“God’s Righteousness Is Revealed in Every Believer from Faith to Faithfulness” (Rom 1.17): A Possible Reading

Introduction

One of the goals of the traditional historical-grammatical criticism of the New Testament has been to investigate and explore the authors’ intended meanings of their texts and how their first readers may have understood them. Romans is one of the most well-studied of Paul’s writings. In this study, I offer a possible reading of Rom 1.17, based on various exegetical grounds with respect to its syntagmatic and literary context and its role in the overall shape of Romans. This study resonates with what D. A. Cruse calls “a variety of ‘contextual’ approach”; he states that “it is assumed that the semantic properties of a lexical item are fully reflected in appropriate aspects of the relations it contracts with actual and potential contexts” (1986, 1). Moisés Silva emphasizes the importance of context in determining the meanings of words, and mentions four criteria: (1) syntagmatic sense relations; (2) literary context; (3) context of situation; and (4) other levels of context (1994, 137–48).

When discerning the meanings of various words and phrases in Rom 1.17, this study focuses on Silva’s first two criteria. In proposing a new reading of Rom 1.17, I discuss various exegetical issues related to the verse. It is possible to criticize this approach as being too selective, or not having a clear and consistent methodology. But the key insights of this study came to me when I was teaching a Greek exegesis course on Romans. It did not originate from a particular research interest but from trying to understand Rom 1.17 better in the light of Paul’s thematic movement in the whole letter.

“God’s righteousness”

Paul uses the phrase δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ seven times in Romans (1.17; 3.5, 21, 22, 25, 26; 10.3). Colin G. Kruse identifies five different aspects of the word δικαιοσύνη throughout Romans: (1) distributive justice (1.18-32; 2.2-11; 3.1-20); (2) covenant faithfulness (3.3-9; 9.1-29; 11.1-10); (3) saving action (3.21-26); (4) the gift of justification and a right relationship (3.21-26; 4.1-25; 5.17; 9.30–10.4); and (5) the righteousness of life (6.1-23; 8.4) (Kruse 2012, 79–81). Following Ernst Käsemann (1969), Kruse contends that the phrase δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ (1.17) carries the sense of (3) saving action (a subjective genitive) and the sense of (4) the gift of justification and a right relationship (a genitive of source/origin).

Paul uses the phrase δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ with multiple senses. Concerning its central meaning, Käsemann states, “Δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ is for Paul, as it is for the Old Testament and Judaism in general, a phrase expressing divine activity, treating not of the self-subsistent, but of the self-revealing God” (1969, 174). However, as Mark A. Seifrid notes, in Rom 1.16-17:

It is unlikely that Paul assumed that his audience was familiar with the background to δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ which Käsemann suggests. If Paul’s addressees had been familiar with a tradition in which the idea of “God’s saving and obedience-producing power” was expressed by δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ, there would have been no need for the argument of Rom 6. (Seifrid 1992, 44)

First, we must consider the phrase’s most typical sense. ¹ As Denny Burk argues, “Because δικαιοσύνη is the nominalization of an attribute, we have to rule out of bounds any notion of δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ as a subjective or objective genitive” (2012, 346). The nominalized form of the verb δικαιόω is not δικαιοσύνη but δικαίωσις. ² The abstract noun δικαιοσύνη is derived from the adjective δίκαιος. Therefore, the genitive θεοῦ is an adjectival genitive or an ablatival genitive, rather than a verbal genitive. I concur with Burk that the genitive θεοῦ should be identified as an adjectival genitive (i.e., possessive genitive), not as a verbal (subjective or objective) genitive. If Burk is right here, strictly speaking, the most typical and obvious sense of the phrase δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ is that θεὸς ἐστιν δίκαιος (“God is righteous”) rather than θεὸς δικαιοῖ (“God justifies”).

