unrighteousness commendeth the righteousness of God, what shall we say?
Is God unrighteous who visiteth with wrath? (I speak after the manner
of men.) God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world? But if
the truth of God through my lie abounded unto his glory, why am I also
still judged as a sinner? and why not (as we be slanderously reported,
and as some affirm that we say), Let us do evil, that good may come?
whose condemnation is just.
What is of interest here is to notice that St. Paul reproduces the
argument of his Jewish opponent with great sympathetic force. It had
clearly been weighed in his own mind. It was urged, no doubt, against
his own teaching, that it gave an excuse for sinning by suggesting that
the greatness of the sin only glorified the super-abundant greatness of
the pardoning love. It is only too probable that some of his followers
were persuaded by some such argument or acted as {119} if they were.
Thus St. Paul states it with vigour, but thereby only makes all the
more apparent the meagreness of his reply. Not that the argument is
such as makes reply difficult. In a slightly different form St. Paul
deals with it elaborately in chapters ix-xi. But here he clearly
treats it as contemptible when its true character has once been
disclosed. And why? Because it is professedly an explanation of the
ways of God with man, which is at the same time an excuse for
immorality. It is an intellectual exercise at the expense of
conscience. And St. Paul shows, by the very contempt with which he
treats it, that a man who will play false with his conscience, and then
proceed to find intellectual justifications, is not to be met in the
intellectual region at all. He has been condemned already.
St. Paul then, we find, will not argue with one who reasons at the
expense of his conscience; and this is an important principle. When
the intellect is acting purely, it must be free, and must be dealt with
seriously on its own ground. But the conscience must be followed first
of all. Its light is clearer than the light of intellect, and must be
left supreme. Whatever be the bewilderment of my intellect, I am
self-condemned, {120} God-condemned, if I play false to the moral
light. And arguments to the contrary, however clever-sounding or
philosophical, are in fact sophistry. There is, we must confess, a
good deal of such sophistry to-day in the use of arguments drawn from
the current philosophy of necessitarianism and the idea of heredity.
[1] Chapters ix-xi.
[2] The points are resumed in ix. 1.
[3] Ps. xxxii.
{121}
DIVISION I. Sec. 4. CHAPTER III. 9-20.
_Sin and condemnation universal._
At this point the direct argument with an opponent is dropped; and St.
Paul restates what he has so far been occupied in proving. It is not
that Jews are in a worse position than Gentiles. It is that all
together are involved in the same moral failure. To deepen the
impression that this is a true statement, St. Paul culls from various
psalms and from Isaiah a series of passages describing a general state
of depravity, moral blindness, apathy, failure, unprofitableness,
falsity, hatred, and outrage against God and man. These utterances of
the book of 'the law' (here used for the Old Testament scriptures
generally) are meant for those first to whom this law belonged. They
condemn Jews as well as Gentiles. They show all equally to be under
{122} divine judgement. They prove that if the written law could teach
men God's will, it could not, by the works that it enjoined, enable him
to satisfy God. It had its function only in teaching him to know his
sinfulness by contrast to his plainly declared duty. The conclusion is
then that all men, Jews and Gentiles alike, are involved in sin, are
under the wrath of a holy God, and are in utter need of a deliverance
which they are incapable of procuring for themselves.
What then? are we in worse case than they? No, in no wise: for we
before laid to the charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all
under sin; as it is written,
There is none righteous, no, not one;
There is none that understandeth,
There is none that seeketh after God;
They have all turned aside, they are together become unprofitable;
There is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one:
Their throat is an open sepulchre;
With their tongues they have used deceit:
The poison of asps is under their lips:
Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
Their feet are swift to shed blood;
Destruction and misery are in their ways;
And the way of peace have they not known:
There is no fear of God before their eyes.
Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it speaketh to them
that are under the law; that every {123} mouth may be stopped, and all
the world may be brought under the judgement of God: because by the
works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for through
the law _cometh_ the knowledge of sin.
1. The 'Scripture proof' which St. Paul here offers of universal human
corruption is, according to a recognized Hebrew practice, made up by
stringing together a number of separate texts,--Ps. xiv. 1-3, v. 9,
cxl. 3, x. 7, Isa. lix. 7, 8, Ps. xxxvi. 1. They represent the
impression made by human wickedness upon the righteous observer. The
estimate covers Israel as well as, indirectly, the world at large[1].
It is thus an authoritative rebuke to Jewish self-complacency. It is
as if an English preacher were to rebuke similar self-complacency in
Englishmen by a collection of passages from standard English
authorities, in which our nation was judged, in common with others, in
a manner most humiliating to its pride. It is this, though, inasmuch
as the psalmists and prophets were and are believed to have spoken
under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, it is also something more.
It is well known that, as the quotations in {124} the New Testament
have frequently affected the Greek text of the Old, so here this
conglomerate of quotations came to be attached altogether to Ps. xiv in
some Greek MSS., increasing it by four verses. Thence they passed into
the later Latin Vulgate. Thence into Coverdale's Bible and into the
Great Bible, and so into the Prayer Book version of the Psalms. But
our present Bible version remains true to the Hebrew original.
