(rf) God's righteousness ayid human sin. — As the righteousness of God means a status of man before Him, or rather a relationship between Him and nuin, which He brings into being through the sacri- ficial death of Christ, and which becomes a reality of experience for man as he believes, St. Paul can speak of it as he could not if it were merely an attribute t of God's nature. He can say that it is due to 'faith in Jesus Christ' (Ito 3-"-), or that it originates with God and rests on faith (Ph 3"). The believing man jiossesses it as the gift of life to him. These two sides of the truth are always present to the mind of St. Paul, but one is some- times more prominent than the other, and he freely passes from the one to the other. It is necessary to recollect tliis, as we go on to analyze the Apostle's main statements upon the relationship in question.
Righteousness, on the Pharisaic lines of piety, meant an Ivvofios /3Iw<ris, fidelity to the Divine Torali as embodying the standard set by God for His people ; in other words, all th.at God requires from man in relation to Himself and to other men. It is a matter of life and death. To be saved, a man must be righteous ; and he alone is righteous w ho conforms to this Law. And God ? His righteousness consists in fidelity to His own Law, as the highest norm of life. He is righteous as He rewards and praises those who keep that Law, which as Judge or Ruler He is bound to uphold. Now this was an aspect which, in the stiict sense of the term, St. Paul naturally left out of account, since he held that no one, however much care and passion he devoted to legal obedience, could possibly attain a position wliich entitled him to
* In this particular passage (Gal 326) it is possible to take Sm TTJs TTt'o-Tews by itself, and render, 'you are all sons of God in Christ Jesus, by your faith ' ; but this is less probable, and even if it were taken thus, there are many other passages where the above-noted principle is implied {e.g. Ro 42af.).
t O. Pfleiderer, Pautinism, Eug. tr., 2 vols., London, 1877, i. 103.
1 The Philonic habit of regarding certain attributes of God's nature as semi-personified, and therefore capable of being ap- propriated by man, might form a precedent for the view that St. Paul considered God's righteovisness as emanating from Himself and yet entering into human experieiK^e upon certain condi- tions. But this is not supported by his language. He does objectify or personify sin and death an<l wrath, but Ro 1^7 is too slender a basis for the idea that righteousness is similarly conceived as a Divine power operating in historj'. "The per- sonification in 2 Co S'-i' is irrelevant to such a notion (see below).
386
KIGIITEOUSNESS
RIGHTEOUSNESS
such ])raise ami reward.* Sin intervened so power- fully and disastrously that St. Paul was forced to lix his niiml upon the other side of tlie Divine rijjliteousuess, viz. the puiiislnneiit of dis- ohedieiiee. It was a.xioiuatic for liiiu as for the Judaism of his age, tliough in dillerent (lef;rees, that the just (ioil could not leave sin unpvmished ; He must uuiintain the rights of the Law when it was violated. The Divine Law, like human \a.\\, involved the praise of those who kept it and also the |>unishmeiit of transgressors. The old nia.xim helil good : ' juile.\ damiiatur uhi noceus absolvitur.' It was essential that tJod should prove Himself 'just' in this restricted .sense of 'righteous,' liy taking account of evil and transgression. But this punitive attitude, which St. Paul de.scribes as theanger of God, did not exhaust His mind towards a Inunanity which deserved nothing else. There is the waj' of e.xpialion or atonement, which enables (iod to acquit the sinner without condoning the sin. No sacrifice that men can otter has this atoning power ; St. Paul never troubles to argue that the ceremonial sacrifices, or even the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, on which probably pious Jews relied for the completion of pardon, did not avail for this purpose. The sacrifice is ottered by God Himself ; in modern terminology, it is a Divine self-sacrifice for the sake of sinful men ; the Cross of Christ reveals the heart of God in its righteous- ness (or grace) and also reveals his condemnation of sin. Through the blood of the Cross God's righteousnesj< is revealed fully as the saving power of His love for men. It repre.sents His grace — and grace for St. Paul means the power as well as the disposition of God's love to sinners — but, as Si/caio- aivj] connoted justice in the narrower sense, St. Paul could use the term upon occasion to bring out that punishment of sin which was essential to His nature and relations to men, or, as a modern might say, to the moral order.
The revelation of Divine goodness or righteous- ness in the gospel is therefore thrown into relief against the revelation of Divine anger which is the only alternative for those who will not have faith to see God's meaning and purpose in the go.spel of Christ. This is the point of Ro 1""- (' the gospel is God's saving power [Swa^uis $eoO eis auiTrip- iav'\ for everyone who has faith . . . God's Smaio- ffvvri is revealed in it by faith and for faith '). It is apt to be distorted for modern readers, who inevit- ably associate righteousness with an austere, retri- butive exercise of judicial power. But St. Paul here distinctly connotes it with saving power and opposes it to the Divine wrath, in a way that reuiinds us of the Psalmist's phrase (Ps 98") : ' The Lord hath made known his salvation (ti)!/ ffioTTjpiav avTov) : his righteousness {r-qi/ diKawtrufTjv avTou) hath he openly shewed in the sight of the nations.' The Apostle, as often, objectifies his thoughts. By the words 'a righteousne.ss of God is revealed ' he means that God is revealed as a God who justifies, as a God who, Himself right- eous, seeks to have men righteous before Him (cf. 3^).