_ABRAHAM AND DAVID_
ROMANS iv. 1-12
The Jewish disputant is present still to the Apostle's thought. It
could not be otherwise in this argument. No question was more pressing
on the Jewish mind than that of Acceptance; thus far, truly, the
teaching and discipline of the Old Testament had not been in vain. And
St Paul had not only, in his Christian Apostleship, debated that
problem countless times with Rabbinic combatants; he had been himself
a Rabbi, and knew by experience alike the misgivings of the
Rabbinist's conscience, and the subterfuges of his reasoning.
So now there rises before him the great name of Abraham, as a familiar
watchword of the controversy of Acceptance. He has been contending for
an absolutely inclusive verdict of "_guilty_" against man, against
every man. He has been shutting with all his might the doors of
thought against human "_boasting_," against the least claim of man to
have merited his acceptance. Can he carry this principle into quite
impartial issues? Can he, a Jew in presence of Jews, apply it without
apology, without reserve, to "the Friend of God" himself? What will he
say to that majestic Example of man? His name itself sounds like a
claim to almost worship. As he moves across the scene of Genesis,
we--even we Gentiles--rise up as it were in reverent homage, honouring
this figure at once so real and so near to the ideal; marked by
innumerable lines of individuality, totally unlike the composed
picture of legend or poem, yet walking with God Himself in a personal
intercourse so habitual, so tranquil, so congenial. Is this a name to
becloud with the assertion that here, as everywhere, acceptance was
hopeless but for the clemency of God, "_gift-wise, without deeds of
law_"? Was not at least Abraham accepted because he was morally worthy
of acceptance? And if Abraham, then surely, in abstract possibility,
others also. There must be a group of men, small or large, there is at
least one man, who can "boast" of his peace with God.
On the other hand, if with Abraham it was not thus, then the inference
is easy to all other men. Who but he is called "the Friend" (2 Chron.
xx. 7, Isai. xli. 8)? Moses himself, the almost deified Lawgiver, is
but "the Servant," trusted, intimate, honoured in a sublime degree by
his eternal Master. But he is never called "the Friend." That peculiar
title seems to preclude altogether the question of a legal acceptance.
Who thinks of his friend as one whose relation to him needs to be good
in law at all? The friend stands as it were behind law, or above it,
in respect of his fellow. He holds a relation implying personal
sympathies, identity of interests, contact of thought and will, not an
anxious previous settlement of claims, and remission of liabilities.
If then the Friend of the Eternal Judge proves, nevertheless, to have
needed Justification, and to have received it by the channel not of
his personal worth but of the grace of God, there will be little
hesitation about other men's need, and the way by which alone other
men shall find it met.
In approaching this great example, for such it will prove to be, St
Paul is about to illustrate all the main points of his inspired
argument. By the way, by implication, he gives us the all-important
fact that even an Abraham, even "the Friend," did need justification
_somehow_. Such is the eternal Holy One that no man can walk by His
side and live, no, not in the path of inmost "friendship," without an
acceptance before His face as He is Judge. Then again, such is He,
that even an Abraham found this acceptance, as a matter of fact, not
by merit but by faith; not by presenting himself, but by renouncing
himself, and taking God for all; by pleading not, "I am worthy," but,
"Thou art faithful." It is to be shewn that Abraham's justification
was such that it gave him not the least ground for self-applause; it
was not in the least degree based on merit. It was "of grace, not of
debt." A promise of sovereign kindness, connected with the redemption
of himself, and of the world, was made to him. He was not morally
worthy of such a promise, if only because he was not morally perfect.
And he was, humanly speaking, physically incapable of it. But God
offered Himself freely to Abraham, in His promise; and Abraham opened
the empty arms of personal reliance to receive the unearned gift. Had
he stayed first to earn it he would have shut it out; he would have
closed his arms. Rightly renouncing himself, because seeing and
trusting his gracious God, the sight of whose holy glory annihilates
the idea of man's claims, he opened his arms, and the God of peace
filled the void. The man received his God's approval, because he
interposed nothing of his own to intercept it.
From one point of view, the all-important view-point here, it mattered
not what Abraham's conduct had been. As a fact, he was already devout
when the incident of Gen. xv. occurred. But he was also actually a
sinner; _that_ is made quite plain by Gen. xii., the very chapter of
the Call. And potentially, according to Scripture, he was a great
sinner; for he was an instance of the human heart. But this, while it
constituted Abraham's urgent need of acceptance, was not in the least
a barrier to his acceptance, when he turned from himself, in the great
crisis of absolute faith, and accepted God in His promise.
