' Light is liffht which radiates. Blood is blood which circulates. Life is life which generates '
(Kmerson, Threnody, 242 ff.).
God as righteous is the living God, not one who stands aloof from sinful men, leaving the race to itself, except to brood over its heightening impiety with the anger of outraged justice that ends in
* Unlike his contemporary, the author of the Apocalypse of Baruch, who (li. 3 f.) describes in glowing language the glory of ' those who have now been justified in My law . . . those who aave been saved by their works, and to whom the law has been low a hope.* So?ne lines of the description (' they shall be jhanged into every form they desire, from beauty into loveli- Qess, and from light into the splendour of glory ') recall 2 Co i^^.
punishment and death. The supreme obstacle to Ilis life generating life in men is .sin, the sin which has assumed such tyrannical power over humanity. Hut in the gospel lie removes this obstacle, or rather, breaks this hostile power, by the sacrificial death of Christ, Ilis Son, so that His righteousness or vital energy can now come into play.
When the Ai)ostle eventually tfescribes this in more detail (in Ko 3'-'"°*), he still speaks of the Divine righteousness being manifested, but, by a natural l\irn of thought and expression, he also uses SiKaioavfii in v.'-^'- in the narrower sense of 'justice' as oi)posed to laxity. The atoning death of Christ is put forward as a proof that He did recognize the doom with which sin had to be punished, and therefore that His righteousness bestowed on believing men is consonant with moral justice. If St. Paul could use Omaioirvfri already in a restricted sense in v.' of this chapter, the present writer sees no reason why he sliould not employ it in this particular sense in v.'-"-, especially as it was a sense which was innate in the term. Whenever 'righteousness' was associated with the thought of sin, its aspect of justice naturally tended to become prominent ; the .sombre punitive element came to the front, as in the case of the verb SiKaiovv (see above).
The use of a word in different senses in the same context may be illustrated from the very next paragraph (Ro 3'-^f-), where St. Paul employs f 6/ios in the special sense of principle (v. 27) anil then (v.^) as 'Law' (see above, p. 3S4). The Psalter of SiAoirutn furnishes another case of Sitcatotrvnj being used in two or three different senses close together :
' The works of mercy (iiKaiooTii-at) of thy saints are before thee . . . 0 God, our actions are in our own choice and power, to do right (iroi^tj-at StKaLoavtr/jv) OF wrong in the works of our hands. Id th.v righteousness (tV t^ SiKaioa-Cir^i trov) thou visitest the sons of men ' (ix. 6-8).
Before going further into this passage, however, we must turn to the prior allusion in 2 Co 5'-', one of the most startling personifications in the Pauline literature. ' For our sakes he made him to be sin who himself knew nothing of sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.' When did God ' make Christ sin ' ? * At the Incarnation, when the pre-e.xistent Son of God was made to wear the flesh of sinful man? This is Holsten's view. He regards St. Paul as holding that the flesh was essentially sinful, and consequently that Christ's human birth might be said to imply that He took sin upon Him by entering our sinful state. This view of the flesh, however, is untenable, and the fact which St. Paul has in mind is the Death pre-eminently. Whether 'sin ' means 'sin-offering' is not quite so clear. It is no argument against such an interpretation that it involves a double sense of ' sin ' in the same verse, for the compressed, rapid style of the Apostle here might admit of that. But the parallelism of ' sin ' and ' righteous- ness ' tells against it strongly. It is a daring expression, though not unexampled. God, St. Paul seems to mean, treated Clirist as a sinner, let Him suffer death (the normal consequence of human sin) in the interests of men, that we might become righteous t by our union with Him. ' Righteous ' here obviously means more than acquitted ; to become righteous in Christ, righteous before God, is to enjoy not simply freedom from guilt but a positive relation to God. How this takes place, St. Paul does not state in the verse before us ; his words must be read in the light of his other references to the virtue of Christ's sacri-
* The expression is even stronger than the similar phrase in Gal 3'^: 'Christ ransomed us from the curse of the law by becoming accursed (xarapa) for us: for it is written, Cursed (eirt«aTapaTo?) is everyone who hangs on a gibbet.' St. Paul
leaves out the LXX virb Seov after en-iKaTaparo?.
tin Eiu Ixii. 3 (' righteousness is judged before him '), ' right- eousness' similarly means 'the righteous.'
EIGHTEOUSNESS
RIGHTEOUSNESS
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