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Course 7 · Lesson 5.2

Gospel, faith and righteousness in Romans and Galatians

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 7 outline

Module 1: The World of the New Testament

  1. Second Temple Judaism in the time of Jesus
  2. Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and other movements
  3. Rome, the Herods and the province of Judea
  4. Hopes, protest and revolt in Jewish political life

Module 2: Jesus in History

  1. Sources for Jesus: Christian, Jewish and Roman
  2. The quests for the historical Jesus and their methods
  3. Criteria of authenticity and their limits
  4. Historical results and Christian confession

Module 3: The Gospels as Books

  1. The gospels and ancient biography
  2. Traditions of authorship and the arguments about them
  3. The synoptic problem: the evidence of agreement and difference
  4. Solutions: Markan priority, Q, Matthean priority and others
  5. Four portraits of Jesus: the distinct emphasis of each gospel

Module 4: Acts and the Spread of the Church

  1. Pentecost and the Jerusalem church
  2. The mission to the Gentiles and the council at Jerusalem
  3. Paul in Acts and in his own letters
  4. Acts as history and as theology

Module 5: Pauline Theology

  1. Paul and his letters: occasion, authorship and order
  2. Gospel, faith and righteousness in Romans and Galatians
  3. Christ, the Spirit and the body of Christ
  4. Reading Paul: traditional, new perspective and other approaches

Module 6: Johannine Theology

  1. The Gospel, the three letters and Revelation: authorship questions
  2. Word, light, life and love in the Gospel of John
  3. The signs and the I am sayings
  4. The Spirit, the community and the Johannine letters

Module 7: Hope, Authority and Church Order

  1. The kingdom of God and last things in Jesus and the apostles
  2. Ways of reading New Testament eschatology
  3. What an apostle was and how apostolic authority worked
  4. Offices and order in the first churches
  5. How Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches read the evidence

Module 8: The Testaments Together

  1. Fulfilment and continuity: how the New Testament uses the Old
  2. Law and covenant across the Testaments
  3. Comparing Paul and John: a method
  4. Shared convictions and meaningful differences

All courses

Program / Course 7: New Testament Theology and History / Lesson 5.2

What you will learn

  • Explain Paul’s use of the words gospel, faith, righteousness and justification in Romans and Galatians.
  • Follow the main steps of Paul’s argument in Romans 1 to 5 and Galatians 2 to 3.
  • Describe how Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Reformed and other readers understand justification.
  • Explain why the phrase ‘works of the law’ and the meaning of ‘the righteousness of God’ are debated.

The big idea

In Romans and Galatians Paul argues that God puts people right with himself through Jesus Christ, and that this comes by faith and not by keeping the law as a way of belonging to God’s people. The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, Jew first and Gentile as well. Christians agree on the center of this message, that salvation is God’s gift in Christ. They differ about what justification means, how faith and works relate, and how the letters should be read.

Key terms

Gospel
In Paul, the good news that God has acted in Jesus’ death and resurrection to save, announced to all peoples.
Righteousness (of God)
A key phrase in Romans. It can mean God’s own justice or covenant faithfulness, a status that God gives to believers, or both. Interpreters debate the emphasis.
Justification
From the Greek verb dikaioo, to declare or make righteous. It names God’s act of putting people right with himself.
Faith
Trust in and loyalty to God, and in Paul’s argument trust in what God has done in Christ. The Greek word pistis can also mean faithfulness.
Works of the law
A phrase in Galatians and Romans. Some read it as any human effort to earn favor, others as the observances that marked Jews apart, such as circumcision, Sabbath and food laws.
Imputation
In Protestant theology, God’s reckoning of Christ’s righteousness to the believer.
Grace
God’s undeserved favor and gift, central to Paul’s gospel.