The principle of the acceptance of "the Friend" was identically that
which underlies the acceptance of the most flagrant transgressor. As
St Paul will soon remind us, David in the guilt of his murderous
adultery, and Abraham in the grave walk of his worshipping obedience,
stand upon the same level here. Actually or potentially, each is a
great sinner. Each turns from himself, unworthy, to God in His
promise. And the promise is his, not because his hand is full of
merit, but because it is empty of himself.
It is true that Abraham's justification, unlike David's, is not
explicitly connected in the narrative with a moral crisis of his soul.
He is not depicted, in Gen. xv., as a conscious penitent, flying from
justice to the Judge. But is there not a deep suggestion that
something not unlike this did then pass over him, and through him?
That short assertion, that "he trusted the LORD, and He counted it to
him for righteousness," is an anomaly in the story, if it has not a
spiritual depth hidden in it. Why, just then and there, should we be
told this about his acceptance with God? Is it not because the
vastness of the promise had made the man see in contrast the absolute
failure of a corresponding merit in himself? Job (xlii. 1-6) was
brought to self-despairing penitence not by the fires of the Law but
by the glories of Creation. Was not Abraham brought to the same
consciousness, whatever form it may have taken in his character and
period, by the greater glories of the Promise? Surely it was there and
then that he learnt that secret of self-rejection in favour of God
which is the other side of all true faith, and which came out long
years afterwards, in its mighty issues of "work," when he laid Isaac
on the altar.[46]
It is true, again, that Abraham's faith, his justifying reliance, is
not connected in the narrative with any articulate expectation of an
atoning Sacrifice. But here first we dare to say, even at the risk of
that formidable charge, an antique and obsolete theory of the
Patriarchal creed, that probably Abraham knew much more about the
Coming One than a modern critique will commonly allow. "He rejoiced to
see My day; and he saw it, and was glad" (John viii. 56). And further,
the faith which justifies, though what it touches in fact is the
blessed Propitiation, or rather God in the Propitiation, does not
always imply an articulate knowledge of the whole "reason of the
hope." It assuredly implies a true submission to _all that the
believer knows_ of the revelation of that reason. But he may (by
circumstances) know very little of it, and yet be a believer. The
saint who prayed (Psal. cxliii. 2) "Enter not into judgment with Thy
servant, O Lord, for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified,"
cast himself upon a God who, being absolutely holy, yet can somehow,
just as He is, justify the sinner. Perhaps he knew much of the reason
of Atonement, as it lies in God's mind, and as it is explained, as it
is demonstrated, in the Cross. But perhaps he did not. What he did was
to cast himself up to the full light he had, "without one plea," upon
his Judge, as a man awfully conscious of his need, and trusting only
in a sovereign mercy, which _must_ also be a righteous, a
law-honouring mercy, because it is the mercy of the Righteous Lord.
Let us not be mistaken, meanwhile, as if such words meant that a
definite creed of the Atoning Work is not possible, or is not
precious. This Epistle will help us to such a creed, and so will
Galatians, and Hebrews, and Isaiah, and Leviticus, and the whole
Scripture. "Prophets and kings desired to see the things we see, and
did not see them" (Luke x. 24). But that is no reason why we should
not adore the mercy that has unveiled to us the Cross and the blessed
Lamb.
But it is time to come to the Apostle's words as they stand.
[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =What then shall we say that Abraham has
found=--"_has found_," the perfect tense of abiding and always
significant fact--"_has found_," in his great discovery of divine
peace--=our forefather, according to the flesh?= "_According to the
flesh_"; that is to say, (having regard to the prevailing moral use of
the word "_flesh_" in this Epistle,) "in respect of self," "in the
region of his own works and merits."[47] [Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =For if
Abraham was justified as a result of works, he has a boast;= he has a
right to self-applause. Yes, such is the principle indicated here; if
man merits, man is entitled to self-applause. May we not say, in
passing, that the common instinctive sense of the moral discord of
self-applause, above all in spiritual things, is one among many
witnesses to the truth of our justification by faith only? But St Paul
goes on; =Ah, but not towards God;= not when even an Abraham looks HIM
in the face, and sees himself in that Light. As if to say, "If he
earned justification, he might have boasted rightly; but 'rightful
boasting,' when man sees God, is a thing unthinkable; therefore his
justification was given, not earned." [Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For what
says the Scripture,= the passage, the great text (Gen. xv. 6)?
="Now Abraham believed[48] God, and it was reckoned to him as
righteousness."= [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =Now to the man who works, his
(ὁ) reward,= his earned requital,[49] =is not reckoned grace-wise,=
as a gift of generosity, =but debt-wise; it is to the man who does not
work, but believes, confides, in Him who justifies the ungodly one,
that "his faith is reckoned as righteousness."= "_The ungodly one_";
as if to bring out by an extreme case the glory of the wonderful
paradox. "_The ungodly_," the ἀσεβής, is undoubtedly a word intense
and dark; it means not the sinner only, but the open, defiant sinner.
