There has always been
a great deal of discussion about whether Paul speaks only of a
"pronouncing righteous" or of a "making righteous" by God.
In reality this is an idle dispute. It is true that the verb used by Paul in
itself means nothing more than "declare righteous, pronounce
righteous"; cf. also the contrast of "pronounce righteous" and
"condemn" in Rom. 8:33-34; further, I Cor. 4:4: "I am not aware
of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who
judges me" (RSV). But for Paul, God's action that acquits is a creative
action which causes the godless to become righteous and
makes the sinner into a "new creation"; in II Cor. 5:17, 21,
"If anyone is in Christ, he is a
new creation; the old has passed away; behold, the new has come into
being," is in parallel with "He had made him who knew no sin to be
sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him." And as
in Rom. 5:1 Paul says, "We have peace with God," as a consequence of
being justified by faith, so he says of himself, having turned away from the
righteousness of the law: "I . . . not having my own righteousness which
is of the law, but that [righteousness] which is through faith in Christ, the
righteousness from God on the basis of faith" (Phil. 3:9; cf. also Col.
2:13-14). Indeed, for Paul God is the one "who gives life to the dead and
calls into being that which does not exist" (Rom. 4:17), and therefore
God's judgement is an event and his pronouncement of righteousness has
"the character of power. Thus if for Paul "God's righteousness"
denotes God's saving action, which in the present end-time declares sinful man
righteous and thus is a newly creative force, then what is meant thereby
becomes fully comprehensible to be sure, only when we observe the connection of
this divine action with Jesus Christ and the precondition of faith for the
pronouncement of justification. (W.G. Kümmel, Theology of the New Testament:
Study Edition [John E. Steely; London: SCM Press, 1974], 198-99, emphasis
in bold added)
Response to a Recent Attempt to Defend Imputed Righteousness