state of acceptance with God, this right relation- sliip between the righteous God and sinfnl men, is lirought about by God. It is not the goal of a lalKjrious (jiiu.st of man for God. The initiative is with Him. Tiiat is what the genitive nigniiies. He wills, He creates, He bestows, tliis bliss. * It is all the doing of God ' (2 Co S'^). When St. Paul speaks of righteousness as ' God's,' in opjiosition to a righteousness which is man's (* their own,' 'my own,' see below), lie has the same religious interest as the Johannine theology in speaking of the new birth. The origin of the Christian life lies in the will of God as a will of life for man. ' The righteousness which consists not in what we do but in what we are, is the righteousness of faith,' and what we are, we are by the grace of God. It is He who sets us in this new, vital relationship, by pardoning us for Christ's sake.
p. Wernle, who laments St. Paul's doctrine of justification by faitii as 'one of his most disastrous creations' (/>'('f;i7i?ii?iy« o/ Christianit}/, Eng. tr., London and New York, 1903-04, i. 309), admits that its misleading husk contains the great and profoimd thought that 'God is our Father, who freely gives to us whether we deserve it or not, and that we men, just as we are, are His children, livinjjby His love.' Jowett's essay on 'Right- eousness by Faith ' (The Epistles of St. Paul to the Thess., Gal. and Hom-'-^t ii. 247-272) is not one of his strongest pieces, but it equally penetrates to this thought as one of the ethical contri- butions of the doctrine to the religious life. In Exp, Sth ser., iv. [1912] 252-262, J. Oman emphasizes the same aspect. It is one of the points at which St. Paul's subordination of the paatkeia or inalcuth doctrine to that of the zecuth turns out to be a real parallel to the teaching of Jesus, who subordniated the zecuth idea lo that of the inalcuth. St. Paul's category is closer to the Rabbinic standpoint, but the conception of God as the gracious Giver breaks through until it ajiswera to that of the Father, in the teaching of Je-sus, who takes the initiative by sending the Son and setting up the Kingdom for men on earth. For some other aspects of this parallel, see W. Sanday's article on ' St. Paul's Equivalent for the Kingdom of Heaven/ in JThSt i. [1899-1900] 481-491.
It is this interest that made the legal phrase- ology about faith being ' reckoned as righteousness ' by God so attractive to St. Paul. The status of being right with God was something which men owed to Him, not to themselves ; it depended on His verdict, on His gracions assurance that He was prepared to treat them as * righteous.' But in several ways the Apostle shoAvs that the status was more than a legal fiction. In itself, * the idea of righteousness as dependent on a divine judgment (3C'n) could only have arisen on the basis of legal- ism, while at the same time it points beyond it' (Skinner, ICC, 'Genesis,' Edinburgli, 1910, on Gn lo*^).* It points beyond legalism in St. Paul from various aspects. The God who thus reckons men righteous is a Giver, not a Judge, not even a Law- giver. The basis for His reckoning is a Divine self-sacrifice, due to Divine love for men, the death of Christ, God's Son, who breaks the power of sin and deatli in the flesh for the doomed race of men. And the reckoning is interpreted as equivalent to forgiveness, a blissful experience (Ro 4"-)- To be treated as * righteous' is to be pardoned and recon- ciled. Tlie status is a relationship to God which means life, as opposed to the condemnation and death which are the fate of sin, i.e. of those who refuse this reconciliation and therefore have their trespasses still counted against them (2 Co 5'^ : ' In Christ God reconciled the world to himself, instead of counting men's trespasses against them '). Just as sin means to fall short of_ the Divine glory (Ro 3^'^), so to receive God's righteousness is to participate in that glory — and glory, in this con- nexion,t is associated (cf. 2 Co 3^-4*^) with life. The terminology of * righteousness ' and 'justify' * Barnabas (xiii. 7) quotes this verse as fitSvos irco-reuVas ^riB^
eiS 8LKa.l.O(TVVT\V.
t The conception of 'glory' as the immortal, sinless life enjoved by Adam and Eve in Paradise, and to be enjoyed by the faithful, underlies the Pauline usage of the term; cf. H. A. A. Kennedv, St. Paul's Conceptions of the Last Things, London, 1904, pp. 92 f., 301 f.
RIGHTEOUSNESS
lUGUTEOUSNESS
377
was not quite so well suited to bring out this posi- tive, personal relation to (Jod as some other phrases and conceptions* which St. I'aul employs, liut even here he reveals now and then tlie deeper religious interests to which the juridical concep- tion [>ointed. Thus, while the old debate whetlier righteousness, in the phrase ' righteousness of God,' meant an attribute of God or some quality which He imparted, whether 'God' was subjective or objective — while tliis was largely a phih)logical rather than a real issue, and while dcKaioOi' or 'justify' certainly denotes (as its opposite, Kara- Kplyeiv, indicates) ' to consider or i)ronounce right- eous,' not 'to make righteous.' t nevertheless when St. Paul could write to the Christians of Corinth, 'Some of you were once like that' (im- moral, vicious, criminal), ' but you washed your- selves clean at baptism, you were consecrated, you were justilied (ediKaiwdri) in the name of our Lord Jesus CliristJ and in the Spirit of our God' (1 Co 6"), when he could speak of Christ being made 'our righteousness' by God, or of our becom- ing 'God's righteousness in him,' it is plain that the juridical sense of a change in the position of men towards God is shading oti' into that of a change in the character of men,§ and that the ' righteousness ' in question is not simply formal and forensic but real. It is a status, but a status ' in Christ ' — which makes all the dili'erence in the world. Justitication is not followed by sanctifica- tion, in the technical sense, but accompanied by ' consecration ' ; it is a transformation in the atti- tude of God to sinners, which not only frees them from the power and penalties of sin but makes them God's very own people— not righteous as He is righteous, for (as Haring admits) that is an un- Pauline and (cf. 1 Jn 3") almost an unbiblical turn of thought, but in possession of His eternal life through Jesus Christ. The objective righteousness which He has realized and revealed through the sacriKcial death of His Son implies a subjective righteousness, in men, and the decisiveness with which St. Paul states the former as fundamental to the gospel must not be allowed to obliterate the fact that he recognized the latter, even in his use of juridical formula; which lent themselves specili- cally to the prior truth.