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δικαιοσύνη (Dikaiosynē): The Righteousness God Gives · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome back to the Deep Dive, which is, of course, part of the
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  Reformed Thinking Platform. We're here to give you that
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  shortcut to being well informed. And today we are tackling one of
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  the most crucial concepts in all of theology.
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  We're taking on a single Greek word, but this one word, well,
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  it carries the entire weight of salvation history.
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  We're talking about D Kyosina. That's right.
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  And when we talk about D kyosina, which, you know, we
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  almost always translate as righteousness, we are really
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  tracking a massive conceptual migration.
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  This isn't just about a word changing its definition a little
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  bit. It's about watching the the very
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  idea of human goodness and God's relationship to man get
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  completely rewired. We're going to trace this
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  concept from its starting point in classical Greek philosophy,
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  then see what happens when it gets pulled into the Septuagint,
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  the Greek Old Testament, or LXX, and has to carry all this Hebrew
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  theological weight. And then finally, how it just
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  explodes with new meaning in the writings of the Apostle Paul.
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  So the mission for you as you're listening is to see why this one
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  word is really the epicenter of the divide between any kind of
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  merit based system and salvation by grace alone.
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  Charting the shift from the Kyacena is something you build
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  up for yourself, a personal ethical project, to something
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  that is a divine sovereign saving action that God just
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  gives you and. We're pulling this picture
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  together from, you know, lexical analysis, the context of the
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  LXX, and of course, the central arguments Paul makes in Romans
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  and Galatians. OK.
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  Let's get into it. And to do this right, we have to
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  start where the word itself started.
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  So let's imagine we're walking through the agora in Athens,
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  maybe 4th century BC. If you were to ask a citizen
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  there or a philosopher what Dekaisino meant, what was the
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  standard definition before any biblical worldview got its hands
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  on it? Right before the LXX, before any
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  of this, Dekaisino was primarily A moral or civil virtue.
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  That's the baseline. Its core meaning was just the
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  quality of being upright. You know, balanced, lawful.
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  For the Greeks, this idea was completely tied to the
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  harmonious function of the city state, the pulleys, and the
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  harmonious function of a person's soul.
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  So it sounds like it's about fitting into society properly
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  and having your own internal life in order.
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  Precisely. The goal was self-sufficiency
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  and social utility. There's a poet, the Agnes, who
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  famously defined Ikayasini as the sum total of all virtues.
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  It was the master virtue, Arto, that sort of contained
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  everything else. Justice, temperance, courage,
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  all of it. So if you had righteousness, you
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  basically had the complete moral package.
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  Yeah, the whole thing and this distinction is absolutely
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  critical when we get to the biblical view.
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  For the Greeks, it's not really an action, it's a state of being
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  that then leads to good actions. Not something temporary, but a
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  sustained quality. Exactly.
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  Philosophers like Plato and Aristotle saw it as a a
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  sustained, almost static quality.
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  They called it an existing controllable habit or state.
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  The term they used was exes, hexes, Yes, a hexes.
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  And it was something a person developed through, you know,
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  rigorous ethical training, constant practice, or in some
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  cases, they just thought it was kind of inherent in a well
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  ordered soul. That word hexes is really
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  interesting. If righteousness is a habit, a
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  state that you control, how does that automatically make it a
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  selfreliant system? Because it's anchored in the
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  stability of the human will of your character.
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  Yeah. It implies this sort of
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  internal, meticulous moral accounting.
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  The individual is responsible for maintaining this internal
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  balance. And if they slip up, if they
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  have a moral failure or, you know, face a situation that's
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  beyond their capacity, the whole foundation of their
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  righteousness just crumbles. So if I'm a righteous person in
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  ancient Athens, I am in the driver's seat of my own
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  righteousness. I achieve it, I maintain it, and
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  any judgment on me is based on my observable success in
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  following the norms of society and the law.
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  That's it. The focus was heavily on social
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  order, fairness, justice, adherence to the law.
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  The de Chios person, the righteous person, was the
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  reliable citizen. And the system, you know, it
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  inherently fosters a sense of self justification, or at least
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  self-reliance. It just doesn't have a category
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  for existential failure or guilt before some kind of divine
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  absolute standard. If you were a good person, you
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  would achieve de Chiosino and that was that.
