Christ sin? [Note: The expression is even stronger than the similar phrase in Gal 3:13 : Christ ransomed us from the curse of the law by becoming accursed () for us: for it is written, Cursed () is everyone who bangs on a gibbet. St. Paul leaves out the LXX after .] At the Incarnation, when the pre-existent Son of God was made to wear the flesh of sinful man? This is Holstens view. He regards St. Paul as holding that the flesh was essentially sinful, and consequently that Christs human birth might be said to imply that He took sin upon Him by entering our sinful state. This view of the flesh, however, is untenable, and the fact which St. Paul has in mind is the Death pre-eminently. Whether sin means sin-offering is not quite so clear. It is no argument against such an interpretation that it involves a double sense of sin in the same verse, for the compressed, rapid style of the Apostle here might admit of that. But the parallelism of sin and righteousness tells against it strongly. It is a daring expression, though not unexampled. God, St. Paul seems to mean, treated Christ as a sinner, let Him suffer death (the normal consequence of human sin) in the interests of men, that we might become righteous [Note: In En. lxii. 3 (righteousness is judged before him), righteousness similarly means the righteous.] by our union with Him. Righteous here obviously means more than acquitted; to become righteous in Christ, righteous before God, is to enjoy not simply freedom from guilt but a positive relation to God. How this takes place, St. Paul does not state in the verse before us; his words must be read in the light of his other references to the virtue of Christs sacrifice as the death of One who, as sinless, did not deserve to die, and whose death therefore availed for the guilty. God thus reconciles men to Himself, and it is an act of love. This death of the One for all (2Co 5:14 f.) means that all have died, and that he died for all in order to have the living live no longer for themselves but for him who died and rose again for them. It is in the light of such words that we can interpret what St. Paul intended by this antithesis of 2Co 5:21. The identification of Himself with sinful men is the clue to the meaning of Christs death; it is an expression of His love, just as from another side it shows Gods treatment of Him as bound up with sinners, so as to die for them. The result is that sinners are freed from the death which is their due, and raised to a position which is defined as devotion to Christ or as righteousness, that is, life shared with God, the life to which Christ Himself rose and into which He raises His people. Instead of being condemned to death, they are now freed from condemnation and made right with God; i.e. they are reconciled (2Co 5:18 f.), they are made a new creation (2Co 5:17), which has a moral purpose in it. This purpose is elsewhere described as consecration (), e.g. in 1Co 6:11, where justification is associated with consecration, as a real and true relation to the living God. In reconciliation or justification there is an implicit purpose of holiness or consecration, in this sense of belonging to God, and of caring to belong to Him, as members of His own community. [Note: The term () quite naturally included the further idea of the life which answered to this position (cf. 1Th 5:3 f.), just as did (p. 377).] But the sharp point of the paradox in 2Co 5:21 lies in the phrase about the act of God which makes the Christian standing a reality. At first sight, the parallel indeed seems unreal. Christ was not really a sinner, in His death for sin. Is our righteousness of the same kind? Is it only an estimate? We may reply, with Sabatier (The Apostle Paul, Eng. translation , p. 330), Redemption consists precisely in this, that God sees in Christ that which is in us,-namely, sin; and in us that which is in Christ,-namely, righteousness. No doubt this is a logical contradiction; but it is the Divine contradiction of love. The logic of the heart triumphs over that of the intellect. We may also perhaps add this moralizing consideration. When Christ by the will of God identified Himself with sinful men, His sympathy with them only intensified His holiness and goodness; the more He came into contact with sin, the stronger did His holy love become. So, as we identity ourselves with Him, we come to share His mind towards our sin; we learn to condemn it and to side with God against ourselves. When we are brought to cry, Who shall deliver me from this body of death? we become Gods. It is through the death of Christ that we truly learn our hopeless position as sinners, and the hope enshrined in His sacrifice. What St. Paul elsewhere describes as by faith, he expresses here by the phrase in him. The vicarious death of Christ implies that God subjected Him to real suffering for our sakes, to the last extremity of desertion and death, and when we identify ourselves with Him, when we trust Him with ourselves, God subjects us to as real an experience of reconciliation. Christs experience of agony and desolation at the end was real in its bitterness; He was not going through a painful official formality when He suffered. So our experience of union with God is a real bliss, a direct, personal relation to Himself. What is common to both is the intense and growing reaction against sin which Christs sacrifice produces in us. What differentiates Christ and men is that our characters are transformed by the creative act of One whose character required no change.

The importance of taking 2Co 5:21 at this stage in an analysis is two-fold: it is a fresh corroboration of the truth that Gods righteousness is a positive, personal relation to Himself; and also of the vital connexion between this righteousness and the Person of Jesus Christ. We are hardly surprised to discover that the close association of righteousness with a personal experience of Christ [Note: The lack of any reference to the Messianic promise in Jer 23:6 (Israels name is to be The Lord our righteousness) is surprising. Zahn explains it (Der Brief des Apostels Paulus an die Rmer, Leipzig, 1910, p. 84) by the fact of the LXX mistranslation , but thinks that a writer like St. Paul, who knew the Hebrew original, cannot fail to have been influenced by the striking expression.] emerges in the last autobiographical reference, in Php 3:6-11. St. Paul summarizes his Pharisaic prerogatives, a passionate and positive orthodoxy, immaculate according to the standard of legal righteousness, [Note: Paul belonged to the Luther and Bunyan class-not to those who, like Augustine, broke through to Christ out of a vicious life.] zeal, high character, and all the rest, all the which he and others thought contributed materially to salvation. I parted with them gladly, he confesses, for the sake of intimacy with Christ Jesus my Lord. And I gained far more. It was for the sake of gaining Christ and being found (when I die) in him, possessing no legal righteousness of my own (i.e. no religious standing which a man thinks he can secure by scrupulous obedience to the moral code of the Law) but the righteousness of faith in Christ, the Divine righteousness that rests on faith. There is only a verbal difference between this last description and the more personally tinged expression knowing Christ Jesus my Lord-where knowing means practical reverence and intimacy. [Note: Wis 15:3 : to know Thee is complete righteousness, and to know Thy power is the root of immortality.] Whether St. Paul speaks of righteousness by faith, or of Christ being made righteousness for us, or of our being made righteousness in Him, the same inspiring conviction breaks through the somewhat legal and technical phraseology, viz. that while the reconciliation is a reality apart from our experience of it, it becomes a reality for us only through our personal surrender to the personal will of love which reaches us in the Cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

From these earlier and later allusions, we may now turn back to the references in Romans. The conception of righteousness is commonly studied first of all in Romans 1-8, where it is discussed for its own sake, [Note: G. Rutherford, in his translation of St. Pauls Epistle to the Romans, London, 1900, arranges the entire Epistle, apart from its preface (Rom 1:1-17) and epilogue (Rom 15:14 to Rom 16:27), under the category of righteousness: righteousness created by faith (Rom 1:18 to Rom 5:21), righteousness realized in faith (Rom 6:1 to Rom 8:17), righteousness triumphant (Rom 8:18-39), faith the only source of righteousness (Rom 9:1 to Rom 11:36), righteousness as affecting conduct (Rom 12:1 to Rom 15:13).] rather than in Galatians, where the leading thought is the freedom of Christians, and justification comes in to illustrate the main theme. So far, the method is legitimate. But this concentration of interest on Romans has had its drawbacks and dangers. One thing, e.g., which has thrown investigators off the track repeatedly has been the circumstance that the earliest allusion to righteousness in the Epistle appears to introduce it in rather an abstract sense. I am proud of the gospel; it is Gods saving power (i.e. it is a thoroughly effective plan of ensuring the Messianic , which no one need be ashamed of trusting and serving) for everyone who has faith, for the Jew first and for the Greek as well. Gods righteousness is revealed in it by faith and for faith-as it is written, Now by faith shall the righteous live (Rom 1:16 f.). Even here, the impression of abstractness is superficial. St. Paul is speaking of the gospel, and that is Gods personal, direct message and gift to the faith of men, inseparable from Jesus Christ. Still, the very absence of any direct reference to Christ has led some critics at the start to isolate righteousness and consequently to misunderstand it either by treating it as a Divine quality which operates more or less independently of the Person of Christ, or by regarding the entire topic as a religious piece of forensic controversy. But even the context itself implies that justification, i.e. the process by means of which one becomes right with God, is not a cold ante-chamber through which the Christian is ushered into the warm atmosphere of personal intimacy beyond. It is not a chamber or hall of justice; it is the household of the living God. The righteousness which is revealed and conveyed is not simply acquittal, but life in the fullest sense of the term. By faith shall the righteous live. The righteousness which comes by faith is not a preliminary stage, at which a man is pardoned for his sins and let off; it is a living, personal experience of God revealed in Christ. The righteousness revealed in the gospel is not the issuing of a pardon or the proclamation of an amnesty, but a relation of acceptance with God, in fellowship with Jesus Christ, which depends on faith as the personal surrender of a mans entire nature to the Divine will of reconciliation.

This is fundamental to Paulinism, and one of the simplest ways to grasp the truth of it is to note how the Apostle twice over uses righteousness in a personal sense, as applied to Christ. This, he argues in 1Co 1:30, is the God to whom you owe your being in Christ Jesus, whom God has made our Wisdom (), that is, our righteousness and consecration and redemption. [Note: here is as little eschatological as in Rom 3:24.] Christ as the Divine Wisdom is further defined as righteousness and consecration and redemption for us. The Christian Sophia is not a vague, shadowy, speculative idea or aeon; it is embodied in Christs personal relation to the sin and need of men, whom He has brought into intimate relation with God. Again, in the more difficult passage in 2Co 5:21, God is said to have treated Christ as a sinner for our sakes, to have allowed Him to suffer what sinful men suffer, dying the accursed death of the Cross (Gal 3:13). For our sakes he made him to be sin who knew nothing of sin (i.e. because he knew nothing of sin as a personal experience), so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (i.e. Divinely righteous). St. Paul may personify righteousness in Rom 1:17 and elsewhere, but it is more important to observe how readily he identifies it with the personal relations of Christ to men and of men to God. Nothing proves more clearly how far he was from regarding it as an abstract, official relationship between the sinner and the Saviour, which led to some further and closer fellowship.

