gog2
CONTINUED
NOT BY WORKS
In Eph. 2:8-9, Paul contrasts this salvation by grace with salvation by works.
“2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, 2:9 not as a result of works, that no one should boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9 NAS)
We have already examined salvation by grace. What is salvation by works? Salvation by works is a salvation that is earned; it is merited.
“4:4 Now to the one who works his wages is not reckoned according to grace [as a gift] but according to debt [something owed since it was earned] 4:5 But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.” (Rom. 4:4-5 ERS).
The works that are supposed to earn salvation are more than just good works (good deeds or acts); they are meritorious works; they are good deeds that earn salvation. Each good work is regarded as having a certain quantity of merit attached to it; when the good work is done, the merit is imputed or reckoned to the account of the person performing the act. Correspondingly, each evil or bad work is regarded as having a certain quantity of demerit or negative merit (penalty) attached to it so that the demerit is reckoned to the account of the person doing the evil work (sin). At the final judgment each person’s account is balanced — the merits and demerits are weighed against each other. If the merit outweighs the demerit, that person is saved — he has earned eternal life. If the demerit outweighs the merit, that person is condemned — he is punished eternally for his sins. This merit scheme underlies and is implied by all teaching that salvation is by works.
The Bible very clearly teaches that salvation is not by works ( Eph. 2:8-9; Titus 3:5). Salvation is the gift of God, given by His grace and received through faith. Man cannot be saved by his meritorious good works; he cannot earn salvation by his works. This is the clear and explicit teaching of Scripture. Salvation by grace and salvation by meritorious works are mutually exclusive and opposing ways of salvation.
“But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.” (Rom. 11:6)
Now, if we ask why man cannot be saved by his works, that is, what is the reason man cannot earn salvation by his meritorious works, the usual answer given to this question is that man apart from God’s grace is not able to do good works by which he can earn salvation. Man, it is usually said, is not only not able to do good works, but he is able only to sin apart from the grace of God.
Now, the curious implication of this answer is that if a man were able to do good works — able not sin — then he could earn salvation and be saved by his meritorious works. This implication is made explicit in the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church since the time of Augustine in the early fifth century, that by the grace of God, which is infused into a man at his baptism, and renewed by the sacraments, he is able to do good works by which salvation (eternal life) may be earned. Accordingly, salvation is ultimately and fundamentally by works even though the grace of God makes possible the meritorious works.
It was this teaching that the Protestant Reformers opposed. They rejected the idea that grace was something infused into man to make it possible for him to earn salvation. Grace, said the Reformers, is God’s unmerited favor, and salvation (eternal life) was a gift to be received by faith. But, they said, that eternal life was earned by the active obedience of Christ during His life on earth. This “merits of Christ” is imputed to the believer’s account when he first believes in Christ. Thus salvation is still ultimately and fundamentally by meritorious works. It is true that they said that it was not by our works and it was a gift received by faith. But salvation was still by works — not by our works but by the meritorious works of another, Jesus Christ. Christ by his active obedience has earned for us eternal life. It is a vicarious salvation by works. This explanation of salvation like the earlier Roman Catholic explanation mixes grace and works, which Paul says that cannot be done or grace will no longer be grace ( Rom. 11:6). And as it turned out in the history of Protestantism, the strong dynamic concept of God’s grace as God’s love in action is reduced to the weak idea of grace as unmerited favor.
Salvation is not by meritorious works, not because a man is not able to do them, but because God does not deal with mankind on the basis of the merit scheme. As Jesus made clear in his parable of the householder (Matt. 20:1-16), God does not act toward us on the basis of our merit but on the basis of His generosity. And because God does not treat mankind according to their desserts, but according to His love, He often puts the least deserving before the more deserving. “The last will be first and the first last.” (Matt. 20:16; 19:30; Mark 10:31; Luke 13:30)
The Apostle Paul in opposing salvation by works refers to meritorious works as “the righteousness of the law” (Rom. 10:5; Phil. 3:6, 9) and as “the works of the law” (Rom. 3:20; 4:2-5; Gal. 3:2, 5, 10). The law was legalistically considered to be the standard by which the merits of good works can be determined. This is a distortion of the Mosaic law and is a characteristic of legalism.
What is legalism? Legalism does not mean just having rules or laws; it is a misuse of rules and laws. Theologically, legalism is a distortion of the law of God, a misunderstanding of the law given by God to Israel. The law of God is not legalism. The law of God was a covenant relationship between God and the people Israel. Unlike the covenants God made with Noah and with Abraham, which were covenants of sheer grace, with no conditions attached to the receiving of the blessings of the covenant, the Mosaic covenant was conditional. God made unconditional promises to Noah and to Abraham of what God Himself would do. But the blessings of the Mosaic covenant were conditioned upon Israel’s obedience to God (Deut. 28:1-14); their disobedience to Him would bring curses upon them (Deut. 28:15-20; 30:1-20). These conditions are given in the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:3-17; Deut. 5:6-21) and other statutes and ordinances. These commandments were not an end in themselves; they were specific ways in which they were to obey God. The law is concerned with Israel’s personal relationship to God: to love and obey God and not to worship or serve other gods. The history of Israel shows that they did not obey God. They disobeyed Him by turning from Him to other gods. From the time of Moses through the times of the judges and kings they kept backsliding into idolatry. The prophets over and over again rebuked them for the sin of idolatry. The curses that God said He would bring upon them for their disobedience and idolatry (Deut. 28:36-52, 63-66; 29:24-28) came upon them; they were scattered among the nations: the northern tribes in 722 B.C. by Assyria and the southern tribes in 586 B.C. by Babylonia. When they returned from the 70 years of Babylonian captivity, the Jews never again went into the idolatry of worshipping pagan gods.