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  Let me push on that for a second.
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  If the goal is this perfect hexus, this perfect moral habit,
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  how did their worldview, say in Greek tragedy or philosophy,
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  account for inevitable human failure?
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  I mean, how do you restore a shattered moral state?
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  And that's where the Greek framework really hits its limit,
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  especially when you look at it through the lens of sin, the
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  main response to moral imbalance.
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  What they called kakia or vice was usually pedagogical.
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  Meaning reeducation. Reeducation or just more
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  rigorous self-discipline to try and re establish the hexes.
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  There was no concept of a sovereign external pardon, no
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  judicial declaration. Why?
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  Because the righteousness was supposed to be inherent in you.
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  So if you lacked it, you just lack the virtue.
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  And you had to rebuild it yourself, often through, you
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  know, some kind of societal punishment or even ostracism.
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  OK, so the picture is clear. The ancient Greek striving for
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  righteousness is building his own ethical house, brick by
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  virtuous brick, and if that house falls down, he's the one
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  responsible for picking up every single piece and rebuilding it
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  himself. This sets a very clear starting
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  line for us. Righteousness is defined by
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  man's observable self achieved moral success.
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  And that self achieved status is what makes a theological shift
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  that comes next so absolutely startling because the biblical
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  world took this word, this word for human success, and
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  completely repurposed it to describe something man is
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  utterly incapable of achieving on his own.
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  All right, So now we cross that conceptual threshold.
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  We're moving from the ethical world of Athens into the
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  theological world of Jerusalem. This is happening around the 3rd
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  to 2nd century BC when the Septuagint was being created.
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  And the Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew
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  Scriptures. This must have been an
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  incredible challenge for the translators.
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  They're taking Greek vocabulary and trying to make it carry
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  ideas it was never designed for. It was nothing short of
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  revolutionary, the LXX translators.
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  They chose to Kyosano to render the main Hebrew terms for
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  righteousness, idaqua and adek, and by doing that they injected
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  A fundamentally relational and covenantal theology into this
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  Greek term. And in the process, they just
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  shattered that philosophical idea of a self-contained hexis.
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  So how does that change things for the righteous person on the
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  ground? What's the real shift from an
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  ethical virtue to a covenant relationship?
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  Well, the shift is from a self-contained quality to a
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  relational obligation. The Greek idea stressed your
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  internal moral state. Hebrew righteousness, on the
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  other hand, implies a relationship that you maintain
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  by meeting the claims made upon you.
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  So a person is righteous a Dick in Hebrew when they act in a way
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  that conforms to the established covenant fellowship between God
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  and man. The standard is no longer
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  defined by my internal balance or by the nomos, the general law
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  of society. The standard is now external.
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  It's God centered. It's defined by the covenant
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  itself. That's it exactly.
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  The Decaios, the righteous man in the Old Testament is the one
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  who fulfills his duties towards God.
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  And you know, the theocratic community, He's satisfying God's
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  claim. And this is just a much richer
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  idea than just fulfilling your civil duties.
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  It's rooted in God's faithfulness.
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  And the righteous person is the one who reflects that divine
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  faithfulness in their life. Yes, and here's where it gets
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  really interesting, because the meaning starts to include divine
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  intervention, salvation. This is the crucial twist the
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  Greek philosophers could never have seen coming.
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  OK, so how does righteousness start to mean salvation?
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  This is maybe the most significant part of the shift.
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  The Hebrew word under qua often includes this positive idea of
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  help or deliverance or salvation.
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  So when Scripture talks about God's righteousness, it's not
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  just some abstract, cold judicial rule.
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  It's his judicial reign which, because he's faithful to his
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  covenant promises, actively intervenes to vindicate and to
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  save his people. Can you give us a concrete
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  example from the LXX where you can see the Chaosina
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  transforming into salvation? Oh absolutely.
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  Look at the prophetic literature, especially
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  Deuteronomic Isaiah. Take Isaiah 51.
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  The text is talking about God's saving action.
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  In Isaiah 51.5 it says my righteousness is near, my
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  salvation has gone forth. Right there.
