"Right relationship"

Perhaps the most succinct thing we can say against “right relationship” as an adequate definition of righteousness is that it is not a verb! The most important thing to remember about the righteousness of God is that it is the powerful action of God in making right. “Righteousness in the Old Testament is not some ontological state of cosmic harmony, but an event inaugurated by God’s intervention in the world for the sake of humanity and rendered according to the divine will” (Brevard Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993], 490).—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 134 n. 61 (emphasis original)