Here is a problem that has nothing to do with anyone being dishonest. Sometimes a Greek word simply has no English equal, and the translator has to break it in half and hand you one piece.
δικαιοσύνη is the clearest case in the New Testament.
The split
Open Matthew 5, verse 6, in the Sermon on the Mount:
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.
(Matthew 5:6)
Theologians Bible
The Greek is δικαιοσύνην.
Now, in English, "righteousness" sounds personal and inward. Moral uprightness. Being a good person. Clean hands and a clean heart.
But δικαιοσύνη is also the ordinary Greek word for justice. The thing courts are supposed to deliver. The right ordering of things between people. When a Greek speaker heard it, he did not hear only private virtue. He heard rightness, including rightness between neighbours, including the widow getting what she is owed.
English forces a choice. Righteousness pulls inward. Justice pulls outward. The Greek does not have to choose, and Christ did not choose.
Read the Beatitude both ways
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Blessed is the man desperate to be made clean.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after justice. Blessed is the man who aches because the world is crooked and cannot rest until it is set right.
Both are true. Both are in the word. And a Christianity that hears only the first becomes private and self absorbed, worried about its own purity and blind to the old woman struggling with the trash while everyone stands around discussing theology at coffee hour. A Christianity that hears only the second becomes a political programme that forgets it needs a Saviour.
The Greek holds them together. That is not an accident.
Seek first
Same chapter's argument continues into Matthew 6, verse 33:
But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.
(Matthew 6:33)
Theologians Bible
His δικαιοσύνη. Notice whose it is. Not yours. His.
That single possessive does a lot of work. You are not told to go manufacture righteousness out of your own effort and present the invoice. You are told to seek His, which means it is something you receive and then live inside. And you are told to seek it first, before food and clothing, which is a hard saying if you have ever actually been short of both.
Where the traditions split
Now the big one. Open Romans 1, verse 17:
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "The just shall live by faith."
(Romans 1:17)
Theologians Bible
δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ. The righteousness of God. Whole traditions have been built on how you take that phrase.
Is it a righteousness God has, His own attribute? Is it a righteousness God gives, credited to you from outside? Or is it a righteousness God works in you, actually making you righteous rather than merely declaring it?
The Orthodox answer leans hard on the third, and it is of a piece with everything else we say. Salvation is not a legal transaction filed in heaven while you stay exactly as you were. It is theosis. It is real transformation by participation in the divine grace of God. The Church is a hospital and the mysteries are medicine, and medicine is not a certificate saying you are well. It actually heals you.
Notice that this is not primarily an argument about the Greek. Both readings are grammatically possible. It is an argument about what salvation is, and you settle it from the whole witness of Scripture and the Fathers, not from a lexicon entry. That is worth saying plainly, because people on all sides pretend the word alone decides it. It does not.
How to read a word like this
Here is the method, and it applies far beyond this one word.
When you find a Greek word with a wide range, do not pick the sense you like and stamp it on every occurrence. Do the opposite. Let the sentence tell you which end of the range is active, and stay alert to the possibility that both ends are active at once, because good writers do that on purpose.
Then read whole paragraphs, not verses. Then read the Fathers, who were reading this in their own language and did not need a translator standing between them and it.
- Read the whole Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 through 7, in one sitting. Watch how often δικαιοσύνη appears.
- Open it in the Greek Lexicon from each verse and read the range.
- Read Chrysostom's Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew and St. Augustine's Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, both in the Fathers Library in full.
Then go be just to somebody. The word was never meant to stay on the page.