For Paul, God’s righteousness is incompatible with dependence on mere human righteousness (Rom 9:30—10:6; Phil 3:9). Divine righteousness is not a goal to be reached by human effort, but a relational premise that should dictate the new life of faithfulness to Christ. Often Romans uses the verb cognate (dikaioo¯) for God putting believers right with himself, reinforcing the possibility that this is how Paul uses the noun here.50 This verb can signify just vindication; in a forensic context it may entail “justification” (as many translations render some of its occurrences in Romans) or acquittal. Those who argue for legal acquittal rightly emphasize God’s generosity, or “grace,” as opposed to human achievement.
Nevertheless, Paul does not think only of “acquittal,” which is only one element of the term’s normal sense. Acquittal does not dominate the entire letter, which goes on to address conduct (Rom 6; 12:1—15:7);51 moreover, when God pronounces something done, one expects this to happen, not merely produce a legal fiction (Gen 1:3; 2 Cor 4:6).52 In Romans, righteousness is a transforming gift. It is a divine gift rather than human achievement (Rom 5:17, 21), but God’s gift also enables obedience (cf. 1:5; 2:8; 5:19; 15:18), i.e., right living (6:16–18; 8:2–4; 13:14). In theological terms, justification is inseparable from regeneration.
Although disputed, “from faith to faith” may simply mean that God’s righteousness revealed in the gospel is a matter of faith from start to finish.53 Romans often uses pistis (“faith”) and its verb cognate pisteuō (“believe”). Apart from disputed instances (e.g., 3:22), faith is normally in God or Christ (most obvious in cases where the verb is being used). Whatever else “faith” means for Paul, it is not a human work, whether physical or (as sometimes in Protestantism) mental in nature (Rom 3:27–28; 4:5; 9:32; Gal 2:16; 3:2, 5). It involves dependence on God’s righteousness. This means not a Kierkegaardian “leap into the dark” (reacting to the Kantian consignment of faith to the category of subjectivity), but embracing truth in the gospel (in contrast to the false ideologies of the world; cf. Rom 1:18–23, 28). We should note, however, that just as “righteousness” involves transformation, so the term pistis includes the sense of “faithfulness”—loyalty and allegiance—and not simply an intellectual acknowledgment. Genuine dependence on Christ invites genuine loyalty to him, not simply reciting a statement about him as if nothing is truly at stake.54
As in the rest of Romans, Paul now turns to Scripture to demonstrate a controversial point, using a familiar early Jewish and Christian citation formula.55 Paul here cites Hab 2:4, which concerns God preserving the righteous in the time of impending judgment. Some interpreters take “righteous one” here as Jesus (cf. Acts 3:14; 7:52), but none of the other sixteen uses of dikaios (“righteous”) in Pauline literature in context refer to Jesus (including in the quotation of this same passage in Gal 3:11).
Scholars also debate whose faith(fulness) is in view in this Habakkuk quotation. Although the dominant Greek version of Hab 2:4 says, “my [God’s] faith [pistis],” Paul undoubtedly knows that the Hebrew speaks of the faith of the righteous person; Paul simply omits the debatable pronoun. Scholars have taken him in one or both ways here; Paul does speak later of God’s faithfulness (pistis, 3:3). Yet it would have been easy for him to have followed the Greek rendering familiar to his audience, which he chooses not to do,56 and in Romans he far more often speaks of believers’ pistis (e.g., 1:8, 12), even when echoing the text here (4:5). Elsewhere (Gal 3:6, 11) Paul midrashically links the two biblical texts that mention both righteousness and faith, and the other text clearly refers to a believer’s (Abraham’s) faith (Gen 15:6). Thus Paul probably refers to the believer’s faith here.
Like some other Pharisaic interpreters,57 Paul presumably applies “live” to eternal life, the resurrection life of the coming age (2:7; 5:21; 6:22–23; 8:13; 10:5; 14:9), even though in a sense believers have already entered it (6:10–13; 8:2, 6). Thus Paul presumably here cites Habakkuk to affirm that God preserves from his wrath those who trust in him.
Made Right by Trusting Christ (1:18—5:11)
Modern outlines cannot do justice to Paul’s careful thinking in Romans, which often transitions seamlessly from one point in his argument to the next. It is not possible to sever 1:18–23 from 1:16–17, but we have followed the traditional division here. In 1:18—5:11, Paul argues at length that Jew and Gentile alike are made righteous only through depending on Christ.
Inexcusable Idolatry (1:18–23)
Instead of believing truth in the gospel, some corrupt even the truth they have in nature. While God’s saving righteousness is “revealed” in the gospel for those who trust it (1:16–17), God’s wrath is “revealed” against those who suppress the truth by unrighteousness (1:18–23).58 The truth they unrighteously suppress is the truth about God (1:25; cf. 2:8), which they suppress, ultimately, by idolatry (1:19–23).59
This denunciation offers a key transition in Paul’s larger argument that shows that both Gentiles and Jews need the gospel. Jewish people regarded idolatry (1:23) and sexual vice (1:24–25), especially homosexual behavior (1:26–27), as characteristically Gentile sins. But after Paul denounces such sins to his audience’s applause, he quickly turns to more universal sins (1:29–31), finally consigning his own people, knowledgeable of the law, to judgment as well (2:17–29; 3:9, 19–20). (Cf. the same tactic in Amos 1:3—2:8.) Although condemning Gentiles in 1:18–32, Paul employs for this condemnation biblical language regarding Israel, probably evoking such texts in the memories of his more biblically informed hearers and preparing for his wider argument in the next chapter.60
Although God’s wrath (1:18) has a future aspect (e.g., 2:5, 8; 9:22), it is revealed in the present here especially through God “handing over” sinners to the consequences of their own sinfulness (1:24, 26, 28; cf. Acts 7:42).61 As God’s righteousness appears in the truth of the gospel (1:16–17), their unrighteousness (1:18) appears in suppressing the truth of God’s character (1:19–23). Saving faith (1:16–17) is thus not a guess or wishful thinking, but embracing the genuine truth in contrast to lies that seem progressively more plausible to depraved humanity.
Whereas some philosophers believed that true knowledge would lead to right living, Paul believes that knowledge merely increases moral responsibility (“without excuse,” 1:20; cf. 2:1, 15). God revealed enough for Gentiles to be damned, though people who know the Scriptures