Every human heart is _capable_ of such sinfulness, for "_the_ heart is
deceitful above all things." In this respect, as we have seen, in the
potential respect, even an Abraham is a great sinner. But there are
indeed "sinners and sinners," in the experiences of life; and St Paul
is ready now with a conspicuous example of the justification of one
who was truly, at one miserable period, by his own fault, "an ungodly
one."
"Thou hast given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme"
(2 Sam. xii. 14). He had done so indeed. The faithful photography of
the Scriptures shews us David, the chosen, the faithful, the man of
spiritual experiences, acting out his lustful look in adultery, and
half covering his adultery with the most base of constructive murders,
and then, for long months, refusing to repent. Yet was David
justified: "I have sinned against the Lord"; "The Lord also hath put
away thy sin." He turned from his awfully ruined self to God, and _at
once_ he received remission. Then, and to the last, he was chastised.
But then and there he was unreservedly justified, and with a
justification which made him sing a loud beatitude.
[Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =Just as David too speaks his felicitation (τὸν
μακαρισμὸν) of the man= (and it was himself) =to whom God reckons
righteousness irrespective of works,= [Sidenote: Ver. 7.] ="Happy they
whose iniquities have been remitted, and whose sins have been
covered;= [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =happy the man to whom the Lord will not
reckon sin"= (Psal. xxxii. 1, 2). Wonderful words, in the context of
the experience out of which they spring! A human soul which has
greatly transgressed, and which knows it well, and knows too that to
the end it will suffer a sore discipline because of it, for example
and humiliation, nevertheless knows its pardon, and knows it as a
happiness indescribable. The iniquity has been "_lifted_"; the sin has
been "_covered_," has been struck out of the book of "_reckoning_,"
written by the Judge. The penitent will never forgive himself; in this
very Psalm he tears from his sin all the covering woven by his own
heart. But his God has given him remission, has reckoned him as one
who has not sinned, so far as access to Him and peace with Him are in
question. And so his song of shame and penitence begins with a
beatitude, and ends with a cry of joy.
We pause to note the exposition implied here of the phrase, "_to
reckon righteousness_." It is to treat the man as one whose account is
clear. "Happy the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin." In the
phrase itself, "_to reckon_ righteousness," (as in its Latin
equivalent, "_to impute_ righteousness,") the question, _what clears
the account_, is not answered. Suppose the impossible case of a record
kept absolutely clear by the man's own sinless goodness; then the
"reckoned," the "imputed, righteousness" would mean the Law's
contentment with him on his own merits. But the context of human sin
fixes the actual reference to an "imputation" which means that the
awfully defective record is treated, for a divinely valid reason, as
if it were, what it is not, good. The man is at peace with his Judge,
though he has sinned, because the Judge has joined him to Himself, and
taken up his liability, and answered for it to His own Law. The man is
dealt with as righteous, being a sinner, for his glorious Redeemer's
sake. It is pardon, but more than pardon. It is no mere indulgent
dismissal; it is a welcome as of the worthy to the embrace of the Holy
One.
Such is the Justification of God. We shall need to remember it through
the whole course of the Epistle. To make Justification a mere synonym
for Pardon is always inadequate. Justification is the contemplation
and treatment of the penitent sinner, found in Christ, as righteous,
as satisfactory to the Law, not merely as one whom the Law lets go. Is
this a fiction? Not at all. It is vitally linked to two great
spiritual facts. One is, that the sinner's Friend has Himself dealt,
in the sinner's interests, with the Law, honouring its holy claim to
the uttermost under the human conditions which He freely undertook.
The other is that he has mysteriously, but really, joined the sinner
to Himself, in faith, by the Spirit; joined him to Himself as limb, as
branch, as bride. Christ and His disciples are _really_ One in the
order of spiritual life. And so the community between Him and them is
real, the community of their debt on the one side, of His merit on the
other.
Now again comes up the question, never far distant in St Paul's
thought, and in his life, what these facts of Justification have to do
with Gentile sinners. Here is David blessing God for his unmerited
acceptance, an acceptance by the way wholly unconnected with the
ritual of the altar. Here above all is Abraham, "justified in
consequence of faith." But David was a child of the covenant of
circumcision. And Abraham was the father of that covenant. Do not
their justifications speak only to those who stand, with them, inside
that charmed circle? Was not Abraham justified by faith _plus
circumcision_? Did not the faith act only because he was already one
of the privileged? [Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =This felicitation therefore,=
this cry of "Happy are the freely justified," =is it upon the
circumcision, or upon the uncircumcision? For we say that to Abraham,=
with an emphasis[50] on "_Abraham_," =his faith was reckoned as
righteousness.= The question, he means, is legitimate, "_for_" Abraham
is not at first sight a case in point for the justification of the
outside world, the non-privileged races of man. [Sidenote: Ver. 10.]
