What Staint Paul Really Said, NT Wright

When I first read this in chpater 6, it went right over my head. Didn't even notice. It wasn't until much later, when I was reading his Easter series of meditations, that the point really hit home.

Paul says, in his 2nd letter to the church at Corinth,

We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making his appeal through us. We appeal on behalf of Christ, 'be reconciled to God'. God made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the dikaiosune theou.

For Paul, the apostles were the expression and means of God's covenant faithfulness. The church, therefore, was the ground and pillar of the truth (as Paul says elsewhere): the witness and manifestation of it, the proof of it. But what truth does the church prove? Well, the truth that God has been faithful, and has fulfilled his word to Abraham.

That is our privilege. To become in turn the dikaiosune theou: the righteousness of God. The means by which restoration continues, and therefore the witness that God has been true.