_JEWISH CLAIMS: NO HOPE IN HUMAN MERIT_
ROMANS iii. 1-20
As the Apostle dictates, there rises before his mind a figure often
seen by his eyes, the Rabbinic disputant. Keen, subtle, unscrupulous,
at once eagerly in earnest yet ready to use any argument for victory,
how often that adversary had crossed his path, in Syria, in Asia
Minor, in Macedonia, in Achaia! He is present now to his consciousness,
within the quiet house of Gaius; and his questions come thick and
fast, following on this urgent appeal to his, alas, almost
impenetrable conscience.
[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] "=What then is the advantage of the Jew? Or what
is the profit of circumcision?=" "=If some did not believe, what of
that? Will their faithlessness cancel God's good faith?=" "=But if our
righteousness sets off God's righteousness, would God be unjust,
bringing His wrath to bear?="
We group _the questions_ together thus, to make it the clearer that we
do enter here, at this opening of the third chapter, upon a brief
controversial dialogue; perhaps the almost verbatim record of many a
dialogue actually spoken. The Jew, pressed hard with moral proofs of
his responsibility, must often have turned thus upon his pursuer, or
rather have tried thus to escape from him in the subtleties of a false
appeal to the faithfulness of God.
And first he meets the Apostle's stern assertion that circumcision
without spiritual reality will not save. He asks, where then is the
advantage of Jewish descent? What is the profit, the good, of
circumcision? It is a mode of reply not unknown in discussions on
Christian ordinances; "What then is the good of belonging to a
historic Church at all? What do you give the divine Sacraments to do?"
The Apostle answers his questioner at once; [Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =Much,
in every way; first, because they were entrusted with the Oracles of
God.= "_First_," as if there were more to say in detail. Something, at
least, of what is here left unsaid is said later, ix. 4, 5, where he
recounts the long roll of Israel's spiritual and historical
splendours; "the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the
law-giving, and the worship, and the promises, and the Fathers, and
the Christ." Was it nothing to be bound up with things like these, in
a bond made at once of blood-relationship, holy memories, and
magnificent hopes? Was it nothing to be exhorted to righteousness,
fidelity, and love by finding the individual life thus surrounded? But
here he places "first" of even these wonderful treasures this, that
Israel was "_entrusted with the Oracles of God_," the Utterances of
God, His unique Message to man "through His prophets, in the Holy
Scriptures." Yes, here was something which gave to the Jew an
"advantage" without which the others would either have had no
existence, or no significance. He was the trustee of Revelation. In
his care was lodged the Book by which man was to live and die; through
which he was to know immeasurably more about God and about himself
than he could learn from all other informants put together. He, his
people, his Church, were the "witness and keeper of Holy Writ." And
therefore to be born of Israel, and ritually entered into the covenant
of Israel, was to be born into the light of revelation, and committed
to the care of the witnesses and keepers of the light.
To insist upon this immense privilege is altogether to St Paul's
purpose here. For it is a privilege which evidently carries an awful
responsibility with it. What would be the guilt of the soul, and of
the Community, to whom those Oracles were--not given as property, but
_entrusted_--and who did not do the things they said?
Again the message passes on to the Israel of the Christian Church.
"What advantage hath the Christian? What profit is there of Baptism?"
"Much, in every way; first, because to the Church is entrusted the
light of revelation." To be born in it, to be baptized in it, is to be
born into the sunshine of revelation, and laid on the heart and care
of the Community which witnesses to the genuineness of its Oracles and
sees to their preservation and their spread. Great is the talent.
Great is the accountability.
But the Rabbinist goes on. [Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For if some did not
believe,= what of that? =Will their faithlessness cancel God's good
faith?= These Oracles of God promise interminable glories to Israel,
to Israel as a community, a body. Shall not that promise hold good for
the whole mass, though some (bold euphemism for the faithless
multitudes!) have rejected the Promiser? Will not the unbelieving Jew,
after all, find his way to life eternal for his company's sake, for
his part and lot in the covenant community? "_Will God's faith_," His
good faith, His plighted word, be reduced to empty sounds by the bad
Israelite's sin? [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =Away with the thought,[27]= the
Apostle answers. Any thing is more possible than that God should lie.