However, Burk concedes that:

Käsemann’s interpretation is still possible even when rendering the phrase as a simple possessive genitive—God’s own righteousness. When the phrase is interpreted as a possessive genitive, righteousness at its root is an attribute of the divine nature that can stand metonymically for God’s redemptive work through Christ. (2012, 346)

While Käsemann’s interpretation is still possible, as Burk emphasizes at first, the genitive θεοῦ is not a verbal genitive. Frank Thielman correctly captures the most typical sense of the phrase:

It not only refers to God’s saving activity and to the gift of acquittal from sin before God on the basis of faith, but, from the perspective of its first readers and hearers in Rome, would have referred most obviously to a property of God’s character, that he is fair, even-handed, and equitable in the way he distributes salvation. (Thielman 2011, 35)

Paul writes in Rom 3.26, “It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” ³ While the phrase δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ (Rom 1.17) refers both to God’s saving activity and God’s gift of righteousness based on faith in the light of Rom 3.26, its most typical sense is “God is righteous,” or “God is right.” ⁴

“In every believer”

Virtually all English translations of Rom 1.17 identify the personal pronoun αὐτῷ with the noun τὸ εὐαγγέλιον in v. 16 (e.g., CJB, ESV, GNB, NET, NIV, NJB, NLT). Perhaps the only exception is Eugene Peterson’s The Message (“God’s way of putting people right shows up in the acts of faith, confirming what Scripture has said all along: ‘The person in right standing before God by trusting him really lives’”). However, the personal pronoun αὐτῷ can be either masculine or neuter dative singular. There is a certain poetic parallelism in Rom 1.16-17:

The coordinating conjunction γάρ appears three times here. Some may argue that the poetic parallelism of Rom 1.16-17 suggests that the antecedent of the personal pronoun αὐτῷ in v. 17 is the noun τὸ εὐαγγέλιον in v. 16. The stronger poetic parallelism here is not between the first and the third γάρ but between the second and the third γάρ. What strikingly and immediately parallels the phrase δικαιοσύνη θέου in v. 17 is not the noun τὸ εὐαγγέλιον but the phrase δύναµις θέου in v. 16. As God’s power causes the salvation of everyone who believes, God’s righteousness causes a movement in every believer’s life from faith in Jesus Christ to continuing Christ-like obedience to God.

I am not saying here that the conventional English translations of Rom 1.17 are incorrect, but am proposing a possible reading that highlights Paul’s holistic and dynamic portrait of Christian life. This reading identifies the personal pronoun αὐτῷ with the phrase παντὶ τῷ πιστεύοντι rather than the noun τὸ εὐαγγέλιον, for the former is the closest possible antecedent and it makes better sense of Paul’s citation of LXX Hab 2.4, by which he shapes his words in Rom 1.17.

Dietrich-Alex Koch (1985) claims that the LXX reading ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεώς µου ζήσεται (W* B S Q V) of Hab 2.4 is original, containing the possessive adjective µου, and that Paul intentionally dropped the µου for his own rhetorical purpose. As Chris Kugler argues, “if there was still any doubt concerning the source of Paul’s formation, the fact that ἐκ πίστεως occurs only in Romans and Galatians—the very letters alone that cite Habakkuk 2.4—is decisive evidence for this conclusion” (Kugler 2016, 251; cf. Campbell 1992, 100, and Hays 1997, 42). The phrase ἐκ πίστεώς µου “by my faith” in LXX Hab 2.4 contrasts with the phrase באמונתו “by his faith” in MT Hab 2.4. Kugler comments on Paul’s citation of LXX Hab 2.4 in Rom 1.17:

As Campbell has suggested, Paul has taken this expression from Habakkuk, and excised the pronoun in either MT or LXX, because he wants to relate this πίστις to Jesus Christ (Campbell 1994, 268). Essentially, Paul has taken a text which read something like, “ἐκ πίστεως Χριστου” (Campbell 1994, 268). Hence, Paul has taken an expression from the Jewish Scriptures which, when related to a genitive pronoun of person, is always subjective, and he has brought that formation in relation to Jesus Christ. (Kugler 2016, 252)

