Paul's use of Habakkuk 2:4, "the just shall live by faith," as a foundation for revising the Christian view of the Old Testament and the Law (Rom 1:17 & Gal 3:11) has long intrigued me. This seemingly minor verse has become central to a theology of faith. I have recently learned that this verse speaks not only to those surviving Nebuchadnezzar's attack on Israel but also carries messianic significance. Richard Hays (1948-2025), in "The Faith of Jesus", explains that Habakkuk's prophecy refers to the coming Messiah, as being the one who will live by faith.
Working within this messianic application, the article:
It has often intrigued me that Paul should use the verse “the just shall live by faith” from Habakkuk (Hab 2:4) as the justification for a thoroughgoing revision of the Christian’s attitude to the Old Testament and the Law (Rom 1:17 & Gal 3:11). How is it that this seemingly obscure, and perhaps inconsequential, verse should become the basis for a theology of faith? Recently, I have come to learn that this verse is not for the benefit of those who, by trusting in Yahweh, would survive the devastation of the oncoming Nebuchadnezzar, God’s means of judgment against an idolatrous Israel. Rather, this verse is laden with messianic content.
In his treatment of “The Faith of Jesus”, Richard Hays (1948-2025) explains that Habakkuk’s prophecy pertains to the promise of the coming Messiah, a Messiah who will live by faith. Arguing that Paul’s understanding of the verse would have been shaped by the LXX, Hays asserts that “the just” of whom Habakkuk writes is Jesus. Hays provides the following LXX rendering to Hab 2:4:
This is not dissimilar to what we find in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb 10:37), which the ESV renders as:
So, if “the just” of Rom 1:17 is a specific reference to Jesus, might we find other indication of that as a title attributed to Him by the early church? Indeed, we do. Allowing that dikaios may be translated as either just or righteous, we find:
Hays, C H Dodd (1884-1973) and numerous others find messianic content in Habakkuk, but is the title “the Just One” peculiar to Habakkuk or are there other indications in the Old Testament that Christ should be known as Jesus, the Righteous? The prophet Jeremiah, a contemporary of Habakkuk, offers a possibility when he writes of “Jehovah Tsidkenu” (Jer 23:6). The literal translation of this being:
Martin Luther was a man deeply conscious of the sin in his life. He was so troubled by the smallest of sins that on one occasion, in exasperation, the priest hearing his confession pleaded with him to leave the confessional and commit some serious sins rather than trouble himself over petty matters! This anguished conscience led Luther to hate the notion of God’s righteousness because all Luther could see was unending condemnation and certain wrath. This was until the Holy Spirit opened the meaning of ‘righteousness’ as presented in the Psalms.
Says David Guzik’s commentary:
“Early in the 16th Century, a German monk and seminary professor named Martin Luther taught through Psalms, verse-by-verse, at the University of Wittenberg. In his teaching he came upon this statement in Ps 31:1 (31:2 in German). The passage confused him; how could God’s righteousness deliver him? The righteousness of God – His great justice – could only condemn him to hell as a righteous punishment for his sins.
One night up in a tower in the monastery, Luther thought about this passage in Psalms and also read Rom 1:17 : For in it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed. Luther said he thought about this day and night, until he finally understood what the righteousness of God revealed by the gospel is. It is not speaking of the holy righteousness of God that condemns the guilty sinner, but of the God-kind of righteousness that is given to the sinner who puts his trust in Jesus Christ.
Luther said of this experience: “I grasped the truth that the righteousness of God is that righteousness whereby, through grace and sheer mercy, he justifies us by faith. Therefore I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise….. This passage of Paul became to me a gateway into heaven.”.”
Thus is God’s righteousness, a righteousness which delivers those who call upon Him (Ps 31:1, Ps 71:2) for it would be unrighteous of God to ignore a person in need when that person reaches out to Him and asks for help. Moreover God’s method of delivering the sinner, as Luther found, is to provide a righteousness in place of their sinfulness.
So if God’s righteousness is a righteousness which delivers, we might expect that it is Jesus who reveals that deliverance. It is for this reason that Paul writes that God, via the Cross of His Son, was both just (i.e. righteous) and the justifier of them who believe in Jesus (Rom 3:26). Which is to say that by His suffering, death and resurrection, Jesus is both:
Clearly then Christ at Calvary serves two purposes. He, and He alone, demonstrates that God is righteous; He, and He alone, provides the means for God-pleasing righteousness to be imputed to us. But if Christ, and Christ alone, is the means of God’s righteousness being revealed what are we to make of the typical rendering of Rom 3:21-22?
This rendering teaches, not that Christ is the revealing of God’s righteousness, but that it is our faith in Jesus which demonstrates that God is righteous? This is a strange for two reasons. Firstly how can our believing in what we hope is true prove/demonstrate that something is true? It is like arguing that we know the contents of a safe because we believe it to contain a certain item. We may believe that a locked safe contains a diamond, but we won’t know for certain until the safe is opened. Further, is it not folly, if not blasphemy, to suppose that anything which we do is capable of holding a candle to the righteousness of God? Having demonstrated how all mankind is incorrigibly prone to going astray (Rom 1:18-3:21), would Paul then rely on the faith of men and women as being the proof that God was righteous?