In the light of all this, we can at last read the central passage in Rom 3:20 f.: On the score of obedience to law, no person will be acquitted in his sight. What the Law imparts is not acquittal but only the consciousness of sin [, St. Pauls favourite word for a full recognition, a sight of the real meaning, of anything or any person]. But now [harking back to Rom 1:17] we have a righteousness of God disclosed apart from law altogether [i.e. entirely apart from any human achievement of obedience to law, as above]; it is attested by the Law and the prophets [i.e. apart from law does not mean that the revelation has no continuity with the OT], but it is a righteousness of God which comes by believing in Jesus Christ, and it is meant for all who have faith. No distinctions are drawn [the religions interest of catholicism, already noted; cf. p. 385]. All have sinned, all come short of the glory of God, but they are justified for nothing by his grace through the ransom provided in Christ Jesus [all this was in his mind when he spoke of Gods righteousness being revealed in the gospel, Rom 1:16 f.], whom God put forward as the means of propitiation () by his blood, to be received by faith. Later on, he will explain how God condemned sin through His Son (Rom 8:3), but here he goes on to note that, while this righteousness of God is made available for believing men apart from the Law altogether, the fact that it rests on the Divine self-sacrifice in the death of Christ is enough to prove that God is not taking sin lightly or failing to visit transgressions with their moral due. He has in mind a criticism of his doctrine of righteousness. It had been objected-or he anticipated the objection-that the Law, with its sacrificial rites and stress on repentance, at least took moral evil seriously; St. Paul might deride it and criticize it, but surely it was not open to the charge of laxity like his own theory, which asserted that a sinner could be restored to God by faith and nothing more. The Apostle replies by claiming actually that the very reverse is true. Gods new means of providing righteousness shows that He is dealing with sin more rigorously than He ever did under the old system of the Law; the sacrifice of Christ, His Son, exhibits His uncompromising attitude towards sin, which hitherto had not been displayed to the full. When the gospel bids men seek righteousness outside the code and ritual of the Jewish Law, it is not suggesting that God is now pleased to be satisfied with an inferior type of righteousness, or that He is prepared to annul sin without more ado. To drive this point home, St. Paul now uses in its narrower sense. In Rom 8:21 f. it denotes the general redeeming purpose of God, as in 1:17, but in v. 25f. the meaning is closer to that of v. 5, i.e. the moral integrity of God, which in presence of deliberate sin implies the reaction of His inviolable justice. In order to realize His righteousness for sinful men, God had to vindicate His character of justice. Hence the two-fold purpose of Christs sacrificial death. It was to demonstrate the justice of God in view of the fact that sins previously committed during the time of Gods forbearance [Note: Not in the previous life of people who are now saved, but in the sense of Act 17:30, although the eschatological horizon is more distinct there than here.] had been passed over; it was to demonstrate his justice at the present epoch (in contrast to the past, when it had not been so exhibited), showing that God is just himself and that he justifies man on the score of faith in Jesus.

Whether means propitiatory gift or sacrifice, it is offered by God Himself, not by men; and this sacrifice of Christ was necessary for the realization of Gods righteousness or redeeming purpose. It is fairly clear from the context, and this interpretation is supported by other data, that the words by his blood refer to the historical Crucifixion. It is the sacrificial death of Christ, not blood-fellowship with the Risen Christ, which the Apostle has primarily in mind. [Note: It is true that justification implies the Resurrection (Rom 3:25), but the relation of the justified to God depends on one who was dead and is alive again as their Lord. In view of a passage like 5:9f., it is beside the point to lay stress, as Lipsius does, on the absence of any reference to the Cross here. The recent popularity of this blood-fellowship interpretation (cf., e.g., G. A. Deissmann in EBi iii. 3034-3035; A. Schettler, Die paulinische Formel Durch Christus, Tbingen, 1907, p. 5; and Otto Schmitz, Die Opferanschauung des spateren Judentums, do., 1910, p. 223 f.) is probably due to a right reaction against the idea of righteousness as a purely forensic status, depending on the death of Christ, but it is not necessary from an exegetical point of view, and it tends to miss the truth that the relationship of righteousness implies a communion with God through Christ in which the sacrificial power of His death is the effective thing (cf. A. Juncker, Die Ethik des Apostels Paulus, Halle, 1904, p. 121 f.).] What enables God to justify sinners, what justifies Him in justifying them, is the of Christ. It is through this sacrificial death that Gods moral character as becomes, in relation to human sin, the attitude and action of a . Till Christ and outside of Christ there is no righteousness for men.

This is the vital point at which the conception of righteousness crosses the conception of atonement in St. Pauls theology. Without trespassing on the province of the articles Justification and Atonement, we may point out that in the present passage St. Paul distinctly regards the sacrificial death of Christ as the explicit sentence of God on human sin. This is why he speaks of the past, and in so doing uses in v. 25f. in the specific sense of justice. In the death of Christ as the one adequate offering for sin, God now shows His real mind towards sin and sinners as punitive and judicial; He condemns sin, and thus cannot be suspected of any indifference to it. Men, arguing from the long past when He forbore to exhibit any such weighty reprobation as the death of Christ now conveyed, might impugn His justice, as if He were indifferent to moral interests. But the terrible expression of His real attitude in the death of Christ removed any such suspicion; it revealed for the first time and finally His true verdict on sin. If He had forborne to show this until now, that was because He sent Christ, as St. Paul elsewhere argues, [Note: In due time (Rom 5:6), when came (Gal 4:4).] at the proper moment in the worlds history, not because of any failure to conserve the interests of justice. St. Paul would have admitted that sins had been visited by Gods anger in the past; this is the thought of Rom 1:18 f. (Gods anger is revealed from heaven against all the impiety and wickedness of men). The mere fact of death (Rom 5:12 f.) showed that sin had consequences for sinners. But until the death of Christ on the Cross the full exhibition of Gods condemnation of sin could not be made; and it had to be made, not only in view of the previous forbearance or abeyance of judgment, by which God had spared the Jews, instead of punishing them by extinction, but in order to realize the new righteousness. That new righteousness or state of acceptance with God involved a recognition of the just connexion between sin and death (God himself is just), and at the same time of a gracious power triumphing over both (all are justified for nothing by his grace through the ransom provided in Christ Jesus, he justifies man on the score of faith in Jesus). This demonstration was furnished in the death of Christ, the Divine Being who died on the Cross neither as a sinner nor as a sinless individual but as Gods Son, the innocent for the guilty, reversing the fatal consequences of Adams transgression and inaugurating a new relationship between God and His people, on the basis of faith in Himself. When St. Paul describes this death as a ransom, he is thinking pre-eminently of its positive results in the creation of fellowship rather than of its negative side. The uppermost idea is the restoration to God of those who belong to Him, not of what they are ransomed from, nor of the particular price paid. It is God who provides this sacrifice, as it is God who desires the restoration. Obviously, the new content of the religion is larger than the old sacrificial metaphors employed to state it, but does carry sacrificial meaning. Here as elsewhere the fundamental thing in righteousness is the positive relation of life to which those who believe in Christ are admitted, their new standing before God (We are justified by faith through our Lord Jesus Christ we have got access to this grace where we have our standing). It is not exhausted in the assurance that they are now considered far from blame and no longer liable to punishment. Whether the righteousness of God means God bringing men to Himself or the relation in which they stand to Him when they are thus brought home-and both meanings naturally emerge, and emerge together, in St. Pauls language-the cardinal idea is the same; it would be scholastic to imagine that he thought of this righteousness either as a preliminary action of God, clearing away the obstacles in order to let the Spirit have full play, or as a state which required to be vivified by a second act of grace. Here the contrast between the Law and the ransom is enough to explode any such misinterpretation. The enables God to do what the Law could never do, and if the Law meant anything it meant the maintenance of living communion between God and men.

Such were the presuppositions underneath the first allusion to the Divine righteousness in Romans (Rom 1:17), for the gospel in which it is disclosed has been already described in Rom 1:2-5 as a gospel of redemption through Jesus Christ, Gods Son. Gods anger is revealed from heaven against human sin, and the counterpart is the revelation of His righteousness, for the moral situation is such that man cannot put himself right with God. This revelation of His righteousness is inaugurated by the sacrificial death and resurrection of Christ; it is not a revelation which has been in existence from the beginning, the revelation of a Divine attribute which constantly unfolds itself in human history and has acquired a heightened expression through Christ. On the other hand, it is not punitive, for the attitude of God to sin is described as anger. What is denoted by righteousness is saving power, as defined more fully elsewhere. [Note: g. in Rom 3:26 (God just himself and the justifier of men).] The main difference between the use of the phrase here and in most of the other passages is that the emphasis falls upon in this passage, not on . The contrast is between righteousness and anger. Human sin leaves no alternative but for God to show His moral displeasure in punishment, but He freely and graciously reveals through Christ how sinners can be right with Him. His righteousness is the new hope for men who have brought upon themselves His anger.

We may ask, Why is not love the antithesis to anger? It really is, in St. Pauls view. The entire justification of men is due to Gods love. Therefore, as we are justified by faith, let us enjoy our peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ since Gods love floods our hearts. God proves his love for us by this, that Christ died for us when we were still sinners (Rom 5:1; Rom 5:5). St. Paul never distinguishes, as moderns have often done, between love and righteousness in God. Incidentally, as we have already seen, he recognizes a sense in which righteous is less than loving as applied to men, but God is never righteous to him in this sense of the term. Probably the reason why he prefers to speak of Gods righteousness rather than of His love, in this connexion, is either because he cherishes the old classical term, or because he was dealing with a controversial topic in its own vocabulary, or because he desired to emphasize the moral quality and aim of Gods nature and dealings with men. This may be why he uses righteousness here, just as elsewhere he chooses to speak of grace, which is only the Divine love in action upon the sin of men. Righteousness is Gods nature revealed in its special purpose of dealing with the desperate situation of mans sin and guilt; the Johannine theology uses love outright in this connexion, but St. Paul generally prefers the term a grace as an equivalent for this purpose in its personal action upon sinners who yield, and anger for the relation of God to wilful disobedience and rebellion. It is characteristic of his Jewish training that he employs a term like righteousness to express not only what was fundamentally a religious relation between God and man, but also the moral issues of that relation. The persistence with which he rules out any human element which might compromise the absolute grace of God in justifying sinners becomes all the more significant when we find that he did not hesitate still to use this very term righteousness as one of the words for the ethical outcome or aspect of justification. To this we may now pass.

