RIGHTEOUSNESS / justice — one word in Greek for what English splits into two, and the key term of Romans. ⚠ 'The righteousness of God' (dikaiosynē theou, 1:17) is the most argued-over phrase in the letter, and the dispute is grammatical before it is theological: a righteousness that BELONGS to God (his covenant faithfulness, his putting-things-right), one that COMES from God as a gift, or one that COUNTS before God. Luther described his whole turn as a change of mind about this genitive. Behind it stands the Hebrew tsedaqah, which is likewise relational — being right BY someone, not merely being morally correct. ⚠ In Matthew the word runs the other way round — not a status God gives but the doing of what God has asked: it is what Jesus says he and John are completing when he insists on being baptized, 'thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness' (3:15), and it becomes the spine of the Sermon on the Mount (hunger for it, 5:6; exceed the scribes' and Pharisees' measure of it, 5:20; do not practise it to be seen, 6:1). → first discussed at Rom 1:17