Twisting God's Words

We return to the Jew/Gentile issue: Paul here speaks in the voice of his Jewish debater, raising a valid question. The Jews had been entrusted with the very words of God. God's intention from the start was that they were to be a light for the Gentiles (e.g. Isa. 42:6). They had broken that trust, so what was God to do? If he found another way to reach the Gentiles, was he reneging on his promises? This is the moral dilemma that drives the argument from here to the end of ch. 4.

At this point we stumble on one of the tricky issues of this letter. The problem is that the English language has no single word to translate the Hebrew word that dominates today's reading and much of what follows. This is the word that is translated "righteousness" in most English translations. Paul, thinking like a Jew, and in line with the Old Testament, has in mind the Hebrew word tsedeq, which means "what is right," "justice." Unlike our English "righteousness" it carries a connotation of relationship, so that in the Old Testament it frequently means "vindication" or "saving presence." It implies activity. What it doesn't mean is abstract moral perfection. To complicate matters still further, Paul uses the Greek word which corresponds to the Hebrew, dikaiosyne. Greek has a verb from the same root, which can be translated "proved right" in v. 4. So when Paul speaks of the "righteousness of God" he means the "saving activity of God." Later in the letter dikaiosyne will be translated "justification." It is the same word.

So the question in v. 5 becomes clearer. If the more I sin, the more God saves, doesn't my sin resound to the glory of God? Paul has brought his Jewish debater to a point where the absurdity of that argument begins to be clear.