None are Righteous, No Not One: God’s Righteousness, Justification, and Restorative Justice

Introduction

[1] Throwing criminals in prison is not working: the prisons are overcrowded, they are financially draining–profiting only the very wealthy–and, most importantly, prisoners are not rehabilitated to deal with society when they leave—recidivism rates are high.[1] The current retributive system places emphasis on anonymity (intentionally or unintentionally): keeping separate the offender and the victim for the sake of the victim.[2] Anonymity fosters and makes space for dehumanizing the offender and (even) the offended. Those who are found guilty are stripped of their personhood: names change to numbers; human dignity is traded for being subhuman.[3] Criminals become monsters worthy of only punishment, sacrificed on the altar of the retributive carceral system[4].

[2] They are not just sacrificed once—as if serving time is enough; the prisoner will suffer for the rest of their life, dragged back on to the altar to be sacrificed repeatedly. Michelle Alexander describes the “parallel universe” the guilty defendant will enter, “…one that promises a form of punishment that is often more difficult to bear than prison time: a lifetime of shame, contempt, scorn, and exclusion. In this hidden world, discrimination is perfectly legal.” In an atmosphere pregnant with revenge and vengeance, someone must pay. “America requires a sacrifice,” writes Nikia Smith Robert, “for the Carceral State to function. Prisons are therefore needed to systematically produce delinquents by disenfranchising, disqualifying and dehumanizing the least of these.”[5]

[3] Addressing the sacrificial demand of America’s retributive carceral justice system, Robert explains, “Applied allegorically to the contemporary social content of the Carceral State, not Christ but Black bodies become the sacrifice for human sin. This is to say, in the feudal economy as in the Carceral State there is an analogous hierarchical relationship where lords can be understood interchangeably with dominant privileged society and serfs with the criminalization of the subaltern.”[6] Due to America’s own caste system built on the color of one’s skin, the retributive carceral system, entwined with the anti-Blackness of a society in the wake of Jim Crow era segregation and racist laws, notices the amount of melanin the criminal has.[7] Black men suffer at higher rates proportionally in a retributive system than White men[8] (and Black women more than White women[9]). Black men are incarcerated, ripped from families and communities, causing oppression to continue, especially in poor communities, forcing Black women into vulnerable and precarious financial situations to hold the fort, taking on multiple jobs to keep food on the table and a roof above.

[4] Considering all of this, the way Americans view criminals must change. First, Blackness doesn’t mean criminal.[10] Second, offenders are more than the sum of their crimes. We need to see people who commit crimes differently; we need to see them as human, even when they do things to us that we deem inhuman.

[5] Robert argues convincingly for “A Liberation Theology of Lockdown America” where “…the cross and the resurrection reveal God’s solidarity with the incarcerated and the restorative possibilities for transformation and freedom.”[11] “A Liberation Theology of Lockdown America” is an antidote to the poison of America’s current sacrificial and punishment-based system of retribution derived from and sustained by penal substitution atonement theories. She writes, “The task of ‘A Liberation Theology for Lockdown America’ is to prioritize the experiences of Black and Brown persons who are disproportionately warehoused to the U.S. prison industrial complex. It is to interrogate the association of theological categories such as sin and sacrifice with social phenomena such as criminality and punishment.”[12]

[6]  Howard Zehr, in Changing Lenses, proposes “The Victim-Offender Reconciliation Program” (VORP). According to Zehr, VORP offers a necessary adjustment to our current understanding of retributive justice. VORP is hinged on very specific and uniquely Christian elements that are transferred by the preaching of the Gospel. Zehr claims that, for Christians, God’s justice is more about shalom, covenant, and reconciliation than retribution; therefore we, as Christians, need to act similarly. Zehr collapses justification to a passing word at the end of his chapter, “Covenant Justice: The Biblical Alternative”; even though he is strictly critiquing the penal aspect of justification, he refuses the massive concept sufficient room in his theological approach. In other words, justification is, for Zehr, part of the problem.

