The Gospel is one great paradox. The fullness of God is born in a delicate baby in a manger. The maker of the world enters His creation unrecognized. A crucified and inhumed Messiah rises over death. These paradoxes are at once beautiful and puzzling; so too is the Gospel’s paradox of righteousness. The Pharisees, despite boasting a strict adherence to the Mosaic and Jewish law, are some of Jesus’ most frequent antagonists, while Jesus, for his own part, dines with the tax collectors and the sinners. The Pharisees can’t fathom why Jesus would condescend to such low company, but Jesus’ explanation only affirms the unworthiness of his camaraderie: “‘I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners’” (Matthew 9:13). The righteous God dines with wretched men.
This paradox of righteousness is born of the legalism of the Pharisees, scribes, and lawyers who adhere strictly to Jewish law and think highly of their own virtue. Those who do not boast the same austere obedience to the law, they scorn. So palpable is their air of superiority that Jesus parabolizes it in His tale of the tax collector and Pharisee. Whereas the publican, so ashamed that he will not even raise his eyes, prays, “‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner,’” the Pharisee prays, “‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get’” (Luke 18:9-13). The Pharisee lists many good reasons to consider himself more righteous than the publican, but he sees the world only through the binary of adherence and disobedience to the law.
It is inside this legal framework of the Pharisees and the lawyers that Luke boldly steps. Adopting the same legal principles as Jesus’ antagonists, Luke is able to render their errors plain. The critical moment comes in Luke 7, after Jesus has explained the ministry of John the Baptist and the nature of the Kingdom of God to a crowd. Luke’s record of what happens next comes in explicitly legal language:
When all the people heard this, and the tax collectors too, they declared God just [dikaioō], having been baptized with the baptism of John, but the Pharisees and the lawyers [nomikos] rejected [atheteō] the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him. (Luke 7:29-30)
Three Greek words from Luke’s record are worth illuminating. The first is nomikos, or “lawyer.” Because the lawyers are a repeating group of characters throughout Luke’s Gospel, their presence contributes only modestly to the theme of legalism. Their close partnership with the Pharisees, however, does emphasize the legal expertise and perspective of those who are rejecting God.
The second word is dikaioō. Although this word is rendered above as “to declare just,” its definitions range from “do justice” to “justify” to “vindicate” to “be pronounced righteous.” Each of these meanings affirms this word’s legal register, as do other occurrences of dikaioō in Scripture. After Jesus finishes his parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee, he explains, “‘[the tax collector] went to his house justified [dikaioō] rather than the [Pharisee]’” (Luke 18:14). In Luke 7:35, Jesus proclaims that “wisdom is vindicated [dikaioō] by all her children.’” Jesus draws upon this word to give the Pharisees a pithy summary of their error: “‘you are those who justify [dikaioō] yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts’” (Luke 16:15). Perhaps the Septuagint’s1 translation of Psalm 82 characterizes dikaioō best. Notice that dikaioō is only one wave in a great storm of legal language:
“God takes His stand in His own congregation; He judges in the midst of the rulers. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah. Vindicate the weak and fatherless; do justice [dikaioō] to the afflicted and destitute.” (Psalm 82:1-3)2
Finally, the Septuagint’s authors chose dikaioō to translate the legal terminology in Isaiah’s prophecy of our salvation through God’s “Righteous One,” Jesus. “The Righteous One, My Servant, will justify [dikaioō] the many, as He will bear their iniquities” (Isaiah 53:11).
The antithesis to dikaioō in Luke’s Gospel is atheteō, whose meanings range from “declare invalid,” and “nullify” to “set aside” and “reject.” Luke writes this word in only one other passage, when Jesus tells a group of missionaries that “‘the one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects [atheteō] you rejects [atheteō] Me; and he who rejects [atheteō] Me rejects [atheteō] the One who sent Me’” (Luke 10:16). Examples outside of Luke display the legal connotations of atheteō more boldly. Mark records how King Herod was forced to behead John the Baptist because he was unwilling to refuse [atheteō] an oath to his daughter (Mark 6:26). In Mark 7:9, Jesus’ words drip with sarcasm when He rebukes the Pharisees and the scribes, telling them, “you have a fine way of rejecting [atheteō] the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition.’” “Reject” in this verse could even be rendered as “nullify” or “make void.” The Septuagint, translating the psalmist’s record of God’s words, leans on atheteō to articulate the doctrine of God’s covenant: “‘My covenant I will not violate, nor will I alter [atheteō] the utterance of My lips’” (Psalm 89:34).3 Paul also chooses atheteō when he teaches about covenants. “Brethren,” Paul writes, “I speak in terms of human relations: even though it is only a man’s covenant, yet when it has been ratified, no one sets it aside [atheteō] or adds conditions to it” (Galatians 3:15).
These are the words that Luke carefully and intentionally chooses to frame the choices of the sinners and the Pharisees. This legal jargon exposes the error of the Pharisees and lawyers in their own litigious terms. The Pharisees judge others, condemn their neighbors, and applaud themselves as righteous according to the letter of the law while despising the God who gave them that law and rejecting His New Covenant. But Luke’s language reveals that the Pharisees have not erred because of their legal framework; rather, they have erred because they apply their legal framework to the wrong ends.
God has instituted the New Covenant, and Luke explains the New Covenant in legal terms to illustrate that the law is no longer the way to justification. Righteousness now means accepting God’s mercy for unrighteousness, and unrighteousness means winning righteousness by one’s own hand. Luke subverts the old legal frame and reshapes it in accordance with the new age. The tax collectors and sinners, poor in spirit and conscious of their sin, are righteous because they declare God just [dikaioō]. The Pharisees and the lawyers, too enchanted by their own virtue to condescend next to the sinners, are unrighteous because they reject [atheteō] God’s purpose. Luke lays bare to the Pharisees the paradigm shift that must take place for them to win, not a court case on Earth, but the kingdom of God. And to those who read his Gospel today and who study this paradigm shift, Luke leaves light which more brightly illuminates the path to righteousness through Jesus.
The Septuagint, produced around the 3rd or 2nd century B.C., is the Greek translation of the Old Testament that formed the primary body of Scriptures for the newborn Christian church. It is the most frequent source of Old Testament quotations for the New Testament’s Greek-writing authors.
Because the Septuagint assigns chapter and verse numbers slightly differently than our modern translations, this Psalm is actually Psalm 81 in the Septuagint. This different numbering does not harm the meaning of the text.
Because the Septuagint assigns chapter and verse numbers slightly differently than our modern translations, this verse is actually Psalm 88:35 in the Septuagint. This different numbering does not harm the meaning of the text.