When the Apostle Paul wrote his letter to the Christians who lived in the city of Rome, the capital of the Roman Empire, he had not yet visited them, but he hope to visit them soon. He took this opportunity to explain the message he preached, the Gospel, the good news of salvation through the death and ressurrection of Jesus Christ. The theme of that message is the Righteousness of God. In this paper we shall investigate the Biblical Doctrine of the Righteousness of God as presented in the Bible and particularly in Paul's letter to the Romans.
Martin Luther recovered the Biblical concept of the righteousness of God and of the justification by faith. But his followers obscured this understanding of these concepts by the legalism of their theology and legalistic understanding of righteousness and justification. And this legalism not only affected theology but the whole life of the church. The result of this legalism was dead orthodoxy and a cold, unloving Christianity. To correct these effects there arose in the church various movements such as pietism, the evangelical awakening, revivalism, etc. None of these movements went to the source of the deadness, coldness and unlovableness but just reinforced the cause -- legalism.
The great outpouring of the Spirit starting at the beginning of the twentieth century has been hindered and limited by the constant relapses into the same legalism. And the source of this legalism in practice is the legalism of the theology. The theological legalism produces the practical legalism. The answer to the legalism of the theology is not no theology, but a non-legaistic theology, a Biblical theology. With the present move of the Spirit, the time has come to clear the legalism out of our theology and again recover the Biblical understanding of the righteousness of God and justification by faith. This paper is an attempt to make a beginning at this theological renewal.