=Nay (δὲ), let God prove true, and every man prove liar; as it
stands written= (Psal. li. 4), ="That Thou mightest be justified in
Thy words, and mightest overcome when Thou impleadest."[28]= He quotes
the Psalmist in that deep utterance of self-accusation, where he takes
part against himself, and finds himself guilty "without one plea,"
and, in the loyalty of the regenerate and now awakened soul, is
jealous to vindicate the justice of his _condemning_ God. The whole
Scripture contains no more impassioned, yet no more profound and
deliberate, utterance of the eternal truth that God is always in the
right or He would be no God at all; that it is better, and more
reasonable, to doubt anything than to doubt His righteousness,
whatever cloud surrounds it, and whatever lightning bursts the cloud.
But again the caviller, intent not on God's glory but on his own
position, takes up the word. [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =But if our
unrighteousness exhibits, sets off, God's righteousness,= if our sin
gives occasion to grace to abound, if our guilt lets the generosity
of God's Way of Acceptance stand out the more wonderful by
contrast--=what shall we say? Would God be unjust, bringing His
(τὴν) wrath to bear= on us, when our pardon would illustrate His
free grace? Would He be unjust? Would He _not_ be unjust?
We struggle, in our paraphrase, to bring out the bearing, as it seems
to us, of a passage of almost equal grammatical difficulty and
argumentative subtlety. The Apostle seems to be "in a strait" between
the wish to represent the caviller's thought, and the dread of one
really irreverent word. He throws the man's last question into a form
which, grammatically, expects a "_no_" when the drift of the thought
would lead us up to a shocking "_yes_."[29] And then at once he passes
to his answer. =I speak as man,= man-wise; as if this question of
balanced rights and wrongs were one between man and man, not between
man and eternal God. Such talk, even for argument's sake, is
impossible for the regenerate soul except under urgent protest.
[Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =Away with the thought= that He would _not_ be
righteous, in His punishment of any given sin. =Since how shall God
judge the world?= How, on such conditions, shall we repose on the
ultimate fact that He is the universal JUDGE? If He _could_ not,
righteously, punish a deliberate sin because pardon, under certain
conditions, illustrates His glory, then He could not punish any sin at
all. But He _is_ the Judge; He _does_ bring wrath to bear!
Now he takes up the caviller on his own ground, and goes all lengths
upon it, and then flies with abhorrence from it. [Sidenote: Ver. 7.]
=For if God's truth, in the matter of my lie, has abounded,= has come
more amply out, =to His glory, why am I too[30] called to judgment as
a sinner?= [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =And why not say, as the slander
against us goes, and as some assert that we do say, "Let us do the ill
that the good may come"?= So they assert of us. But =their doom is
just,=--the doom of those who would utter such a maxim, finding
shelter for a lie under the throne of God.
No doubt he speaks from a bitter and frequent experience when he takes
this particular case, and with a solemn irony claims exemption for
himself from the liar's sentence of death. It is plain that the charge
of untruth was, for some reason or another, often thrown at St Paul;
we see this in the marked urgency with which, from time to time, he
asserts his truthfulness; "The things which I say, behold, before God
I lie not" (Gal. i. 20); "I speak the truth in Christ and lie not"
(below, ix. 1). Perhaps the manifold sympathies of his heart gave
innocent occasion sometimes for the charge. The man who could be "all
things to all men" (1 Cor. ix. 22), taking with a genuine insight
their point of view, and saying things which shewed that he took it,
would be very likely to be set down by narrower minds as untruthful.
And the very boldness of his teaching might give further occasion,
equally innocent; as he asserted at different times, with equal
emphasis, opposite sides of truth. But these somewhat subtle excuses
for false witness against this great master of holy sincerity would
not be necessary where genuine malice was at work. No man is so
truthful that he cannot be charged with falsehood; and no charge is so
likely to injure even where it only feigns to strike. And of course
the mighty paradox of Justification lent itself easily to the
distortions, as well as to the contradictions, of sinners. "Let us do
evil that good may come" no doubt represented the report which
prejudice and bigotry would regularly carry away and spread after
every discourse, and every argument, about free Forgiveness. It is so
still: "If this is true, we may live as we like; if this is true, then
the worst sinner makes the best saint." Things like this have been
current sayings since Luther, since Whitefield, and till now. Later in
the Epistle we shall see the unwilling evidence which such distortions
bear to the nature of the maligned doctrine; but here the allusion is
too passing to bring this out.
"_Whose doom is just._" What a witness is this to the inalienable
truthfulness of the Gospel! This brief stern utterance absolutely
repudiates all apology for means by end; all seeking of even the good
of men by the way of saying the thing that is not. Deep and strong,
almost from the first, has been the temptation to the Christian man to
think otherwise, until we find whole systems of casuistry developed
whose aim seems to be to go as near the edge of untruthfulness as
possible, if not beyond it, in religion. But the New Testament sweeps
the entire idea of the pious fraud away, with this short thunder-peal,
"_Their doom is just_." It will hear of no holiness that leaves out
truthfulness; no word, no deed, no habit, that even with the purest
purpose belies the God of reality and veracity.
