Daniel's Literal Translation and Commentary
Justice as well as Holiness
"30 And by Him ye are in Messiah Yeshua, who becomes wisdom to us from God, justice besides also holiness and redemption" (torahtimes.org, 1Cor. 1:30).
comment: The word "justice", δικαιοσυνη, may also be translated "righteousness" here, however "justice" is best since moral righteousness is already contained in the term "holiness" (αγιασμος, also "sanctification"). In the term "justice" Paul is communicating the satisfaction of divine justice for our sins by Yeshua on the cross, a point which the English "righteousness" hides from view, but is really present in the original text.
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The word "redemption" looks forward to the time of the kingdom (cf. Romans 8:23; Eph. 1:14; 4:30) and also refers to God's past and present redemptive acts for us (cf. Rom. 3:24).
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The mistranslation of the Greek aorist verb εγενηθη from γινομαι as a past tense (became) in most versions misses most of Paul's point, and lends itself to the false doctrine of acquittal before God by substitutionary legalism (a.k.a imputed righteousness of the Lutheran variety). The idea that the aorist grammaticalizes time at all is a matter of dispute (Porter, Fanning, McKay, Campbell, Wallace). Campbell's view is the best. What it does do is give us a summary view of the matter from a remote point of view. It says that something does happen without saying when (cf. Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek, Constantine R. Campbell, 2008). "Doth become" is a good gloss to capture the gnomic/iterative idea here.
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Messiah doth become justice "to us". Paul is using the plural "us" here in collective reference to God's people Israel. The time at which he doth become justice to us depends on when we learn about it, as an individual part of the "us". Messiah has always had "wisdom", "justice", "holiness", "redemption" to give from the Father. But it only doth become such to us at the point which we receive it.
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For the faithful who know Messiah, the justice part is past tense. The holiness part is iterative, (or progressive, but the progressive idea is not the viewpoint of the aorist aspect, so we must think Paul is saying that holiness does happen without looking at it close up in a progressive sense, and the redemption part, at least in this context, is focusing on what is to come. Really, though, justice and holiness can be called redemption also, and are so called elsewhere.
Daniel's Literal Translation and Commentary: (http://www.torahtimes.org/translation/1Cor0130.html)
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