But consider: =How then was it reckoned? To Abraham in circumcision or
in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision;=
fourteen years at least had to pass before the covenant rite came in.
[Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =And he received the sign of circumcision,= (with
a stress upon "_sign_," as if to say that the "_thing_," the reality
signed, was his already,) =as a seal on the righteousness of the faith
that was in his circumcision,= a seal on the acceptance which he
received, antecedent to all formal privilege, in that bare hand of
faith. And all this was so, and was recorded so, with a purpose of
far-reaching significance: =that he might be father,= exemplar,
representative, =of all who believe notwithstanding uncircumcision,[51]
that to them righteousness should be reckoned;= [Sidenote: Ver. 12.]
=and father of circumcision,= exemplar and representative within its
circle also, =for those who do not merely belong to circumcision, but
for those[52] who also step in the track of the uncircumcision-faith
of our father Abraham.=
So privilege had nothing to do with acceptance, except to countersign
the grant of a grace absolutely free. The Seal did nothing whatever to
make the Covenant. It only verified the fact, and guaranteed the _bona
fides_ of the Giver. As the Christian Sacraments are, so was the
Patriarchal Sacrament; it was "a sure testimony and effectual sign of
God's grace and good will."[53] But the grace and the good will come
not through the Sacrament as through a medium, but straight from God
to the man who took God at His word. "The means whereby he received,"
the mouth with which he fed upon the celestial food, "was faith."[54]
The rite came not between the man and his accepting Lord, but as it
were was present at the side to assure him with a physical concurrent
fact that all was true. "Nothing between" was the law of the great
transaction; nothing, not even a God-given ordinance; nothing but the
empty arms receiving the Lord Himself;--and empty arms indeed put
"nothing between."
DETACHED NOTE TO CHAPTER X
_The following is extracted from the Commentary on this Epistle in
"The Cambridge Bible"_ (p. 261).
"[What shall we say to] the verbal discrepancy between St Paul's
explicit teaching that 'a man is justified by faith _without works_,'
and St James' equally explicit teaching that '_by works_ a man is
justified, and _not by faith only_'? With only the New Testament
before us, it is hard not to assume that the one Apostle has in view
some distortion of the doctrine of _the other_. But the fact (see
Lightfoot's _Galatians_, detached note to ch. iii.) that Abraham's
faith was a staple Rabbinic text alters the case, by making it
perfectly possible that St James (writing to members of the Jewish
Dispersion) had not Apostolic but Rabbinic teaching in view. And the
line such teaching took is indicated by Jas. ii. 19, where an example
is given of the faith in question; and that example is concerned
wholly with the grand point of _strictly Jewish orthodoxy_--GOD IS
ONE.... The persons addressed [were thus those whose] idea of faith
was not _trustful acceptance_, a belief of the heart, but _orthodox
adherence_, a belief of the head. And St James [took] these persons
strictly on their own ground, and assumed, for his argument, their own
very faulty account of faith to be correct.
"He would thus be proving the point, equally dear to St Paul, that
mere theoretic orthodoxy, apart from effects on the will, is
valueless. He would not, in the remotest degree, be disputing the
Pauline doctrine that the guilty soul is put into a position of
acceptance with the FATHER only by vital connexion with the SON, and
that this connexion is effectuated, _absolutely and alone_, not by
personal merit, but by trustful acceptance of the Propitiation and its
all-sufficient vicarious merit. From such trustful acceptance 'works'
(in the profoundest sense) will inevitably follow; not as antecedents
but as consequents of justification. And thus ... 'it is faith alone
which justifies; but the faith which justifies can never be alone.'"
[46] On St James' use of that great incident, see detached note, p.
115.
[47] We see much reason, however, in the explanation which connects
κατὰ σάρκα with πατέρα (or προπάτορα) ἡμῶν: "_our father according to
the flesh_," our natural progenitor.
[48] In the Greek, ἐπίστευσε stands first in the clause, and is thus
emphatic.
[49] Not that μισθὸς always gives the thought of earning as a
right. It may mean merely "_result_, _issue_," however realized. See
_e.g._ 2 John 8. But the context here decides the reference.
[50] By the position of the name in the Greek sentence.
[51] Διὰ ἀκροβυστίας: as if _passing through_ its seeming obstacle.
[52] So the Greek precisely. But practically the words "_for those_"
may be omitted here.
[53] See Article xxv.
[54] See Article xxviii.