Rom. 3:21-22 - The faithfulness of Jesus Christ

²¹ The Jewish Law cannot guarantee a righteous standing before God on the coming day of wrath and of revelation of the righteous judgment of God (2:5). It will not provide a means to escape the judgment of God (2:3), either for Jews or for Gentiles, because although it provides instruction in a way of righteousness, it must ultimately hold Israel accountable to God so that the whole Greek-Roman world may be held accountable for its idolatry, immorality and injustice (3:19). Therefore, if God is to prove himself to be righteous and honour the promise to Abraham, his people must be justified apart from the Law.

^22a The interpretive background to the phrase righteousness of God is to be found in passages such as Isaiah 51:1-8 LXX, which speaks of God’s ’righteousness’ as his response to the crisis of Israel’s rebellion and humiliation. Those who seek deliverance for Israel are urged to look to Abraham and remember God’s creational promise to bless him and multiply his descendants; God will restore the ’waste places’ of Jerusalem; they will become like the ’garden of the Lord’. Israel will be saved from the consequences of judgment, and through that salvation the ’justice’ of God will be established as a ’light for the nations’ (Is. 51:4). The ’righteousness’ of YHWH quickly draws near: ’my salvation will go out as a light, and on my arm nations will hope’ (51:5; cf. 46:12-13; 59:16-18).

The event that has brought to light an alternative way of righteousness – this escape from destruction – is denoted by the phrase through the faith or faithfulness of Jesus Christ. Most modern translations will have something like ‘through faith in Jesus Christ’ here. The exegetical debate has been long, tortuous, and still probably inconclusive; but I think there are good enough arguments that can be put forward – albeit too briefly and provisionally – in support of the view that this phrase refers to the faith or faithfulness of Jesus rather than to the faith of others in Jesus.

i) The nearest preceding reference to faith/faithfulness is in 3:2-3: if judgment comes upon Israel because the Jews were faithless, it follows naturally that justification comes because Jesus was faithful.

ii) Paul states that the righteousness of God has been manifested through pisteōs Iēsou Christou. This makes much more sense if pisteōs Iēsou Christou refers to something that Jesus did rather than the subjective response of believers. Dunn argues that ‘the central issue is how God’s righteousness operates’, namely through the faith of the believer rather than through works of the law (Dunn, Romans, 166). But pephanerōtai does not mean ‘operates’.

iii) The phrase for all who believe which follows would appear largely redundant if we were to translate dia pisteōs Iēsou Christou as ‘through faith in Jesus Christ’.

iv) A reference to Jesus’ faithfulness in pursuing his calling to the point of death leaves us with a precise parallelism between 3:21-22a and 3:25:

v) Romans 1:17 suggests that behind 3:22 lies the statement in Habakkuk 2:4 about the survival of the righteous when the the day of God’s wrath comes upon Israel: ’For the righteousness of God in it is unveiled from faith for faith, as it is written, "The one righteous through faith shall live."’ The repeated sequence of thought that we have just noted is anticipated in this verse:

The background eschatological narrative makes it clear that the righteousness of God is demonstrated through a concrete act of faith or faithfulness in the face of suffering that leads to the justification of the ‘righteous’. The narrative context also suggests that we do not need to make too a sharp distinction between ‘faith’ and ‘faithfulness’ here. What Paul has in mind is a ‘faith’ that persistently trusts God under concrete practical circumstances – and, crucially, in the face of extreme hostility. In Jesus’ language this is the difficult path that leads to life.