[7] T. Richard Snyder in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Punishment, like Zehr, demonstrates the rich groundwork of restorative justice and proposes that American Protestantism needs a new way of looking at both crime and the criminal. Snyder suggests challenging the over-emphasized individualism plaguing American Protestantism causing those who follow to desire punishment of those who have offended. While he does an artful job demonstrating the way restorative justice features in other cultures and spiritualities around the world, he locates Christian support in the Judeo-Christian themes of Covenant, Incarnation, and Trinity. Snyder criticizes and holds responsible individual conversion as the locus of anti-communality that threatens the overarching themes just mentioned. He writes, “To understand our lives as essentially and intimately connected with all other living beings, including God, poses a serious problem for those who hold to a doctrine of the fall that implies total depravity and the loss of the image of God. For them the essential connection has been lost. For them, restoration can occur only when the individual’s heart is regenerated through conversion. All other tasks are secondary to proclaiming this truth and inviting person to make the decision to turn to God.”[13] Instead, he argues in the last chapter of his book for a public (communal) conversion causing politics, economics, and culture to be converted unto the mission of divine liberation.

[8] In these proposed systems (and others not mentioned) the doctrine of the justification of the sinner by faith apart from any works is ignored (Robert), sidelined (Zehr), or blamed (Snyder). It seems then that one cannot hold to a restorative system and also the definitive article of Protestant theology (generally) and Lutheran theology (specifically). It could be logically deduced that restorative justice demands one reject the doctrine of the justification. Or does it? With any demand for change within human systems from a gospel perspective there needs to be an appeal to something else; we need to wonder not only how can we do this and why do we do this? But also, how do I do this and why do I do this? Something needs to change in me, awaken in me, be born in me before I can, effectually, begin to participate in restorative justice at any level of human civilization. I cannot go from isolated monad turned in on myself to communal paragon of social justice; I cannot bypass personal and individual transformation in the encounter with God in the event of faith.

[9] Thus, with recourse to Eberhard Jüngel and his conception of the event of justification and God’s righteousness, this essay offers additional insight, theologically, that verifies Zehr’s and Snyder’s appropriate desire not only to see the penal system in America changed, but also to change the way we view (and treat) those who have offended while also demonstrating how Robert’s “A Liberation Theology of Lockdown America” finds fundamental necessity within good Protestant (generally) and Lutheran (specifically) praxis in the world for the wellbeing of the neighbor (whoever and wherever they are) to the glory of God.

Law and Gospel and Revelation of Righteousness

[10] In his essay, “Living Out of Righteousness: God’s Action—Human Agency” [14] Eberhard Jüngel begins by examining what the Scriptures mean by speaking of God’s righteousness. To acknowledge God’s righteousness is to acknowledge that God is God. When we talk about God’s righteousness, we talk about God; in talking about a life of righteousness, we cannot talk about it accurately if we do not talk about God. “A life out of righteousness, if such a thing there be, is a life out of God.”[15]

[11] But God must always be spoken of for God’s own sake; God is not to be “instrumentalized” as a means to an end, which is human agency. God is interesting for God’s own sake and is to be spoken of for God’s own sake. Much like the beloved is interesting for her own sake and not as some means to an end for the lover; one does not (or should not) love another person to get something as if she was a talisman of sorts.[16] So it is when we find God interesting not for God’s own sake but as a means to an end; at that point, God becomes a superstition, even if it appears a respectable superstition—to love God in this way is not to love God for God’s own sake.

[12] Jüngel turns to discuss the understanding of the righteousness of God. Referring to Luther, Jüngel explains that God’s righteousness is revealed in the Gospel rather than the Law. The law is not completely sufficient in demonstrating God’s righteousness, because it is a command given to the person and, in failure to fulfill that command, the person stands accused, judged, and punished by God. In this way, God’s righteousness is defined as accusing, judging, and punishing.[17] Yet, the gospel gives a different understanding (or definition) of the righteousness of God. Rather than being the God that damns the unrighteous, the gospel tells us that God gives God’s self to us: “In the gospel the demanding God who stands over against me in the law draws near to me, indeed nearer to me than I am able to be to myself. And thus I realize what it means to be a sinner,” but not the damned sinner as the righteousness of God defined by the law would have it, but a sinner who has been made righteous by the righteousness of God defined by the Gospel.[18] The righteousness of God, according to the Gospel, makes the unrighteous righteous because the gospel is about the justification of sinners.