Though it goes beyond the scope of this study to delve into the πίστις Χρίστου debate, I want to respond briefly to Kugler’s comments on Rom 1.17. Kugler seems to argue that Paul refers to the faithfulness of Christ (subjective genitive) by the phrase ἐκ πίστεως in his citation of LXX Hab 2.4 in Rom 1.17. This makes little sense in its syntagmatic and literary context. If Kugler is correct, according to a conventional English translation such as ESV, Paul writes, “as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by [the] faithfulness [of Jesus Christ],” which would have made his first readers wonder what that meant specifically. While both the objective genitive reading and the subjective genitive reading make good sense for the phrase διὰ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ εἰς πάντας τοὺς πιστεύοντας in Rom 3.21-22, Kugler’s argument for the subjective genitive reading in Rom 1.17 is unconvincing.

As I will explain shortly, Paul more likely refers not to the faithfulness of Jesus Christ (subjective genitive) but to every believer’s faith in Jesus Christ (objective genitive) and his or her continuing Christ-like obedience to God. The faithfulness of Jesus Christ makes one’s faith in him possible as its foundation, and Paul does not isolate the latter from the former. As Robert Jewett suggests, Paul may have altered the text “to make plain to his audience that faith refers to acceptance of the gospel” (2006, 144).

Paul uses the identical phrase ἐκ πίστεως and an abstract noun δικαιοσύνη derived from the adjective δίκαιος in LXX Hab 2.4. In conventional English translations, it is not immediately clear how “the gospel” or “the righteousness of God” is linked to “the righteous one” in LXX Hab 2.4 and why Paul cites this particular Scripture as his supporting text. My new reading of Rom 1.17 makes better sense of why Paul quotes LXX Hab 2.4. Paul perceives that everyone who is not ashamed of the gospel but experiences the power of God that leads him or her to salvation fulfills this prophecy in Habakkuk. Rikki E. Watts explains how the question of God’s righteousness and wicked Gentiles in Hab 2.4 “provides Paul an opportunity to establish that his gospel and its problematic outworkings are in continuity with the earlier ‘mysterious’ revelation of God’s promised salvation” (1999, 24–25).

Throughout Romans, Paul uses the phrase Ἰουδαῖος τε πρῶτον καὶ Ἕλλην (1.16; 2.9, 10) and its equivalent expressions (3.9, 29; 9.24; 10.12). There is no favoritism with God (2.11). God is the God of both Jews and Gentiles (3.29). God has called believers from both Israel and Gentiles (9.24). There is no distinction between a Jewish and a Gentile believer, for Jesus is the same Lord of all (10.12). Paul writes in Rom 1.16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” Paul immediately emphasizes that the same righteousness of God is revealed in every believer. My new reading makes Rom 1.17 a stronger rhetorical statement than its conventional translations.

Some may argue that the pronoun αὐτῷ (Rom 1.17) requires a singular antecedent and, since the phrase παντὶ τῷ πιστεύοντι, Ἰουδαίῳ τε πρῶτον καὶ Ἕλληνι (Rom 1.16) is effectively plural, the former cannot refer to the latter. This criticism fails to capture the effectively plural sense of αὐτός (Rom 1.17) in conjunction with the indefinite pronoun πᾶς (Rom 1.16). There are many examples of the personal pronoun αὐτός functioning as effectively plural because of its link with the indefinite pronoun πᾶς throughout the New Testament (e.g., Matt 5.22, 28, 32; 1 Cor 11.4). Paul is a competent Greek writer and would not have made an obvious grammatical mistake, using the phrase ἐν αὐτοῖς to refer to the dative singular παντί (Rom 1.16).

Some may further suggest that the cosmic overtones of the verb ἀποκαλύπτω weigh against a focus on the individual believer. This criticism loses its force when we consider Paul’s statement in Gal 1.15-16, “God was pleased . . . to reveal his Son in me [ἀποκαλύψαι τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ ἐν ἐµοί], in order that I may preach him among the Gentiles” (my translation); cf. Gal 4.19; 2 Cor 4.10-11. Paul’s use of the verb ἀποκαλύπτω with the phrase ἐν ἐµοί (Gal 1.15-16) parallels his use of the verb with the phrase ἐν αὐτῷ (Rom 1.17). Paul writes in 2 Cor 5.17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” Paul considers the internal transformation in a believer through Christ as a cosmic event.

