Luther got righteousness wrong. Biblical righteousness emphasizes Gods covenant faithfulness, not the status of the human being. Data below. A biblical definition of Righteousness: From Hebrew sedeq, translated dikaiosynē in Greek in the Septuagint, both of which are translated in English as “right, “righteous, and “righteousness, as well as “just, “justice and “justification”. These maybe separate categories in English, but they all belong together linguistically and theologically in Hebrew. (They come from one single word.) The OT, upon which the NT is based, depicts righteousness in two ways: 1) A Law Court with a Judge, plaintiff and defendant. (The Jews had no public prosecutors or attorneys.) Righteous was the status given by the court to the one it declares in favor of (to be right, or in the right). It is also the status given to the judge when the judge judges rightly. 2) The Covenant, though it merges with the law court, as the law (Torah) is their national charter. The Jews play various roles, sometimes accusing their enemies as plaintiffs before God, and sometimes they are standing on trial for their sins against God. They awaited vindication, or justification, when God would show they are his people by judging their enemies in the Jews favor. Luther got righteousness wrong. He corrected the misunderstanding of “righteousness” as merely being distributive justice—merely punishing wrong and rewarding right—but shifted the focus away from God’s covenant faithfulness onto the status of the human being. However, Luther’s followers, however, returned to the idea of distributive justice, saying that God must punish wrong and reward right, and that the divine justice of God was satisfied in Christ. (That never was the focus.) God’s declaration that we are in the right now is a declaration in advance of the day when we will stand before him to be judged based on how we lived our whole lives. On a practical note, the idea of our being in right standing implies resultant right living, including being part of God’s plan to put the whole world to rights. Excerpted from ntwrightpage/Wright_NDCT_Righteousness.htm
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 11:35:27 +0000
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