The Righteousness of God

[13] But one cannot stop at speaking only of that gift of righteousness of God to the unrighteous; one must also talk about the “righteous being” of God. If, in being righteous, God does righteous actions, and if the righteousness of God is the righteousness that makes righteous those who are unrighteous, then an examination of God in God’s deeds will reveal the truth of this claim.[19] The first thing that needs to be established is that righteousness is relational.[20] Righteousness is not demanded where one is an isolated monad, but only in relation to someone else.[21] Essentially, there is no righteousness apart from relation.[22] In that righteousness only exists in relation, then peace becomes an integral aspect of righteousness. “According to the understanding of the Bible, the connection between peace and righteousness is so close that they are mutually determinative. Righteousness is…the outer ground of peace, and peace the inner ground of righteousness. One cannot be had without the other.”[23]

[14] In understanding righteousness defined relationally when one speaks of God as righteous, then it must be said that God is a well-ordered being of self-relation first in God’s self (first and foremost), so that “…in [God’s] self-relation as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…the mutually distinct Trinitarian persons ‘give one another their due.’”[24] In other words, God is not a well-ordered being in that God is rich in relations over and against God’s creation, but God is first a well-ordered being in God’s self-relation between the three persons of the Trinity, “…the Trinitarian community of mutual difference.”[25] Each person of the Trinity is affirmed in mutual differentiation, and in this way God corresponds to God’s self and is, thus, righteous because God corresponds to God’s self in such a way that the three persons of the trinity remain distinct yet communal.[26] Referring to Barth, Jüngel writes, “[God] is just in [Godself]. This is the backbone of the event of justification…‘For the righteous Lord loveth righteousness’ (Ps. 11.7): this is…an ontological statement…which is…unchangeably valid. God is just in [Godself].”[27]

By Grace Alone

[15] Taking into account that God’s righteousness is relational within Godself (“God is just in [Godself]”) and that God’s righteousness is the righteousness that makes the unrighteous righteous, then it is deduced that “God declares and makes the sinner righteous by grace alone.”[28] As stated before, God’s righteousness is not expressed in the law, in that the law condemns all that fail it; thus God’s righteousness would then be righteous by condemnation of the unrighteous. Rather, the gospel tells us that God’s righteousness is made manifest in that God, the one who stands over against the sinner in the law, has drawn near to the sinner, and in drawing near to the sinner has made the sinner righteous. Therefore, it is only by grace that the sinner is justified. However, the sinner being justified by grace alone does not imply that God’s grace tempers God’s justice; God’s justice and God’s mercy do not oppose each other. God’s righteousness is made manifest in God’s coming to the sinner and making the sinner righteous, “God is righteous in [God’s] grace.”[29]

[16] God is gracious in that God does not remain alone, present only for God’s self.[30] In this graciousness also lies judgment. Judgment limits injustice and recognizes God as judge. Should this judgment not occur, God would be a merciless God. Evil (in all its forms) needs to be judged by a judge. For sinners to be justified, they need to be judged and to pass through that judgment by grace (while not bypassing the judgment). The cross is that word of judgment.[31] The cross delivers its verdict to sin, evil, human injustice and guilt: no. And this is grace: that God does not just pass over evil and sin and injustice but rather prevails against it and condemns it. In the event of the Cross, the sinner is identified with Christ in his death.