(e) Gods righteousness and the new life.-The problem of the nexus between this faith-righteousness and the moral life of the Christian, between the free forgiveness which cuts away works as establishing any claim on God and the strong ethical interests of the Pauline gospel, is unusually difficult, but it has sometimes been made needlessly difficult by dogmatic handling. For example, some of the Reformed theologians, in a laudable effort to oppose the Roman theory of merits, occasionally tended to reduce faith to a barren assent, which emptied it of ethical content, making it either (a) a mere organ for receiving the initial blessing of forgiveness, i.e. assent to a doctrine of salvation, or. (b) too much a matter of subjective feeling. Luther himself, in his sheer anxiety to safeguard the interests of saving faith, now and then allowed himself to say paradoxical things which suggested that there could be justifying faith apart from love. Luther is certainly a better exegete of St. Paul at this point, in the main, than the tradition derived from Augustine. Augustine tended to regard human faith as worthless until it was infused and vitalized by Divine grace, and he seems now and then to read St. Paul as if Gods grace revived faith and made it ethically valid by means of the sacraments. The spirit of Luthers fundamental interpretation is at any rate more true to the Apostles teaching. At the same time, the problem of the relation between righteousness by faith and the conduct of the Christian really does belong to the problem of justification (q.v. [Note: .v. quod vide, which see.] ), for St. Paul, as we have seen (above, p. 372), does not scruple to speak of the Christian life as righteousness in the non-technical as well as in the technical sense of the term. The vexed problem of the relation between righteousness by faith and the judgment on works (which includes Christians) might be supposed to lie, strictly speaking, outside our subject; for while St. Paul regards justifying faith as in no essential respect different from the faith which underlies the entire course of the Christian experience, he generally employs other methods of statement (the fruit of the Spirit, etc.) to elucidate the general conduct of the Christian. The terminology of righteousness by faith did not rule his whole theology. Yet, whatever explanation may be adopted of the nexus between the so-called forensic and ethical sides of his theology, the term righteousness is not always dropped when he proceeds to state the latter. This is clear, e.g., in Rom 6:13-22, where he reiterates the thought that Christians must dedicate themselves to the service of righteousness. Life is a service, however you take it, he implies. [Note: As Jesus did in Mat 6:24 : you cannot serve two masters, but you must serve one, either God or mammon. In the next chapter (Rom 7:4), St. Paul puts the same thought from another point of view: you must belong to Someone, either to the Law or to Christ.] In fact, apologizing for the oxymoron, he calls the new life a slavery to righteousness! Set free from sin, you have passed into the service of righteousness (, Rom 6:18). Sin is a slavery, so is . You once knew the former; now take the latter. Here the position of , which is absolutely due to Gods grace, as he has just been arguing in the previous chapter, becomes not only a memory and a hope but an obligation upon those who are justified, the nexus being the Person of Christ with which our faith identifies us, since Christ has broken the hold of sin over us and opened up to us the sphere and the capacity of the Divine life. [Note: It is the of Christ (Rom 5:19) which realizes the new order of reconciliation and for men, who in turn have to give in (see above), by an act of obedience, to these gracious terms of God for their redemption. But the human is not exhausted by this surrender to God in Christ; it has to be worked out in His service and spirit (Rom 6:12 f.). Cf. W. Schlatters Glaube und Gehorsam, Gtersloh, 1901.]

This nexus is not a mere play on the different senses of . The forensic metaphors used by St. Paul in connexion with righteousness in the technical sense render it all the more imperative to grasp the larger thought for which he is seeking a somewhat controversial expression. When a sinner is pronounced righteous or justified, as we have seen, this does not correspond to the cool verdict of acquittal passed by some outside authority; it is the gracious dealing of a loving God, whose end is life for the sinner. The clearest statement of this truth is in the long passage of Rom 5:16 f.: While the sentence ensuing on a single sin resulted in doom, the free gift ensuing on many trespasses issues in acquittal (but acquittal is not the last word). For if the trespass of one man allowed death to reign through that one man, much more shall those who receive the overflowing grace and free gift of righteousness reign in life through One, through Jesus Christ. The or acquittal carries life with it. Hence the Apostle sums up: Well then, as one mans trespass issued in doom for all, so one mans act of redress issues in acquittal and life ( ) for all; just as one mans disobedience made all the rest sinners, so one mans obedience will make all the rest righteous sin increased, but grace surpassed it far, so that while sin had reigned the reign of death, grace might also reign with a righteousness that ends in life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is passages like this which suggest that the Pauline doctrine of righteousness by faith finds its equivalent in the Johannine doctrine of fellowship with the Father and the Son, life in both cases being the central thought. The door into this fellowship opens from within, and similarly the righteousness which issues in life is steadily regarded as a free gift of God; you cannot pay for it, or work for it, you have only to accept the reconciliation. The life comes through a Divine self-sacrifice. When St. Paul is using his most juridical language, he never forgets to bring this out, and the very fact that his line of argument in this section does not lead him to develop the human faith which receives the gift enables him to lay all the more stress upon the Divine generosity which provided it for needy man. [Note: what R. W. Dale once said about Maurice (Life of R. W. Dale, London, 1898, p. 541): What he wanted was to be conscious that he deserved all the love and trust that came to him. I am more and more clear about this, that we must be content to know that the best things come to us both from man and God without our deserving them. We are under grace, not under law. Not until we have beaten down our pride and self-assertion so as to be able to take everything from earth and heaven just as a child takes everything, without raising the question, Do I deserve this or not? or rather with the habitual conviction that we deserve nothing and are content that it should be so, do we get into right relations either with our Father in heaven or with the brothers and sisters about us. That principle is capable of a most fatal misconception, but in its truth it is one of the secrets of righteousness and joy.] The gift, the free gift, for nothing-it is as if he could not say enough to convince his readers of Gods character and motives in the work of reconciliation.

Yet even when he considers human faith in this, connexion, it only serves to emphasize the truth that the new relation of righteousness cannot rest on any pact between a man and his God. Faith is not the contribution which the sinner makes. There were religious conceptions of righteousness which gave a place to faith alongside works, but St. Paul would not hear of such an admixture as we meet, e.g., in the apocalypse of 4 Ezra. A worker has his wage counted to him as a due, not as a favour; but a man who instead of working believes in him who justifies the ungodly has his faith counted as righteousness (Rom 4:4). Everything turns upon faith, he adds (Rom 4:16), for the new righteousness is a gift or, historically regarded, a promise; these are the terms on which it is offered.

In the light of this, it is not difficult to understand why, after urging Christians to serve righteousness (in Rom 6:13 f.), he instinctively varies the phrase: now that you are set free from sin, now that you have passed into the service of God (this is another way of stating what he means by justification or the possession of Gods righteousness), your gain is consecration (), and the end of that is life eternal, Sins wage is death, but Gods gift is life eternal in Christ Jesus our Lord. The life which the practice of produces is ultimately a Divine gift. Even in this sphere, where the human will is active, where a man is bidden co-operate with all his powers, the notion of merit is carefully excluded. A man gets something out of the service of sin, and he has himself to thank for it! He also gets something out of the service of righteousness (i.e. out of his devotion to the character which God approves), but he has God to thank for this. The fact that St. Paul uses in this definite sense of character, so soon after he has just used it to denote a religious standing or relationship to God, is noticeable; it confirms our interpretation of the latter as implying a positive experience of life, and it illustrates at the same time the common basis of both in the grace of God, mediated through Jesus Christ. Not only justification but the service of depends upon mans relation to Him, since the latter means a life lived for Him (2Co 5:21) or in Him (Rom 6:11), In both senses of the term, means life (Rom 5:21; Rom 6:23), and whether this life is viewed as a standing before God or a calling it is equally dependent upon Him. St. Paul could have conceived acquittal apart from moral renewal as little as he could have conceived moral renewal apart from acquittal (Sokolowski, Die Begriffe von Geist und Leben bei Paulus, p. 14); the one involved the other, and, as both implied the mediation of life through Jesus Christ, the intrusion of merit or self-righteousness was definitely eliminated. In Php 3:9 f. we have both aspects and senses of held together; the gift is a task, and the very task is itself a gift, depending for its inspiration as well as for its reward upon the Lord. In Rom 6:15 f., the conception of faith, which elsewhere reveals the nexus between the so called forensic and ethical sides of righteousness, is conspicuous by its absence, but the second half of the chapter rests on the thought of the first half, viz. the identification of the Christian with Christ in His new life of power over the flesh and sin, and therefore the Apostles language about the duty of devotion to as the religious ideal could not be misunderstood, as if it implied that in this career of goodness a man was somehow less dependent upon God than in the initial crisis of justification. The juridical associations of righteousness and justify made it more easy for the Apostle to bring oat the absolute indebtedness of man to God for forgiveness and fellowship at the outset of the Christian experience. They did not suggest so naturally the same exclusion of merit in the statement of the new career of ; in fact, their terminology did not lend itself so readily [Note: Paul did not quote Psa 118:19 f. as Clement or Rome did (xlviii. 2-4), to show that of the numerous gates which are opened, this in righteousness is the gate in Christ, whereby blessed are all they that enter and make straight their paths in holiness and righteousness. In view of Gal 6:8 it is literally, but no more than literally, correct to say (with Lightfoot on Rom 6:21) that St. Paul never uses of the results, of evil-doing, but always substitutes . Still he does tend to confine this organic metaphor to the new life in the spirit; he avoids speaking of (cf. Pro 11:30, LXX) except in Php 1:11.] to the expression of this positive and living content in justification at all, for we cannot assume that he ever used the verb justify (apart from the quotation in Rom 3:4) of God in any sense except that of pronouncing a verdict. But when believers were counted righteous, because they believed in Christ who bad died for their sins, this involved their possession by God; they were now His, for His own purposes, and His purpose was life. Through their organic union with Christ, this life is reproduced in their experience, and consummated. He glorifies those whom he has justified (Rom 8:30). Probably it was to avoid any possible misapprehension that St. Paul never spoke of God making men righteous; be reserved strictly for the verdict of acquittal, which altered once and for all the standing of the sinner before his God. Instead of using the same term for the process of making the justified man righteous in the moral sense of the term, he employed other words (e.g. Rom 7:4) and metaphors. Nevertheless the acquittal was a creative act, and even righteousness is used in connexion, e.g., with life, which shows what was in the writers mind. Allusions like those in 2Co 5:15 and Rom 8:10 (whatever view is taken of this clause; cf. above, p. 372) indicate what be regarded as implicit in the initial verdict of justified, and what prompted him for once to employ as he does in Rom 6:13 f.