But it seems that very soon after the last of the O.T. prophets, Malachi, they developed an idolatry of the law. They began to trust in the law (Rom. 2:17). The law became an absolute standard to be obeyed. Obedience to the law subtly took the place of obedience to God. Keeping the law became a meritorious work that could earn God’s favor and blessings. Eventually there evolved the idea that one’s eternal destiny depends upon the amount of merit or demerit that one accumulates during one’s life-time. This whole scheme of merit with its absolute standard of the law is what we mean by legalism.
Jesus and the early apostles, particularly Paul, opposed this Jewish legalism. Paul combated the Judaizers’ attempts to put Christians under the Mosaic law. When we realize the covenant nature of the law, we can see why this was not possible. Since the Christian’s relationship to God was already established in the New covenant, it could not at the same time be established under the Old Mosaic covenant. Then it must be that what the Judaizers were trying to do was to make the law in an absolute sense necessary for a right relationship to God. This is not just the Mosaic law; it is legalism. And Paul refused to allow it.
Even though Paul’s opposition to the Judaizers in the early church effectively stopped the entrance into Christianty of the Jewish legalism (see the Letter to the Galatians), this did not stop another form of the legalism from creeping into Christian thought and practice some 200 years later. In this later form of legalism the rationalism of the Greek philosophers had been wedded to the legal philosophy of the Romans developed by such earlier writers as Cicero (1st century B.C.). This rationalistic legalism crept into Christian theology by way of a 3rd century lawyer and Christian apologist, Tertullian, and since the time of Augustine (5th century) has formed the basis of most Roman Catholic and Protestant theology.
The following statements will summarize our discussion concerning the Law and the distortion of the law called Legalism.
A. WHAT IS THE LAW?
The law is God’s conditional covenant with Israel; it is different from the unconditional covenants of grace with Noah and Abraham. The law was given to clarify man’s relationship to God and to his fellowman. The law intensifies wrath, gives knowledge of sin, but cannot produce righteousness because it cannot make alive.
“Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not;
for if a law had been given which could make alive,
then righteousness would indeed be by the law.” (Gal. 3:21)
That is, since the law cannot make alive, it cannot take away sin. There is no salvation by the law.
1. Legalism is a distortion of the law of God and a misunderstanding of it.
2. In its fullest form, legalism consists of four distortions of the law.
a. Legalism absolutizes the law of God by making the law into ultimate reality. This may be done either by making the law stand by itself apart from and above God or by identifying God with the law: “God is law.”
b. Legalism depersonalizes the law of God by making the law into a thing that is over man and between God and man.
c. Legalism quantitizes the law of God by attaching to the law’s commands and prohibitions various quantities of merit and demerit.
d. Legalism externalizes the law of God by making the law regulate the outward acts and conduct rather than the inner decisions and orientation of the will.
3. Legalism misunderstands sin as just a breaking of the law and/or falling short of the standard of moral perfection contained in the law.
4. Legalism misunderstands the righteousness of God as justice, that is, as that principle of God’s being that requires and demands the reward of good work (comformity to the Law) because of their intrinsic merit (remunerative justice) and the punishment of every transgression of the law with a proportionate punishment because of its own intrinsic demerit (retributive justice).
5. Legalism misunderstands death as the necessary penalty for sin.
6. Legalism misunderstands God’s wrath as necessary divine retribution.
7. Legalsim misunderstands salvation as eternal life earned by meritorious works.
C. WHAT IS CHRISTIAN LEGALISM?
1. Christian legalism misunderstands the personal origin of sin in the doctrine of original sin; that is, sin is an inherited sinful nature. This doctrine was developed by Augustine during the Augustinian-Pelagian controversy to explain why man can not be saved by meritorious works, and was expanded by Calvinism as the imputation of the sin of Adam to all his descendants.
2. Christian legalism misunderstands salvation as either grace infused by the sacraments in order to be able to earn eternal life by meritorious works (Roman Catholic doctrine), or as the imputation of Christ’s righteousness; that is, the merits earned by Christ’s active obedience is imputed to the account of the believer (Orthodox Protestant doctrine).
3. Christian legalism misunderstands Christ’s death as a vicarious penal satisfaction, a paying of the penalty of sin to satisfy God’s justice by the passive obedience of Christ in our stead on the cross.
4. Christian legalism misunderstands the Christian life as a struggle of the new nature with the sinful nature, misinterpreting Romans 7 as the normal Christian life.
The doctrine of the sinful nature was introduced into Christian theology by Augustine in the early fifth century A.D. to explain why man can not save himself by his meritorious works. Instead of denying that salvation has anything to do with meritorious works, Augustine assumed that salvation is by meritorious works and he taught that since the fall, because of his inherited corrupt or sinful nature, man cannot do meritorious works to earn salvation apart from the grace of God. The grace of God which is infused into man’s will by the sacraments enables him to earn eternal life.