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  God's righteousness dichaiseano is put in parallel with his
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  Salvation Suteria. It's an active power of God that
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  works deliverance. It's not just God being morally
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  upright in a passive way. It's God acting righteously on
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  behalf of his people. So if God is righteous, he can't
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  just punish the wicked. He also must save the righteous
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  because he promised he would. His own righteousness compels
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  him to keep his covenant. That is the covenant fidelity at
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  work, and it's why in the LX Acts, you know, especially in
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  the Psalms and Isaiah, the Caissy you know, so often
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  becomes basically a synonym for Savior salvation.
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  Suturia. God's D Caissy knows is his
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  active loyalty be used to His Word, which results in saving
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  action for His chosen people. You mentioned east of the Hebrew
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  word for loyalty, covenant, love, loving action.
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  Was the Chiasini actually used to translate that term as well?
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  It was, yeah, although elios, which means mercy, is the more
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  common rendering for a said. But the fact that the chiasini
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  is sometimes used for ESAID just reinforces this idea that God's
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  righteousness is not some detached, cold justice.
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  It's bound up with his mercy and his relational loyalty.
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  OK, so let's get to the verb form dikayish.
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  To justify if the noun is shifting from an ethical status
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  to this idea of covenant faithfulness, the verb must be
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  undergoing A radical legal change too.
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  A profound change. We often call it the forensic
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  shift in secular Greek dikayo, meant to make righteous, or
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  sometimes almost as a euphemism. It can mean something negative,
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  like to condemn or to. Punish so a judge could decayo
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  defendant and it might mean executing them.
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  It could. It was about establishing what
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  was right, which could mean applying the penalty.
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  But the LXX, when it's translating the Hebrew verb
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  akak, it changes the meaning completely.
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  It uses it almost exclusively as a forensic term, a legal term,
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  and it means to pronounce righteous, to justify or to
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  vindicate, but always in a positive sense.
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  This is a crucial distinction. It doesn't mean to make
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  righteous on the inside, it means to declare righteous in a
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  legal sense. Can we breakdown what forensic
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  means here for everyone listening?
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  It's a technical term, but it's central to this whole deep dive
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  of. Course, when we say forensic,
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  you should just think of a courtroom.
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  Yeah, it refers to the judicial, the legal dimension of
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  something. So when God de kayo someone,
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  he's acting as the judge. He isn't necessarily saying you
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  are now a morally perfect person.
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  He's saying the legal case against you is dismissed and you
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  were declared legally right with me.
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  It's a change of your legal standing, a verdict.
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  It's not a description of your internal moral state.
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  And this idea of legal acquittal, this positive
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  forensic meaning, is what really dominates biblical usage from
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  this point forward. Yes, but before we jump ahead to
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  Paul, we have to mention this. This constriction that happened
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  later in the Jewish tradition, it really sets up the perfect
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  counterpoint to Paul's doctrine. A constriction.
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  The meaning narrowed. It narrowed in the centuries
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  leading up to the New Testament and rabbinic usage and dequa or
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  de chaoseno often became synonymous with almsgiving or
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  other specific charitable deeds. That seems to pull the term
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  right back toward human action and merit.
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  It does. It focused on the mitzvah, the
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  fulfillment of the law. The charitable act became a
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  highly meritorious work. It was an act of human
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  performance that you know was thought to contribute directly
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  to your standing before God. So when we read a passage like
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  Matthew 6.1 where Jesus warns against performing your de
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  chaoseno before men, the meaning can include these religious
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  observances or alms that are done for show.
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  So it reinforces the idea that in much of 1st century Judaism,
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  righteousness was about stacking up meritorious deeds akut to
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  outweigh your sins. Exactly.
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  So by the time Paul comes on the scene, this single Greek word,
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  dikhyosina is a theological battleground.
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  Could mean a Pagan ethical state, it could mean God's vast
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  saving covenant faithfulness. Or it could mean a narrow,
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  meritorious act of charity. All right, so let's look at the
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  whole family of words that stem from this root deco, the concept
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  of rightness. Because if we compare, say, the
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  mindset of someone meticulously tracking every good deed to earn
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  a favorable verdict versus the mindset of someone who just
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  receives A sovereign, unilateral declaration of pardon, well,
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  we're seeing the difference these terms define.
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  That's a great analogy. It helps us see we're really
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  dealing with three things, a standard, the person who meets
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  that standard, and the action that declares the standard has
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  been met. So let's start with the standard
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  itself, the state. OK, so that's D kyosini, the
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  noun. This is the abstract quality or
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  state of being upright. And this noun, it carries that
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  whole spectrum of meaning we've been talking about.