Finally, a word upon the idea of rewards and punishments being meted out to Christians at the end. Bunyan pointed out that the village of Morality lay off the straight, safe road to the Celestial City; he also recalled how Mr. Honest in his lifetime had appointed one Good-conscience to help him over the River of Death, and how the last words of Mr. Honest were, Grace reigns. So with St. Paul. He warns the Christian off works of the law (Mr. Legality is the leading inhabitant of the village of Morality!), and also warns him not to meet the end without a good conscience, without amoral record which will bear the most searching scrutiny. For such a scrutiny awaits even the justified, even those for whom there is now no condemnation; they will be taken to account before the Divine tribunal for what they have made of their life. The emphasis set by St. Paul on the moral transformation of the believing man is shown by this striking fact that he retains the conception of judgment being passed on the works even of Christians at the end, although logically it seems incompatible with the truth that Christians were already free from doom and assured of salvation. Various explanations of this have been offered. The Apostles stress upon recompense is excused as a remnant of his traditional Pharisaic theology, which he did not reconcile with his evangelical principle of justification by faith; the two are left side by side as parallel lines, religions and ethical; or, the doctrine of judgment on works is taken to refer to the degrees of glory in which Christians are to stand, all being saved as believers in Christ, but with varying records. The latter view [Note: It is argued by E. Khl in Rechtfertigung auf Grund Glaubens und Gericht nach den Werken bei Paulus, Knigsberg, 1904.] is ingenious, but it has to be read into St. Pauls language in order to explain all the facts. Other a point out that the equivalence of reward and service is not mechanical or juridical, and that the deeds which come up for scrutiny at the end are the fruit of the Spirit. In any case, St. Paul never regarded justifying faith as either morally indifferent or guaranteeing mechanically a good life. He retains judgment on the works of the Christian [Note: It is impossible (in face of Rom 2:6 f. and 2Co 5:10) to hold that he kept it for outsiders.] as a justified man, on account of his strong sense of ethical responsibility. There may be a formal contradiction, but the significant thing is that both in 2Co 5:9 f. (I am eager to satisfy him, whether in the body or away from it; for we have all to appear before the tribunal of Christ, each to be requited for what he has done with his body, well or ill) and in Php 3:9 f., where the possession of the Divine righteousness at the end does not exclude personal effort in the present, [Note: Titius (Der Paulinismus, pp. 203-205) traces in Php 3:9 f. a weakening of the definitive character or justification, although he interprets Gal 2:17 of the constant task which falls to the Christian-the task or maintaining hit position as a justified man. Gal 2:17 is a difficult link in a difficult chain of argument, but it probably means that even Jews who sought righteousness on Christs terms had to confess they were sinners; they could not bring forward any racial privilege which would exempt them from the verdict that all have sinned (Rom 3:23).] the Apostles religions experience is larger than the logical inferences of the strict righteousness-doctrine. To be justified by faith was Gods gift. But it was more than a gift; it was a vocation, a career-Aufgabe as well as Gabe. Because it was the gift of a new relationship, the recipient had to work from it or with it scrupulously: Work strenuously at your salvation, for it is God who in his goodwill enables you to will this and to achieve it (Php 2:12). My aim, he adds, is to see if I too can attain the resurrection from the dead (Php 3:11), that being part and parcel of the Divine righteousness which depended on faith. Baur takes this last clause and writes opposite it, If there be anything that our apostle could not possibly have written it is that dubious , where his whole fellowship with Christ is put in question. St. Paul could not have written it, unless he had been more than a Paulinist-a Paulinist of Baurs type. But he was a great Christian. He could conceive it possible that even he might be a reprobate, and he wished his churches to feel the same wholesome fear of themselves. He knew there was such a thing as receiving the grace of God in vain. Nothing would have been more out of keeping with his doctrine of assurance than a Christianized Pharisaism which counted lightly on final acceptance. [Note: Pascals saying: au lieu de dire, sil ny avait point en Dleu de misricorde, il faudrait faire toutes sortes defforts pour la vertu, il faut dire, au contraire, que cest parce quil y a en Dieu de la misricorde, quil faut faire toutes sortes defforts (Penses ed. E. Havet, Paris, 1866, vol. ii. p. 103).] It is not a proof of the unauthenticity of Philippians that he introduces this remarkable allusion to the subjective aspect of righteousness. On paper the collocation of this with the assurance of acquittal on the score of faith may seem heterogeneous, just as the cognate association of justification by faith with judgment to be passed on the conduct of Christians may appear an antinomy. But, while we learn to know St. Paul first on paper, the clue to the real St. Paul lies in the spiritual and ethical attitude towards the realities of God and human life, which can and must hold together in the Christian consciousness things which logically amount to a paradox.

The judgment on works, i.e. on the behaviour of Christians as justified men as well as on outsiders, implies the recompense of good conduct and service an well as the retribution upon evil. The good life is crowned, at the end (2Ti 4:9). This was sometimes expressed by St. Paul as receiving Gods praise, e.g. in 1Co 4:5 (almost in the sense or approval), where each faithful servant gets his proportionate meed of praise from God, when the final scrutiny upon the records of service takes place (cf. Rom 2:29). This shows that the equivalence of reward and service is not a mechanical equivalence or even a purely juridical verdict, but, as in the teaching of Jesus, a gracious act of God. This is confirmed by the fact that the deeds for which men are rewarded are done under the inspiring Spirit; they are the outcome of a process (Gal 5:22; Gal 6:8), and the very process is more than a human achievement. The Pauline doctrine thus differs from the Jewish conception of the judgment, [Note: But it is only fair to recall sayings like that of Rabbi Aiba (Pire Aboth, iii. 19); The world is judged by goodness, and [yet] all is according to the [amount of] work.] which tended to fix a mans fate by the tally of meritorious actions which, he could produce at the end, one of these being faith or fidelity. To St. Paul, faith is the principle which inspires the whole process of conduct. [Note: From one point of view, he could say (2Th 1:5 f.) that God considered it only right ( ) to reward Christian suffering with rest and relief hereafter; from another, he could suggest that the closing as well as the opening act of the Christian experience was one of Gods grace (see above, p. 376). There is no real discrepancy between the two aspects.]

The religious interest in this reward of service and conduct is expressed in the original form of the prayer in the Te Deum: We believe that thou shale come to be our judge. We therefore pray thee, help thy servants, whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood; make them to be rewarded (not numbered-the true reading is munerari, not numerari) with thy saints in glory everlasting. The tone of this petition recalls the spirit of St. Pauls emphasis on judgment or praise for the Christian at the end. He employs terms which literally am incompatible with his original view of Justification, but he employs them in such a way as to urge ethical responsibility without compromising the grace of God or affording any ground for the unhealthy which it was his relentless aim to eradicate from righteousness at any stage and in any form of the religious experience.

Literature.-The linguistic data are stated fully in H. Cremers Bibl.-Theol. Lexicon of NT Greek, Eng. translation , Edinburgh, 1878, pp. 183-200, and J. Morisons monograph, A Critical Exposition of the Third Chapter of Romans, London, 1866, p. 165, etc., by J. Massie in Expositor , 1st ser., viii. [1880] 257-269, and in P. Feines Theologie des Neuen Testaments2, Leipzig, 1911, p. 338 f. The most notable of the special articles and monographs in recent years are: G. A. Frickes Der paulinische Grundbegriff der , do., 1888; an essay by H. Beck in Neue Jahrbcher fr deutsche Theologie, iv. [1895] 249-261; and a pamphlet by T. Hring on bei Paulus, Tbingen, 1896; G. Schnedermanns monograph on Der israelitische Hintergrund, in der Lehre des Apostels Paulus von der Gottesgerechtigkeit aus Glauben, Leipzig, 1895; J. Barmby, in Expositor , 5th ser., iv. [1896] 124-139; H. Cremers Die paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre im Zusammenhang ihrer geschichtlichen Voraussetzungen2, Gtersloh, 1900; J. Denney, in Expositor , 6th ser., iii. [1901] 433 f., iv. [1901] 81 ff., 299 ff.; W. Ltgerts monograph on Die Lehre von der Rechtfertigung durch den Glauben, Berlin, 1903; K. Mller, Beobachtungen zur paulinischen Rechtfertigungslehre, Leipzig, 1905; J. H. Gerretsen, Rechtvaardigmaking bij Paulus in verband met de prediging van Christus in de Synoptici, Nijmvegen, 1905; E. Tobac, Le Problme de la justification dans saint Paul, Paris, 1908; and B. F. Westcotts St. Paul and Justification, London, 1913, in addition to those mentioned in the course of this article.

The subject is discussed by all the editors of Romans, and in treatises on NT Teleology and on Paulinism, among which the following are particularly valuable: F. C. Baurs Paulus, Eng. translation , 2 vols., London, 1873-75, vol. ii. pp. 134-168; E. Reuss, Hist. de la thologie chrtienne au sicle apostolique3, Strassburg, 1864, Eng. translation , London, 1872-74, vol. ii. pp. 20f., 171 f; C. Holsten, Das Evangelium des Paulus, i. [Berlin, 1880] 67 f., ii, [do., 1898] 64 f.; E. Mengoz, Le Pch et la rdemption daprs saint Paul, Paris, 1882. p. 160 f; B. Weiss, Biblical Theology of the NT, Eng. translation , London, 1888, vol. i. p. 315 ff,; A. Sabatier, The Apostle Paul, Eng. translation , do., 1891, p. 297 ff.; G. B. Stevens, The Pauline Theology, do., 1892, pp. 40f, 249 f; A. B. Bruce, St. Pauls Conception of Christianity, Edinburgh, 1894, pp. 114 f., 147 f.; J. Bovon, Thologie du nouveau Testament2, Lausanne and Paris, 1902-05, ii. 134-202; A. Seeberg, Der Tod Christi, Leipzig, 1895, p. 188 f.; W. Beyschlag, Neutestamentliche Theologie, Halle, 1891-92, Eng. translation , 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1895, vol. ii. pp. 94 f., 179 f.; A. Titius, Der Paulinismus unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Seligkeit, Tbingen, 1900, pp. 153-218; H. St. John Thackeray, The Relation of St. Paul to Contemporary Jewish Thought, London, 1900, pp. 80-97; J. Denney, The Death of Christ, do., 1902, p. 163 f.; Emil Sokolowski, Die Begriffe von Geist und Leben bei Paulus, Gttingen, 1903, pp. 5 f., 67 f., 168 f.; M. Gogul, LAptre Paul et Jsus-Christ, Paris, 1904, p. 294 f.; Shailer Mathews, The Messianic Hope in the NT, Chicago, 1905, p. 193 ff.; W. P. DuBose, The Gospel according to St. Paul, New York, 1907, p. 69 f.; Otto Pfleiderer, Das Urchristenthum2, Berlin, 1902, Eng. translation , Primitive Christianity, 4 vols., London, 1906-11, vol. i. p. 344 f.; E. D. Burton, in Biblical Ideas of Atonement, Chicago, 1909, p. 157 f.; H. J. Holtzmann, Lehrbuch der neutest. Theologie2, 2 vols., Tbingen, 1911. il. 131 f.; A. Garvie, Studies of Paul and his Gospel, London and New York, 1911, p. 153 f.; E. von Dobschtz, Die Rechtfertigung bei Paulus, eine Rechtfertigung Paulus, SK [Note: K Studien und Kritiken.] [1912] 38 f.; G. P. Wetter, Der Vergeltungsgedanke bei Paulus, Gttingen, 1912, p. 161 f.; A. de Boysson, La Loi et la foi, Paris, 1912, p. 225 f.; H. Weinel, Biblische Theologie des NT2, Tbingen, 1913, p. 272 f.; J. G. Simpson, article Justification, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics vii. 615-619; J. Weiss, Das Urchristentum, Gttingen, 1914, p. 384 f.