But Augustine’s assumption is wrong. According to the Scriptures ( Eph. 2:8-9; Rom. 4:4-5), salvation is not by meritorious works, eternal life is not earned by meritorious works, and the doctrine of the sinful nature is unnecessary to deny that man can save himself by meritorious works. According to the Scriptures, man cannot save himself because he cannot make himself alive by the law, not because he cannot do meritorious works.
“Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not; for if a law had been given which could make alive, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.” (Gal. 3:21)
Since the law cannot make alive, there is no salvation by the law. The law cannot deliver one from death nor from sin, neither can the law produce life or righteousness. The sinful nature is not needed to explain why man cannot save himself by meritorious works, because the law was not given by God for salvation. God gave the law, not for salvation from sin, but for the knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:19); that is, to show what should be man’s right personal relationship to God and to his fellow men (Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:37-40). This knowledge does not save man but only shows man what he ought to be but it cannot make him to be that. Salvation is only through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, not by the law and not by human self-effort (the flesh) to earn it. Man is spiritually dead and the law cannot make him alive ( Gal. 3:21). But the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus makes alive those who are spritually dead when they receive by faith the risen Jesus Christ as their Lord and their God. Jesus Christ is Life, and he who has Him has life and is alive to God (I John 5:11-12).
One of the implications of Augustine’s doctrine of the sinful or corrupt nature of man is that salvation is entirely the work of God (monergism), since man, because of his sinful nature, is totally unable to do good works in order to earn salvation by them. According to Augustine, not only is the grace of God the work of God but so is faith, since salvation is “by grace through faith” ( Eph. 2:8). According to Augustine, the faith that receives the grace of God is also the work of God. This monergism totally eliminates the human will from any part or place in salvation. Augustine understood the human will, not as a choice between sin and righteousness, but choice according to one’s nature: the choice of sin if one’s nature is sinful, the choice of righteousness if one’s nature is good. So accordingly all men’s choices are sin because their nature is sinful. And the grace of God must enable the will of man if he is going to do meritorious works to earn his salvation. This efficient grace is received through the sacraments. Thus salvation is a monergism, where God does all that is needed to earn salvation, not a synergism, where God’s act of grace enables the will of man to earn salvation, as was taught by the later Roman Church.
Furthermore, in Augustine’s teaching, grace is reduced to something that enables the human will to do good works so that it can earn salvation. These views of Augustine concerning salvation follow from his view of human nature as sinful or corrupt. The Calvinist Reformers denied this view of grace and sees the grace of God as the unmerited favor of God in which God gives to the elect the righteousness or merits earned for them by Christ’s active obedience. That is, God in Christ has earned for them the salvation that they themselves cannot earn because of their sinful nature. But the Calvinist is wrong; righteousness is not merits but is a right personal relationship to God through faith ( Rom. 4:4-5). And God puts man into this right personal relationship to Himself by His grace, not by vicarious meritorious works that was earned for them by another. The grace of God is not just the unmerited favor of God, but it is the love of God in action to save man from death to life.
“2:4 But God who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, 2:5 even when we were dead in our failures,
made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” (Eph. 2:4-5 ERS).
According to these verses, the grace of God is God’s love in action. God’s grace is more than just His favor; it is His love acting to do something good for us. The parallelism between the phrase in last part of verse 5 “(by grace you have been saved)” and the phrase in verse 4 and in the first part of verse 5, “God…out of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our failures, made us alive together with Christ”, shows that the grace of God by which we are saved is God’s love acting to make us alive together with Christ. That is, this salvation by the grace of God is salvation from death to life. And since this salvation from death to life is by the love of God, then the grace of God that saves us is God’s love in action to save us. Now since God’s love in action to save us is more than His favor, then the grace of God is more than just His favor. That is, the grace of God is God’s love in action, not just His favor. And because He loves us, He has acted to save us.
Calvinism’s view of salvation like Augustine’s is monergistic, that is, God alone is active in salvation, because it believes that since man’s nature is sinful and man does what his nature is, then all the acts of man are sinful and he cannot do any righteous act to earn salvation. Therefore, God alone must earn it for him. Calvinism, denying the Augustinian view that man does these meritorious acts by the efficient grace of God that man receives from God through the sacraments, asserts that God alone does these meritorious acts through the active obedience of Christ; Christ has earned salvation for us. God alone is active in man’s salvation. Not only is the grace of God the work of God but so also is faith, since salvation is “by grace through faith” ( Eph. 2:8). According to Calvinism, the faith that receives the gift of God is also the work of God. The Calvinistic doctrine of Irresistible Grace teaches that God gives the elect a new nature by which they can believe and thus be saved. Thus not only is salvation by grace as a gift but so also is faith the gift of God. But Calvinism is wrong. The phrase in Eph. 2:8, “and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God”, refers not to faith but to salvation. In the Greek of this verse, the demonstrative pronoun translated “that” agrees in gender (masculine) with the verbal participle translated “have been saved”, and not with the noun translated “faith” which is feminine. Salvation is the gift which God has given by His grace and is received by man’s faith. And this faith does not earn this salvation by meritorious works. For faith is not a meritorious work.
