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 ^1:16I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. ¹⁷For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

The Old Testament is filled with verses on righteousness… just search on this blog where I have written on them all.  In fact, the first verses on righteousness teach where it comes from and what it is used for… from believing God, for use in obeying Him.  It teaches what it means as well for God to be righteous… God’s righteousness is primarily justice.  And then we come to Romans, where Paul writes of a righteousness revealed from God.  Interesting that he says “a” righteousness, because in addition to believing God, Exodus revealed that zealousness for God’s name is accounted to us as righteousness as well.  Is there yet another way? In short, not exactly.

One of the challenges in studying righteousness is in understanding God’s justice.  He shows pity to those who turn from wickedness to goodness, and turns away from those who turn from goodness to wickedness.  That is justice.  God’s justice is not equitable if measured in terms of a single life, yet God’s justice is meted out equitably.  Justice is just.  God does not weight our amount of goodness or our amount of wickedness, but looks at how we turn out.  Where our past would outweight our last days, God overlooks it and judges our fate by our final choices… our true heartfelt choices.  Do we really believe Him? Do we turn obey Him?  Good.  Do we truly care about Him?  Then we are His, else we are not.  The final judgement on our lives.  Simple.

And so it would seem that no matter what we do, no matter what our fate, our righteousness or lack thereof will activate God’s when He judges us.  One might even say that God’s righteousness is revealed even in the evil that we do.  In fact, that is exactly where Paul goes in chapter 3…

 ⁵But if our unrighteousness brings out God’s righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? (I am using a human argument.) ⁶Certainly not! If that were so, how could God judge the world? ⁷Someone might argue, “If my falsehood enhances God’s truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?” ⁸Why not say—as we are being slanderously reported as saying and as some claim that we say—”Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is deserved.

But then Paul turns back to his original point:

 ²¹But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. ²²This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, ²³for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. ²⁵God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— ²⁶he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.  

So what are the features of this righteousness?  Well, they are very similar to the righteousness God accounts to us when we believe, and the same as when we are zealous for His name:

• “This righteousnss comes from God”
• This righteousness comes “to all who believe”
• It doesn’t matter who you are, “for all have sinned” and are given this righteousness “free by his grace”

But unlike the righteousness that comes from belief or zealousness for God’s name, this righteousness has a name: “justification”.  Notice that the word “justify” (dikaioo) has the same root as “justice” (dikaiosume, translated as “righteousness” in the New King James).  In other words, we have been “freed”, or brought into a state of justice relative to God.  But not also that our justification is because there was punishment suffered for our sins; our sins were not excused.  Jesus suffered punishment for us so that we would not have to.  And that brings me to how we receive this justification, this freedom, this righteousness: through faith in Jesus who suffered in our place… by “believing” God when He says in scripture that He did this.  As other scriptures later show, we are to then take the righteousness God credits us with, and “obey” by getting baptized and by tithing.  As in the Old Testament, our obedience is an application, or evidence of our righteousness, but does not earn us righteousness per se.  And so we that our “belief” and “faith” in Jesus are indeed enough to justify.

Wow. I had no idea that my study of righteousness would lead directly to the Gospel and salvation, but there it is!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 at 7:09 am and is filed under Bible Commentary, Righteousness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.