To identify the noun ὁ δίκαιος (Rom 1.17) with every believer is not in any sense intended to promote justification by works. It is God’s righteousness through faith in Christ which makes a believer righteous (Rom 3.21-26). God justifies the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom 3.26) and, therefore, with the noun ὁ δίκαιος from LXX Hab 2.4, Paul refers to every believer in Christ. Jesus is the ultimate righteous one, on his own merit; however, those who belong to him also become righteous by virtue of his righteousness (2 Cor 5.21). Believers in Christ must live righteously, not because they must earn their justification by works, but because they already have been justified by faith in Christ; cf. 1 Cor 6.11.

“From faith to faithfulness”

Wilbur A. Benware concludes his study, “From the viewpoint of Cognitive Grammar, the asyndetic relation of the two prepositional phrases in Rom 1.17 leads to an interpretation whereby a TR [Trajector] dikaiosunē theou ‘moves’ between a Source (pistis) and a Goal (pistis).” He goes on, “Since the Source and Goal are expressed by the identical noun, the idiom is best interpreted as ‘begins in faith(fulness) and ends in faith(fulness),’ or ‘faith(fulness) from beginning to end’” (Benware 2000, 338). As we will see shortly, Benware’s interpretation of the phrase ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν in Rom 1.17 comes the closest to my proposed reading of it, except that he does not differentiate the syntagmatic sense of the first πίστις “faith” and that of the second πίστις “faithfulness.”

Charles L. Quarles (2003, 2–5) presents a brief survey of interpretations of the phrase ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν in Rom 1.16-17: (1) “from confidence in the law to faith in the gospel” (Tertullian); (2) “first believing in the prophets and then the gospel” (Theodoret; similarly, Origen); (3) “from the faith of the Old Testament saints to the faith of New Testament believers” (Chrysostom); (4) “from the faith of the gospel preachers to the faith of those who obey it” (Augustine); (5) “from God’s faithfulness to man’s faith” (Ambrosiaster; Barth; Dunn; Davies); (6) “from present faith to future faith,” or “from faith in the unseen to faith in realities actually possessed” (Aquinas); (7) “this faith that advances and grows” (Calvin); (8) “justification by faith and faith alone” (Lietzmann; Nygren; Cranfield; Ziesler; Moo; Byrne; Fitzmyer; Schreiner); (9) “by faith to those who believe” (Cornely; Hill; Murray); (10) “faith as the ground and its goal [of the righteousness of God]” (Lightfoot; Schlatter; Hodge). ⁵ Quarles conducts an extensive review of the use of the formula “from A to A” in extra-biblical Greek, the LXX, and Paul’s other letters. He concludes:

The two most likely options are that (a) the construction expresses that the revelation of the righteousness of God originated with the faithfulness of Christ and results in the faith of the believer or (b) the revelation of the righteousness of God extends from the faith of the Old Testament believer to the faith of the New Testament believer. (Quarles 2003, 21)

Quarles prefers (b) to (a) for the meaning of the phrase. According to Richard N. Longenecker, option (8) above has been the most common until recently, but option (5) has been becoming “a rising tide of scholarly opinion” from the early 1890s to the present (2016, 178). John W. Taylor argues that the phrase “from A to A” refers to the same thing, and there exists progression, movement, or growth between them. Taylor suggests:

“From faith to faith” is Paul’s excited report of the success of the gospel and the growing number of believers, and in particular of the advance or growth of faith among the Gentiles. . . . [Faith] in each case thus stands for a believing response to the gospel, but the increase in faith indicated by the idiom is not personal or individual growth in faith but the mounting number of converts that Paul has seen in his ministry. (Taylor 2004, 346)