“2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that [salvation] is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 2:9 not as the result of works, that no one should boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9 ERS)
But not only has the Biblical concept of sin been misunderstood by legalism but, correspondingly, the Biblical concept of righteousness as a right relationship with God through faith in God ( Rom. 4:4-5) has also been misunderstood as a keeping of the rules, a conformity to the law in thought, word and deed, a living up to the divine standard. Righteousness is misunderstood as moral perfection, that is, a conformity to the divine standard without exception, sinless perfection. Since man is created, according to legalism, under the law and for the law, man’s highest good and final goal is this moral perfection, this legal righteousness. To stand spotless and without blame before the law is thought to be man’s ultimate hope. This righteousness is often conceived in terms of merit; each good deed has a certain quantity of righteousness or merit associated with it. During the course of his life, a man acquires merit by his good works or demerit by his sins, transgressions of the law. At the final judgment these will be weighed in the double-pan balance of justice (dike). And justice will render to each impartially that which is due to him (he has earned it). If the merits outweigh the demerits, the man is legally declared righteous and legally entitled to eternal life and blessedness (he has earned it). On the other hand, if the demerits predominate, he justly deserves and receives eternal death, punishment, pain and suffering. In order for man to be saved, he must have this righteousness, this moral perfection. Thus man needs to be saved, not only because he is a guilty sinner, but also because he does not have this legal righteousness.
This legalistic concept of righteousness is a misunderstanding of the Biblical concept of righteousness. The Biblical concept of righteousness is revealed in the story of Abraham. After God revealed His promises to Abraham, the Scripture says, “then he believed in the Lord; and He [God] reckoned it [his faith] to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6; see also Rom. 4:3 and Gal. 3:6). Abraham believed the promises of God and his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness.
“4:3For what does the scriptures say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.'” (Rom. 4:3)
“4:9 … We say that faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness.” (Rom. 4:9)
And Abraham’s faith was reckoned to him as righteousness because faith in God is righteousness, the righteousness of faith (Rom. 4:16-22). Righteousness is not a quality that we possess, neither merit that we have earned or have imputed to our account, but a right relationship to God. Faith in God relates us rightly to God. A man is righteous when he is in right relationship to God. And faith in God, believing the promises of God, trusting in God is being in right relationship to God. The righteousness of faith is the opposite of sin; sin is trusting in a false god and righteousness is trusting in the true God. Just as man’s basic sin is idolatry, so man’s basic righteousness is faith in, allegiance to and worship of the true God from the heart; this is righteousness of faith. It has nothing to do with merit just as sin has nothing to do with demerit.
Legalism also misinterprets the righteousness of God as justice, that is, as that principle of God’s being that requires and demands the reward of good work (comformity to the Law) because of their intrinsic merit (remunerative justice) and the punishment of every transgression of the law with a proportionate punishment because of its own intrinsic demerit (retributive justice). According to this view, for God to do otherwise He would be unrighteous and unjust. Absolute justice, which according to this legalistic point of view is the eternal being of God, is said to require and demand, of necessity, the reward of meritorious good works and the punishment of sin.
But the righteousness of God in the Scriptures is not justice, an attribute of God whereby He must render to each what is he has merited nor is a quantity of merit which God gives, but righteousness of God is the act or activity of God whereby He puts or sets right that which is wrong. [1] Very often in the Old Testament the righteousness of God is the action of God for the vindication and deliverance of His people; it is the activity in which God saves His people by rescuing them from their oppressors.
“In thee, O Lord, do I seek refuge; let me never be put to shame; in thy righteousness deliver me!” (Psa. 31:1)
“In thy righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline thy ear to me, and save me!” (Psa. 71:2)
“143:11 For thy name’s sake, O Lord, preserve my life! In thy righteousness bring me out of trouble! 143:12 And in thy steadfast love cut off my enemies. and destroy all my adversaries, for I am thy servant.” (Psa. 143:11-12)
Thus the righteousness of God is often a synonym for the salvation or deliverance of God. In the Old Testament, this is clearly shown by the literary device of parallelism which is a characteristic of Hebrew poetry. [2] Parallelism may be defined as that Hebrew literary device in which the thought and idea in one clause is repeated and amplified in a second and following clause. This parallelism of Hebrew poetry clearly shows that Hebrew poets and prophets made the righteousness of God synonymous with divine salvation:
“The Lord hath made known His salvation: His righteousness hath he openly showed in the sight of the heathen.” (Psa. 98:2 KJV)
“I bring near my righteousness, it shall not be far off, and my salvation shall not tarry; and I will place salvation in Zion for Israel my glory.” (Isa. 46:13 KJV)
“My righteousness is near, my salvation is gone forth, and mine arms shall judge the people; the isles shall wait upon me, and on mine arm shall they trust.” (Isa. 51:5 KJV)
“Thus says the Lord, Preserve justice [judgment], and do righteousness: For my salvation is near to come, And my righteousness to be revealed.” (Isa. 56:1 NAS) (See also Psa. 71:1-2, 15; 119:123; Isa. 45:8; 61:10; 62:1)
From these verses, it is clear that righteousness of God is a synonym for the salvation or deliverance of God.In the Old Testament, the Hebrew noun, tsedeq and tsedaqah, is derived from the Hebrew verb, tsadaq. [3] Although it is usually translated “to be righteous” or “to be justified,” the verb has the primary meaning “to be in the right” rather than “to be righteous.” (Gen. 38:26; Job 11:2; 34:5) [4] The causative form of the verb (hitsdiq) generally translated “to justify” means not “to make righteous” nor “to declare righteous” but rather “to put in the right” or “to set right.” (Ezekiel 16:51-55). Thus it very often has the meaning “to vindicate” or “to give redress to” a person who has suffered wrong. Thus the Hebrew noun (tsedeq) usually translated “righteousness” means an act of vindication or of giving redress. When applied to God, the righteousness of God is God acting to put right the wrong, hence to vindicate and deliver the oppressed. Thus the Biblical concept of the righteousness of God is the action of God whereby He puts or sets right that which is wrong.
