The Righteousness of God by Faith (3:21–22a)

In verses 21–22a, Paul reveals the very heart of the good news: God’s righteousness is available to all who put their faith in Jesus Christ. This righteousness is the same as Paul already announced in 1:17. It is better translated “the righteousness of God.” Paul refers to a definite “righteousness”: the process by which God acts to put people in right relationship with himself. The “but now” that opens the paragraph contrasts the situation in the time period before Christ, which Paul has described in the previous chapters, with the situation that now exists after his coming (see also 1 Cor. 15:20; Eph. 2:13; Col. 1:22). In other words, Christ’s coming announces a decisive shift in salvation history.

God’s plan of salvation unfolds in stages—a “history”—and the coming of Jesus the Messiah inaugurates a new stage in that plan. Paul elaborates this idea in the two contrasting phrases “apart from law” and “to which the Law and the Prophets testify.” Some interpreters think Paul is saying that God has made known a new kind of righteousness—one that is “apart from law,” that is, a righteousness not based on the law (the niv translation suggests this interpretation). But it fits Paul’s focus on salvation history better to take the phrase with the verb “make known”; note the nab rendering, that “the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law.” “Law,” then, as usually in Paul, refers to the Mosaic law.

Paul beautifully captures in just a few words the continuity and discontinuity in God’s plan of salvation. The discontinuity? God reveals his righteousness in Christ “apart from” the law of Moses. Like the “old wineskins” of Jesus’ parable (Mark 2:22), the Mosaic covenant simply cannot contain the “new wine” of the gospel. The continuity? The entire Old Testament (“the Law and the Prophets”) testifies to this new work of God in Christ. The cross is no afterthought, no “Plan B”; it has been God’s intention from the beginning to reveal his saving righteousness by sending his Son as a sacrifice for us.

At the beginning of verse 22, Paul reiterates another point already made in 1:17: This righteousness of God is available only “through faith.” Now, however, Paul is more explicit: God’s righteousness “comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” The translation “faith in Jesus Christ” appears in almost all modern translations. But another translation is possible and is being supported by a growing number of scholars: “faith of Jesus Christ.” The debated construction is a genitive: pisteos Iesou Christou. The niv takes this genitive to be “objective”; that is, “Jesus Christ” is the object of the noun “faith.” But it can equally well be a “subjective” genitive, with Jesus Christ being the subject of “faith” (note the identical construction in 4:16, pisteos Abraam, which means “the faith Abraham exercised”).

This alternative is particularly attractive here because it removes what otherwise seems to be a needless repetition: “faith in Jesus Christ” and “to all who believe.” Paul would then be making clear that our salvation comes about both because of Christ’s “faith” or “faithfulness” to the task God gave him to do as well as from our faith in him. This idea is theologically acceptable, and Paul does use the noun pistis to refer to God’s faithfulness in 3:3.

Other considerations, however, lead me to keep the usual translation here, “faith in Jesus Christ.” In the present context Paul consistently uses pistis to denote the response of believers to God (see, e.g., 3:25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31; also throughout ch. 4). Moreover, Paul’s failure ever to make Jesus the subject of the verb pisteuo (believe, entrust) makes it difficult to think that Iesou Christou is a subjective genitive. Adding “to all who believe” is not needless repetition, because Paul continues to be especially concerned to show that God’s work in Christ is for everyone. His righteousness is “activated” only for those who believe, but it is also for all those who believe.

The Backdrop of Universal Sinfulness (3:22b–23)

Why does God’s righteousness need to be available for “all who believe”? Because “all have sinned.” Paul here inserts a brief reminder of his teaching in 1:18–3:20, which we need to understand to appreciate the universal dimensions of the gospel. As Paul has argued, there is no basic “difference” or “distinction” (diastole; see also 10:12) between people, especially between Jew and Gentile. All are under sin’s power, and all “fall short of the glory of God.”

God’s glory (doxa) in the Bible is, first of all, his own awesome presence. But the Bible teaches that God’s people are destined to share in that glory; thus doxa also describes the eternal destiny of believers (see esp. Rom. 8:18; Phil. 3:21; 2 Thess. 2:14). Jewish texts speak of Adam’s having lost the “glory” of being like God at the time of the Fall, and all human beings since him share that fate. But what the first Adam lost, the second Adam, Christ, will restore.