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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.  Propitiation is salvation from wrath to peace with God;  Redemption is salvation from sin to righteousness; and Reconciliation is salvation from death to life.

These Three Aspects of Salvation are accomplished through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Propitiation is the sacrifical aspect of His work, redemption is the liberation aspect of His work, and reconciliation is the representative aspect of His work of salvation.  This threefold act of God for the salvation of man is the righteousness of God.

The Biblical concept of the righteousness of God is the act or activity of God whereby He puts or sets right that which is wrong. Very often in the Old Testament, it 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)

 

“¹¹ For thy name’s sake, O Lord, preserve my life!  In thy righteousness bring me out of trouble!  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. Parallelism is 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:  He has revealed His righteousness in the sight of the nations.”    (Psa. 98:2 NAS)

 

“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 saith the Lord, ‘Do judgment and righteousness: for my salvation is about to come, and my righteousness to be revealed.'”    (Isa. 56:1 ERS)    (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.  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; and 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 RSV, NAS, NIV) and “the Lord our righteousness” (Jer. 23:5-6; 33:15-16).

The righteousness of God is not opposed to the love of God nor does it condition it. On the contrary, it is a part of and the proper expression of God’s love. The righteousness of God 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, God opposes the sin that would destroy man whom He loves. In His grace, He removes the sin. The grace of God is the love of God in action to bring salvation ( Eph. 2:4-5; Titus 2:4-7). Thus the grace of God may properly be called the righteousness of God. For in His righteousness, God acts to deliver His people from their sins, setting them right with Himself.

There is a difference between the righteousness of God in the Old Testament and that in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, the righteousness of God is the vindication of the righteous who are suffering wrong (Ex. 23:7). God vindicates the righteous who are wrongfully oppressed. In the Old Testament, the righteousness of God 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). In the New Testament, the righteousness of God is not only a vindication of a righteous people who are being wrongfully oppressed (this view is in Jesus’ teaching recorded in Matt. 5:6; 6:33; and Luke 18:7), but it is also the deliverance of the people from their own sins; it is also the salvation of the ungodly who are delivered from their ungodliness (trust in a false god) and unrighteousness. The righteousness of God saves the unrighteous by setting them right with God Himself through faith ( Rom. 1:17a).

Legalism misinterprets the righteousness of God as justice, that is, as that principle of God’s being that requires and demands the reward of good works (by comformity to the Law) because of their intrinsic merit (by remunerative justice) and the punishment of every transgression of the law with a proportionate punishment because of its own intrinsic demerit (by 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.

It was this legalistic concept of justice that gave Martin Luther so much trouble. But Martin Luther rediscovered the true meaning of the righteousness of God in Paul’s letter to the Romans. After a long and troubled search, Martin Luther recovered the Biblical concept of the righteousness of God and of the justification by faith. But his followers obscured this understanding of these concepts by the legalism of their theology and legalistic understanding of righteousness and justification. Luther’s use of the scholastic distinction between active and passive righteousness tended to obscure the Biblical concept of the righteousness of God. Luther attempted to solve the problem of the righteousness of God as justice by denying the active meaning of righeousness (the attribute of God by which He punishes sin and rewards man’s good works) and by equating the righteousness of God with righteousness in a passive sense as that given by God, the righteousness from God. Luther obviously rejected the active sense; but the 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 righeousness 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. The righteousness from God is the righteousness of faith ( Phil. 3:9), because God reckons faith as righteousness ( Rom. 4:3-5). That is, the righteousness of faith is not merit placed to the account of the believer, but the right relationship of the believer to God by faith. And this righteousness of faith is the righteousness from God. The righteousness of faith is the act or choice of a man to trust God but the righteousness of God is the act or activity of God to set a man right with God Himself by faith. Since this act of faith by a man is possible only when God acts to set a man right with God Himself, the righteousness of faith is the righteousness from God. Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians,

“^3:7But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss because of the sake of Christ.  ^3:8Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.  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 in Christ, the righteousness from [ek] God that depends upon [epi] faith, …”    (Phil. 3:7-9).