Paul needs a better example, and reading Rom 1:17 as “the Righteous One shall live by faith” provides such an archetype. To accept Christ as the forerunner of faith (Heb 12:2) means that the righteousness of God is revealed, not by our faith, but by the faithfulness of Christ. As the International Standard Version puts it:
Which is to say that, in addition to the holiness of God, as spoken about in the Law, we have the testimony of the Law and the Prophets (both of which speak of Christ advent) to point us to God’s delivering righteousness in Christ. On this basis, it is not our faith in Christ which reveals God’s righteousness, but the faithfulness of Christ which reveals God’s righteousness.
This is not the first time in Romans that Paul makes use of the prophets. He opens his letter with a greeting which explains that he has something to preach because the gospel of Jesus Christ was attested to by the prophets (Rom 1:2). Paul’s explication of the gospel is highly Christ-focussed.
As Paul opens his letter to the Romans he explains that he has received the ministry of winning men and women to the obedience of the faith (Rom 1:5). By this expression “obedience of the faith” Paul equates the two nouns. Which is to say that Paul is not seeking to change minds only. The message which he preaches is a message which changes what people believe and how people live. The Gospel of Christ is not an intellectual message in which a cognitive recognition of the Calvary narrative will suffice. The gospel is the good news of Christ’s power to change lives and to deliver from sin’s thraldom. This deliverance is an integrated “faith-obedience” deliverance.
Paul’s rhetoric at Rom 1:16-17 is highly structured. He is ready to preach the gospel in Rome:
In all this Paul must demonstrate a link between God’s integrity, His power and faith as being revealed in Christ. Paul has already laid the foundation for such links in the opening verses (Rom 1:2-4). In these verses Paul centralizes the gospel on Christ who is a descendant of David according to the flesh (Rom 1:3) and the Son of God (Rom 1:4a). In this way Paul sets before us a Christ who:
But if Christ is to be centre of the gospel and that gospel is centred on God’s integrity, His power and the principle of faith-obedience, Paul needs to make one further attribution to Christ. He must reveal how it is that Jesus Christ represents the faith-obedience entailed in the gospel? Here now we find the further promise that Messiah is “the Righteous One [who] shall live by faith”.
Jesus is the Righteous One who lived midst our sin-afflicted cosmos by faith. Jesus is the Righteous One who could not be held down by death itself, but inhabited hell for three days waiting in faith to be raised by the glory of the Father (Rom 6:4, Gal 1:1). The Righteous One lived by faith, in life and in death.
If the gospel is an integrated “faith-obedience” then Christ’s life was a life of righteous-fidelity. Jesus was not only obedient. He was trustingly obedient and totally faithful to the Father. Quoting from M R Vincent’s word study (1 John 1:9); “The two words, faithful and righteous, imply each other. They unite in a true conception of God's character.” Therefore we must consider Christ’s obedience, not as faultless performance only, but as prefect faithfulness also. The consequences of such faithfulness are numerous to consider, but a few present themselves as demanding recognition:
FIRST ~ If we understand that Jesus’ life of obedience was a faith-based walk, we can appreciate why it is that Scripture teaches that it was “through the Spirit” that He offered Himself without spot to God (Heb 9:14).
Indeed, there is a strange illogicality to our understanding of Christ’s obedience. On the one hand we readily grant that “by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in God’s sight” (Rom 3:20), and that “by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (Gal 2:16 & 3:11). This is because we are keenly aware of our inability to keep the law, but this is not the reason that law does not justify. The law’s inability to justify is because “if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law” (Gal 3:21). Despite this, we are taught to rejoice in the fact that Christ’s imputed righteousness comes to us because He kept the law? What is important about Christ’s law-keeping is not only the fact of its perfection, but the means by which it was achieved. Jesus was perfect in righteousness because He lived by faith, even to the extent of perfect adherence to the law (Hab 2:4). It is because of Jesus’ faith reliance on the Holy Spirit for the obedience of his flesh that He is said to have been justified by the Spirit (1 Tim 3:16).
The relationship between faith-obedience and life is not always abundantly evident. Perhaps a return to Eden will assist. Adam & Eve had before them two trees; the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. God forbad them to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, least they die, but they were at liberty to eat from all other trees (Gen 2:16-17). Is it not feasible that by faithful obedience to God’s Word, Adam & Eve would have partaken of the Tree of Life? Thus, disobedience is always faithless but life-giving obedience is always faith dependent.
SECOND ~ We have a clearer more formidable picture of what it means when “Looking to Jesus the Author and Perfector of our faith” (Heb 12:2) because participation in that faith means power for obedience, even as He was obedient.
THIRD ~ It becomes clearer that we bring nothing of ourselves to the New Testament covenant of grace.
Most Evangelicals will happily admit to being “saved by faith”, never realizing the error of this dictum. We are not saved by faith. We are saved by Christ Jesus. To think of ourselves as being saved by our “faith in Christ” merely makes faith a different form of works. In this way, the imputation to us of Christ’s righteousness becomes dependent on our “faith in Christ”. Thus, when we read Romans as “faith in Christ”, there is inferred a latent sense of self-effort, since we look to a righteousness which depends on our faith in Christ:
But if we read Romans with a view to the “faith of Christ” we are removed from a seeming direct engagement in righteousness as being by our faith and are located more deeply in Christ as the source of faith-obedience, having:
Similarly when we read Philippians, there is a palpable shift. For, to read Phil 3:9 as “faith in Christ” seems to lead us from abandoning a law-based righteousness of our own to having a faith-based righteousness from God attributable to our own faith:
But reading Phil 3:9 as “faith of Christ” removes ourselves from being prime mover and locates our believing more clearly in Christ:
