Two Kinds of Righteousness

Overview

About twelve pages, a short sermon on Philippians 2, preached and printed by Martin Luther in 1519, just a year before the Ninety-Five Theses would launch his public confrontation with Rome. Compressed into barely a dozen pages, the sermon contains the actual theological seed that would eventually grow into Luther’s fully developed doctrine of justification by faith.

The first righteousness is alien: the righteousness of Christ, given from outside and received by faith, which swallows up sin at once and is worked out over a lifetime. The second is our own, the ordinary righteousness of a good life and just dealing, which grows out of the first and is its fruit rather than its cause. The distinction is the seed of Luther’s later doctrine of justification, set out in a few pages.

What happens

Distinguishing two righteousnesses. Luther opens by distinguishing two kinds of righteousness relevant to Christian life, setting up the sermon’s central theological distinction that will structure everything that follows in this brief but consequential argument.

Alien righteousness given from outside. Luther describes the first righteousness as alien, Christ’s own righteousness given entirely from outside a person and received purely through faith rather than earned through any accumulated personal moral effort or virtuous action.

Sin swallowed up at once. Luther argues that this alien righteousness swallows up sin immediately upon being received through faith, even though its full implications and effects continue working themselves out gradually across an entire subsequent lifetime of sustained faith.

Proper righteousness as fruit. Luther turns to the second righteousness, our own ordinary righteousness of good conduct and just dealing, insisting this proper righteousness is fruit rather than cause, growing directly out of the alien righteousness already received rather than producing or earning it.

Inverting the commonsense order. This specific ordering, alien righteousness first and proper righteousness following as natural consequence rather than precondition, directly inverts the commonsense assumption that good behavior earns divine favor or produces righteousness in the first place.

The seed of justification by faith. Though set out in only a few pages, this precise distinction and ordering between alien and proper righteousness would become the actual theological seed from which Luther’s later, more fully developed and more famous doctrine of justification by faith would grow.

How to read it

Read this sermon as a genuine theological seed rather than a fully developed treatise; its brevity and focus on a single precise distinction, rather than comprehensive systematic argument, is exactly what makes it valuable for tracing how Luther’s later, more elaborate doctrine of justification actually originated.

Pay close attention to the specific ordering Luther insists on, alien righteousness first, proper righteousness following as its fruit; getting this sequence correct, cause before consequence rather than consequence mistaken for cause, is the sermon’s entire theological achievement compressed into its brief argument.

Notice how the sermon’s account of alien righteousness combines apparent contradiction, sin swallowed up at once yet also worked out gradually across a lifetime; this combination of immediate and gradual effect is worth tracking carefully as central to how Luther actually understood faith’s relationship to ongoing Christian life.

Consider this sermon’s early date, preached a full year before the Ninety-Five Theses, as significant for understanding Luther’s own theological development; this specific distinction between alien and proper righteousness was already substantially formed before his more famous public confrontation with indulgence sales had even begun.

Read this sermon alongside Luther’s own later Preface to Romans to see how this early, compact distinction between two kinds of righteousness develops into the more extended theological argument about law, sin, faith and grace that the later preface sets out at greater length.

Questions it raises

• Does the distinction between alien and proper righteousness successfully resolve the tension between faith and good works that would become so central to later Reformation debate, or does this early formulation leave genuine ambiguity about exactly how the two righteousnesses actually relate to each other in practice?
• How does the claim that alien righteousness swallows up sin at once, while its full implications work themselves out gradually across a lifetime, hold together as a coherent account of Christian experience? Does this combination of immediate and gradual effect represent genuine theological insight or an unresolved tension in Luther’s early thinking?
• What does the specific ordering, proper righteousness as fruit rather than cause of alien righteousness, actually mean for how a Christian should understand their own good conduct? Does treating good works as fruit rather than cause diminish their genuine significance or place them in proper theological perspective?
• Given how early this sermon falls in Luther’s development, a year before the Ninety-Five Theses, what does its already sophisticated theological argument suggest about how much of his mature theology had crystallized before his public break with Rome actually began?
• How does this sermon’s brief, focused treatment of a single theological distinction compare to Luther’s later, more extensive treatments of related themes in works like his Preface to Romans? Does the compression here achieve genuine clarity, or does brevity leave important questions underdeveloped that his later, fuller treatments would need to address?
• What does the sermon’s origin as preached oral address, later printed, suggest about how Luther’s theological ideas first took shape and reached audiences, compared to his later, more deliberately composed written treatises addressed to specific readers or institutions?