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  It can be moral integrity in the Hellenistic sense.
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  That could be divine justice or God's rule, like in the LXX.
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  And most critically for Paul, it's the divine method of
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  justification that God reveals. It defines what is required.
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  And the person who conforms to that standard.
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  That's D chios, the adjective. This is the person or entity
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  that conforms to the standard. So God is the ultimate D chios
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  because he's perfectly upright and always keeps his word.
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  Christ is D chios, and in the Old Testament, the human D chios
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  is the one who fulfills his duties toward God and the
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  community. But in the New Testament,
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  especially for Paul, the di Kaos is the person who has been
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  judicially declared righteous by God through faith.
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  OK. And then the action, the verb
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  that actually changes the legal status.
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  Di kao, the verb. This is the action that declares
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  or establishes someone as righteous.
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  And as we've said in Paul, this is specifically judicial
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  acquittal. It's the sovereign decree from
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  the judge that grants the status of being decaios.
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  It is an objective legal change that happens outside of the
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  person's inherent moral quality at that moment.
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  Then there are two other related nouns, dekaiema and decaisis.
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  It seems like these clarify the legal mechanics even further.
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  They get more specific than just the simple state or action.
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  They do. These are technical legal nouns
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  and they really capture the complexity of God's rule and His
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  redemptive action. So first you have the kaishma.
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  This one is often translated as ordinance or righteous act, or
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  even sentence. Why does it have such a broad
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  range of meanings? An ordinance and act and a
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  sentence seem pretty different. Because it relates directly to
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  the standard of rightness that God establishes.
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  So it can refer to a legal statute or ordinance, like the
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  requirements of the law you see in Romans 1.
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  It can also refer to a righteous act that fulfills that standard.
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  And the most important example of that is the perfect obedience
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  and sacrificial death of Christ, which Paul contrasts with Adam's
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  transgression in Romans 5. And then it can also mean the
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  sentence itself. Yes, the legal sentence.
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  It's often used as the direct opposite of condemnation.
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  Katakrima. So D Kushma is multi layered.
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  It's the perfect rule, it's Christ's perfect fulfillment of
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  that rule, and it's the resulting sentence of
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  justification. Exactly.
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  It's the definition of what is right in both precept and in
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  action. Then we have decisis.
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  This one is a bit less ambiguous.
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  It refers specifically to the act of justification by divine
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  acquittal. It's the result, the decisive
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  event. And you mentioned that this one
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  is explicitly correlated with life.
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  Yes, Paul links decisis directly to the bestowal of eternal life
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  sutures. The divine acquittal is not just
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  some entry in a Ledger book, it's the gateway to life itself.
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  The declaration of justification is immediately tied to the
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  believer being raised to newness of life.
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  It's a dynamic legal status that carries vital spiritual
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  consequences. It's clear that with this word
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  group, we're no longer talking about Greek ethics.
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  This is a legal and covenantal framework where the terms have
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  to be precise because the stakes are eternal.
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  OK, now we arrive at the theological heart of the matter.
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  This whole conceptual journey of the Kyocena really culminates in
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  the New Testament, where the tension between human effort and
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  divine gift reaches its absolute peak.
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  Paul's doctrine is so revolutionary because he takes
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  his complex vocabulary and he applies it in a way that
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  directly contradicts the prevailing merit based system of
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  his day. It really does.
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  And we can start with the source of it all.
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  For Paul, the phrase decayo Sina, the O, the righteousness
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  of God, is not a static attribute.
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  It's God's saving and pardoning action revealed dynamically,
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  unilaterally in the cross of Christ.
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  Paul takes that Old Testament link between God's a Meadow, his
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  faithfulness and salvation, and he elevates it to the ultimate
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  eschatological saving event. And if we look at Romans, Paul
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  is making it crystal clear that this righteousness is completely
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  separate from the Jewish system of law keeping.
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  He hammers that point home. He stresses that it's dispensed
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  without reference to nomos, without the law.
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  For Paul, the law was good, of course, but it was not the
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  source of righteousness. It was the revealer of sin.
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  This righteousness is apprehended only by faith at
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  Pistache, and he calls it a free gift bestowed by God.
