Justification

acquired his own store of merit or “righteousness,” which he is then able to transfer (the technical term being “impute”) to those who believe in him. This has been a major theme in some expositions of Paul’s theology, particularly his teaching on justification. It has therefore been assumed that the life of Jesus contributes to this result: the “a

the rule of YHWH (and, by implication, the rule of Israel) over all the peoples of the earth; that was the whole point of it. To announce the kingdom in a sense which brought Israel merely a new dimension of religious experience, or a new sense of religious community, but which left the rest of the world unaffected, would be radically to miss the p

But for Paul, the “although” is indeed the “because,” meaning God takes on the “although” action to justify “because” God is minister.

It is Luther who, drawing from Paul’s words in Galatians and Romans, is credited with making justification “by faith alone” central.8 Much of Protestantism, following Luther, has asserted that the righteousness of the human agent is always a foreign righteousness.9 It comes from nowhere inside human willing or acting but is bestowed upon the human