2. Righteousness of God
Romans 1:17 For therein [in the Gospel] is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
God makes a fantastic, unbelievable, promise to us: He reveals and gives His own righteousness to us and we are just by faith. He reveals the righteousness of God in the Gospel. It is the Gospel that shows us a righteousness that is ours by faith. God’s justice demands righteousness in us; we shall be holy; we must be just and right. We cannot produce it, we cannot live it, we cannot claim it; we cannot be it; we have no righteousness in us in the least bit, and yet God requires it perfectly and fully. But God gives us His own inherent righteousness, a righteousness that belongs to Him, but He shares it with us who believe the Gospel.
God’s righteousness is ours, but Luther calls it an “alien” righteousness, alien because it is not a part of us, it has no source in us, it is not produced by us, and it has nothing to do with us. Though it is alien it belongs to us by faith. It is revealed to faith and faith perceives it, receives it, and makes it one’s own. Faith in the gospel is accounted to us as righteousness. God grants us His righteousness and counts it as ours. By faith, we are considered as, reckoned as, looked on as, related to as, regarded as, and loved as righteous people.
This is an all at once process and by faith it is complete once for all. God does not make us righteous, that is, He does not change our character and personality and essential being. It is long process of sanctification that slowly makes us more and more righteous and enables us to live a more holy life over time as the Holy Spirit applies the Gospel over and over. The sinful old man lives alongside the righteous new man while it is slowly influenced by that alien righteousness living in our spirit. It is an inward righteousness, which avails before God; it is not an outward righteousness, which shows itself before men. It is a faith that grows, but it will not be complete outwardly until the Resurrection, when we shall be changed substantively, both inwardly and outwardly.
Faith is necessary and absolutely required to receive this inward, invisible and alien righteousness because we do not see it; we get glimpses and fruit shows, but we do not see it either in ourselves or in others. Therefore, we believe the promise.