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  The Drurya. Let's really spend some time on
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  Romans 3.2526. It's maybe the most technical
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  and critical statement on decaya senatheo in the whole Bible.
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  It seems like a paradox. God is both just and the one who
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  justifies the ungodly. That is the central problem that
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  Paul sets out to resolve. The common understanding of the
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  time was that God's justice demanded punishment for sin.
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  So the question becomes, how can God maintain his integrity,
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  remain just, and at the same time pardon wicked people?
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  So how does the cross solve that judicial dilemma?
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  Paul uses the term Hillisterian, which we often translate as
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  propitiation or a sacrifice of atonement.
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  God presented Christ as the means by which his wrath against
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  sin was satisfied. Christ's perfect obedience and
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  his substitutionary death legally met the judicial demands
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  of God's own righteousness. So the cross is the place where
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  God displays his justice by punishing sin in the person of
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  Christ that maintains his integrity, and then he is free
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  to exercise an executive pardon toward the believer.
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  Exactly. Romans 3.26 says this was done
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  to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time so that He
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  might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in
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  Jesus. The cross ensures that the
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  declaration of justification isn't arbitrary.
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  It's a declaration grounded in the payment of the debt, which
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  satisfies God's own perfect standard.
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  This union of God's integrity with his saving plan is what
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  makes Paul's concept so unique and so powerful.
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  Now contrast that complex mechanism with the general view
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  of Judaism at the time. Well, the general view was still
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  focused heavily on God's judicial rule and his covenant
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  faithfulness, but the human response was always prioritized.
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  God was expected to save Israel, sure, but an individual standing
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  before God was still heavily weighted toward their
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  meritorious response to the law. And the mechanism of atonement
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  was different. Very different.
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  It was centered on temple sacrifice and personal
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  repentance, not on a definitive final third party satisfaction
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  like the one Christ accomplished.
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  Paul's insistence that this gift is dispensed without reference
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  to the law really is the hinge on which his entire doctrine
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  turns. It sets his theology apart from
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  everything else. It does, and Paul uses this
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  radical definition of God's righteousness to then sharply
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  critique and reject any attempt at humanly achieved uprightness.
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  He calls uprightness that his based on the Loda Kyo CNA
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  ekaedru using impossibility for fallen human beings.
• 19:21
  He dismisses it as one's own self-made uprightness.
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  Idia de kyo Sina. And this idea, de kyo Sina, this
• 19:27
  self-made righteousness is what people naturally seek, isn't it?
• 19:30
  We want to stand for God on the merits of our own
• 19:32
  accomplishments. It is the natural trajectory of
• 19:34
  that Greek hexus model we talked about, just amplified by the
• 19:37
  rabbinic focus on the mitzvah. And Paul argues fiercely that
• 19:41
  these efforts are worthless for gaining life.
• 19:43
  They produce boasting, not peace, and they completely fail
• 19:46
  to bridge the infinite gap between God's holiness and man's
• 19:49
  sin. So the righteousness that a
• 19:51
  believer receives is purely an external status.
• 19:54
  It is given not achieved. It's primarily a status of legal
• 19:58
  rectitude. It's forensic justification.
• 20:00
  It's the sovereign declaration of God justifying the ungodly
• 20:04
  who believe. And this new status is entirely
• 20:06
  grounded in Christ's imputed righteousness.
• 20:09
  We are declared righteous in court because Christ's perfect
• 20:12
  record is legally credited to our account.
• 20:15
  This is such a huge deviation from the merit based views of
• 20:18
  the synagogue where the individual is constantly trying
• 20:20
  to earn their standing. Oh absolutely.
• 20:22
  The Rabbinic doctrine define the decaios, the righteous person,
• 20:25
  as one whose merits or zakud earned through careful format of
• 20:29
  the law, were seen to predominate over their
• 20:32
  transgressions. The focus was on a personal
• 20:34
  moral balance sheet achieved by works.
• 20:36
  And even in the general New Testament, usage outside of Paul
• 20:39
  Decasini is often just defined as the quality of upright
• 20:42
  behavior. You know, life rectitude.
• 20:44
  Which brings us to that famous textual tension, Paul versus
• 20:48
  James, specifically about Abraham.
• 20:51
  Paul says Abraham was justified by faith, not by works.
