We Need Righteousness From God

Romans 1:17 because in [the Gospel], the righteousness of (= from) God is revealed...

After writing that the Gospel saves the believer from God’s anger (v. 16), the Apostle Paul goes on to explain—in the next verse—that the Gospel saves “because in [the Gospel], the righteousness of God is revealed.” The word “righteousness” here means a state of rightness. The implication is that if we do not have this righteousness which the Gospel reveals, we would not be saved.

But why do we need this righteousness to be saved? Paul answers this question in the next verse: “Because God’s anger is revealed from heaven upon every irreverence and unrighteousness.” In other words, we needed to be saved because we were under God’s anger, and we were under God’s anger because of our “irreverence and unrighteousness.” This, in turn, is because God is a God of righteousness. Therefore, the only way to be saved from God’s anger is to possess the opposite of “irreverence and unrighteousness”: righteousness.

However, we cannot rely on our own righteousness to save us from God’s anger because “all our righteous deeds are like a garment of stains.” (Isaiah 64:6) Even the best of our righteous deeds are blemished and therefore insufficient to save us from God’s anger. In Romans 1:17, the genitive “of” in the phrase “righteousness of God” indicates origin. This means that we must receive this righteousness “from God” in order to be saved. That is the only way to have a righteousness perfect enough to be saved from God’s anger.

How, then, do we receive this righteousness “from God"? Romans 3:23–24 says that “all [the ones who believe] ... are being justified freely by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.” Romans 5:9 says that “Therefore, much more, having been justified now in his blood, we shall be saved through him from the anger [of God].” In other words, because Jesus died for us on the cross, we—the ones who believe—are made righteous and hence saved from God’s anger.