This 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).   To trust in God is to be righteous (Rom. 4:5).  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 ….    (Rom. 4:3-5)

 

“^4:9bWe say that faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness.”    (Rom. 4:9b)

 

“^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. 4:13)

 

“^4:20No distrust made him [Abraham] waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, ^4:21fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.   ^4:22That is why his faith was ‘reckoned to him as righteousness.’   ^4:23But the words, ‘it was reckoned to him,’  were written not 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. 4:20-25)

Luther’s apparent identification of the righteousness of God with the righteousness from God led eventually lead to the equating of the righteousness from God with Christ’s righteousness, that is, the merits earned by Christ’s active obedience under law and is imputed to the believer’s account when he believes. And the righteousness of God was then equated with the justice of God, that is, that attribute of God which requires that God punish all sin and reward all meritorious works.  But righteousness of God is not justice. The righteousness of God is God acting in love for the salvation or deliverance of man. This righteousness of God (salvation) has been manifested (publicily displayed) in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

“²¹But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, ²²even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe ….”    (Rom. 3:21-22 NAS).

The gospel tells us about this act of God, about this manifestation of the righteousness of God. And 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 ( Rom. 1:16); in this activity, man is being delivered from something bad, from wrath, sin and death, to something good, to peace, righteousness and life.

This revelation of the righteousness of God ( Rom. 1:17a) is also called in our English translations justification ( Rom. 3:24). 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 personal 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 RSV). This close relationship between these two concepts is more obvious in the Greek because the words translated “righteousness” and “justification” have the same roots, not two different roots as do the two English words.

Now justification is a deliverance of the ungodly from their own sins. Thus, Paul says that God is He “that justifies the ungodly” ( Rom. 4:5). Justification is the salvation of the ungodly who are delivered from their ungodliness and unrighteousness. But justification not only saves the ungodly from their sins (trust in false gods), it also brings them into the righteousness of faith (trust in true God). To be set right with God, that is, to be justified, is to have faith in God. And this faith in God is reckoned as righteousness, the righteousness of faith.

“Abraham believed God, and it [his faith] was reckoned unto him for righteousness”    (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:3, 9b; 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 it is also the deliverance from wrath to peace and from death to life. That 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)

Here, Paul connects justification with redemption, the liberation aspect of salvation, and with propitiation, the sacrifical aspect of salvation. 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 of God by the sacrifical death of Jesus (“His blood”) which turns away or averts the wrath of God through faith in that sacrifice (“through faith in His blood”). That is, 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 and resurrection 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 (“having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” Rom. 5:10; see also 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 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, but 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 act 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 becomes righteous because of life. Justification as the revelation of the righteousness of God brings about life and the righteousness of faith.

Why do men need to be saved?  An examination of Scripture (John 10:10; Eph. 2:4-5; Heb. 2:14-15; I John 4:9; etc.) clearly shows that the answer to this question is that man needs to be saved because he is spiritually dead. Man is separated and alienated from God (Eph. 4:8). He does not know God personally, and because he does not know the true God, he turns to false gods – to those things which are not God – and makes those into his gods ( Gal. 4:8). The basic sin is idolatry ( Ex. 20:3; Rom. 1:25), and man sins (chooses these false gods) because he is spiritually dead – separated from the true God.

What is sin?  The analysis of human freedom shows that every man must have a god. By the very constitution of his freedom, man must have an ultimate criterion of decision. That is, behind every decision as to which thing a man should do or think, there is a reason, a criterion of decision. And the ultimate reason for any decision, practical or theoretical, must be given in terms of some particular criterion, an ultimate reference or orientation point in or beyond the self or person making the decision. This ultimate criterion is that person’s god.

Thus every man must then choose something as his god. If he doesn’t choose the true God as his ultimate criterion of decision, he will choose a false god. He will choose some part or aspect of reality as his god, deifying it.

“They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator.”    (Rom. 1:25)

The choice of a false god and the consequent personal allegiance and devotion to it is what the Bible calls idolatry. An idol does not have to be an image of wood, stone, or metal. It may be money, wealth, power, pleasure, education, the family, mankind, the state, democracy, experience, reason, science, the moral law, etc. An idol is a false god, and a false god may be anything, which may be good in its proper place, that takes the place of the true God, anything a person chooses as his or her ultimate criterion of decision, exalting it as God. A false god is any substitute or replacement for the true God in a person’s life.

Since a false god usurps the place of the true God in a person’s life, idolatry is the basic sin. This sin is directly against the true God; it is a direct insult to Him and an affront to His divine majesty. No more serious sin could be imagined than this one. Since it is the most serious sin, it is therefore the most basic. This is the main reason that idolatry is the first sin prohibited by the Ten Commandments.

