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Romans 1:17

For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

This verse is a daunting one to study, as it contains a lot of theological concepts that are difficult to summarize in a 300-500 word blog post. As you may have noticed in the time jump between the blog post on v.16 and the blog post here, writing and finishing my exploration of v.17 has taken quite some time.

The ‘righteousness of God’ is spoken of in this verse. This term is found infrequently in the letter to the Romans but, according to Moo (1990) its importance outweighs its frequency, as it is a term that was only written by Paul in this letter. The real difficulty in this verse is interpreting what Paul means when he writes ‘the righteousness of God’. There seems to be many diverse interpretations for what ‘the righteousness of God’ is referring to, and each commentary and literature takes slightly different views on the topic. Once again, I refer to Moo, who concludes that ‘righteousness of God’ refers to the activity of God saving his people.

With this in mind, the verse could be paraphrased:
‘For in the gospel, God’s act of saving his people is revealed-a justification that by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

The quote at the end of the verse is from Habakkuk:

Habakkuk 2:4

“See, the enemy is puffed up;
    his desires are not upright—
    but the righteous person will live by his faithfulness—

To put this verse into context, Habakkuk has been complaining to God about how Israel is going astray, and that the Babylonians are coming and they’re even worse. Habakkuk 2:4 is part of the Lord’s response to the author’s complaint about Babylon, and God is saying that those that are righteous can have faith that God will eventually overcome all the difficulties the righteous person is facing. Paul, however, uses the verse in Romans to say that in order to become righteous, you need to have faith. The connection between the meaning behind the source and the quote is that having faith in God means putting our sole trust in him, not our own abilities.

ASK YOURSELF: Do I have faith that God holds my life in my hands? Is my faith one that would be willing to drop everything I hold dear to follow the will of God?

Dear God, please strengthen my faith. Open my eyes to see that you have been faithful to me in my life. I pray for my family and friends that they will see in my a life that is been lived in faith. Amen.