The Justice of God

We have already seen strong and repeated evidence that Paul taught the following: the justification announced by Christ — received personally through faith — comes to humanity through Christ’s death on the cross. Christ willingly gave His life at God’s direction, and this extraordinary act was necessary because of human sin. Paul also described Christ’s death as the ransom-price that secures salvation, emphasizing just how costly that salvation is and how absolutely essential Christ’s death was as the only way to achieve it. Alongside this, Paul spoke of Christ’s death as a propitiation for sin, linking it with the sacrificial system of the Old Covenant, where animals were slain to deal with guilt.

Taken together, these ideas make something very clear: apart from Christ’s death, salvation would have been impossible. Only through that death could humanity be freed from moral bondage, and only then could people escape God’s anger toward sin.

Redemption and Propitiation

After stating in Romans 3:21–22 that the gospel reveals a righteousness from God available to all who believe, Paul goes on in verse 24 to say that we “are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” That word — redemption — deserves careful attention.

The same term (ἀπολύτρωσις) appears in a wide range of biblical contexts. In Daniel 4:32 (Septuagint), it refers to Nebuchadnezzar’s restoration. Elsewhere it is used in Romans 8:23; 1 Corinthians 1:30; Ephesians 1:7, 14, and 4:30; Colossians 1:14; Hebrews 9:15 and 11:35; and Luke 21:28. A related verb appears in the Septuagint — for example, in Exodus 21:8, “he shall let her go free for a ransom,” and in Zephaniah 3:1 — but not in the New Testament. A simpler related noun appears in passages such as Matthew 20:28 and Mark 10:45, where Christ says that He came “to give His life as a ransom for many.” It also appears in Proverbs 13:8 (“a man’s wealth is the ransom of his life,” meaning money can sometimes save someone from death) and Proverbs 6:35 (“he will not accept any ransom,” meaning no amount of money will pacify an offended husband).

The Teaching of Paul on the Death of Christ

Another major strand of New Testament teaching — one that Paul closely connects with his central doctrine of justification by faith — now calls for our attention. This teaching helps address a serious moral problem: how God can pardon guilty people while remaining righteous. Both Christ and His apostles proclaim forgiveness, but Paul presses us to see how this forgiveness is grounded in something much deeper.

After announcing in Romans 3:21–22 a “righteousness … through faith in Christ for all who believe,” Paul continues in verse 24 by saying that believers are “justified … through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” He immediately expands on this idea of redemption by adding that God put Christ forward “as a propitiation through faith, in His blood.” These words clearly highlight the violent death of Christ as a central element of the redemption accomplished in Him.
Paul explains the ultimate purpose of this act: it served as a demonstration of God’s righteousness, so that God might remain righteous while also justifying those who have faith in Jesus. In short, God gave Christ over to death in order to bring human justification into harmony with His own righteous character.

Results Attained: Preliminary Issues & Justification by Faith

Let’s pause for a moment and take stock of what we’ve established so far.

Looking at the visible universe, we saw strong evidence pointing beyond it to an unseen, intelligent Creator and Ruler. And within human moral awareness, we found an expectation that all people will ultimately be repaid according to their actions. The uneven justice we observe in this life makes it clear that a final and complete reckoning must lie beyond death.

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.

The Gospel of Christ

Our next question is a crucial one: Did Christ Himself actually teach the doctrine of justification by faith — the doctrine Paul so clearly proclaims? Or did Paul, however sincerely, reshape Christ’s message through his own way of thinking and the world he lived in?

Put differently, did Paul truly understand and faithfully represent the mind and purpose of the One whose messenger he claimed to be? And to what extent might Paul’s own background and habits of thought have influenced the way he expressed Christ’s teaching?

The Nature of Faith

By now we have clear historical evidence that Paul taught a central claim: God welcomes into His favor all who believe the good news announced by Christ. This teaching is often summed up as Justification through Faith.

Because this doctrine plays such a foundational role in the apostle Paul’s theology, we need to look carefully at what we mean by faith and belief, and at the kind of mental state these words describe. I will begin by examining how these words are used in modern English. Before we can understand their Hebrew and Greek counterparts, we must first understand what goes on in our own minds when we use them. The best way to do that is to reflect on our everyday thinking as expressed in our native language. Once we have done this, we can then compare our usage with that found in the biblical languages.