Faith and Works

In The Moral Teaching of Christ we saw that each of the four Gospels presents Christ as teaching — clearly, repeatedly, and without apology — that God opposes all sin and shows favor only to those who obey his commands. And we saw that Paul echoes that same point with equal clarity and force. Yet we also saw something else: both Christ and Paul say, just as plainly, that God welcomes into his favor as heirs of eternal life all who believe the good news Christ announces. Put side by side, those statements can sound like a contradiction — and that tension is what we need to face now.

Because the New Testament teaches both truths so strongly, we cannot accept any “solution” that weakens either one. The first claim is demanded by the supreme authority of the moral law, which will not tolerate any violation of its rights. The second is just as necessary, because only full pardon can meet the deep need of guilty and helpless humanity. So we now look for the underlying harmony between the claims of justice and the message of mercy.

Universal Sin and Moral Ruin

In our last post on "Righteousness and Law", we saw that people across cultures share a deep sense of personal sin and a fearful awareness of punishment beyond death. Alongside this is another powerful experience: the feeling of being morally trapped. We sense what is right, we even approve of it — but something within us holds us back. It is like a chain we cannot break. When we look honestly at ourselves, we find this inner condemnation and bondage clearly present in our own hearts. And when we look outward, we see the same reality vividly reflected throughout human literature.

This same understanding of the human moral condition appears clearly in the letters of Paul. In Romans, Paul pauses his explanation of the Gospel to give a careful description of humanity’s condition apart from it — both Gentiles and Jews alike. In Romans 1:18–32, he explains that God made Himself known to the Gentiles through creation, so that they would have no excuse for their sin. Their moral collapse, he says, shows God’s righteous anger against them for turning away from that revelation and embracing idolatry instead.

Righteousness and Law

Because the New Testament was written in an ancient language that we know only through ancient texts, understanding the precise meaning of Paul’s words requires careful linguistic study — especially of the Greek in which they were written. Theology, which, as we have seen, has already drawn insight from natural science, ethics, and history, now needs help from philology and grammar as well.

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.