Romans 1:16–17
The righteousness of God
The theme of Romans fits in two verses. Paul says why the gospel is God’s power to save, and points to what it reveals.
I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, then to the Greek. For the gospel reveals the righteousness of God that comes by faith from start to finish, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
Romans 1:16–17Righteousness revealed in the gospel
Righteousness is : God’s own rightness, and the standing of one whom God counts right before him. The Greek of verse 17 says from faith to faith, as the KJV and the LSV keep it; the BSB interprets the phrase as by faith from start to finish. Matthew Henry reads it the same way: it is not faith first and works afterwards, “but it is all along from faith to faith” Matthew Henry. Paul seals the point with Habakkuk: “but the righteous will live by faith” (Habakkuk 2:4).
This verse once opened a door in the church’s history. Near the end of his life Luther recalled how he had hated the phrase the righteousness of God, taking it to mean the justice by which God punishes sinners, until, wrestling with this verse, he understood it as the righteousness by which a merciful God justifies us through faith. He felt, he wrote, as though he had been born again and had gone through open gates into paradise Luther, Preface to the Latin Writings.
Righteousness apart from the law
In chapter 3 Paul unfolds the same righteousness. It has been revealed “apart from the law” (Romans 3:21), and between Jew and Gentile “There is no distinction” (Romans 3:22).
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
Romans 3:23–24Wesley glosses freely as “Without any merit of their own” Wesley. In verse 22 the BSB reads faith in Jesus Christ, the KJV faith of Jesus Christ, the LSV the faith of Jesus Christ. The Greek genitive can mean our faith in Christ or Christ’s own faithfulness, and scholars still weigh the two; either way the same verse says this righteousness comes to all who believe. In verse 25 Christ is set forth as an atoning sacrifice, in the KJV a propitiation, in the LSV a propitiatory covering: the Greek ἱλαστήριον is the word the Septuagint uses for the mercy seat, the cover of the ark. So God does not wave sin away, and yet he is able “to be just and to justify the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26).
How the churches have read it
The churches of the Reformation teach justification as God declaring sinners righteous for Christ’s sake, Christ’s righteousness being reckoned to them through faith, with a renewed life that always follows. The Catholic Church taught at Trent that justification is not only the forgiveness of sins but the sanctification and renewal of the inner person through grace received, and called faith the beginning, foundation and root of it Council of Trent. In 1999 the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church agreed together that God accepts sinners by grace alone, not for anything they have earned, as they trust in Christ, and set out the differences that remain Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.
ObjectionIf we are justified freely, may we live as we please?
Paul raises the question himself and answers, “Certainly not!” (Romans 6:2). Matthew Henry notes that the apostle “does not explain away the free grace of the gospel” Matthew Henry, and yet will not let justification and holiness be parted: no one can be dead to sin and go on living in it.
Of these passages only Romans 1:16 has the gospel’s own Greek word, and it has a page of its own in the dictionary of verses.
This step’s verses
Read each verse in the original, in several translations, with the commentaries and a note.
Verse dictionary →Source
- Martin Luther, Preface to the Latin Writings 1545 — Looks back on his discovery that 'the righteousness of God' in Romans 1:17 is the righteousness given through faith.
- Jewish translators at Alexandria, The Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament) — 3rd–1st century BC. The Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, often quoted by the New Testament writers. It mostly renders בָּשַׂר (basar) by εὐαγγελίζομαι (euangelizomai) (2 Samuel 18; Psalms 40:9, 68:11, 96:2; Isaiah 40:9, 52:7, 61:1), and calls the reward for news εὐαγγέλια at 2 Samuel 4:10. English: Brenton (1844).
- Council of Trent, Decree on Justification 7–8장 / chs 7–8 — 1547. Justification is not the forgiveness of sins only but the sanctification and renewal of the inner man through the willing reception of grace and gifts; baptism, the sacrament of faith, is its instrument, and with forgiveness faith, hope and charity are poured in, for faith without hope and charity does not unite a person perfectly with Christ (ch. 7). Faith is the beginning of human salvation, the foundation and root of all justification (ch. 8).
- Lutheran World Federation and Catholic Church, Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification 1999 — A shared statement of basic truths on justification, signed at Augsburg on 31 October 1999: together they confess that God accepts us by grace alone, as we trust in what Christ did to save us, and not for anything we have earned, and that the sixteenth-century condemnations do not apply to the teaching it sets out, while naming the differences that remain. The World Methodist Council joined it in 2006 and the World Communion of Reformed Churches in 2017.