The righteous acts of the Lord, or more literally, the righteousnesses of the Lord, referred to in Judges 5:11; I Sam. 12:7-11; Micah 6:3-5; Psa. 103:6-8; Dan. 9:15-16 means the acts of vindication or deliverance which the Lord has done for His people, giving them victory over their enemies. It is in this sense that God is called “a righteous God and a Savior” (Isa. 45:21) and “the Lord our righteousness” (Jer. 23:5-6; 33:15- 16).
A judge or ruler is “righteous” in the Hebrew meaning of the word not because he observes and upholds an abstract standard of Justice, but rather because he comes to the assistance of the injured person and vindicates him. For example, in Psalm 82:2-4:
“82:2 How long will you judge unjustly, And show partiality to the wicked? 82:3 Vindicate the weak and fatherless; Do justice [judgment] to the afflicted and destitute. 82:4 Rescue the weak and needy; Deliver them out of the hand of the wicked.”
(Psalm 82:2-4 NAS. See also Psa. 72:4; 76:9; 103:6; 146:7; Isa. 1:17.)
For the judge to act this way is to show righteousness. A judge in the Old Testament is not one whose business it is to interpret the existing law or to give an impartial verdict in accordance with the established law of the land, but rather he is a deliverer and thus a leader and savior as in the book of Judges (Judges 1:16-17; 3:9-10). His duty and delight is to set things right, to right the wrong; his “judgments” are not words but acts, not legal verdicts but the very active use of God’s right arm. The two functions of a judge are given in Psalm 75:7: “But God is the judge: he puts down one and exalts another.” Since this is a statement concerning God as a judge, it could be taken as a general definition of a Biblical judge. In Psa. 72:1-4, these two functions of Biblical judge are given to the king of Israel.
“72:1 Give the king thy judgment, O God, and thy righteousness to the royal son! 72:2 May he judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment! 72:3 Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness! 72:4 May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, and give deiverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor!” (Psa. 72:1-4 ERS)
These same two functions are ascribed to the future ruler of Israel, the Messiah, according to Isaiah 11:3-5.
“11:3 And His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what His eyes see, or decide by what His ears hear;
11:4 but with righteousness He shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and He shall smite the earth with a rod of His mouth; and with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked. 11:5 Righteousness shall be the girdle of His waist and faithfulness the girdle of His loins.” (Isa. 11:3-5)
His righteousness is shown in the vindication of those who are the victims of evil, the poor and meek of the earth. The righteousness of God is not opposed to the love of God nor does it condition it. On the contrary, it is apart of and the proper expression of God’s love. It is the activity of God’s love to set right the wrong. In the Old Testament, this is shown by the parallelism between love and righteousness.
“But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon those who fear him, and His righteousness to children’s children.” (Psa. 103:17; See also Psa. 33:5; 36:5-6; 40:10; 89:14.)
God expresses His love as righteousness in the activity by which He saves His people from their sins. In His wrath, He opposes the sin that would destroy man whom He loves. In His grace, God removes the sin. The grace of God is the love of God in action to bring salvation unto all men ( Eph. 2:4-5).
“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation unto to all men,” (Titus 2:11 NAS)
The grace of God may properly be called the righteousness of God. For in His love, God acts to deliver His people from their sins, setting them right with Himself.
ENDNOTES FOR “THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD”
[1] Alan Richardson,
An Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament,
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), pp. 79-83, 232-233.
[2] Edward J. Young, An Introduction to the Old Testament
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1950), pp. 281-282.
See also Gleason L. Archer, Jr.,
A Survey of Old Testament Introduction
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1964), pp. 418-420.
[3] C. H. Dodd, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans
(London and Glasgow: Fontana Books, 1959), p. 38.
[4] C. H. Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1964), p. 46.
The Protestant Reformation actually began, not when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses upon the door of the Wittenburg church on 31st of October, 1517, but when Martin Luther rediscovered the meaning of the righteousness of God in Paul’s letter to the Romans. This discovery not only brought peace to Luther’s troubled conscience but it was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Luther’s protest against the errors of the Roman church stems from this discovery. But his discovery was lost by those who came after him, the Protestant scholastics. Luther’s use of the scholastic distinction of active and passive righteousness tended to obscure the Biblical concept of the righteousness of God. Luther obviously rejected the active sense; but the later Lutheran protestant scholastics interpreted Luther as accepting both senses. Because their explanation of the death of Christ was still grounded in the legalistic concept of justice, that is, that Christ died to pay the penalty for man’s sin which the justice of God requires to be paid before God can save man, they had to retain the active sense also. Thus Luther’s discovery of the Biblical understanding of the righteousness of God was obscured and eventually lost.
By identifying the righteousness of God with the passive sense, Luther gave the impression that the righteousness of God is the righteousness from God, that is, the righteousness that man receives from God through faith. But the righteousness from God is not the righteousness of God. These are different though related ideas and must be carefully distinguished. Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians,
“3:8b For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, in order that I may gain Christ 3:9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith, the righteousness from [ek] God that depends upon [epi] faith, …” (Phil. 3:8b-9).