“Thou shalt have no other gods besides me.”    (Exodus 20:3)

Thus idolatry is the basic sin, not pride; pride is not even mentioned in the Ten Commandments. Idolatry is also the basic sin because this sin leads to other sins. It leads to other sins since a person’s god, being his ultimate criterion of decision, will determine the choices he or she will make. The choice of a wrong god will lead to other wrong choices. That is, the idol that a person sets up in his heart (Ezek. 14:35) will affect the character and quality of his whole life. Idolatry is therefore the basic sin.  And all men have sinned because they are spiritually dead.  This is what the Apostle Paul says in the last clause of Romans 5:12 ERS:  “because of which [death] all sinned.” [1]

“^5:12Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death passed unto all men, because of which all sinned:   ^5:13 For until the law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed where there is no law. ^5:14 But death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned after the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.”    (Rom. 5:12-14 ERS).

Spiritual death which “spread to all men” along with physical death is not the result of each man’s own personal sins. On the contrary, a man sins as a result of spiritual death. He received death from Adam, from his first parents. The historical origin of sin is the fall of Adam – the sin of the first man. [2] Adam’s sin brought death – spiritual and physical – on all his descendants (Rom. 5:12, 15, 17). [3] This spiritual death inherited from Adam is the personal, contemporary origin of each man’s sin. Because he is spiritually dead, not knowing the true God personally, he chooses something other than the true God as his god; he thus sins.

This is why a man needs to be saved. He is dead spiritually and dying physically. Man needs life – he needs to be made alive – to be raised from the dead. And if he receives life, if he is made alive to the true God, death which leads to sin is removed. And if death which leads to sin is removed, then man will be saved from sin. Thus salvation must be understood to be primarily from death to life and secondarily from sin to righteousness. And since God’s wrath – God’s “no” or opposition to sin – is caused by sin (Rom. 1:18), the removal of sin brings with it also the removal of wrath. No sin, no wrath. Salvation is then thirdly from wrath to peace with God (Rom. 5:1, 9).  This is what the law cannot do; it cannot make men alive.  As Paul says in Gal. 3:21;

“…for if there had been a law given which could make alive, verily righteousness would have been by the law.”    (Gal. 3:21)

That is, since the law cannot make alive, righteousness cannot be by the law. And since the law cannot make alive, salvation therefore cannot be by the law. The righteousness of the law, the merits earned by keeping the law, is a false righteousness, dirty filthy rags (Isa. 64:6; cf. Phil. 3:7-9 and Rom. 10:3-4). Just as trust in a false god is sin, so trust in the true God is righteousness, the righteousness of faith ( Rom. 4:3-5). And just as sin flows from death, so righteousness flows from life. The law cannot give life. And because the law cannot remove death, it also cannot remove sin. And since the law cannot make alive, it cannot produce a real righteousness.  From the Biblical point of view the law has three serious weaknesses (Rom. 8:3).

1.  The law cannot remove the wrath of God but causes wrath  (Rom. 4:15; Gal. 3:10; the curse of the law = the wrath of God).
And the law cannot remove the wrath of God because

2.  the law cannot take away sin (Heb. 10:1-4, 15-18).   Not only is the law unable to take away sin, but the law causes sin (Rom. 7:5, 8, 11, 13). This is not because the law is evil (on the contrary, the law is holy, righteous and good, Rom. 7:12), but because

3.  the law cannot make alive (Gal. 3:21). The law cannot deliver man from the death that has been passed to him from Adam (Rom. 5:12, 15, 17). On the contrary, the law brings death (Rom. 7:10-11, 13). The law makes death, primarily physical death, the result of personal sins (Ezek. 18:4, 20; Deut. 24:16; Isa. 59:2) and superimposes this relationship of death-because-of-sin upon the more basic relationship of sin-because-of-death ( Rom. 5:12d ERS; Gal. 4:8). But the law did not change this more basic relationship; man sins because of spiritual death. And the law cannot remove this death, and therefore cannot remove sin. Also, since the law cannot make alive, it cannot produce righteousness (Gal. 3:21) and therefore peace with God (Rom. 5:1). Christ is the end of the law for righteousness (Rom. 10:4) because He alone can and did remove death and does make alive and thereby righteous.