• 20:54
  But James says Abraham was justified by works when he
• 20:56
  offered up Isaac. How do we reconcile these two
• 20:59
  views on justification? This is one of the most
• 21:02
  historically contentious passages for sure, but the
• 21:05
  source material helps to see that they're using the same
• 21:07
  word, the kyo, but they're using it in two different courts, so
• 21:10
  to speak. Paul is discussing justification
• 21:12
  before God. He's talking about the ultimate
• 21:15
  saving forensic verdict that determines one's eternal status.
• 21:19
  For Paul, that verdict is granted solely by faith in
• 21:21
  Christ. He cites Genesis 15.6, where
• 21:25
  Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as
• 21:27
  righteousness. This verdict is a gift, and it's
• 21:30
  received instantly. James, on the other hand, is
• 21:33
  discussing justification before men.
• 21:35
  He's talking about the demonstration and the
• 21:37
  fulfillment of that initial faith.
• 21:39
  James's audience was struggling with a dead faith, people who
• 21:42
  claimed to believe but showed no evidence of it in their lives.
• 21:45
  So James says Abraham was justified by his works when he
• 21:48
  offered Isaac because that act proved the reality and the
• 21:51
  genuineness of the faith he already possessed.
• 21:53
  OK, so Paul defines D ko as the legal status that saves you.
• 21:57
  James defines D ko as the subsequent proof that that legal
• 22:00
  status is real. They're not contradicting each
• 22:02
  other on the source of salvation.
• 22:04
  But on the necessary evidence that validates that salvation
• 22:08
  correct, Paul is answering the question, How is a person
• 22:11
  accepted by God? His answer faith alone.
• 22:16
  James is answering the question, how is genuine faith
• 22:18
  demonstrated his answer by works of love and obedience.
• 22:21
  James, you know, is insisting that true faith must find its
• 22:25
  fulfillment in works, which is a view Paul himself would agree
• 22:28
  with when it comes to the outcome of justification, even
• 22:31
  though he utterly rejects works as the cause of it.
• 22:33
  The timing of this declaration is another critical distinction
• 22:36
  Paul makes. I mean, if righteousness is
• 22:38
  something you achieve through merit, then the judgment has to
• 22:41
  wait until all the accounts are settled at the end of your life.
• 22:44
  And that was the standard rabbinic doctrine.
• 22:46
  The Judicial Act was generally postponed until the last
• 22:48
  judgment, so your justification remained uncertain.
• 22:51
  It was provisional throughout your entire life because the
• 22:55
  final sentence was based on balancing your merits against
• 22:58
  your transgressions. The scale analogy.
• 23:00
  You had to wait until the day of judgement to really know where
• 23:02
  you stood. That sounds like a lifetime of
• 23:04
  legal anxiety. It was because the outcome
• 23:07
  depended on your own performance.
• 23:09
  And Paul just absolutely refutes this temporal uncertainty.
• 23:15
  He asserts that the Kayasini is imparted now is a present
• 23:18
  justification. The moment a believer apprehends
• 23:21
  Christ by faith, they are justified in the saving present
• 23:24
  based entirely on the finished work of the cross.
• 23:26
  That present certainty must have sounded so radical in the 1st
• 23:29
  century. It's an immediate settled
• 23:31
  status. It is.
• 23:33
  Paul assures the Romans that since they have been justified
• 23:35
  by faith, they now have peace with God.
• 23:38
  The hostility is over, however, and this is important.
• 23:41
  Paul also holds that this present acquittal looks forward
• 23:44
  to a consummated reality. The gift of righteousness
• 23:47
  carries with it the hope of a definitive final acquittal on
• 23:49
  the last day. So if justification is a present
• 23:52
  reality, why does Paul talk about a future acquittal?
• 23:54
  Does that reintroduce some of the uncertainty?
• 23:57
  No, not at all. It introduces A certainty and
• 23:59
  finality. The present justification is the
• 24:01
  down payment. It's the guarantee.
• 24:03
  The future acquittal is the public, final, visible
• 24:06
  declaration of that status when Christ returns.
• 24:09
  Paul sees justification is a grace that spans all of time.
• 24:13
  It secures us now, and it assures us of a favorable
• 24:16
  verdict. Then, because the basis for both
• 24:19
  is Christ's work, which is immutable, it moves the
• 24:22
  believers focus from anxiety about their performance to
• 24:25
  certainty about the judge's declaration.
