In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has revealed his power, displayed his wrath against sin, and manifested his righteousness in saving sinners without compromising his righteousness. The gospel, therefore, summons all people—Jew and Gentile alike—not merely to seek personal salvation but to behold, trust, and proclaim the radiant righteousness of God revealed in Jesus Christ. 

The Justification of God

Of the numerous portions of Scripture that declare “God’s righteousness,” the Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Romans stands out. He makes this clear with his thesis statement: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew and then to the Greek. For God’s righteousness is being revealed in it from faithfulness unto belief, just as it is written, “But the Righteous one shall live from faithfulness” (Rom. 1:16–17).1 These verses convey a tightly condensed summary of the argument Paul develops throughout his letter. We would therefore be rash and mistaken to suppose that we can comprehend these compressed terms and phrases apart from carefully reading the content of Paul’s letter to the Romans for ourselves. Each phrase and word in this sentence is jam-packed and awaits the apostle’s own unfolding of their meaning in the body of his letter.2

Paul emphasizes how the good news, as it is in Jesus, uniquely and preeminently reveals “God’s righteousness” when he states, “But now, apart from the law, God’s righteousness has been revealed, being testified to by the Law and the Prophets” (Rom. 3:21). First, the gospel reveals God’s righteousness uniquely in a way distinct from the law covenant. Whereas the law covenant commands righteous behavior it cannot bring about, the gospel has the power to declare the unrighteous righteous. Second, the gospel reveals God’s righteousness preeminently in that it is the full revelation of God’s righteousness to which the Law and the Prophets bore witness to in a veiled form (cf. Rom. 1:1–2; 16:25–27).

Thus, Paul presents the gospel of Jesus Christ as uniquely revealing God’s righteous character. The gospel is first and foremost a message not about us as sinners but about God. Because God, in his forbearance, passed over previously committed sins, some doubted God’s righteousness (Rom. 3:25). Thus, Paul’s thesis and argument focus on the justification of God—how can God be righteous while forgiving sin? The law court imagery, which dominates Paul’s argument throughout his letter, is not only about how a sinner may stand righteous before the Lord God on the Day of Judgment, but also about how God will vindicate his own righteousness. God’s vindication of himself, therefore, grounds his justification of sinners.3

Luther Biased Our Understanding of Paul’s Thesis Statement

No one disputes that Paul presents the thesis of his letter in Romans 1:16–17. But there is great consternation about exactly what the thesis presented in these verses is. The only path forward is to study the text closely.

First, Paul states, “the gospel is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes,” and then, the gospel “reveals the righteousness of God” (dikaiosynē theou). Biblical scholars offer divergent explanations of “the righteousness of God” revealed by the gospel. Many focus on the believer’s justification before God, while others center on God’s character as righteous.4 Since the Reformation, a large swath of Christians has followed Martin Luther’s assertion that “the righteousness of God is that righteousness which he imparts in order to make men righteous.”5 Earlier in his life, Luther had understood the revelation of God’s righteousness as the bad news that God, who is righteous, was actively against him, a sinner. At his conversion, Luther changed his understanding of the righteousness God revealed. Thus, prompted by Luther, many presume that Paul speaks not of God’s righteous character but of a divine action granting individual believers a gift of righteousness in contrast to works-righteousness.6 While Luther correctly drew this doctrine from Paul’s Letter to the Romans as a whole, he wrongly projects it onto the apostle’s thesis statement in 1:17. This was a mistake, which has prejudiced generations of both Reformed and Lutheran readers against the correct understanding of Romans 1:17. For example, Charles Hodge, following Luther, argues that the righteousness Paul speaks of “cannot here be understood of a divine attribute, such as rectitude, justice, goodness, or veracity, is obvious, because it is . . . a righteousness which is by faith.”7

But Luther’s interpretation of Paul’s thesis is far from the only one. Since the late 20th century, three interpretations, with some variations within each, have competed over how Paul uses “of God” in the phrase “righteousness of God.”

1. The explanation of Romans 1:17 that dominates evangelical, Reformed commentaries is that the passage speaks of righteousness from God. In this majority view, righteousness is God’s gift received by humans who believe the good news. Thus, it is a right standing that God gives. I emphatically affirm that this expresses a correct and proper teaching found in Paul’s letters, including Romans. However, it is wrongly imposed onto Paul’s thesis concerning “God’s righteousness” in Romans 1:17.

Simply because this interpretation of Romans 1:17 has endured and dominated for centuries does not mean it is correct. It fails to explain why the apostle’s first use of the expression, “righteousness of God,” after his thesis statement in Romans 1:17 occurs in Romans 3:5, where “God’s righteousness” speaks unambiguously of God’s character, as all English translations show, not of God’s declaring a righteous standing upon a believer. Following this unmistakably clear use of the phrase in Romans 3:5, Paul uses it again four more times in Romans 3:21, 22, 25, and 26, where in the latter two verses, again, the expression unequivocally speaks of God’s attribute, “his righteousness” (dikaiosynē autou). As with Romans 1:17, each use of “God’s righteousness,” in Romans 3:5, 21, 22, 25, and 26, is the object of a verb: (1) “demonstrates God’s righteousness” (Rom. 3:5); (2) “God’s righteousness has been manifested” (Rom. 3:21, same verb supplied in 22); (3) “to show God’s righteousness” (Rom. 3:25); (4) “to show God’s righteousness” (Rom. 3:26).