Background

Galatians and Romans are the two letters in which Paul most fully argues about the relation of faith, the law and righteousness. Galatians is a sharp letter written to churches in Galatia where some teachers were urging Gentile believers to be circumcised. Romans is a longer, calmer letter to a church of Jews and Gentiles in Rome, which Paul hoped to visit. Both letters rest on the conviction that in Christ, God has done what the law could not do.

These letters drove the debates of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, when Martin Luther read Romans as teaching that a person is justified by faith alone. Catholic theologians answered at the Council of Trent. Since the twentieth century, scholars have reread Paul in his Jewish setting and asked again what he meant. The next lesson looks at those readings. This lesson sets out the argument.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The gospel and the righteousness of God

Romans begins with a statement of the theme: ‘For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith’ (Romans 1:16 to 17). The phrase ‘righteousness of God’ has been read in several ways. Luther, after long struggle, came to understand it as the righteousness that God gives to the believer. Other interpreters stress God’s own faithfulness to his promises and his saving justice, shown in Christ.

Many scholars now hold that both ideas belong together: God’s righteousness is his faithful action to put the world right, and it results in a righteous standing for those who trust him.

Step 2: All are under sin; God’s answer in Christ

Romans 1:18 to 3:20 argues that all, Gentile and Jew, are under the power of sin. Paul concludes that ‘by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight’ (Romans 3:20). Then comes the turn: God’s righteousness has been shown ‘by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe’ (Romans 3:22), and people are ‘justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus’ (Romans 3:24). God set forth Christ as a ‘propitiation’ or place of atonement (Romans 3:25).

Interpreters differ on the Greek phrase in Romans 3:22. It can be translated ‘faith in Jesus Christ’ or ‘the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.’ Both are held by serious scholars, and both can be harmonized with the same teaching: that salvation depends on what God has done in Christ.

Step 3: Abraham and the promise

Both Romans 4 and Galatians 3 go back to Abraham, who ‘believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness’ (Genesis 15:6). Paul argues that this happened before circumcision, so that Abraham is the father of all who believe, Jew or Gentile. In Galatians he adds that the promise to Abraham comes before the law of Moses, which cannot cancel it (Galatians 3:17).

Paul concludes in Galatians 3:28 that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. Scholars agree this verse says that all are equally heirs of the promise. They debate how far it bears on social roles.

Step 4: Faith, works and the Spirit

Galatians 2:16 says that a person is not justified by works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ. In Galatians the immediate issue is whether Gentiles must adopt Jewish markers to belong to God’s people. Many readers also understand Paul to be making a wider claim: no human effort earns standing before God. Both readings find support in the text, and the next lesson discusses how they relate.

Paul does not teach that faith leaves life unchanged. In Galatians 5:6 he says that what counts is ‘faith which worketh by love.’ Romans 6 to 8 describes new life in the Spirit, and Galatians 5 describes the fruit of the Spirit. The question for the churches has been how to relate justification, God’s declaration, to sanctification, the growth in holiness that follows.

  1. What do you notice when you read Romans 1:16 and 17 slowly, and what questions does it raise?
  2. Why does Paul begin with the sin of all people before announcing God’s remedy?
  3. How does Abraham serve as an example in Paul’s argument?
  4. What difference would it make if ‘works of the law’ meant mainly Jewish identity markers?
  5. How do faith and the life of love relate in Galatians 5:6?
  6. Why do different Christian traditions read the same verses in different ways?

Examples

Luther at the tower

Martin Luther later described how he struggled with the phrase ‘the righteousness of God’ until he came to see it as a gift received by faith, and not a demand. Historians debate the date and detail of this account, but it shows how the verse shaped the Reformation.

James and Paul

James 2:24 says that a person is justified by works and not by faith only. Interpreters have asked whether James contradicts Paul. Many hold that James speaks of faith that is shown by deeds, and Paul of the basis of acceptance with God, with different meanings of the word justified.

Peter at Antioch

When Peter withdrew from table fellowship with Gentiles, Paul called it a failure to walk ‘uprightly according to the truth of the gospel’ (Galatians 2:14). The incident shows that the doctrine of justification was bound up with the question who may eat together.