Taylor’s claim that “from faith to faith” does not indicate “personal or individual growth in faith but the mounting number of converts that Paul has seen in his ministry” is unconvincing, when we consider that Rom 1.16-17 is the propositio of the letter, not just Paul’s “excited report of the success of the gospel and the growing number of believers.” On the one hand, Quarles’s and Taylor’s comprehensive surveys illuminate what the phrase ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν could mean in consideration of its general usage in the Greek language. On the other hand, however, I suggest that its particular meaning in Rom 1.16-17 becomes clearer when we pay attention to its syntagmatic and literary context and its role in the overall thematic movement of Romans, which I will explain in the following.

Paul’s hermeneutical creativity

More than forty years ago, E. P. Sanders (1977) challenged the previous NT scholarship’s stereotypical depiction of Second Temple Judaism as a works-based legalistic religion. Instead, Sanders argues that its common soteriological framework is what he calls “covenantal nomism,” famously put as “getting in” the covenant by God’s gracious election and “staying in” the covenant by obedience to the law (420). Sanders argues that Paul was reflecting on Judaism from the viewpoint of life in Christ: “Paul’s thought did not run from plight to solution, but rather from solution to plight” (443). He concludes, “It is thus not first of all against the means of being properly religious which are appropriate to Judaism that Paul polemicizes (‘by works of law’), but against the prior fundamentals of Judaism. . . . In short, this is what Paul finds wrong in Judaism: it is not Christianity” (551–52).

It goes beyond the scope of this study to discuss the contributions to the topic of justification by those who identify with the New Perspective on Paul (cf. Lee 2016). However, I do see a parallel between what Sanders calls “covenantal nomism”—the typical soteriological framework in biblical Judaism and Second Temple Judaism—and how Paul explains the organic connection between what later Christian theologians described as “justification by faith” and “sanctification.”

Paul’s creativity as a writer is conspicuous in that he uses the preposition ἐκ in the phrase ἐκ πίστεως in a directional sense in Rom 1.17, whereas he typically uses the preposition ἐκ in the phrase ἐκ πίστεως in an instrumental sense (cf. δὶα πίστεως, 3.30, 31) elsewhere in Romans (1.17b; 3.26, 30; 4.16; 5.1; 9.32; 10.6; 14.23). By the idiom “from A to A,” Paul portrays God’s righteousness revealed in every believer as a dynamic movement from one’s initial faith in Christ to his or her continuing Christ-like obedience to God. Seifrid comments on Rom 1.16-17:

The revelation of God’s righteousness leads to the act of faith (είς πίστιν) which appropriates it (παντὶ τῷ πιστεύοντι). The righteousness conferred by God, revealed in the Gospel through faith, is given to faith. The dual prepositional usage is not merely stylistic then. The phrase είς πίστιν removes any misunderstanding regarding the means by which the δικαιοσύνη manifest in the Gospel is acquired. Paul is able to use the Habakkuk citation (ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται) as a summary of the whole. (Seifrid 1992, 218)

What Seifrid calls “the act of faith” here is equivalent to my translation of the phrase εἰς πίστιν as “to faithfulness.” Seifrid correctly highlights here the intrinsic link between a Christian believer’s justification by faith in Jesus Christ (ἐκ πίστεως) and ongoing obedience to God in everyday life (εἰς πίστιν). As I argued earlier, my new reading of Rom 1.17 more clearly explains how and why “Paul is able to use the Habakkuk citation as a summary of the whole [letter]” than most English translations available today. As Stegman notes, “Paul’s exhortations to ‘God’s beloved in Rome’ (1.7) are therefore based on his understanding that the Spirit-empowered community gathered around Christ and consisting of Jews and Gentiles (15.9) is called to be the ongoing manifestation of the dikaiosynē theou” (2011, 521).