The law has therefore a threefold weakness: the law cannot remove wrath, sin or death because the law cannot produce peace, righteousness or life. There is no salvation by the law.  What the law could not do, God has done through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, His Son. God has made us alive to Himself in the resurrection of Jesus and set us free from the slavery of sin. Since the basic sin is idolatry (trust in a false god) and sin is a slavery to a slave master (John 8:34), the false god is the slave master. We were all slaves of sin, serving our false gods when we were spiritually dead, alienated and separated from the true God, not knowing Him personally. But we have been set free from this slavery of sin through the death of Christ. Jesus entered into our spiritual death and died our death. His death is our death. Now when a slave dies, he is no longer in slavery; death frees him from slavery. So we likewise have been set free from the slavery of sin having died with Christ. We have died to sin with Christ (Rom. 6:1-7). But now Christ is alive, having been raised from the dead, and we have been made alive to God together with Him in His resurrection. His resurrection is our resurrection. We are no longer slaves of sin but have become slaves of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Now that we are alive to God in Him, we have become slaves of righteousness (Rom. 6:17-18). For just as death produces sin, so life produces righteousness. Since we have passed from death to life, we have been saved from sin to righteousness (I Peter 2:24). Thus justification is also deliverance from death to life.  Justification is the free act of God’s grace ( Rom. 3:24; Titus 3:7). 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.

“^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 trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).”    (Eph. 2:4-5)

 

“For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.”    (Titus 2:11 NIV).

 

“^3:4 But when the kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared,  ^3:5 He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit;
^3:6 whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,  ^3:7 that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”    (Titus 3:4-7 NAS)

Hence justification is the true expression of the grace of God and is 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; II Tim. 1:9; Titus 3:5).

The whole legalistic theology is a misunderstanding of the righteousness of God and 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 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 meritorious works.

“But if it is by grace, it is no more on basis of works;  otherwise grace would no longer be grace.”    (Rom. 11:6)

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)

Salvation is by grace through faith and not by works. God does not give man His grace so that he can earn merits by works to gain eternal life nor to declare that he is legally righteous before God. Eternal life is the gift of His grace and it is received by faith. Neither was eternal life earned by the active obedience of Jesus Christ nor did Jesus Christ satisfy the demands of the law, either in precept or penalty, in our place. Christ fulfilled 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. 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).

Legalism in absolutizing the law has distorted the meaning and the place of the law in God’s dealings with man. The law in its proper place in God’s dealings with man must be carefully distinguished from the distortion of the law that results from the legalistic absolutizing of the law. The failure to make this distinction between the proper understanding of the law and the legalistic misunderstanding of the law has led to much confusion in the discussion about the relationship of the law to the gospel. The distinction between the law and the gospel is not the same as the distinction between legalism and the gospel. The distinction between the law and the gospel is the distinction between the old Mosaic covenant and the new covenant. Whereas the distinction between legalism and the gospel is the distinction between salvation by meritorious works and salvation by grace through faith. The law as the old Mosaic covenant is not legalism and does not contain any of the legalistic abuses of law discussed above. These were introduced later by the Pharisees, etc. Legalism has taken some elements of the Mosaic covenant of the law and has exaggerated them, distorting them into something that God did not intend or reveal. The apparent truth of legalism stems from these elements of the Mosaic covenant that legalism has distorted.

There are two of these elements of the Mosaic covenant in particular that legalism has distorted which needs to be especially noted here. The first is the meaning of sin. With the revelation of the law, sin becomes more than just any choice contrary to faith and trust in the true God; it becomes the transgression of a God-revealed command. Now in legalism this element that a transgression of the law is sin is taken and generalized into a universal definition of sin; sin is now defined as any transgression of or want of conformity to the law (The Larger Catechism of the Westminster Assembly). Sin is thus defined in terms of the law as a universal standard. What was true in a particular situation under the Mosaic covenant, legalism has generalized into a universal definition of sin that is true everywhere and always. And to justify this universal definition, legalism assumes contrary to explicit statements of Scripture ( Rom. 2:14; 5:13) that there is a universal standard, a law of nature, that exists everywhere and in the conscience of everyone. Legalism thus has taken an element of the Mosaic covenant that a transgression of the law is sin and generalized it into the definition of sin, distorting the Biblical meaning of sin.

This is not the Biblical concept of sin. From the Biblical point of view, sin must be understood and defined in terms of the true God and not just in terms of the law. Sin must be defined as any choice that is contrary to faith and trust in the true God. “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23). Since sin existed before the law of God was given, sin must not be just a trangression of the law. According to Rom. 5:13, in the period before the law, “sin was in the world.” Men were sinning and sin existed where the law did not exist. Therefore, sin must be more than just a transgression of the law. If sin is just a transgression of the law, then all would not have sinned before the law was given, since all did not have the law. Not only those before Moses did not have the law, but also the Gentiles did not have the law.

“When the Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law”    (Rom. 2:14 ERS).