Different perspectives

Catholic view

The Council of Trent taught that justification is God’s gift, begun by grace, that includes both the forgiveness of sin and the renewal of the person by grace and love. Works do not earn the first grace. In 1999 the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation signed a Joint Declaration stating a common understanding of the basic truths of justification.

Orthodox view

Orthodox theology speaks less of a legal declaration and more of healing and participation in God, sometimes called theosis. Justification is not a separate event from the life of union with Christ in the church. Orthodox writers read Paul’s language of righteousness within that frame, and have often stressed that faith and love belong together.

Lutheran and Reformed view

Lutheran and Reformed traditions teach that sinners are declared righteous by God for Christ’s sake, through faith alone, and that good works follow as fruit. The Lutheran confessions and the Westminster Confession state this doctrine as central. They teach that Christ’s righteousness is imputed or reckoned to the believer.

Other readings

Wesleyan and Methodist traditions emphasize justification by faith along with holiness and the work of the Spirit. Some contemporary scholars, within the New Perspective described next, argue that Paul’s focus was the inclusion of Gentiles in God’s people on equal terms. These positions are held with serious reasons and are still being discussed.

Why it matters

The meaning of faith and righteousness has shaped Christian history, and the arguments of the sixteenth century still mark the churches. Knowing what Paul argued and how the traditions read him lets a student speak fairly of the differences and appreciate what they share: that salvation is God’s gift in Christ.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Catholics believe in earning salvation by works, and Protestants in faith without works.

Correction: Catholic teaching holds that salvation begins with God’s grace and cannot be earned, and Protestants teach that true faith produces good works. The disagreement concerns the nature of justification and the role of works in it, and not whether grace is central.

Misunderstanding: Paul opposes the Old Testament law as evil.

Correction: Paul says that the law is holy and righteous and good (Romans 7:12). His argument is that the law cannot give life or define the people of God now that Christ has come.

Misunderstanding: Faith means believing facts without action.

Correction: In Paul, faith is trust and allegiance, which he describes as working through love (Galatians 5:6) and as the obedience of faith (Romans 1:5).

Misunderstanding: Everyone agrees on what the righteousness of God means.

Correction: Interpreters hold differing views, and the debate continues.

Knowledge check

What is the theme of Romans according to Romans 1:16 and 17?

The gospel is God’s power for salvation for everyone who believes, Jew first and also Gentile, and in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith. These verses introduce the main subjects of the letter: gospel, faith, righteousness and the unity of Jews and Gentiles.

What does justification mean?

It is God’s act of putting people right with himself. Protestants of the Reformation tradition generally take it as a declaration of righteous standing, while Catholics include the renewal of the person. Orthodox writers place it within healing and union with Christ.

Why does Paul use Abraham?

Genesis says Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, before he was circumcised. Paul uses this to show that the promise rests on faith and that Abraham is the father of all believers, Jew and Gentile.

What are two ways to read ‘works of the law’?

One reading takes it as human effort to earn God’s favor by keeping the law. Another takes it as the Jewish identity markers, such as circumcision, Sabbath and food laws, which some wanted to require of Gentiles. Many scholars combine the two.

Do Paul and James contradict each other?

Most traditions hold that they do not. James speaks of faith shown by deeds before others and Paul of the ground of acceptance with God. They use justified in different senses and address different problems.

Think it through

  1. What does it mean to you that salvation is a gift?
  2. How would you explain the difference between being declared righteous and being made righteous?
  3. Where do you see the temptation to belong by markers other than faith, in churches today?
  4. How can Christians who disagree about justification speak to each other with respect?

Independent assignment

Tracing the argument

In your own notebook, write 350 to 500 words. Read Romans 3:21 to 5:1 in one sitting. Outline Paul’s argument in eight to ten short lines, noting where he uses the terms faith, grace, righteousness and law. Then write a paragraph on one question the passage raises for you. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study