380
KIGHTEOUSNKSS
RIGHTEOUSNESS
pointed by Ood. 'Tlio ideas of right and wrong apiong tlie Huljrews are forensic ideas ; that is, the Hebrew always thinks of the right and tlie wrong (US if they were to he settled before a judge. Righteousness is to the Hebrew not so much a moral quality as a legal status. ... In primitive society the functions of judge and lawgiver are not separated, and reverence for law has its basis in personal respect for the judge. So the just con- sistent will of Jehovah is the law of Israel, and it is a law which as King of Israel He Himself is continually administering' (W. R. Smith, The Prophets of Israel, London, 1895, p. 71 f.). The repeated violations of the Law, which the weakness of the flesh produces, result, according to St. Paul, in a state of guilt which calls out righteousness as the punitive duty of the Lawgiver. He speaks of this less often than of sin, but the outcome is the punishment of death as tlie supreme expression of the Divine wratli for wilful transgressions of the Divine Law. The Law works out in wrath (Ro 4">) ; the thunderclouds of doom are ready to break over those who take that path. In one place, he attri- butes moral perversity (Ro I-*'-) to the working of the Divine wrath. But this is merely one expres- .sion of it, and (2''-"-) the stress falls on the eschato- logical visitation of God's wrath. The dpy-q of God, like its opposite, (Tt^tjpla, is for St. Paul * originally and especially e.schatological (cf.'l Th 1'", Ro 5') ; it is an accompaniment of the Day of Judgment, the punishment of those who wilfully disobey God. f To St. Paul the history of the world is a drama of disobedience, and the fifth act of the tragedy is being played out ; the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ prove that the final scenes are immi- nent. Accordingly, the primitive Christian escha- tology viewed justification as the anticipation of salvation at the end, the guarantee that he who is justified will be right with God at the Final Judg- ment. The decision of God will be in his favour. He will be inside, not outside, the Messianic realm of bliss and life. ' By faith we wait in the Spirit for the righteou.sness we hope for' (Gal 5=),t i.e. the final acceptance and freedom (1 Co 1", Ro 8^) from condemnation. But God's wrath is not ex- clusively eschatological for St. Paul, neither is His righteousness. As in Judaism § already, so, and much more so, in St. Paul, justification ceases to be a mere hope. It is not simply the assurance of being acquitted at the end, but becomes a present, definite attitude of the soul towards God. Here and now there is a valid status before God. St. Paul's word is, ' We are justified,' not ' We shall be justified.' God's righteousness is a revela-
* Like John the Baptist (Mt 37=Lk 37), hut unlike Jesus ; in the Synoptic record of His teaching;, it is introduced hy St. Luke onlv once (21^), while Mt 24-1 and jit 1319 gimpiy"^ speak of
t This is reiterated in Ro 2-''f-, and St. Paul puts the reverse side in 21^- l^i. 'To be just before God,' or acquitted, or delivered from His wrath, is the supreme boon of the Messianic order. Christ has already inaugurated this order by His death and resurrection, and He is sure to complete it at His return, when the Day of Judfjment will decide the fate of men. The conditions of that decision are stated by St. Paul, but he denies that believing men need have any fear of the result ; their present relation to God through Christ, in the new order, en- ables them to anticipate the future with confidence (Ro 5ir 83if.). We can feel the alteration of emphasis from the contemporary Jewish faith, which drew its passion for law-righteousness largely from its interest in the future final hope of glory and recompense.
I Contrast the contemporary Apoc. Bar. xiv. 12 ('the right- eous justly hope for the end . . . because they have with thee a store of works treasured ').
§ Particularly, though by no means exclusively, in apocalyptic circles, where the heavenly powers and realities were believed to be already moving in human life, instead of remaining hidden in heaven until the epoch of consummation. The fact of Christ's death and resurrection having recently taken place increased the Christian tendency to realize that the new age bad already begun in the existence of the Church whose experiences of justification and fellowship rested on Christ's sufferings and risen glory.
tion in the present order, a reality of experience here and now. In Ro 1", e.c/., it is not wholly eschatological any more than wrath is ; the term 'salvation' tends to retain its predominantly es- chatological meaning, but 'righteousness' increas- ingly bears upon the immediate position of the soul towards God, largely because it was so definitely associated with forgiveness. The eschatological hope usually came to be expressed by St. Paul in other terms ; ' righteousness ' was so bound uji with the sacrifice of Christ and the present fellowship into which faith ushered the Christian, that it gradually became concentrated upon the experience and standing of the believing man. It is needless to multiply proofs of this obvious Pauline position. A sentence like that in Ro 5" clinches the matter: 'Much more, then, now that we are justified by his blood, shall we be saved by him from wrath.' The present experience of God's righteousness (1") becomes the ground of assurance that we are freed from condemnation and that we shall not be exposed to the final doom of His wrath (I's, 1 Th 5") which is imminent and eschatological. The es- chatological background to St. Paul's theory of righteousness* and justification is real (cf., e.fj., Ro 2'^- '^), but it may be exaggerated, as it is by those who fail to see that justification, like i;io^e<rla, the alternative conception, deepens into a present moral and spiritual experience, involving a career as well as a hope, or rather a hope whicli implies a career of goodness. Because the Christian is sure of final acquittal, he is to live up to it. Or, to put it in an antithesis : he is not to be saved because he is good, he is to be good because he is justified. It is a short interval till the final crisis arrives, but the Christian can await the Judgment with confidence, on the strength of his justification by faith and (Ro 13'"-) readiness for salvation.