If we read aright Acts xxiv. 20, 21, with Acts xxiii. 6, we see St
Paul himself once, under urgent pressure of circumstances, betrayed
into an equivocation, and then, publicly and soon, expressing his
regret of conscience. "I am a Pharisee, and a Pharisee's son; about
the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question." True,
true in fact, but not the whole truth, not the unreserved account of
his attitude towards the Pharisee. Therefore, a week later, he
confesses, does he not? that in this one thing there _was_ "evil in
him, while he stood before the council." Happy the Christian, happy
indeed the Christian public man, immersed in management and
discussion, whose memory is as clear about truth-telling, and whose
conscience is as sensitive!
[Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =What then? are we superior?[31]= Say =not= so =at
all (μηδαμῶς).= Thus now he proceeds, taking the word finally from
his supposed antagonist. Who are the "_we_" and with whom are "we"
compared? The drift of the argument admits of two replies to this
question. "_We_" may be "_we Jews_"; as if Paul placed himself in
instinctive sympathy, by the side of the compatriot whose cavils he
has just combated, and gathered up here into a final assertion all he
has said before of the (at least) equal guilt of the Jew beside the
Greek. Or "_we_" may be "_we Christians_," taken for the moment as men
apart from Christ; it may be a repudiation of the thought that he has
been speaking from a pedestal, or from a tribunal. As if he said, "Do
not think that I, or my friends in Christ, would say to the world,
Jewish or Gentile, that we are holier than you. No; we speak not from
the bench, but from the bar. Apart from Him who is our peace and life,
we are 'in the same condemnation.' It is exactly because we are in it
that we turn and say to you, 'Do not ye fear God?'" On the whole, this
latter reference seems the truer to the thought and spirit of the
whole context.
=For we have already charged Jews and Greeks, all of them, with being
under sin; with being brought under sin,= as the Greek (ὑφ᾽
ἁμαρτίαν) bids us more exactly render, giving us the thought that
the race has fallen _from_ a good estate _into_ an evil; self-involved
in an awful superincumbent ruin. [Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =As it stands
written, that there is not even one man righteous; there is not a man
who understands, not a man who seeks his (τὸν) God. All have left
the road; they have turned worthless together. There is not a man who
does what is good, there is not, even so many as one. A grave set open
is their throat,= exhaling the stench of polluted words; =with their
tongues they have deceived; asps' venom is under their lips[32]; (men)
whose mouth is brimming with curse and bitterness. Swift are their
feet to shed blood; ruin and misery= for their victims =are in their
ways; and the way of peace they never knew. There is no such thing as
fear of God before their eyes.=
Here is a tesselation of Old Testament oracles. The fragments, hard
and dark, come from divers quarries; from the Psalms (v. 9, x. 7,
xiv. 1-3, xxxvi. 1, cxl. 3), from the Proverbs (i. 16), from Isaiah
(lix. 7). All in the first instance depict and denounce classes of
sins and sinners in Israelite society; and we may wonder at first
sight how their evidence convicts all men everywhere, and in all time,
of condemnable and fatal sin. But we need not only, in submission, own
that somehow it must be so, for "it stands written" here; we may see,
in part, how it is so. These special charges against certain sorts of
human lives stand in the same Book which levels the general charge
against _the human heart_ (Jerem. xvii. 9), that it is "deceitful
above all things, hopelessly diseased," and incapable of knowing all
its own corruption. The crudest surface phenomena of sin are thus
never isolated from the dire underlying epidemic of the race of man.
The actual evil of men shews the potential evil of man. The
tiger-strokes of open wickedness shew the tiger-nature, which is
always present, even where its possessor least suspects it.
Circumstances infinitely vary, and among them those internal
circumstances which we call special tastes and dispositions. But
everywhere amidst them all is the human heart, made upright in its
creation, self-wrecked into moral wrongness when it turned itself from
God. That it _is_ turned from Him, not to Him, appears when its
direction is tested by the collision between His claim and its will.
And in this aversion from the Holy One, who claims the whole heart,
there lies at least the potency of "all unrighteousness."