[17] Yet, this word of judgment, the word of condemnation, is not the only word or the final word. (Thus, Jüngel proves not to be contradicting himself by allowing judgment and condemnation (the function of the law as stated above) to be a part of God’s righteousness.) By the event of the cross, God provides a “new beginning” for the one who was condemned previously. God’s righteousness (and justice for that matter) is not equivalent to a secular understanding of justice which is best described as justice “among equals.” Rather, biblical justice and God’s righteousness—as defined by the gospel and the event of the cross—is exemplified in that God shares God’s righteousness with those who are, in fact, unequal to God.[32] Jüngel writes, “The righteousness of God is not a divine metaphysical attribute reserved for God, but a communicable attribute: God is righteous in that [God] makes others righteous.”[33]

[18] Sin is the opposite of God’s righteousness and justice. Sin is “the drive to have one’s own right prevail at the expense of others and in this way to be the one nearest to oneself.”[34] Sin breaks (disorders) the richness of relations that characterize God’s relationality within God’s self and with God’s creation (and in which they have been included); sin places the person in priority to others, and, rather than giving others their due, the sinner seizes her right (her due) by taking away the right of others.[35] Sin disorders relations by disconnecting them and causing isolation.

[19] Looking at sin in this light, we can see that death would be the ultimate end, or the ultimate consequence of disordered relationality, because death becomes, in sin, the final word of separation, of isolation.[36] Sin is less about wrong activity (though not distinct from it) and more about disordered relations, from which spring wrong activity. Christ, through the event of the cross, becomes a “curse” for us; he bears relationlessness on himself. In bearing this relationlessness and the ultimate consequence of sin on himself, God draws nearer to us; by drawing nearer to us, God makes us righteous, God justifies us.[37] Thus we are given new life (and true life).

[20] We, through the event of the cross and the resurrection of Christ, are brought to death and into new life; our disordered relationality is reordered, and in this reorderedness (where God has drawn nearer to us than we can to ourselves) we have new and true life, because God who is ordered in God’s relationality and just in God’s self has drawn near to us and caused us to be justified and righteous.

The New Beginning and Receiving Ourselves

[21] In that the event of the cross is the event where God draws nearer to us, thus bringing the sinner to death and into new life, this change from death into new life cannot be a change that has been made by us. All our activity has been excluded from this event; we receive new life and, thus, ourselves.[38] In “only receiving ourselves” we exist in a new way: we simply (and truly) exist and in that we can have joy.[39] All of our activity stems from this realization: that we are first inactive, that we receive our new life from God who has (in God’s activity) drawn near to us. This is the meaning of the Sabbath: the Sabbath is not only the end of the week, but also the source of the work week.[40]

[22] The Sabbath—the Lord’s day—is the reminder that all our activity is subjected to being first receivers (passive) and in this way being reminded again that God is the ultimate giver who has acted toward us and on our behalf. And, properly, worship becomes the moment through which the sinner is “interrupted” and the “new becomes possible.” Jüngel explains, “In worship we ourselves are addressed as persons who are more than the sum of their deeds. In worship we discover ourselves as a community of justified sinners, whose first action is not an achievement, bur rather praise and thanks. In worship we discover ourselves as those liberated from our own past, who cannot rejoice enough about their liberator and their own freedom.”[41] And from this rich source of worship flows the Christian’s activity in and for their everyday life with the neighbor to the glory of God.

The Person over the Work

[23] An essential element in living out of the righteousness of God, justification by faith alone, is that the person has total and unconditional precedence over their work.[42] Neither good deed nor ill will be used to define the “I” of the person. One cannot become more human or less human based on good and bad deeds, respectively. The doctrine of the justification of sinners “demythologizes the myth of super-humans who surpass themselves with their successes….[as well as] demythologizes the myth of inhuman beings who have become non-persons through the atrocities they have committed.”[43]

[24] Behind and underlying both the superhuman and the inhuman are the persons to whom God has been merciful; this means that for the Christian, those who live out of God’s righteousness, there is no such thing as a hopeless or inhuman person based on deeds.[44] “God’s righteousness forbids us to widen the inhuman deed so categorically that its subject is identified with it and in this way declared to be inhuman. The category of the inhuman is itself an inhuman category.”[45]

Conclusion: What Lutheran Theology Means for the Criminal Justice System

[25] Eberhard Jüngel writes, “It is not only in the erstwhile Christian West that the penal system has mocked the doctrine of justification. Even today the system is still awaiting a new reform, an elemental interruption of the undisputable connection between person and work, so that the system addresses the prisoner as a person distinguishable from his or her deeds.”[46] Restorative justice programs and liberation theologies work primarily because they restore relations, and, more so, because, in that restored relation, in that exchange, an affirmation of humanity occurs: I consider you to be a person apart from your deeds (personally and corporately). Herein lies the vitality of the doctrine of the justification for restorative and liberative penal programs.

