Part III · Justification: God Declares Us Righteous
δικαιόω
Dikaioō
to justify, declare righteous
“To Declare Righteous”
In the sixteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Reformers parted ways over a great deal. They also agreed on a remarkable amount: that God saves sinners, that Christ’s death and resurrection were the basis of salvation, that grace was necessary, that faith was essential.
What they disagreed on, more sharply than on almost anything else, was what one Greek verb meant.
The verb was dikaioō. The disagreement was — and still is — about whether this verb means “to declare righteous” or “to make righteous.” The Council of Trent, in its session on justification in 1547, took the second position. The Reformers held the first. Whether you stand before God on Tuesday morning by trusting Christ alone, or by working out your salvation by faith plus your own growing holiness, depends on that one verb.
Luther called justification — what dikaioō names — the article on which the church stands or falls. He was not wrong.
The Word
δικαιόω (dikaioō), pronounced dee-kai-OH-oh. A verb. The family includes the noun dikaiosynē (righteousness, which we will meet in Chapter 18) and the adjective dikaios (righteous, just).
The Greek family is borrowed from the courtroom. Dikē (δίκη) is “justice” — what a court hands down. Dikaios is the person who satisfies the court’s standard. Dikaioō is what the court does when it issues its verdict. To dikaioō someone is to declare them in the right.
This is the most important point in the chapter, and we are going to spend the next several pages defending it: dikaioō is what a judge does, not what a therapist does. The verb is forensic. It is declarative. It is not a verb for changing someone’s character. It is a verb for issuing a verdict about them.
Range of Meaning
The semantic range of dikaioō in the New Testament includes:
- To declare righteous, to acquit. The forensic, courtroom sense. This is the dominant sense in Paul.
- To vindicate, to prove right. “Wisdom is dikaiōthē by her deeds” (Matt 11:19) — wisdom is shown to be right by what it does. Same verb, “vindication” register.
- To set right, to make just. A minority sense that does carry the “make” force rather than the “declare” force. Found in some non-Pauline contexts and in extra-biblical Greek.
- To free from a charge, to release. Acts 13:39: “everyone who believes is dikaioutai from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.”
In Paul, the dominant sense is the first. Romans, Galatians, and Philippians use dikaioō in a forensic, courtroom sense throughout. The judge declares the defendant in the right. This is what God does for the sinner who trusts Christ.
The “to make righteous” sense exists in the broader Greek world and shows up occasionally in the New Testament — but importing it into Romans, where Paul is consistently using the forensic sense, is the move that gave the church four centuries of confusion.
Where You’ll Meet It
“…and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…” (Romans 3:24, ESV)
The third and fourth chapters of Romans are where Paul lays out the doctrine in detail. The verb appears here in the present passive — God is the one doing the justifying, sinners are the ones being justified. The basis is not their works but God’s grace.
“For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” (Romans 3:28, ESV)
This is the sentence Luther rendered into German with the addition of “alone” — allein durch den Glauben, “by faith alone.” His Roman Catholic critics objected. Luther defended the rendering on the grounds that the German required it to make Paul’s sense come through. The Greek verb is again dikaioō. The faith is the receiving instrument; the work is God’s.
“What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.’” (Romans 4:1–3, ESV)
Paul reaches back to Abraham. Abraham believed and was dikaiōthē — declared righteous. Not after his works. Before circumcision, before any works of the law. Faith alone, righteousness imputed.
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:1, ESV)
Aorist passive: dikaiōthentes — having been justified. Past tense, completed action. The verdict has been rendered. We do not work toward this justification; we live from it.
“…yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ…” (Galatians 2:16, ESV)
Paul says it again in Galatians, in a context where he is rebuking Peter for backing away from the implications. The verb appears three times in this one verse. It is so important to Paul that he is willing to risk his most important friendship over it.
And finally, the verse that has confused readers for two thousand years:
“You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” (James 2:24, ESV)
James uses dikaioō too. And he denies what Paul affirms — or seems to. This is the verse that gave Luther fits and that has given the church reason to keep both books in the canon. We will return to it under “Where People Get It Wrong.”
What Confessional Lutherans Hear
Dikaioō — to justify, declare righteous
We hear dikaioō with two emphases the broader Christian conversation often softens.
First, the verb is forensic, not transformative. When God dikaioī the sinner, He renders a verdict. He does not first remake the sinner morally and then declare what He has made. He declares the sinner righteous on the basis of Christ’s righteousness imputed — Christ’s standing reckoned to the sinner’s account. The sinner remains a sinner; what has changed is the verdict. The Augsburg Confession, Article IV, states this without flinching: human beings “are justified as a gift on account of Christ, through faith, when they believe that they are received into grace and that their sins are forgiven on account of Christ.”
This is the place where Lutheran theology parts company with Tridentine Catholicism. The Council of Trent, in its sixth session (1547), defined justification as a process that includes both forensic declaration and inner moral transformation. The sinner is, in the Tridentine view, gradually made righteous through infused grace, faith, sacraments, and good works cooperating with grace. The Lutheran response was — and is — that this conflates justification (what God declares once-for-all) with sanctification (what the Holy Spirit works in the believer over time). Both are real. They are not the same act, and confusing them costs the gospel its certainty.
This is also where Lutheran theology has had to push back against some Reformed and Evangelical readings — the New Perspective on Paul, which treats justification as covenant-membership language; the “lordship salvation” framings that load justification with conditions about Christian growth and obedience; the moralistic-therapeutic deisms that turn justification into “God thinks you are great.” All of them, in different ways, soften what dikaioō in Paul is doing. Dikaioō declares. It does not negotiate, it does not process, it does not measure. It declares.
Second, the verb is in the passive voice for a reason. You do not dikaioō yourself. You are dikaiōthentes — having been justified, by someone else, for someone else’s sake. The active agent is God. The instrument is faith — and faith is not a work, not a contribution, not your share of the bargain. Faith is what receives. The Apology of the Augsburg Confession spends most of Article IV defending this point against Tridentine accusations of antinomianism, and the defense holds up four hundred years later. Faith is the empty hand that takes what Christ has done.
The pastoral payoff: when you wake up on Tuesday morning and your conscience says you have failed again, you do not have to wait for Sunday to be justified. You already are. The verdict has been rendered. The Word has done what the Word does. Your remaining sin does not unjustify you. Your slow sanctification does not justify you. Christ is your righteousness, and the verdict has been read.
The full entry in Just Enough Greek continues with “Where People Get It Wrong,” “So What,” and “If You Want to Go Deeper.”