James Moffatt.

Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church

RIGHTEOUSNESS

Justice, holiness. The righteousness of God is the absolute and essential perfections of his nature; sometimes it is put for his justice. The righteousness of Christ denotes not only his absolute perfections, but is taken for his perfect obedience to the law, and suffering the penalty thereof in our stead. The righteousness of the law is that obedience which the law requires. The righteousness of faith is the righteousness of Christ as received by faith. The saints have a threefold righteousness.

1. The righteousness of their persons, as in Christ, his merit being imputed to them, and they accepted on the account thereof, 2Co 5:21. Eph 5:27. Isa 14:24.

2. The righteousness of their principles being derived from, and formed according to the rule of right, Psa 119:11.

3. The righteousness of their lives, produced by the sanctifying which no man shall see the Lord, Heb 13:14. 1Co 6:11.

See IMPUTATION, JUSTIFICATION, SANCTIFICATION; Dickinson’s Letters, let. 12; Witherspoon’s Essay on Imputed Righteousness; Hervey’s Theron and Aspasio; Dr. Owen on Justification; Watts’s Works, p. 532, vol. 3: oct. ed; Jenks on Submission to the Righteousness of God.

Fuente: Theological Dictionary

Righteousness

(, , the quality of being right morally). The righteousness of God is the essential perfection of his nature, and is frequently used to designate his holiness, justice, and faithfulness (Gen 18:25; Deu 6:25; Psa 31:1; Psa 119:137; Psa 119:142; Isa 45:23; Isa 46:13; Isa 51:5-8; Isa 56:1). The righteousness of Christ denotes not only his absolute perfection (Isa 51:11; 1Jn 2:1; Act 3:14), but is taken for his perfect obedience unto death as the sacrifice for the sin of the world (Dan 9:24; Rom 3:25-26; Rom 5:18-19; Jer 23:6; Joh 1:29). The righteousness of the law is that obedience which the law requires (Rom 3:10; Rom 3:20; Rom 8:4). The righteousness of faith is the justification which is received by faith (Rom 3:21-28; Rom 4:3-25; Rom 5:1-11; Rom 10:6-11; 2Co 5:21; Gal 2:21). Righteousness is sometimes used for uprightness and just dealing between man and man (Isa 60:17), also for holiness of life and conversation (Dan 4:27; Luk 1:6; Rom 14:17; Eph 5:9). The saints have a threefold righteousness:

(1.) The righteousness of their persons, as in Christ, his merit being imputed to them, and they accepted on the account thereof (2Co 5:21; Eph 5:27; Isa 45:24);

(2.) The righteousness of their principles, being derived from, and formed according to, the rule of right (Psa 119:11);

(3.) The righteousness of their lives, produced by the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit, without which no man shall see the Lord (Heb 13:24; 1Co 6:11). See Dickinson, Letters, let. 12; Witherspoon, Essay on Imputed Righteousness; Hervey, Theron and Aspasio; Owen, On Justification; Watts, Works, 3, 532, 8vo ed.; Jenks, On Submission to the Righteousness of God. SEE JUSTIFICATION; SEE SANCTIFICATION.

Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

Righteousness

See JUSTIFICATION.

Fuente: Easton’s Bible Dictionary

Righteousness

The renderings righteous and just usually stand for some form of the word tsadak (), which originally signified to be stiff or straight, and whence the names compounded with Zedek are derived. It is rendered lawful in Isa 49:24; moderately in Joe 2:23; and right in several passages. It is unfortunate that the English language should have grafted the Latin word justice, which is used in somewhat of a forensic sense, into a vocabulary which was already possessed of the good word righteousness, as it tends to create a distinction which has no existence in Scripture. this quality indeed may be viewed, according to Scripture, in two lights in its relative aspect it implies conformity with the line or rule of God’s law; in its absolute aspect it is the exhibition of love to God and to one’s neighbour, because love is the fulfilling of the law; but in neither of these senses does the word convey what we usually mean by justice. No distinction between the claims of justice and the claims of love is recognised in Scripture; to act in opposition to the principles of love to God and one’s neighbour is to commit an injustice, because it is a departure from the course marked out by God in his law.

for a further discussion of the word and of its Greek representative , viewed in relation to the doctrine of justification, see chap. xiv. 1.

Fuente: Synonyms of the Old Testament

RIGHTEOUSNESS

The words righteous and righteousness are found much more in biblical language than in everyday language. Both words, however, are concerned with everyday matters, and for this reason some modern versions of the Bible prefer to use such words as right, fair, just and honest. A righteous person is one who, among other things, does right or is in the right.

The source of righteousness

Perfect righteousness is found in God alone. He is perfect in goodness and has a perfect knowledge of what is right and what is wrong (Deu 32:4; Psa 145:17; Isa 45:21; Rom 9:14; Heb 6:18). Since God made human beings in his image, they also have a sense of righteousness. If they are characterized by proper behaviour and moral uprightness, the Bible may speak of them as righteous (Gen 7:1; Psa 15:2; Pro 12:3-10; Luk 1:6; 2Co 9:9-10).

This righteousness is not a moral perfection that people achieve by their own efforts, but a right relationship with God that people enter into through faith and obedience (Isa 50:9; Hab 2:4; Rom 3:4-5; Rom 9:31-32; Rom 10:3-4; Gal 3:11-12). It is a righteousness that pleases God and guarantees his help (Psa 45:7-8; Isa 56:1; 1Pe 3:12).

The legal setting

Righteousness is not simply a private affair; it is a matter also for social concern. Gods righteousness demands social justice (Isa 5:7-9; Amo 5:6-7; Amo 5:24). Justice, in fact, is a prominent characteristic of righteousness in the Bible (see JUSTICE).

The Bible commonly uses righteousness and related words in a legal setting, where a judge must administer justice righteously. The judge in some cases is God (Gen 18:25; Psa 96:13; Ecc 3:17; Act 17:31; 2Ti 4:8; Rev 19:11), in other cases a civil official (Lev 19:15; Deu 4:8; Eze 23:45; cf. Joh 7:24). The innocent and the guilty are respectively the righteous and the wicked. In acquitting the innocent, the judge declares him to be in the right, or righteous; in condemning the guilty, the judge declares him to be in the wrong, or wicked (Deu 25:1; 1Ki 8:32; Job 32:1; Mal 3:18; Mat 13:41-43; Mat 27:19; Rom 2:5-8).

This legal sense of righteousness gives meaning to the biblical teaching of justification by faith. (In both Hebrew and Greek the words righteous and justify come from the same root.) To justify means to declare righteous. Justification is Gods act of declaring righteous those who put their faith in Christ and his saving work. God does not make believers righteous in the sense of improving them to a standard of behaviour that satisfies him, but rather he declares them righteous. Christ has met Gods righteous demands by paying sins penalty on behalf of sinners. God can therefore declare repentant sinners righteous, yet himself remain righteous in doing so (Rom 1:16-17; Rom 3:21-26; Rom 4:1-3; Rom 5:1-2; Gal 2:15-16; Gal 3:21-22; Php 3:9). (For details of this aspect of the believers righteousness see JUSTIFICATION.)

Though righteous deeds, or good works, cannot save anyone, once people are saved their lives should be full of righteous deeds (Eph 2:8-10; Php 1:11). Once God has declared them righteous, they must make it true in practice by living righteously (Rom 6:13; Rom 6:18-19; Eph 4:24; Eph 5:9; Php 3:8-10; 1Ti 6:11; 1Pe 2:24; 1Pe 3:14).

Fuente: Bridgeway Bible Dictionary

Righteousness

RIGHTEOUSNESS

I. In OT.

Righteousness, righteous (except in a few passages) stand in EV [Note: English Version.] for some offshoot of the Semitic root tsdq which is met with as early as the Tell el-Amarna letters in the sense of to be innocent. The Heb. derivatives are the adjective tsaddq and the nouns tsedeq and tsdqh (which seem to be practically indistinguishable in meaning), and the verbal forms tsdaq, hitsdq, etc. This group of words is represented in EV [Note: English Version.] in about 400 passages by righteousness, righteous, etc.; in the remainder, about one-fifth of the whole, by just, justice, justify, right. Whether the primary notion was straightness or hardness is uncertain, and quite immaterial for the present inquiry.

The material can be conveniently arranged under two heads: (1) righteousness in common speech; (2) righteousness in religious terminology. The order is not without significance. It has been justly remarked that the development of the idea of righteousness in OT moves in the opposite direction to that traversed by the idea of holiness. Whilst the latter starts from the Divine and comes down to the human, the former begins with the human and ascends to the Divine.

1. Righteousness in common speech.(a) It is perhaps safest to begin with the forensic or juristic application, The plaintiff or defendant in a legal case who was in the right was righteous (Deu 25:1, Isa 5:23); and his claim resting on his good behaviour was righteousness (1Ki 8:32). A judge who decided in favour of such a person gave righteous judgment, lit. judgment of righteousness (Deu 16:18), judged righteously (Deu 1:16). The Messianic King, who would be the ideal judge, would he swift to do righteousness (Isa 16:5), would judge the poor with righteousness (Isa 11:4), and would have righteousness for the girdle of his loins (Isa 11:5). A court of justice was, in theory, the place of righteousness (Ecc 3:16). The purified Jerusalem would be a city of righteousness (Isa 1:26). On the other hand, corrupt judges cast down righteousness to the earth (Amo 5:7), and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him (Isa 5:23). (b) From the forensic use is readily developed the general meaning what is right, what ought to be [some scholars invert the order of a and b, starting with the idea of rightness]. In Pro 16:8 we read: Better is a little with righteousness (i.e., a little got by right conduct) than great revenues with injustice. Balances, weights, and measures which came up to the required standard were just balances, etc., lit. balances of righteousness (Lev 19:36), whilst their converse were wicked balances, lit. balances of wickedness (Mic 6:11) or balances of deceit (Amo 8:5). (c) Righteous speech also, i.e. truthful speech, came under the category of righteousness. Righteous lips, lit. lips of righteousness, are the delight of kings (Pro 16:13).

2. Righteousness in religious terminology.(a) For the ancient Hebrew, righteousness was especially correspondence with the Divine will. The thought of God, indeed, was perhaps never wholly absent from his mind when he used the word. Note, for this conception of righteousness, Eze 18:5-9, where doing what is lawful and right (tsdqh) is illustrated by a number of concrete examples followed up by the general statement, hath walked in my statutes and kept my judgments to deal truly, The man who thus acts, adds the prophet, is just, rather righteous (tsaddq). The Book of Ezekiel has many references to righteousness thus understood.(b) As the Divine will was revealed in the Law, righteousness was thought of as obedience to its rules (Deu 6:25). Note also the description of a righteous man in Psa 1:1-6 (cf. v. Psa 1:1 f. with Psa 1:5 b and Psa 1:6 a). The expression was also used of obedience in a single instance. Restoring a pledge at sun-down was righteousness (Deu 24:13). The avenging deed of Phinehas was counted to him for righteousness (Psa 106:31). So we find the word in the plural: The Lord is righteous: he loveth righteous deeds (Psa 11:7 RVm [Note: Revised Version margin.] ).(c) In most of the passages quoted, and in many places in Ezk., Job, Prov., and Eccles., the righteousness of the individual is referred to; but in others Israel (Psa 14:5; Psa 97:11; Psa 118:20 etc., Isa 41:8-11, and other parts of Deutero-Isaiah, Hab 1:13 etc.), or a portion of Israel (Isa 51:1; Isa 51:7 etc.), is represented as righteous.(d) Since righteousness is conformity to the Divine will, and the Law which reveals that will is righteous in the whole and its parts (Psa 119:7; Psa 119:62; Psa 119:75; Psa 119:172 etc.), God Himself is naturally thought of as essentially righteous (Deu 32:4 where just = righteous; Jer 12:1, Isa 42:21, Psa 7:9 (10) 11 (12), His throne is founded on righteousness and judgment (Psa 89:14, (15)), and all His ways exhibit righteousness (Psa 145:17). As, however, Israel was often unrighteous, the righteousness of Jehovah could then be revealed to it only in judgment (Isa 1:27; Isa 5:18; Isa 10:22). In later times it was revealed in judgment on their heathen oppressors (Psa 40:9 f., Psa 98:2 etc.).(e) So in a number of passages, especially in Isa 40:1-31; Isa 41:1-29; Isa 42:1-25; Isa 43:1-28; Isa 44:1-28; Isa 45:1-25; Isa 46:1-13; Isa 47:1-15; Isa 48:1-22; Isa 49:1-26; Isa 50:1-11; Isa 51:1-23; Isa 52:1-15; Isa 53:1-12; Isa 54:1-17; Isa 55:1-13; Isa 56:1-12; Isa 57:1-21; Isa 58:1-14; Isa 59:1-21; Isa 60:1-22; Isa 61:1-11; Isa 62:1-12; Isa 63:1-19; Isa 64:1-12; Isa 65:1-25; Isa 66:1-24, righteousness is almost synonymous with justification, salvation (Isa 45:8; Isa 46:13; Isa 51:6 f., Isa 58:6; Isa 59:9; Isa 61:11; Isa 62:1; many passages in Psalms [Psa 22:31 (32) Psa 24:5 etc.], Mal 4:2 [Heb 3:19]). For more on this subject cf. art. Justification.

II. In NT.

The Greek equivalents of tsaddq, tsedeq, etc., are dikaios (81 times), righteous, just; dikais (5 t.), justly, righteously; dikaiosyn (92 t.), righteousness; dikaio (39 t.), justify; dikaima (10 t.). righteousness (4t. [AV [Note: Authorized Version.] ] righteous act, judgment, ordinance, justification]); dikaisis (2 t.), justification; dikaiokrisia, righteous judgment (Rom 2:5).

In the teaching of Jesus (Mat 5:6; Mat 5:10; Mat 5:20; Mat 6:1; Mat 6:33; Mat 21:32, Joh 16:8; Joh 16:10), and in NT generally, righteousness means, as in OT, conformity to the Divine will, but with the thought greatly deepened and spiritualized. In the Sermon on the Mount righteousness clearly includes right feeling and motive as well as right action. In Mat 6:1 (where dikaiosyn is unquestionably the true reading) there may be an echo of the later meaning acquired by tsdqh, its Aramaic equivalent, the beginnings of which can be traced in LXX [Note: Septuagint.] (Deu 6:25; Deu 6:8 other passages) and the Heb. Sirach about b.c. 200 (Sir 3:14; Sir 40:17)benevolence, almsgiving. If, as cannot be reasonably doubted, the Sermon on the Mount was originally in Aramaic, the word for righteousness can hardly have been used in such a connexion without a side glance at a common popular application of it. Still, it is not safe to find more than a hint or echo.

In Mat 3:15, Zahn has observed, dikaiosyn seems to be used in the sense of dikaima, ordinance. In the Pauline Epistles, where dikaiosyn and dikaio are most frequently used (85 times out of 131), the former in a considerable number of cases describes not the righteousness required by God, but the righteousness bestowed by God and accepted by faith in Christ (Rom 1:17 etc.).

For fuller treatment cf. art. Justification.

W. Taylor Smith.

Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible

Righteousness

RIGHTEOUS, RIGHTEOUSNESS

It is very highly important and interesting to have clear apprehensions of the Scriptural meaning of the term righteous. What notions we annex to it is of little consequence if the word of God decides other wise. Certain it is, that in the world’s dictionary the term righteous is very freely and commonly bestowed, and upon characters that call in question many of the Lord’s declarations concerning sin, and the sinfulness of our fallen nature. It is highly important therefore to hear what the word of God saith on this point, and not lean upon the human opinion of vain men.

Now the Scriptures with one voice, and in the most unqualified and unaccommodating manner, declare that when the Lord looked “down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand and seek after God,” the result of that enquiry was, that “they were all gone aside, and altogether become filthy, that there was none that did good, no not one.” (Psa 14:2-3) And the apostle Paul quotes this passage, and confirms it by enlargement. (See Rom 3:1-19)

It is in vain for any man to make an appeal against this decision. No comparative statement can, in the least, alter the case. No man, not a single man of the whole race of men sprung from Adam, can be an exception to this universal decree of God.

What then is the righteousness of the Scripture, and who is the righteous man before God? The answer is direct. None but the Lord Jesus Christ. He, and he only, is set forth under this title; and he alone is the Righteousness of his people. It is high treason to talk of any other; and it is equally high treason to talk of any comparative statement between man and man concerning righteousness. The account from heaven is, “All have sinned, and come short of God’s glory. The whole world is become guilty before God.%And by the deeds of the law can no flesh be justified before God.” Hence, therefore, it undeniably follows that Christ is the only righteousness of his people; and he is what Scripture declares his name is, and shall be, JEHOVAH our Righteousness. (Jer 23:6)

Now then the conclusion from this statement of Scripture is evidently this-if Jesus be the only righteousness of his people, either this is my right eousness, or I have none at all. Wholly sinful in myself, and wholly righteous in him I must be; or I have no part nor lot in this matter. If there be not in me a total renunciation of every thing the mistaken calculation of men calls righteousness, yea, more than this, if there be not a full and unreserved confession of universal sin and unworthiness in me, I cannot be wholly looking for acceptance to, and living wholly upon, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Lord my Righteousness. And the gospel knows no mixture, no mingling the righteousness of the sinner with the righteousness of the Saviour. “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.” Blessed and happy souls who, from a deep conviction of the total corruption and depravity of their own nature, are resting all their high hopes of acceptance and justification before God in the perfect and complete righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ; who behold him, and accept the authority of JEHO VAH for this well-grounded confidence of beholding him, and rest with full assurance of faith in him, as the Lord their righteousness; and to whose spirits the Holy Ghost bears witness that “he is made of God to them wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, that, according as it is writ ten, he that glorieth let him glory in the Lord.” (1Co 1:30-31)

Fuente: The Poor Mans Concordance and Dictionary to the Sacred Scriptures

Righteousness

rchus-nes (, caddk, adjective, righteous, or occasionally just , cedhek, noun, occasionally = riahteousness, occasionally = justice; , dkaios, adjective, , dikaiosune, noun, from , dke, whose first meaning seems to have been custom; the general use suggested conformity to a standard: righteousness, the state of him who is such as he ought to be (Thayer)):

1.Double Aspect of Righteousness: Changing and Permanent

2.Social Customs and Righteousness

3.Changing Conception of Character of God: Obligations of Power

4.Righteousness as Inner

5.Righteousness as Social

6.Righteousness as Expanding in Content with Growth in Ideals of Human Worth

LITERATURE

1. Double Aspect of Righteousness: Changing and Permanent:

In Christian thought the idea of righteousness contains both a permanent and a changing element. The fixed element is the will to do right; the changing factor is the conception of what may be right at different times and under different circumstances. Throughout the entire course of Christian revelation we discern the emphasis on the first factor. To be sure, in the days of later Pharisaism righteousness came to be so much a matter of externals that the inner intent was often lost sight of altogether (Mat 23:23); but, on the whole and in the main, Christian thought in all ages has recognized as the central element in righteousness the intention to be and do right. This common spirit binds together the first worshippers of God and the latest. Present-day conceptions of what is right differ by vast distances from the conceptions of the earlier Hebrews, but the intentions of the first worshippers are as discernible as are those of the doers of righteousness in the present day.