Contrary to Käsemann’s claim, his understanding of God’s righteousness as God’s saving power that creates new obedience (nova obedientia) does not explain clearly the intrinsic link between “to declare righteous” (gerecht erklären) and “to make righteous” (gerecht machen). Seifrid notes:

The Gospel as δύναµις θεοῦ εἰς σωτηρίαν, unlike δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ in 1:17, includes the nova obedientia of believers, since it embraces the theology of the entire letter. Although Paul’s statement in Rom 1:16 is formulated on the basis of a distinction between Jew and Gentile, and is followed by an assertion regarding righteousness by faith, v. 16 cannot be interpreted as having merely a forensic force. (Seifrid 1992, 212)

My new reading of Rom 1.16-17 does not have to make such a distinction that “the power of God for salvation” involves the new obedience of believers while “God’s righteousness” does not. God’s righteousness, in this new reading, incorporates here both a forensic sense (“from faith [in Jesus Christ]”) and a behavioral/participatory sense (“to faithfulness”; nova obedientia). We have a case of semantic density in the expression “God’s righteousness.” First, God’s righteousness is revealed in every believer in his or her initial faith in Christ. God is righteous to justify every believer, because of Christ’s atoning sacrifice (3.25). Second, God’s righteousness is revealed in every believer in his or her continuing Christ-like obedience to God. God is righteous, or God is right, in that Christ’s atoning sacrifice was not in vain (3.25; cf. 5.8), for it produces fruits in those justified by faith in Christ (14.18). Those in Christ become God’s righteousness (2 Cor 5.21). Therefore, those in Christ naturally demonstrate God’s righteousness in everyday life as their testimony to God’s grace in Christ.

Paul’s emphasis on the new life in Christ throughout Romans thematically echoes Rom 1.16-17. The question arises whether or not Paul’s first audience would have understood the unique phrase ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν as “from faith (in Jesus Christ) to (Christlike) faithfulness,” as I am proposing here. Perhaps not at that very moment. However, this unique expression certainly would have captivated his original audience, keeping them wondering what he may have meant by it to the end of the letter. ⁷ After reading the entire letter, Paul’s first audience would have understood what he meant by this phrase and identified themselves with the righteous who will live by faith, mentioned in Hab 2.4, and been encouraged to live out their faith in action.

Conclusion

This study proposes a reading of Rom 1.17 as “For God’s righteousness is revealed in every believer from faith to faithfulness, as it was written, ‘The righteous will live by faith,’” considering its syntagmatic and literary context and its role in the overall shape of Romans. Conventional English translations of Rom 1.16-17 identify the third person singular dative pronoun αὐτῷ in v. 17 with the neuter singular nominative τὸ εὐαγγέλιον in v. 16 (e.g., ESV, “For in it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed”). This study identifies the personal pronoun αὐτῷ with the phrase παντὶ τῷ πιστεύοντι rather than the noun τὸ εὐαγγέλιον. The former is the closest possible antecedent and it makes better sense of Paul’s citation of LXX Hab 2.4. Considering that Rom 1.16-17 functions as the propositio of the letter, as is recognized by many commentators, the phrase ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν means “from faith to faithfulness” in the light of the thematic movement in the overall shape of Romans. Paul moves from a focus on theological concepts related to justification by faith (chs. 1–11) to a focus on their practical applications to his readers (chs. 12–16). The first πίστις refers to a believer’s justification by faith in Christ and the second πίστις refers to the believer’s subsequent sanctification.

This reading of Rom 1.17 effectively captures Paul’s holistic and dynamic portrait of Christian life, evident in Romans and elsewhere. Regardless of whether or not one accepts this reading, Paul shows the vital link between faith in Christ and Christ-like obedience to God, in which Paul agrees with James, “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead” (Jas 2.26).

Abbreviations

CJB Complete Jewish Bible (1998)

ESV English Standard Version (2001, 2016)

GNB Good News Bible (1994)

LXX Septuagint

MT Masoretic Text

NET NET Bible (New English Translation; 2001)

NIV New International Version (1978)

NJB New Jerusalem Bible (1985)

NLT New Living Translation (1996)