Two clusters of words immediately stand out in the passages we are examining: righteous, righteousness, and the righteousness of God on the one hand, and faith, belief, and believe on the other. These terms appear repeatedly in Paul’s teaching and are central to his thought. That alone makes them worth careful and sustained attention.
When we study New Testament language, we must remember that these words come from two very different worlds of thought. They are Greek words, shaped by Greek life, culture, and philosophy, and they draw meaning from the rich body of classical Greek literature. At the same time, the authors who used them were Jews, deeply immersed in the Hebrew Scriptures and shaped by Hebrew ways of thinking. The Septuagint — the Greek translation of the Old Testament — forms a crucial bridge between these worlds, translating Hebrew ideas into Greek language. Any serious study of New Testament terms must therefore consider both their use in classical Greek and their role as Greek equivalents of familiar Hebrew concepts.
English adds another layer of complexity. Our language often provides two different word families — one with Latin roots and one with Germanic roots — for a single Greek or Hebrew idea. For instance, righteous and righteousness correspond to the same original words as just and justice. This overlap can blur meaning or hide what a writer is actually referring to. A similar issue arises with faith and believe, which in Greek are forms of the same word but appear as separate ideas in English. Keeping this in mind is essential for clarity.
To understand how the Greeks thought about righteousness, we can turn to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, especially Book V. There he defines the unrighteous as what is unlawful and unequal, and the righteous as what is lawful and equal. Both terms assume the existence of a standard — a measure against which actions are judged. Righteousness, in this sense, means conformity to that standard.
Because shared standards are so important in human interactions, righteous and unrighteous are often used to describe dealings between people. Aristotle himself highlights this specific use of the term. When we compare actions to a standard, we implicitly assume the role of a judge — someone who evaluates whether there is agreement or not. That is why Scripture speaks of people being righteous in their own eyes or righteous before God. Whenever we judge others as righteous or unrighteous, we are assuming a common and recognized standard of right and wrong.
The same logic applies when the Bible describes God as righteous. It means that God's actions conform to the standard of right. God’s righteousness is not arbitrary; it is measured against what is morally right.
For Israel, this idea took on a distinctive shape. The people believed that the unseen Creator of heaven and earth had laid out a path for human life and that He would reward or punish people depending on whether they followed or abandoned that path. Israel also believed that this God was uniquely their Lawgiver and Judge and that He had promised them great blessings if they obeyed Him. As a result, Jewish thinking came to define righteousness as walking in the path God had marked out, enjoying His favor, and receiving the blessings He promised. Righteousness was the condition of living in that favor.
This understanding runs through the entire Bible. When Deuteronomy says that returning a pledged garment will be “righteousness” before God, it means that such an act brings God’s approval. Luke describes Zechariah and Elizabeth as righteous because they lived in obedience to God’s commands. Paul, in Romans, says that Israel pursued a law that would bring righteousness but failed to attain it — they sought a standard that would secure God’s favor but did not succeed.
A law is an authoritative declaration of what people must or must not do. Parents issue laws to children, states to citizens, and rulers to subjects. Laws carry penalties because without consequences they have no force. For Israel, however, God Himself was the only true King, Lawgiver, and Judge. Therefore, unless stated otherwise, law in the Bible refers to the law of God.
According to the Pentateuch, God gave Israel a concrete body of commands at Sinai through Moses. The New Testament writers fully accepted this account as historical and authoritative. They believed that the general principle of law — that God judges people according to their actions measured against His standard — took on a specific historical form at Sinai and a literary form in the books of Moses. Individual commands could be called laws, and the collection of these commands came to be known simply as “the Law.”
Over time, this term expanded. The Pentateuch was called the Law, but so were the Prophets and even the Psalms, since they were understood to speak with divine authority. For Paul and other New Testament writers, the entire Old Testament stood as an authoritative declaration of God’s will.
At its core, the Old Testament expresses a simple principle: Do this and live. Obedience brings life. This principle is the essence of law. The written books are its outward form; the principle itself is its spirit. Depending on context, the word law may refer to either the inner principle or the historical and literary expression. But the meaning underneath remains the same: law is God’s standard for human conduct, and obedience is the condition of His favor.
Human laws reflect this same moral principle, even though Gentiles did not receive a written law from God. Still, Paul insists that everyone — Jew and Gentile alike — will be judged by law. For Gentiles, that law is written on the heart: the innate moral sense shared by all humanity. This internal law governs conscience and self‑judgment and stands as a universal standard.
When we return to the Law of Moses, we notice that it contains two very different kinds of commands. Some are clearly moral and universally binding, such as the command to love one’s neighbor. Others are ritual or ceremonial, such as prohibitions about mixed fabrics. Both carried equal authority for ancient Israel because both were believed to come from God, even though modern moral sense no longer regards the ritual laws as permanently binding.
This distinction is important and complex and must be addressed separately. For now, we can summarize Paul’s teaching as follows: God has woven a moral standard into human nature, and all people will be judged according to their conformity to it. Israel received this standard in written form at Sinai, including both moral commands and ceremonial regulations. Those whose lives conform to the law are righteous; their condition is righteousness. This is the understanding that also permeates the Old Testament.
Finally, even apart from accepting the historical account of Sinai, this view is confirmed by our own moral experience. An inner voice speaks with undeniable authority, telling us that our well‑being depends on living in harmony with the moral structure of our nature. Any further theological inquiry must remain consistent with this truth. Because Paul and the New Testament writers ground their teaching in this moral reality, they rightly command our confidence and respect.
This post is based upon Lecture IX from J. A. Beet's book Through Christ to God: A Study in Scientific Theology (1893), re-written with the assistance of Microslop CoPilot. The original text may be found at the Internet Archive here: Through Christ to God.
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