2. Social Customs and Righteousness:

There seems but little reason to doubt that the content of the idea of righteousness was determined in the first instance by the customs of social groups. There are some, of course, who would have us believe that what we experience as inner moral sanction is nothing but the fear of consequences which come through disobeying the will of the social group, or the feeling of pleasure which results as we know we have acted in accordance with the social demands. At least some thinkers would have us believe that this is all there was in moral feeling in the beginning. If a social group was to survive it must lay upon its individual members the heaviest exactions. Back of the performance of religious rites was the fear of the group that the god of the group would be displeased if certain honors were not rendered to him. Merely to escape the penalties of an angry deity the group demanded ceremonial religious observances. From the basis of fear thus wrought into the individuals of the group have come all our loftier movements toward righteousness.

It is not necessary to deny the measure of truth there may be in this account. To point out its inadequacy, however, a better statement would be that from the beginning the social group utilized the native moral feeling of the individual for the defense of the group. The moral feeling, by which we mean a sense of the difference between right and wrong, would seem to be a part of the native furnishing of the mind. It is very likely that in the beginning this moral feeling was directed toward the performance of the rites which the group looked upon as important. See ALMS.

As we read the earlier parts of the Old Testament we are struck by the fact that much of the early Hebrew morality was of this group kind. The righteous man was the man who performed the rites which had been handed down from the beginning (Deu 6:25). The meaning of some of these rites is lost in obscurity, but from a very early period the characteristic of Hebrew righteousness is that it moves in the direction of what we should call today the enlargement of humanity. There seemed to be at work, not merely the forces which make for the preservation of the group, not merely the desire to please the God of the Hebrews for the sake of the material favors which He might render the Hebrews, but the factors which make for the betterment of humanity as such. As we examine the laws of the Hebrews, even at so late a time as the completion of the formal Codes, we are indeed struck by traces of primitive survivals (Nu 5:11-31). There are some injunctions whose purpose we cannot well understand. But, on the other hand, the vast mass of the legislation had to do with really human considerations. There are rules concerning Sanitation (Lev 13), both as it touches the life of the group and of the individual; laws whose mastery begets emphasis, not merely upon external consequences, but upon the inner result in the life of the individual (Psa 51:3); and prohibitions which would indicate that morality, at least in its plainer decencies, had come to be valued on its own account. If we were to seek for some clue to the development of the moral life of the Hebrews we might well find it in this emphasis upon the growing demands of human life as such. A suggestive writer has pointed out that the apparently meaningless commandment, Thou shalt not boil a kid in its mother’s milk (Exo 23:19), has back of it a real human purpose, that there are some things which in themselves are revolting apart from any external consequences (see also Lev 18).

3. Changing Conception of Character of God: Obligations of Power:

An index of the growth of the moral life of the people is to be found in the changing conception of the character of God. We need not enter into the question as to just where on the moral plane the idea of the God of the Hebrews started, but from the very beginning we see clearly that the Hebrews believed in their God as one passionately devoted to the right (Gen 18:25). It may well be that at the start the God of the Hebrews was largely a God of War, but it is to be noticed that His enmity was against the peoples who had little regard for the larger human considerations. It has often been pointed out that one proof of the inspiration of the Scriptures is to be found in their moral superiority to the Scriptures of the peoples around about the Hebrews. If the Hebrew writers used material which was common property of Chaldeans, Babylonians, and other peoples, they nevertheless used these materials with a moral difference. They breathed into them a moral life which forever separates them from the Scriptures of other peoples. The marvel also of Hebrew history is that in the midst of revoltingly immoral surroundings the Hebrews grew to such ideals of human worth. The source of these ideals is to be found in their thougth of God. Of course, in moral progress there is a reciprocal effect; the thought of God affects the thought of human life and the thought of human life affects the thought of God; but the Hebrews no sooner came to a fresh moral insight than they made their moral discovery a part of the character of God. From the beginning, we repeat, the God of the Hebrews was a God directed in His moral wrath against all manner of abominations, aberrations and abnormalities. The purpose of God, according to the Hebrews, was to make a people separated in the sense that they were to be free from anything which would detract from a full moral life (Lev 20:22).

We can trace the more important steps in the growth of the Hebrew ideal. First, there was an increasingly clear discernment that certain things are to be ruled out at once as immoral. The primitive decencies upon which individual and social life depended were discerned at an early period (compare passages in Leviticus cited above). Along with this it must be admitted there was a slower approach to some ideals which we today consider important, the ideals of the marriage relations for example (Deu 24:1, Deu 24:2). Then there was a growing sense of what constitutes moral obligation in the discharge of responsibilities upon the part of men toward their fellows (Isa 5:8, Isa 5:23). There was increasing realization also of what God, as a moral Being, is obligated to do. The hope of salvation of nations and individuals rests at once upon the righteousness of God.

By the time of Isaiah the righteousness of God has come to include the obligations of power (Isa 63:1). God will save His people, not merely because He has promised to save them, but because He must save them (Isa 42:6). The must is moral. If the people of Israel show themselves unworthy, God must punish them; but if a remnant, even a small remnant, show themselves faithful, God must show His favor toward them. Moral worth is not conceived of as something that is to be paid for by external rewards, but if God is moral He must not treat the righteous and the unrighteous alike. This conception of what God must do as an obligated Being influences profoundly the Hebrew interpretation of the entire course of history (Isa 10:20, Isa 10:21).

Upon this ideal of moral obligation there grows later the thought of the virtue of vicarious suffering (Isa 53:1-12). The sufferings of the good man and of God for those who do not in themselves deserve such sufferings (for them) are a mark of a still higher righteousness (see HOSEA, BOOK OF). The movement of the Scriptures is all the way from the thought of a God who gives battle for the right to the thought of a God who receives in Himself the heaviest shocks of that battle that others may have opportunity for moral life.

These various lines of moral development come, of course, to their crown in the New Testament in the life and death of Christ as set before us in the Gospels and interpreted by the apostles. Jesus stated certain moral axioms so clearly that the world never will escape their power. He said some things once and for all, and He did some things once and for all; that is to say, in His life and death He set on high the righteousness of God as at once moral obligation and self-sacrificing love (Joh 3:16) and with such effectiveness that the world has not escaped and cannot escape this righteous influence (Joh 12:32). Moreover, the course of apostolic and subsequent history has shown that Christ put a winning and compelling power into the idea of righteousness that it would otherwise have lacked (Rom 8:31, Rom 8:32).

4. Righteousness as Inner:

The ideas at work throughout the course of Hebrew and Christian history are, of course, at work today. Christianity deepens the sense of obligation to do right. It makes the moral spirit essential. Then it utilizes every force working for the increase of human happiness to set on high the meaning of righteousness. Jesus spoke of Himself as life, and declared that He came that men might have life and have it more abundantly (Joh 10:10). The keeping of the commandments plays, of course, a large part in the unfolding of the life of the righteous Christian, but the keeping of the commandments is not to be conceived of in artificial or mechanical fashion (Luk 10:25-37). With the passage of the centuries some commandments once conceived of as essential drop into the secondary place, and other commandments take the controlling position. In Christian development increasing place is given for certain swift insights of the moral spirit. We believe that some things are righteous because they at once appeal to us as righteous. Again, some other things seem righteous because their consequences are beneficial, both for society and for the individual. Whatever makes for the largest life is in the direction of righteousness. In interpreting life, however, we must remember the essentially Christian conception that man does not live through outer consequences alone. In all thought of consequences the chief place has to be given to inner consequences. By the surrender of outward happiness and outward success a man may attain inner success. The spirit of the cross is still the path to the highest righteousness.

5. Righteousness as Social:

The distinctive note in emphasis upon righteousness in our own day is the stress laid upon social service. This does not mean that Christianity is to lose sight of the worth of the individual in himself. We have come pretty clearly to see that the individual is the only moral end in himself. Righteousness is to have as its aim the upbuilding of individual lives. The commandments of the righteous life are not for the sake of society as a thing in itself. Society is nothing apart from the individuals that compose it; but we are coming to see that individuals have larger relationships than we had once imagined and greater responsibilities than we had dreamed of. The influence of the individual touches others at more points than we had formerly realized. We have at times condemned the system of things as being responsible for much human misery which we now see can be traced to the agency of individuals. The employer, the day-laborer, the professional man, the public servant, all these have large responsibilities for the life of those around. The unrighteous individual has a power of contaminating other individuals, and his deadliness we have just begun to understand. All this is receiving new emphasis in our present-day preaching of righteousness. While our social relations are not ends in themselves, they are mighty means for reaching individuals in large numbers. The Christian conception of redeemed humanity is not that of society as an organism existing on its own account, but that of individuals knit very closely together in their social relationships and touching one another for good in these relationships (1Co 1:2; Rev 7:9, Rev 7:10). If we were to try to point out the line in which the Christian doctrine of righteousness is to move more and more through the years, we should have to emphasize this element of obligation to society. This does not mean that a new gospel is to supersede the old or even place itself alongside the old. It does mean that the righteousness of God and the teaching of Christ and the cross, which are as ever the center of Christianity, are to find fresh force in the thought of the righteousness of the Christian as binding itself, not merely by commandments to do the will of God in society, but by the inner spirit to live the life of God out into society.

6. Righteousness as Expanding in Content with Growth in Ideals of Human

Worth:

In all our thought of righteousness it must be borne in mind that there is nothing in Christian revelation which will tell us what righteousness calls for in every particular circumstance. The differences between earlier and later practical standards of conduct and the differences between differing standards in different circumstances have led to much confusion in the realm of Christian thinking. We can keep our bearing, however, by remembering the double element in righteousness which we mentioned in the beginning; on the one hand, the will to do right, and, on the other, the difficulty of determining in a particular circumstance just what the right is. The larger Christian conceptions always have an element of fluidity, or, rather, an element of expansiveness. For example, it is clearly a Christian obligation to treat all men with a spirit of good will or with a spirit of Christian love. But what does love call for in a particular case? We can only answer the question by saying that love seeks for whatever is best, both for him who receives and for him who gives. This may lead to one course of conduct in one situation and to quite a different course in another. We must, however, keep before us always the aim of the largest life for all persons whom we can reach. Christian righteousness today is even more insistent upon material things, such as sanitary arrangements, than was the Code of Moses. The obligation to use the latest knowledge for the hygienic welfare is just as binding now as then, but the latest knowledge is a changing term. Material progress, education, spiritual instruction, are all influences which really make for full life.