Long after this, as his glorious rest drew near, St Paul wrote again
of the human heart, to "his true son" Titus (iii. 3). He reminds him
of the wonder of that saving grace which he so fully unfolds in this
Epistle; how, "not according to our works," the "God who loveth man"
had saved Titus, and saved Paul. And what had he saved them from? From
a state in which they were "disobedient, deceived, the slaves of
divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, hating
one another." What, the loyal and laborious Titus, the chaste, the
upright, the unutterably earnest Paul? Is not the picture greatly,
lamentably exaggerated, a burst of religious rhetoric? Adolphe
Monod[33] tells us that he once thought it must be so; he felt himself
quite unable to submit to the awful witness. But years moved, and he
saw deeper into himself, seeing deeper into the holiness of God; and
the truthfulness of that passage grew upon him. Not that its
difficulties all vanished, but its truthfulness shone out; "and sure I
am," he said from his death-bed, "that when this veil of flesh shall
fall I shall recognize in that passage the truest portrait ever
painted of my own natural heart."
Robert Browning, in a poem of terrible moral interest and power,[34]
confesses that, amidst a thousand doubts and difficulties, his mind
was anchored to faith in Christianity by the fact of its doctrine of
Sin:
"I still, to suppose it true, for my part
See reasons and reasons; this, to begin;
'Tis the faith that launched point blank her dart
At the head of a lie; taught Original Sin,
The Corruption of Man's Heart."
[Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =Now we know that whatever things the Law says,
it speaks them to those in the Law,= those within its range, its
dominion; =that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may
prove guilty with regard to God.= "_The Law_"; that is to say, here,
the Old Testament Revelation. This not only contains the Mosaic and
Prophetic moral code, but has it for one grand pervading object, in
all its parts, to prepare man for Christ by exposing him to himself,
in his shame and need. It shews him in a thousand ways that "_he
cannot serve_ the Lord" (Josh. xxiv. 19), on purpose that in that same
Lord he may take refuge from both his guilt and his impotency. And
this it does for "_those in the Law_"; that is to say here, primarily,
for the Race, the Church, whom it surrounded with its light of holy
fire, and whom in this passage the Apostle has in his first thoughts.
Yet they, surely, are not alone upon his mind. We have seen already
how "the Law" is, after all, only the more full and direct enunciation
of "law"; so that the Gentile as well as the Jew has to do with the
light, and with the responsibility, of a knowledge of the will of God.
While the chain of stern quotations we have just handled lies heaviest
on Israel, it yet binds the world. It "shuts _every_ mouth." It drags
MAN in guilty before God.
"_That every mouth may be stopped._" Oh solemn silence, when at last
it comes! The harsh or muffled voices of self-defence, of
self-assertion, are hushed at length. The man, like one of old, when
he saw his _righteous_ self in the light of God, "_lays his hand on
his mouth_" (Job xl. 4). He leaves speech to God, and learns at last
to listen. What shall he hear? An eternal repudiation? An objurgation,
and then a final and exterminating anathema? No, something far other,
and better, and more wonderful. But there must first be silence on
man's part, if it is to be heard. "_Hear_--and your souls shall live."
So the great argument pauses, gathered up into an utterance which at
once concentrates what has gone before, and prepares us for a glorious
sequel. Shut thy mouth, O man, and listen now:
[Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =Because by means of works of law there shall be
justified no flesh in His presence; for by means of law comes--moral
knowledge (ἐπύγνωσις) of sin.=
[27] Μὴ γένοιτο: literally, "_Be it not_"; "_May it not be_."
Perhaps nothing so well represents the _energy_ of the Greek as the
"_God forbid_" of the Authorized Version.
[28] Ἐν τῷ κρίνεσθαι σε: we may render this (as in 1 Cor. vi. 1)
"_When Thou goest to law_." The Hebrew is, literally, "_When Thou
judgest_"; and the Septuagint Greek, used here by St Paul, probably
represents this, though by a slight paraphrase.
[29] Μὴ ἄδικος; where logically it would rather be οὐκ ἄδικος.--Just
above, we explain "God's righteousness" to mean, as commonly in the
Epistle, "God's way of acceptance," His reckoning His Righteousness to
the sinner.
[30] Κἀγώ: he speaks as claiming, on the caviller's principles,
equal indulgence for himself.
[31] Προεχόμεθα: "_Do we make excuse for ourselves?_" is a
rendering for which there are clearer precedents in the use of the
verb. But the context seems to us to advocate the above rendering,
which is quite possible grammatically.
[32] ὑπὸ τὰ χείλη: again the Greek (as in verse 9) gives the thought
of _motion to a position under_. The human "aspic" is depicted as
_bringing its venom up_ to its mouth, ready there for the stroke of
its fangs.
[33] _Adieux_, § 1.
[34] _Gold Hair, a Legend of Pornic._