Thus the righteousness from God is the righteousness of faith (Rom. 4:13) which is that right personal relationship to God that results from faith in the true God (Rom. 4:3). Paul writes in his letter to the Romans,
“4:3 For what does the scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.’ 4:4Now to one who works, his wages are not reckoned as a gift but as his due. 4:5And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness …. 4:13The promise to Abraham and his descendants, that they should inherit the world, did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.” (Rom. 4:3-5, 13)
Faith in God is reckoned as righteousness (Rom. 4:5). That is, to trust in God is to be righteous. And this is the righteousness of faith (Rom. 4:13) and the righteousness from God (Phil. 3:9). The righteousness of God, on the other hand, is God acting to set man right with God Himself and, as we shall see below, it is synonymous with salvation.
The righteousness of God is God acting in love for the salvation or deliverance of man. God has acted in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the salvation of man from death, sin and wrath. Since wrath is caused by sin (Rom. 1:18) and sin by death (Rom. 5:12d ERS), salvation is basically from death to life and then from sin to righteousness and then from wrath to peace with God. Reconciliation is salvation from death to life; redemption is salvation from sin to righteousness; and propitiation is salvation from wrath to peace.
This threefold act of God for the salvation of man is the righteousness of God.
These three aspects of salvation are accomplished through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The righteousness of God (salvation) has been manifested (publicly displayed) in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ;
“3:21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, 3:22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ unto all who believe, for there is no difference; 3:23 since all have sinned and are in need of the glory of God.” (Rom. 3:21-23 ERS)
The gospel tells us about this act of God, about this manifestation of the righteousness of God. But also in the preaching of the gospel, the righteousness of God is being continually revealed or actualized (Rom. 1:17a). That is, God is exerting His power for the salvation of man in the preaching of the gospel:
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” (Rom. 1:16 ERS).
Thus the gospel is not only about the righteousness of God manifested in the past on our behalf, but in the gospel, the righteousness of God is being continually revealed in the present.
“For in it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is being revealed from faith unto faith:” (Rom. 1:17a ERS).
Revelation in this verse is not just a disclosure of truth to be understood by the mind, but it is a working of God that makes effective and actual that which is revealed. [1] Hence, the revelation of the righteousness of God is that working of God that makes effective and actual that which is revealed, the righteousness of God. In other words, the revelation of the righteousness of God is the actualization of God’s salvation. And the righteousness of God is revealed when the salvation of God is made actual and real, that is, when salvation or deliverance takes place. In the preaching of the gospel, there is taking place continually an actualization of the righteousness of God. That is, salvation or deliverance is taking place as the gospel is preached. This is the reason that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.
“1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 1:17 For in it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is being revealed from faith unto faith: as it is written, ‘But the righteous from faith shall live.’ [Hab. 2:4]” (Rom. 1:16-17 ERS).
(Compare these verses, Rom. 1:16-17a, with Isa. 56:1 which is no doubt the source of Paul’s concepts and words in these verses.)
“Thus says the Lord, Preserve judgment, and do righteousness: For my salvation is near to come, And my righteousness to be revealed.” (Isa. 56:1 ERS)
ENDNOTES FOR “THREE ASPECTS OF THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD
[1] Burton on Galations in the ICC in contrasting phaneroo and apokalupto points out that
“for some reason apokalupto has evidently come to be used especially of a subjective revelation, which either takes place wholly within the mind of the individual receiving it, or is subjective in the sense that it is accompanied by actual perception and results in knowledge on his part:
Rom. 8:18; I Cor. 2:10; 14:30; Eph. 3:5.”
Ernest deWitt Burton,
A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galations
The International Critical Commentary
Scribner’s Sons, 1896), p. 433.
He goes on to say that
“phaneroo throws emphasis on the fact that that which is manifested is objectively clear, open to perception. It is thus suitably used of an open and public announcement, disclosure or exhibition:
I Cor. 4:5; II Cor. 2:14; 4:10-11; Eph. 5:13″ Ibid.
The use of the word apokalupto by Paul in Rom. 1:17a thus seems to place an emphasis on something happening to the individual receiving the revelation. The word “subjective” is probably not the right word to use to describe this event because it suggests that the source of revelation is from within the individual, the subject. Clearly the revelation that Paul is speaking of is from without the individual, from God. But it does make a difference, a change; a response does take place in the person receiving the revelation. It does bring about that which is revealed, salvation.
Faith is the actualization of the salvation of God. Faith is not the means nor the condition of salvation but is the actualization of salvation. Salvation is not a thing which is received by faith but is God’s activity of deliverance which produces faith and is accomplished in that faith. This is expressed by Paul in Romans 1:17 in a twofold way: from faith unto faith”.
1. Faith is the source of the revelation of the righteousness of God: “from faith”. The revelation of the righteousness of God arises out of or comes out of faith. Paul is not saying that faith is source of the rigteousness of God, but faith is the source of the revelation of the righteoussness of God. That is, the actualization of the deliverance or salvation of God is the faith which the righteousness of God produces. The righteousness of God is revealed only when the one to whom the revelation comes has faith. Without faith there is no revelation, no actualization of salvation, and only when there is faith is there a revelation or actualization of the righteousness of God. In this sense, faith is the source of the revelation of the righteousness of God.