Not only is present-day righteousness social and growing; it is also concerned, to a large degree, with the thought of the world which now is. Righteousness has too often been conceived of merely as the means of preparing for the life of some future Kingdom of Heaven. Present-day emphasis has not ceased to think of the life beyond this, but the life beyond this can best be met and faced by those who have been in the full sense righteous in the life that now is. There is here no break in true Christian continuity. The seers who have understood Christianity best always have insisted that to the fullest degree the present world must be redeemed by the life-giving forces of Christianity. We still insist that all idea of earthly righteousness takes its start from heavenly righteousness, or, rather, that the righteousness of man is to be based upon his conception of the righteousness of God. Present-day thinking concerns itself largely with the idea of the Immanence of God. God is in this present world. This does not mean that there may not be other worlds, or are not other worlds, and that God is not also in those worlds; but the immediate revelation of God to us is in our present world. Our present world then must be the sphere in which the righteousness of God and of man is to be set forth. God is conscience, and God is love. The present sphere is to be used for the manifestation of His holy love. The chief channel through which that holy love is to manifest itself is the conscience and love of the Christian believer. But even these terms are not to be used in the abstract. There is an abstract conscientiousness which leads to barren living: the life gets out of touch with things that are real. There is an experience of love which exhausts itself in well-wishing. Both conscience and love are to be kept close to the earth by emphasis upon the actual realities of the world in which we live.

Literature.

G. B. Stevens, The Christian Doctrine of Salvation; A. E. Garvie, Handbook of Christian Apologetics; Borden P. Bowne, Principles of Ethics; Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics; A. B. Bruce, The Kingdom of God; W. N. Clarke, The Ideal of Jesus; H. C. King, The Ethics of Jesus.

Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

Righteousness

A term frequently occurring in scripture expressing an attribute of God which maintains what is consistent with His own character, and necessarily judges what is opposed to it – sin. In man also it is the opposite of lawlessness or sin, 1Jn 3:4-7; but it is plainly declared of man that, apart from a work of grace in him, “there is none righteous, no, not one.” Psa 14:1-3; Rom 3:10. But God has, independently of man, revealed His righteousness in the complete judgement and setting aside of sin; and of the state with which, in man, sin was connected. This was effected by the Son of God becoming man and taking on the cross, vicariously, the place of man as under the curse of the law, and in His being made sin and glorifying God in bearing the judgement of sin. Hence grace is established on the foundation of righteousness. The righteousness of God, declared and expressed in the saints in Christ, is thus the divinely given answer to Christ having been made sin. On the other hand, the lake of fire is an eternal expression of God’s righteous judgement. At the present moment God’s righteousness is revealed in the gospel and apprehended by faith.

This is an entirely different principle from that on which the Jew went, namely, that of seeking to establish their own righteousness, and not submitting to the righteousness of God. Rom 10:3. Their father Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness; and the faith of the believer is counted to him for righteousness, apart from works. Rom 4:3; Rom 4:5.

Christ Jesus is made unto us righteousness from God. 1Co 1:30. He is the end of the law for righteousness to all those who believe.

Besides the above, there is the practical righteousness which characterises every Christian. By knowing God’s righteousness he becomes the servant of righteousness. The bride of the Lamb is represented as “arrayed in fine linen, clean and white:” which is “the righteousnesses of the saints.” Rev 19:8.

The doctrine of the imputed righteousness of Christ, though largely acknowledged in Christendom, is not found in scripture. The explanation generally given of the doctrine is that Christ having perfectly kept the law, His obedience has formed a legal righteousness that is imputed to the believer as if the latter had himself kept the law. One passage of scripture proves this view to be incorrect: “If righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” Gal 2:21. The force of the doctrine is to maintain the validity of the law in application to believers; and it stands in the way of their apprehending their death to the law by the body of Christ, so as to be married to Christ raised up from the dead, to bring forth fruit to God. Rom 7:4.

Fuente: Concise Bible Dictionary

Righteousness

By faith

Gen 15:6; Rom 4:3; Rom 4:5; Rom 4:9; Rom 4:11; Rom 4:13; Rom 4:20; Rom 4:22; Rom 4:24

Garment of

Job 29:14; Mat 22:11-14

Imputed on account of obedience

Deu 6:25; Job 33:26

Fruits of

Deu 6:25; Jos 22:31; Psa 1:3; Psa 15:1-5; Psa 24:3-5; Psa 101:3-4; Psa 106:3; Psa 112:4-8; Pro 2:5-20; Pro 10:2; Pro 11:5-6; Pro 11:18-19; Pro 11:30; Pro 12:28; Pro 10:16; Pro 13:6; Pro 14:34; Pro 21:3; Pro 29:7; Isa 28:17; Isa 32:16-18; Isa 33:15-17; Isa 55:12-13; Isa 58:6-14; Isa 62:1; Eze 18:5-9; Eze 33:15; Dan 12:3; Hos 10:12; Mal 3:3; Mal 4:2; Mat 5:20; Mat 12:35; Mar 3:33-35; Mat 12:50; Luk 3:10-14; Luk 8:15; Joh 3:21; Joh 3:33; Joh 8:47; Joh 8:49; Joh 13:35; Joh 14:21-24; Joh 15:4-5; Joh 15:8; Joh 15:12; Act 9:36; Act 11:29-30; Act 19:19; Rom 5:1-5; Rom 6:19-22; Rom 7:4-6; Rom 8:4-6; Rom 14:17-19; Rom 15:1-7; 1Co 4:19-20; 1Co 12:3; 1Co 13:1-13; 2Co 5:17; 2Co 7:10-11; 2Co 9:10; 2Co 10:5; 2Co 13:5; Gal 4:6; Gal 5:22-23; Gal 6:7-8; Eph 1:13-14; Eph 5:9; Phi 1:11; Phi 1:27-29; Phi 2:13; Phi 3:12-14; Phi 4:11-13; Col 1:12-13; Col 3:3; Col 3:5; Col 3:9-17; 1Th 1:3; 1Th 1:9-10; 2Th 1:3-5; 1Ti 2:9-10; 1Ti 5:9-10; 2Ti 2:22; 2Ti 4:6-8; Tit 2:2; Tit 2:11-12; Tit 3:14; Phm 1:5-6; Jas 1:27; Jas 2:14-26; Jas 3:11-18; 1Pe 3:1-11; 1Pe 3:14; 1Pe 4:2; 2Pe 1:5-9; 1Jn 2:3-6; 1Jn 2:10-11; 1Jn 2:24; 1Jn 2:29; 1Jn 3:3; 1Jn 3:6-7; 1Jn 3:9-11; 1Jn 3:14; 1Jn 3:17-24; 1Jn 4:4-21; 1Jn 5:1-5; 1Jn 5:10; 1Jn 5:13; 1Jn 5:18; 2Jn 1:9; 3Jn 1:11; Rev 2:2-3; Rev 2:19

Symbolized

Eze 47:12; Rev 22:2 Sin, Fruits of; Works, Good

Fuente: Nave’s Topical Bible

Righteousness

is “the character or quality of being right or just;” it was formerly spelled “rightwiseness,” which clearly expresses the meaning. It is used to denote an attribute of God, e.g., Rom 3:5, the context of which shows that “the righteousness of God” means essentially the same as His faithfulness, or truthfulness, that which is consistent with His own nature and promises; Rom 3:25-26 speaks of His “righteousness” as exhibited in the Death of Christ, which is sufficient to show men that God is neither indifferent to sin nor regards it lightly. On the contrary, it demonstrates that quality of holiness in Him which must find expression in His condemnation of sin.

“Dikaiosune is found in the sayings of the Lord Jesus, (a) of whatever is right or just in itself, whatever conforms to the revealed will of God, Mat 5:6, Mat 5:10, Mat 5:20; Joh 16:8, Joh 16:10; (b) whatever has been appointed by God to be acknowledged and obeyed by man. Mat 3:15; Mat 21:32; (c) the sum total of the requirements of God, Mat 6:33; (d) religious duties, Mat 6:1 (distinguished as almsgiving, man’s duty to his neighbor, Mat 6:2-4, prayer, his duty to God, Mat 6:5-15, fasting, the duty of self-control, Mat 6:16-18).

“In the preaching of the Apostles recorded in Acts the word has the same general meaning. So also in Jam 1:20; Jam 3:18, in both Epp. of Peter, 1st John and the Revelation. In 2Pe 1:1, ‘the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ,’ is the righteous dealing of God with sin and with sinners on the ground of the Death of Christ. ‘Word of righteousness,’ Heb 5:13, is probably the gospel, and the Scriptures as containing the gospel, wherein is declared the righteousness of God in all its aspects.

“This meaning of dikaiosune, right action, is frequent also in Paul’s writings, as in all five of its occurrences in Rom. 6; Eph 6:14, etc. But for the most part he uses it of that gracious gift of God to men whereby all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ are brought into right relationship with God. This righteousness is unattainable by obedience to any law, or by any merit of man’s own, or any other condition than that of faith in Christ … The man who trusts in Christ becomes ‘the righteousness of God in Him,’ 2Co 5:21, i.e., becomes in Christ all that God requires a man to be, all that he could never be in himself. Because Abraham accepted the Word of God, making it his own by that act of the mind and spirit which is called faith, and, as the sequel showed, submitting himself to its control, therefore God accepted him as one who fulfilled the whole of His requirements, Rom 4:3. …

“Righteousness is not said to be imputed to the believer save in the sense that faith is imputed (“reckoned’ is the better word) for righteousness. It is clear that in Rom 4:6, Rom 4:11, ‘righteousness reckoned’ must be understood in the light of the context, ‘faith reckoned for righteousness,’ Rom 4:3, Rom 4:5, Rom 4:9, Rom 4:22. ‘For’ in these places is eis, which does not mean ‘instead of,’ but ‘with a view to.’ The faith thus exercised brings the soul into vital union with God in Christ, and inevitably produces righteousness of life, that is, conformity to the will of God.” * [* From Notes on Galatians, by Hogg and Vine, pp. 246, 247.]

is the concrete expression of “righteousness:” see JUSTIFICATION, A, No. 2.

Note: In Heb 1:8, AV, euthutes, “straightness, uprightness” (akin to euthus “straight, right”), is translated “righteousness” (RV, “uprightness;” AV, marg., “rightness, or straightness”).

Fuente: Vine’s Dictionary of New Testament Words

Righteousness

justice, holiness. The righteousness of God is the essential perfection of his nature; sometimes it is put for his justice. The righteousness of Christ denotes, not only his absolute perfection, but, is taken for his perfect obedience unto death, and his suffering the penalty of the law in our stead. The righteousness of the law is that obedience which the law requires. The righteousness of faith is the justification which is received by faith.

Fuente: Biblical and Theological Dictionary