To sum up the classical usage, the word has two main refer- ences: 1, to persons ; 2, to things or acts. In both the judicial element is dominant. The primary sense, to make right, takes on the conventional meanings to judge a thing to be right, to judge, to right a person, to treat rightly, to condemn, punish, put to death.
2. New Testament usage. This is not identical with the class- ical usage. In the New Testament the word is used of persons
Ca. IIL] THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 39
only. In Matt. xi. 19; Luke vii. 35, of a quality, Wisdom, but the quality is personified. It occurs thirty-nine times in the New Testament; * twenty-seven in Paul; eight in the Synop- tists and Acts; three in James; one in the Apocalypse.
A study of the Pauline passages shows that it is used by Paul according to the sense which attaches to the adjective dixavos, representing a state of the subject redatwely to God. The verb therefore indicates the act or process by which a man rs brought into a right state as related to God. In the A. V. confusion is likely to arise from the variations in translation, righteousness, just, justifier, justify. See Rom. baees 2 265.25, .50> iv: vy, 1,9: Gal: ii. 16.;,i11,.8, 11, 94; Tit. ii. 7.
The word is not, however, to be construed as indicating a mere legal transaction or adjustment between God and man, though it preserves the idea of relativity, in that God is the absolute standard by which the new condition is estimated, whether we regard God’s view of the justified man, or the man’s moral condition when justified. The element of charac- ter must not only not be eliminated from it; it must be fore- most in it. Justification is more than pardon. Pardon is an act which frees the offender from the penalty of the law, ad- justs his outward relation to the law, but does not necessarily effect any change in him personally. It is necessary to justifi- cation, but not identical with it. Justification aims directly at character. It contemplates making the man himself right ; that the new and right relation to God in which faith places him shall have its natural and legitimate issue in personal rightness. The phrase faith is counted for righteousness, does not mean that faith is w substitute for righteousness, but that faith zs righteousness; righteousness 7m the germ indeed, but still bond fide righteousness. The act of faith inaugurates a righteous life and a righteous character. The man is not made inherently holy in himself, because his righteousness is derived from God; neither is he merely declared righteous by
* Not in Apoc. xxii. 11, where, for ducawShrw let him be justified, the true reading is dicaootyny momnodrw let him do righteousness.
40 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. [Cu. IIL.
a legal fiction without reference to his personal character; but the justifying decree, the declaration of God which pronounces him righteous, is literally true to the fact in that he is in real, sympathetic relation with the eternal source and norm of holi- ness, and with the divine personal inspiration of character. Faith contains all the possibilities of personal holiness. It unites man to the holy God, and through this union he be- comes a partaker of the divine nature, and escapes the corrup- tion that is in the world through lust (2 Pet. i. 4). The intent of justification is expressly declared by Paul to be conformity to Christ’s image (Rom. viii. 29, 30). Justification which does not actually remove the wrong condition in man which is at the root of his enmity to God, is no justification. In the absence of this, a legal declaration that the man is right is a fiction. The declaration of righteousness must have its real and substantial basis in the man’s actual moral condi- tion.