[26] The Christian, going against society that wants to punish the offender even to the point of depriving them of life, dares to declare and see that the offender is still a person, “… as a human self who lives from God’s recognition.”[47] Christians experience the power of the justification event: they are sinners justified by the righteousness of God and deemed human apart from their works, they are met in their sinfulness as they are, absolved, and restored into new life. This is the heart of the event of justification; and it is this event that forbids the Christian from “identifying the self either with the best act one has committed or with the worst act.”[48]

[27] Because of the encounter with God in the event of faith (and all that entails), the Christian is prohibited from now turning such a judgmental, punishing, and death-dealing eye to her neighbor. Justification is an individual event (each one is encountered by God) but it is not a solitary event having no bearing on the believer within her society. By the event of justification and by God’s righteousness that makes us righteous, there is no deed so good or so bad by which God will define …anyone.[49] The Christian has this unique message that offers to those in her community who feel that they are too far off, that God is quite near and, in spite of their deeds, they are (as they are) seen, known, and loved by this same God.

[28] At work here, too, within the event of justification by faith alone is the spiritual reality of the event of confession and absolution, the very event that makes possibility have priority over actuality in temporality. Otherwise known as “forgiving and forgetting.” Considering that the Christian herself has experienced this absolution for her offenses from God through Christ, she can, by the power of the Holy Spirit, manifest this spiritual reality in the temporal realm as she brings into the temporal real the possibility that is created by forgiving and forgetting. In this space created by forgiveness lies the possibility that the offender will not offend again, and in forgetting the victim does not lord the crime over the offender (even if the person can recall the crime and even if there are horizontal consequences for the crime). For the Christian, forgetting—in the process of forgiving—is based within the understanding that humanity is addressed as beings of possibility which has priority over actuality ontologically.

[29] When we hold on to the past, the past reigns over us. As those who are addressed and those who are beings of possibility, we forget the works when thinking of the person (the person comes first). Essentially, when we, the ones who are the addressed, address someone else in God’s name we absolve that person of his past and offer him new possibilities; in this absolution and offering, we have “forgotten” and the actuality of the crime recedes into the history that is now Christ’s and a (new) future is opened up for both the offended and offender. Herein is true restoration and liberation, a spiritual reality made real in the temporal realm.

[30] In the proclamation of the gospel, I am caused to be human over and against my works, and, as Jüngel has written, the “I that I am” takes precedence over my works, the “I-that-I-am” is given value beyond any work I do—whether good or bad. In being offered new life out of death by the gospel message, there is no such person who can be considered/judged a hopeless case. In giving my personhood priority over my activity, I experience not only forgiveness but also forgetfulness; my activity is forgiven and forgotten. And, in return, out of my great gratitude, I can look at another and see a human, one on whom God has mercy despite deeds, no matter how heinous; someone who has hope; someone who gets the second, third, fourth, the 70×7 chance, and in offering that chance I allow possibility to have priority over actuality and allow forgiveness and forgetfulness to work.