But all have sinned (Rom. 3:23). Therefore, sin is not just a transgression of the law.  The Greek word translated “have sinned” in Rom. 3:23 means “missing the mark.” But the mark is not the law as the divine standard, but true God Himself. Man misses the mark when he puts his trust and faith in a false god, a substitute for the true God. The falling short of the glory of God in the last part of Rom. 3:23 does not mean falling short of the standard of God’s perfection given in the law. The Greek word there translated “falling short” means “to be in want of” or “to be in need of”. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, this same word is used in Psa. 23:1.   “The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want.”   (See also Mt. 19:20; Mark 10:21; Luke 15:14; 22:35; John 2:3; I Cor. 1:7; 8:8; 12:24; II Cor. 11:5,9; 12:11; Phil. 4:12; Heb. 4:1; 11:37; 12:15).   The glory of God in the Old Testament is the manifest presence of God. Therefore, according to Rom. 3:23 (ERS) man does not have this presence of God; he is in want or need of it. In other words, he is spiritually dead, separated from God’s presence.   And all have sinned because they are spiritually dead ( Rom. 5:12d ERS).   Thus Rom. 3:23 should be translated:

“All have sinned and are in need of the glory [the presence] of God.”    (Rom. 3:23 ERS)

A second element of the Mosaic covenant that legalism has distorted is the relationship of sin to death. The Biblical concept of sin as basically trust in a false god, idolatry, is misunderstood as basically a transgression of the law, the breaking of the rules and a falling short of the universal divine standard. According to legalism, sin is considered to be a crime against God, and the penalty for these crimes is spiritual, physical and eternal death. Until the penalty is executed at the last judgment, man is under the burden of an objective guilt or condemnation which must be satisfied by the execution of the penalty. And in addition to this objective guilt there is a subjective guilt of a bad conscience, which may or may not correspond to the objective guilt. This objective guilt has been conceived in terms of a debt which man owes and/or as demerit on man’s record. Thus man needs to be saved because he is a guilty sinner.

The legalistic concept of death is a misunderstanding of the Biblical concept of death. In the Scriptures, death is not always the result of each man’s own personal sins. All men have received spiritual and physical death from Adam ( Rom. 5:12 ERS) but not eternal death. Since Adam, man is not responsible for being spiritually dead because he did not choose that state. He received spiritual death from Adam just as he received physical death from Adam ( Rom. 5:13-14). But man is responsible for the god he chooses. The true God has not left man without a knowledge about Himself (Rom. 1:19-20). This knowledge about the true God leaves man without excuse for his idolatry. He knows that his false gods are phonies. But this knowledge does not save him because it is knowledge about the true God, and not a personal knowledge of the true God which is life eternal (John 17:3). But even though man is not responsible for being spiritually dead, he is responsible for remaining in the state of spiritual death when deliverance from it is offered to him in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Biblical concept of the righteousness of God must be carefully distinguished from the Greek-Roman concept of justice. The righteousness of God in the Scriptures is not an attribute of God whereby He must render to each what he has merited nor a quantity of merit which God gives, but it is God acting to set right man with God Himself. Luther’s apparent identification of the righteousness of God with the righteousness from God lead eventually to the equating of the righteousness from God with Christ’s righteousness, that is, the merits of Christ, which Christ earned by His active obedience before He died on the cross and is imputed to the believer’s account. Righteousness is misunderstood as merits and the righteousness of God as the justice of God. The idea that the righteousness of God is the justice of God, that is, that attribute of God which requires that God punish all sin and reward all meritorious works, is a legalistic misunderstanding of the Biblical concept of the righteousness of God. This legalistic misunderstanding reduces and equates the righteousness of God to justice, that is, the giving to each that which is his due to them with a strict and impartial regard to merit (as in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics). It is this concept of righteousness that gave Luther so much trouble.

Martin Luther recovered the Biblical concept of the righteousness of God and of the justification by faith. But his followers obscured this understanding of these concepts by the legalism of their theology and legalistic understanding of righteousness and justification. And this legalism not only affected theology but the whole life of the church. The result of this legalism was dead orthodoxy and a cold, unloving Christianity. To correct these effects there arose in the church various movements such as pietism, the evangelical awakening, revivalism, etc. None of these movements went to the source of the deadness, coldness and unlovableness but just reinforced the cause — legalism.

The great outpouring of the Spirit starting at the beginning of the twentieth century has been hindered and limited by the constant relapses into the same legalism. And the source of this legalism in practice is the legalism of the theology. The theological legalism produces the practical legalism. The answer to the legalism of the theology is not no theology, but a non-legaistic theology, a Biblical theology. With the present move of the Spirit, the time has come to clear the legalism out of our theology and again recover the Biblical understanding of the righteousness of God and justification by faith. This paper is an attempt to make a beginning at this theological renewal.