2. Faith is the goal of the revelation of the righteousness of God: “unto faith”. The revelation of the righteousness of God moves toward and is accomplished in faith. When a man has faith, the deliverance of God has reached its goal. Faith then is the goal of the revelation of the righteousness of God.
In salvation, God does not just give us something but gives us Himself, and faith is not the receiving of something but is the receiving of Him. In salvation, God does not just reveal something about Himself but reveals Himself. Apart from this personal revelation, saving faith is impossible, but when this revelation take place, saving faith is possible. Since “faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17), faith is the product of God’s activity of the revelation of Himself. This revelation takes place in the preaching of the gospel, the word of Christ. For the gospel is the power of God unto salvation:
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” (Rom. 1:16 ERS).
The gospel is not only about salvation (Eph. 1:13), but it is the power of God unto salvation. When the gospel is preached, God exerts His power and men are saved. This act of God’s power through the preaching of the gospel takes the form of the personal revelation of God Himself and His love. For He is love (I John 4:8, 16). Those who believe in response to this revelation are through this decision of faith realizing the power of God unto salvation, and in this decision of faith they are saved. To believe is to be saved, and to be saved is to believe in Jesus Christ.
In this decision of faith, they who believe are saved from death to life. To have faith in God is to believe in Jesus Christ, His Son (John 14:1; 6:29; 8:42; 5:38). And to believe in Jesus Christ is to receive spiritual life. For Jesus is the life (John 5:26; 6:33-35, 38-40, 57-58).
“5:11 And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 5:12 He who has the Son has life; he who has not the Son of God has not life” (I John 5:11-12).
To believe in God’s Son is to have Him and if we have Him, we have life. And to have life is to have passed from death to life. Jesus said,
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24).
The one who believes has passed from death to life because he has in the decision of faith also identified himself with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ identified Himself with us in death; He entered into our spiritual death on the cross and died physically for us. His death was our death. In faith, we accept His death as our death and identify ourselves with His death. But since God has raised Jesus from the dead, so also are we made alive with Christ. His resurrection is our resurrection. In faith, we identify ourselves with Him and His resurrection. To receive life in Christ is to be raised from the dead with Him. To pass from death to life is to have died and been raised with Jesus from the dead. We are now spiritually alive in Him. We have entered into fellowship with God and are now reconciled to God. As the gospel is preached, God exerts His power and men are made alive, raised from the dead. Jesus said,
“Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming and now is when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” (John 5:25)
When the good news of the death and resurrection of Jesus for us is proclaimed, God speaks to men, revealing Himself in Jesus Christ. Those who hear and believe in Jesus are made alive in Him, being raised from the dead. They are reconciled to God (II Cor. 5:20). They are saved from death to life.
But in the decision of faith, men are not only saved from death to life but also from sin to righteousness. To have faith in God is to acknowledge Jesus as Lord. In general, faith is not just belief that certain statements are true but is the commitment of oneself and allegiance to something or someone as one’s own personal ultimate criterion of all decisions, intellectual and moral. Saving faith in Jesus Christ is the commitment of oneself to Jesus Christ as one’s own personal ultimate criterion (“My Lord and my God,” John 20:28). The living person, the resurrected Jesus Christ, not just what He taught, becomes in the decision of faith our ultimate criterion. This decision of faith is a turning from false gods (idols) to the living and true God (I Thess. 1:10). Faith in the true God is righteousness.
“Abraham believed God, and it [his faith] was reckoned to him as righteousness” (Rom. 4:3).
To believe God is to be righteous ( Rom. 4:5).
“4:22That is why his [Abraham’s] faith was ‘reckoned to him as righteousness.’ 4:23But the words, ‘it was reckoned to him,’ was not written for his sake alone, 4:24but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him that raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 4:25who was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” (Rom. 4:22-25).
To acknowledge Jesus as Lord is to believe God that He raised Him from the dead.
“10:9 If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved; 10:10 for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” (Rom. 10:9-10; NAS).
To believe God that He raised from the dead Jesus, who in faith we confess as Lord, is to be righteous. Thus, this decision of faith is salvation from sin to righteousness.
The revelation of the righteousness of God ( Rom. 1:17a) is also called justification:
“3:24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 3:25 whom God set forth as a propitiation
through faith in his blood ….” (Rom. 3:24-25; ERS).
As we have seen, the righteousness of God is the act or activity of God whereby God sets man right with God Himself. Hence, the revelation of the righteousness of God is this act of setting right, and this act of setting right is called justification. Justification is not just a pronouncement about something but is an act that brings about something; it is not just a declaration that a man is righteous before God but it is a setting of a man right with God: a bringing him into a right relationship with God. Justification is then essentially salvation: to justify is to save (Isa. 45:25; 53:11; see Rom. 6:7 where dikaioo is translated “freed” in the RSV, KJV, NAS, and NIV). [1] This close relationship between these two concepts is more obvious in the Greek because the words translated “justification” and “righteousness” have the same roots, not two different roots as do these two English words.
Justification is the free act of God’s grace ( Rom. 3:24;
“3:4But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for man appeared, 3:5He saved us, not on the basis of works which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, 3:6whom He poured out upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior, 3:7that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:4-7 ERS).