[31] The doctrine of justification by faith alone does not prohibit the Protestant Christian (in general) and the Lutheran Christian (in specific) from supporting a move from a retributive penal system to a restorative one. In fact, it’s just the opposite. It promotes such support, in three ways. First, the Christian (who is justified by faith and not by works) is prevented from judging her neighbor by any deed even the one who has offended. Second, she, through being justified by faith and not by works, finds herself primed to work in the world for the wellbeing of neighbor to the glory of God, and this includes those who have offended and broken civil law. If she is now no longer finding ways to justify herself through deeds and is justified by faith, then she is the one liberated from herself for the wellbeing of the neighbor; this, according to Martin Luther in his treatise, Freedom of a Christian, is exactly what brings God glory. Last, it is the Christian who finds herself returning (again and again) to the proclamation of Christ and formed through her regular prayer and worship. This one is the theodidacti (one taught by God) Luther speaks of at the end of Freedom. Prayer and worship place the believer in right relationship to her Creator and Sustainer, the God who saves her by God’s promises, who maintains for her space and time, securing a future for her so she may proceed into the world to love her neighbor as she has been loved by God in Christ. It is this one who is so formed that is not only able to but is exhorted by the Spirit of God to expose and call out broken systems harming the neighbor in body and soul even those who have offended brining the reign of God closer to those who are imprisoned.

[1] See Howard Zehr, Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice. 3^rd  Ed. (Scottsdale: Herald, 2005), 33-44. And Umbreit, Mark. “Victim-Offender Reconciliation Is Ultimately Practical: VORP provides benefits to the victim, to the offender, and to the community,” Christianity Today, April 9 1982, 36.

[2] Lili LeGardeur, “Restorative Justice: Mending the Fabric of Society,” National Catholic Reporter, May 30, 2003, 11-13.

[3] T. Richard Snyder, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Punishment (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001)

[4] Nikia Smith Robert, “Penitence, Plantation and the Penitentiary: A Liberation Theology for Lockdown America,” The Graduate Journal of Harvard Divinity School, vol. 12 (2017), 41-69.

[5] Ibid., 47.

[6] Ibid., 46.

[7] Michelle Alexander, “The Rebirth of Caste” in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010), 25-73.

[8] Nellis, Aschley, Mass Incarceration Trends, The Sentencing Project, updated by Sabrina Pearce in April 2026. Accessed August 14, 2026. https://www.sentencingproject.org/app/uploads/2026/04/Mass-Incarceration-Trends-Fact-Sheet.pdf.

[9] https://nikiasrobert.com/services/abolitionist-sanctuary/data/

[10] Nikia Robert, “Can Faith Defeat Anti-Blackness? Nikia Robert and Vincent Lloyd in Conversation,” Political Theology Network. Accessed August 21, 2026. https://politicaltheology.com/can-faith-defeat-anti-blackness-nikia-robert-and-vincent-lloyd-in-conversation/

[11] Robert, “Penitence, Plantation and the Penitentiary,” 42.

[12] Ibid., 56.

[13] Snyder, Protestant Ethic, 124.

[14] Eberhard Jüngel, “Living Out of Righteousness: God’s Action—Human Agency” in Theological Essays II, Ed. J.B. Webster, Trans. Arnold Neufeldt-Fast and J.B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995).

[15] Jüngel, “Living,” 243.

[16] Ibid., 244.

[17] Ibid., 245.

[18] Ibid., 246; italics Jüngel’s.

[19] Ibid., 247.

[20] Ibid., 247-8.

[21] Ibid., 248.

[22] Ibid., 248.

[23] Jüngel, “Living,” 249.

[24] Ibid., 249.

[25] Ibid., 250.

[26] Ibid,, 250.

[27] Ibid., 250.

[28] Ibid., 250.

[29] Ibid., 250; italics Jüngel’s.

[30] Ibid., 250.

[31] Ibid., 251.

[32] Ibid., 252.

[33] Ibid., 252.

[34] Ibid,, 252.

[35] Ibid., 252.

[36] Ibid., 253.

[37] Ibid., 253.

[38] Ibid., 254.

[39] Ibid., 254.

[40] Ibid,, 254.

[41] Ibid., 255; emphasis mine.

[42] Ibid., 256.

[43] Ibid,, 256.

[44] Ibid., 256.

[45] Jüngel, “Living,” 256.

[46] Ibid., 257.

[47] Eberhard Jüngel, “Becoming Truly Human” in Theological Essays II (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995) p. 237.

[48] Jüngel, “Becoming,” 237.

[49] Ibid., 237.