• 24:27
  OK, so given Paul's emphasis on this forensic status, this legal
• 24:31
  declaration, there's often a misunderstanding that this
• 24:34
  righteousness is static or passive, or maybe just a legal
• 24:37
  fiction. How does Paul make sure that
• 24:39
  this granted status leads to a real living change in the
• 24:43
  believer? Paul is meticulous about this.
• 24:46
  He works hard to prevent that misinterpretation.
• 24:49
  The bestowed righteousness is not a static quality.
• 24:51
  It's a dynamic living state. It's a dynamist.
• 24:54
  It's impossible for the status to be passive because it's tied
• 24:57
  to the Holy Spirit and to the resurrection life of Christ
• 24:59
  Himself. So how does the legal act compel
• 25:02
  moral action? The judicial declaration of
• 25:04
  righteousness. The acquittal simultaneously
• 25:07
  commits the believer to the living influence of dakayo.
• 25:10
  Sina. Paul explains this in Romans 6.
• 25:13
  Because we have died with Christ, we are free from our
• 25:15
  service to sin. We're now obligated to present
• 25:18
  our members not to sin, but as tools or weapons of
• 25:21
  righteousness. Hopla Dakayo Sinas The new legal
• 25:24
  status requires a new ethical life.
• 25:27
  And this relationship is what we often describe as justification
• 25:30
  leading to sanctification. That is the ultimate result.
• 25:33
  Justification is the objective divine act that breaks our
• 25:36
  service to sin. It's the beginning.
• 25:39
  Sanctification, Hi Yasmos is the subjective, ongoing work of the
• 25:43
  Spirit that applies that justified status to our daily
• 25:45
  lives. Paul says that the purpose of
• 25:47
  justification is to lead to obedience into righteousness.
• 25:50
  Hippoco Easte Kyosina. The righteousness that is given
• 25:53
  is a foundation for righteous conduct.
• 25:55
  So while human effort is completely excluded from gaining
• 25:58
  the legal status of justification, that very same
• 26:01
  status fuels and demands the ethical change of
• 26:03
  sanctification. Precisely the goal is that the
• 26:06
  righteousness which is given by God becomes a dynamic force
• 26:09
  within the Christian, assuring them of life, helping them
• 26:12
  overcome sin as he says in Romans 8, and leading them into
• 26:15
  a pattern of living that genuinely reflects the
• 26:17
  declaration that has been made over them.
• 26:19
  The forensic act is teleological.
• 26:21
  It aims at transformation and holiness.
• 26:23
  The Christian lives righteously because they are righteous, not
• 26:25
  in order to become righteous. So we've tracked the kaisena
• 26:28
  from being an ethical hexis, a self-made habit anchored in
• 26:31
  human soul, all the way through the crucial covenant or
• 26:34
  redirection of the Septuagint that filled it with salvific
• 26:37
  meaning. And finally, we saw Paul
• 26:39
  redefine it as a sovereign, immediate, covenant based gift,
• 26:43
  a judicial acquittal declared by God through Christ's satisfied
• 26:46
  justice. The history of this one word
• 26:48
  really encapsulates the entire theological tension between law
• 26:51
  and Gospel. This deep dive shows us that the
• 26:54
  question is never about whether a person must be righteous to
• 26:57
  stand before God. The question rather is whose
• 26:59
  righteousness is capable of standing before God.
• 27:02
  And Paul answers that definitively.
• 27:04
  It is not our own self-made uprightness, our idia de kya
• 27:09
  Sina, but the righteousness of God receives solely by faith,
• 27:12
  which both saves us and immediately begins to transform
• 27:15
  us. And this brings us to our final
• 27:17
  thought for you to consider. If the D kya Sina you receive by
• 27:21
  faith is a judicial acquittal, a status that is granted to you
• 27:24
  right now, which assures you of a favorable verdict on the last
• 27:27
  day, that assurance should redefine all of your
• 27:30
  motivations. So how does this certainty that
• 27:33
  the most important legal question of your existence is
• 27:35
  already settled? How does that shape and motivate
• 27:38
  your pursuit of holiness and good works in this present life,
• 27:40
  knowing that your final acquittal is already guaranteed?