The source of justification is the love of God. And the love of God in action to bring man salvation is the grace of God ( Eph. 2:4-5; Titus 2:11). Hence justification is the true expression of the grace of God, the act of the love of God. Because justification is a gift ( Rom. 3:24; 5:15-17), justification is free and is not something that can be earned ( Rom. 4:4; 11:6). Being a free act of God’s grace, justification has nothing to do with the works of the law (Rom. 3:20, 28; 4:6; Gal. 2:16; 3:11; see also Eph. 2:8-9; Phil. 3:9; Titus 3:5). The whole legalistic theology is a misunderstanding of the righteousness of God and of justification by faith, and is therefore unbiblical and false. The Scripture nowhere speaks of the righteousness or merits of Christ and of justification as an imputation of the merits of Christ to our account. The introduction of such a legalistic righteousness, even if it means the merits of Christ, into the discussion of the righteousness of God and of the justification by faith obscures the grace of God and misunderstands the law as well as the gospel of the grace of God. In principle, the grace of God has nothing to do with legal righteousness and merits. God does not give man His grace by faith so that he can earn merits to gain eternal life nor to declare that he is legally righteous before God. Jesus Christ did not satisfy in our place the demands of the law, either in precept or penalty. Neither did He earn for us eternal life by fulfilling the law. Christ did fulfill the law (Matt. 5:17), but not for us. Nowhere in the Scripture does it say that Christ fulfilled the law for us. Neither did he fulfill it legalistically to earn anything. Not because Christ was not able to do it but because God does not in His love and grace operate on the basis of law or legal righteousness. Christ fulfilled it by love, for “love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:8-10; Gal. 5:14).
There is a difference between justification in the Old Testament and that in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, justification is the vindication of the righteous who are suffering wrong (Ex. 23:7). God justifies, that is, vindicates the righteous who are wrongfully oppressed. Justification requires a real righteousness of the people on whose part it is done. In Isa. 51:7, the promise of deliverance is addressed to those “who know righteousness, the people in whose hearts is my law.” Similarly, in order to share in the promised vindication, the wicked must forsake his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and return unto the Lord (Isa. 55:7). However, in the New Testament, justification is not only a vindication of a righteous people who are being wrongfully oppressed but it is also a deliverance of the people from their own sins. Thus, Paul says that God is He “that justifies the ungodly” ( Rom. 4:5). In the New Testament, justification is not just a vindication of the righteous who has been wronged (this view is in Jesus’ teaching in Matt. 5:6; 6:33; Luke 18:7), but justification is also the salvation of the ungodly who are delivered from their ungodliness and unrighteousness. [2] But justification not only saves the ungodly from their sins, it also brings them into the righteousness of faith. To be set right with God is to have faith in God.
“Abraham believed God, and it [his faith] was reckoned unto him for righteousness” (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:3, 9; cf. Rom. 10:9; Phil. 3:9).
Justification as God’s act of setting man right with Himself brings man into faith, which is to be set right with God. Thus justification is through faith (dia pisteos, Rom. 3:30; Gal. 2:16) and out of or from faith (ek pisteos, Rom. 3:26,30; Gal. 2:16; 3:8,24).
But justification as salvation is not only the deliverance from sin to righteousness but also the deliverance from wrath to peace and from death to life. Justification as deliverance from wrath to peace is set forth by the Apostle Paul in Romans 3:24-25:
“3:24 Being justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, 3:25 whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith in His blood.” (Rom. 3:24-25 ERS; see also Isa. 32:17)
Paul connects justification here with two aspects of salvation, redemption and propitiation. Redemption is the deliverance from sin by the payment of a price called a ransom which is the death of Jesus Christ. And propitiation is the deliverance from the wrath by the sacrificial death of Jesus (“His blood”) which turns away or averts the wrath of God through faith in that sacrifice (“through faith in His blood”). Christ’s death as a propitiation turns away God’s wrath from the one who has faith in that sacrifice. The wrath is turned away because the sin has been taken away (“forgiveness”) by the death of Christ as a ransom, by which a man is redeemed or set free, delivered from sin. When sin has been removed, there is no cause for God’s wrath. No sin, no wrath. Man is saved from wrath because he is saved from sin.
“Being justified freely by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Rom. 5:1)
“Much more then, being justified by His blood, we shall be saved through Him from the wrath of God.” (Rom. 5:9).
Justification is also deliverance from death to life. Man is delivered from sin to the righteousness of faith because he is delivered from death to life. As sinners, we were enemies of God, but through the death of God’s Son, we have been reconciled to God and are now no longer enemies. To be reconciled to God means we have passed from death to life and we are saved in His resurrected life (Rom. 5:10; see II Cor. 5:17-21). We are delivered from death by being “made alive together with Him” in His resurrection ( Eph. 2:5). He was “raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). Thus justification is “justification of life” (Rom. 5:18 KJV). To be set right with God is to enter into fellowship with God. And this right relationship to God is life. Justification puts us into right relationship to God and hence it is a justification of life. Fellowship with God is established when God reveals Himself to man and man responds to that revelation in faith. Life is a personal relationship between God and man that results from this revelation and the faith response to it. Apart from this revelation the response of faith is not possible, and this revelation is the offer of life and the possibility of faith. But life is not actual unless man responds in faith to the revelation of God Himself. Life is received in the decision of faith. Since God’s act of revelation is first, and man’s response in faith is second and depends upon God’s revelation, life results in the righteousness of faith and man is righteous because of life. Justification as the revelation of the righteousness of God brings about life and the righteousness of faith. Thus justification is also salvation from death to life as well as salvation from sin to righteousness and from wrath to peace with God.
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