I purchased a copy of What Saint Paul Really Said? so that N.T. Wright could autograph it since it was the first book on Paul by him I read.

If memory serves it was Edith Humphrey who brought up and challenged Wright’s interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5:21.

For N.T. Wright, if you are discussing Justification using the law-court metaphor (which has been the case since Calvin or before) it makes no sense at all to say that God’s righteousness is “imputed” on the believer. God as judge simply judges justly thus making him a “righteous Judge”. But when putting the subject of the believers Justification aside and asking the question on its own – giving full weight to the Old Testament use of “righteousness” – N.T. Wright believes that the phrase, “Gods Righteousness” is actually short hand for “the covenant faithfulness of God”. In both cases God’s righteousness is his own, it is not something he gives to anyone else.

If his interpretation is correct then what about 2 Corinthians 5:21 in which the text explicitly reads that “we have become the righteousness of God”?

N.T. Wright believes (as he says very clearly in both What Saint Paul Really Said? and in Justification) that this passage is so contextualized that we must read it as Paul talking about his own Apostolic Ministry and not about believers everywhere being imputed God’s righteousness.

Keep in mind that God’s righteousness is a reference to his faithfulness to his covenant, a faithfulness which came to fruition in the “faithful obedience of Jesus Christ on the cross” (Galatians 2:16, Philippians 2:5-11). So if the message of the Gospel – the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1-5) is the message of God’s covenant faithfulness then, says Wright, when Paul and the Apostles preached that message they actually embodied that message. In that sense they literally became “the righteousness of God”. This, says Wright, is the whole context of 5:11-20 and even going back to chapter 3 and 4.

But I was not satisfied with this interpretation because it seemed to limit the scope of the biblical text. I tried to dance – ever so delicately – the line between the “old” view and the “new” (i.e. Wright’s) view believing that this passage does teach that believers “take on” God’s righteousness as it were, but through the Union With Christ (“In Him” it says) rather than “imputation”. In short, I leaned toward Edith’s understanding of this passage.

In Wright’s response to Edith Humphrey my anxieties were relieved. Wright, in explaining this text at the conference, seemed to go further with it then I think he does in his books. Keeping all of his premises in tact he expanded his interpretation of this passage to include all believers and their mission.

The righteousness of God does in fact refer to God’s faithfulness to his covenant expressed fully in the life, death and resurrection of Christ (i.e. the Gospel). Furthermore, Paul in 2 Corinthians is talking – in context – specifically about his own ministry and that of the other Apostles. But – and this I think is the touch Wright adds which he does not make clear in his previous writings – we believers have a job to do in proclaiming the Kingdom Message of the Gospel to the world and when we do that then we too become, i.e. embody, the Righteousness of God.

And that is how N.T. Wright interprets 2 Corinthians 5:21, it is an interpretation I can live with though I myself need to tease it out a bit more.

But as the post takes flight the blogger focuses all of his energy on being made righteous by having faith in Jesus. In other words, there is subtle move from understanding being justified as a matter of “Incorporation/Participation” (being in Christ) to being imputed righteousness by having faith in Christ (believing in Christ).

I think this shift happens without thought and I think it is a mistake. I believe we are not made righteous by having faith in Jesus (that is how we are saved – Eph 2:8-9). But we are made righteous by Jesus’ own faithfulness!

Consider Romans 3:22:

This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. – NIV

Notice the NIV reads, “faith in Jesus Christ”. But the Greek reads, “faith of Jesus Christ” (look it up). And since the Greek word for faith can at the same time be translated “faithfulness”, I think the passage should be rendered, “faithfulness of Jesus Christ”.

Think about it for a moment. The passage makes no sense at all if it says “faith in” because Paul would be exercising his right to redundancy: “Through faith [believing] in Jesus Christ to all who believe” – obviously Paul, why add, “to all who believe” if you already said, “through faith [believing]“?

I think the passage makes better sense this way: “Righteousness of God comes through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ to all who believe”. Now doesn’t that make more sense?

When we believe we become participators in Christ, taking on his righteousness, a righteousness he claims by way of his faithfulness to God by being obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-11).

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God – 2 Corinthians 5:21

The doctrine of imputation is always talked about a part from the doctrine of participation. I think this is a mistake.

The doctrine of imputation should never be talked about a part from the doctrine of participation.

(Note: the article I referenced above is otherwise a great post!)