The Lutheran interpretation does not account for Paul’s careful distinction concerning God’s acting with reference to two different things. On the one hand, “God’s righteousness” is revealed (Rom. 1:17), demonstrated (Rom. 3:5, 25), manifested (Rom. 3:21, 22), shown (Rom. 3:25, 26), not known and not submitted to (Rom. 10:3). On the other hand, “righteousness” without the possessive qualifier “of God,” may be reckoned (Rom. 4:6), is a gift given freely (Rom. 5:17), enlivens (Rom. 8:10), may be pursued (Rom. 9:30). These latter verses speak of the believer’s standing before God because of his act of declaring one righteous. Hence, Luther’s teaching concerning righteousness as God’s gift to believers is correct, but he tried to squeeze this correct doctrine from texts like Romans 1:17 that do not say what he wanted them to say.

2. Since the twentieth century, some New Testament scholars have opted to follow Ernst Käsemann rather than Luther, contending that “righteousness of God” refers to “God’s salvation-creating power.”8 Those who hold this view mistakenly assume that Paul’s use of “righteousness” in Romans 1:17 signifies God’s saving activity.” They attempt to hold together two competing concepts: (1) God’s righteous character, and (2) God’s saving activity of justifying believers.9

Essentially, to merge “God’s righteousness” (Rom. 1:17) with “God’s power” (Rom. 1:16) fails to account for Paul’s precise statements in Romans 1:16–17. It is not “God’s righteousness” but “the gospel” which he describes as “God’s power.” The gospel is “God’s power for the salvation of everyone who believes” precisely because “God’s righteousness” is being revealed in the gospel. The activity Paul speaks of in Romans 1:17 is the revealing of “God’s righteousness” (his character). The activity is not “God’s righteousness” itself.

3. “Righteousness that belongs to God,” “God’s righteousness.” Righteousness of God is a quality or attribute belonging to God. Foremost among those who hold this view is N. T. Wright, who claims that the righteousness which God possesses is his own covenant faithfulness.

Since N. T. Wright wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on Romans at Oxford University, he has revolutionized discussions of Paul’s letters, in the academy and church alike.

Read More

1. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are the author’s. Hear his exposition of Romans 1:16–17 here

2. Other than in Romans, “righteousness of God” is found only once in all of Paul’s letters, in 2 Corinthians 5:21. Some scholars mistakenly claim that the expression also occurs in Philippians 3:9. There, Paul’s expression is different, tēn ek Theou dikaiosunē. The preposition ek renders the phrase distinctively different from δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ.

3. Forty-three years ago, and since, the title of John Piper’s The Justification of God has been overshadowed by his subtitle, An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1–23, for his readers who were influenced by viewing Romans 9–11 as an excursus to Paul’s argument. This combination of words, “the justification of God,” seems to have exceeded Piper’s own realization that it effectively captures the apostle’s thesis and argument throughout his Letter to the Romans, despite his earlier contention that Paul’s use of “God’s righteousness” in Romans 3:1–8 and 25, 26 “refers most basically to the characteristic of God’s nature or the unswerving inclination of his will which precedes and grounds all his acts and gifts” (John Piper, “The Demonstration of the Righteousness of God in Romans 3:25, 26,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 7 (1980): 3). See also, John Piper, “The Righteousness of God in Romans 3:1–8,” Theologische Zeitschrift 36 (1980): 3–16. Piper’s more current exposition of Romans is heavily influenced by Luther.

4. See, e.g., Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans, BECNT, 2^nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), 66–82, for his interaction with a range of interpretations.

5. Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans, trans. and ed. Wilhelm Pauck, Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961), 18.

6. Those who hold this view interpret “righteousness of God” (dikaiosunē theou) not as speaking of God’s character but as “a righteousness from God,” with God as the source of a righteous standing (justification), as if Paul’s wording in Philippians 3:9 (dikaiosunē hē ek theou) explains his different wording in Romans 1:17; 3:5, 21–22; and 10:3 (dikaiosunē theou). See, e.g., Schreiner, Romans, 70–71.

7. Charles Hodge, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 11^th printing 1974 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950), 30, emphasis added.

8. Ernst Käsemann, New Testament Questions of Today, trans. W. J. Montague (London: SCM, 1969), 168–82.

9. See Michael F. Bird, A Bird’s-Eye View of Paul: The Man, His Mission and His Message (Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2008), 95. Like all who hold this view, Bird assumes the phrase, dikaiosunē theou, is a “subjective genitive,” with the noun dikaiosunē implying an action performed by God (theou), while also treating the phrase as indicating possession. Grammatically, it is either one or the other, but not both. None of these expressions to which Bird appeals—”power of God” (Rom. 1:16), “righteousness of God” (Rom. 1:17; 3:5, 21, 22, 25, 26), “wrath of God” (Rom. 1:18), “faithfulness of God” (Rom. 3:3), or “truthfulness of God” (Rom. 3:7; 15:8)—functions to indicate both God’s possession and God’s action simultaneously. Each is one or the other, but not both simultaneously.