2. 'To be justified,' in ver. 20, means to be acquitted, or proved
righteous, or reckoned righteous in the trial before God. This, and
not to _make_ righteous, is the meaning of the word 'to justify,' both
in the Old and New Testament and elsewhere. There is scarcely an
exception. It is a forensic word, that is, a word derived from
processes of law, and it describes the favourable verdict after a
trial. It is used of vindicating God's character to His people[2], or
of vindicating one's own character; of God's judicial acceptance of men
or men's judicial acceptance of one another[3]. And so far as real
righteousness is necessary for judicial {125} acquittal, the word
implies real righteousness, but it does not primarily mean it.
3. Here we find briefly stated St. Paul's apparently wholly original
view of 'the law,' as given simply to enlighten the conscience by
keeping men informed as to their duty, without supplying them with any
moral assistance in performing it. Thus the ultimate aim of the law
was to make man know his own sinfulness; to convince him that his
attempted independence was a failure, and that he could not save
himself; and so to prepare him to cry out for the gift of grace, and to
welcome it when it was given. 'The law was given,' as St. Augustine is
fond of saying, 'that grace might be sought, and grace was given that
the law might be kept.' This antithesis is thoroughly after St. Paul's
mind.
This first division of our epistle gives us as a whole a great deal to
think about. There are, we may say, two spiritual evils conspicuous
to-day. People with consciences in any degree awakened are apt to be
nervous, anxious, despondent, complaining, sullen. The second division
of our epistle supplies the antidote to this error by consolidating the
awakened conscience in divine peace. But there is another, {126} and
perhaps more conspicuous, spiritual evil of our day which this first
division is calculated to meet--the habit of excusing oneself--the
absence of the sense of sin.
Hold thou the good: define it well:
For fear divine philosophy
Should push beyond her mark, and be
Procuress to the lords of hell.
Because philosophy and science have been bringing into prominence the
influence of heredity and physical environment on character, we use
this consideration, and often with little enough knowledge of real
science, to obliterate the sense of sin. We are apt to regard sin as
it appears in the world at large as a result of ignorance, or social
conditions--as in one way or another a form of misfortune. And so
viewing it in the world, we view it in ourselves. We make excuses for
ourselves. We have largely lost the sense that sin is wilfulness; that
it is an inexcusable offence against God; that it does, and necessarily
does, bring us under God's indignation; that necessarily, because God
is what He is, the consequences of sin in this life, and much more
beyond this life, are inconceivably terrible. It is this sense of sin
that St. Paul must help to restore in us. We must believe {127} that
God is holy, and we must learn to tremble under His necessary holiness,
before we can in any right sense realize that He is loving. We must
learn once again to be really penitent; to confess our sins in general
and in particular with utter humiliation; to expect the divine
judgement upon them; to use with reality the stern language about sin
of the Bible and the Prayer Book. And learning this for ourselves with
regard to our own personal sins, we must learn also to feel, like
Daniel, what our church and nation deserve in God's sight. We must
confess our own sins and the sins of church and nation[4]--aye, of the
human race. Only through such a restoration of evangelical severity
can there be a restoration of evangelical joy. The deepened sense of
personal sin is the needful step to spiritual progress. Certainly no
more in our case than in that of the Jews will orthodoxy, or ritual
accuracy, or frequent services, or superior education, or philanthropic
zeal, be accepted as a substitute for moral severity, for the spirit of
penitence and the readiness for penance. Let us judge ourselves,
brethren, that we be not judged of the Lord.
And it is all-important what our standard of {128} judgement is. The
Jews failed because they judged themselves by a mainly external and
therefore easy standard. So do most respectable Englishmen. We are
satisfied if we do nothing discreditable. But the religious sense of
sin, as it is experienced by the psalmists, or St. Paul, or Luther, or
John Keble, arises from the intense perception of a personal relation
to the All-Holy. The 'falling short,' or rather 'experienced need[5],'
of which St. Paul goes on to speak, is the experienced need of
something very lofty, to which it is possible for men to be quite
insensible--'the glory of God.' God's divine brightness, the eternal
light, streams forth into nature. 'The whole earth is full of His
glory.' Man also in his natural and moral being is meant to have
fellowship with God. He is meant for the divine glory also. It is in
proportion as he realizes what he was meant for, and becomes conscious
in himself of a capacity for God, that his present actual pollution and
sinfulness becomes a reality to his consciousness. It is in the light
of God, {129} and in aspiration after the glory of God, that the sense
of sin really awakens. 'Thou requirest truth in the inward parts,'
says the Psalmist. 'Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned.' 'If
thou, Lord, shouldst be extreme to mark what is done amiss, Lord, who
may abide it?'[6]
[1] Dr. King (The Psalms in Three Collections, &c.: Cambridge, 1898)
has remarked that Ps. xiv. 1-3 closely resembles the general
condemnation of 'all flesh upon the earth' in Gen. vi. 5, 12.
[2] Cf. above ver. 4, from Ps. xxxii.
[3] See Ps. li. 4; Job xxxii. 2; Prov. xvii. 15; Isa. v. 23; Matt. xi.
19; Luke vii. 29; x. 29; xvi. 15.
[4] Cf. Dan. ix. 4-20.
[5] The word for 'fall short' in ver. 23 is a 'middle' verb, and
apparently implies not only failure in point of fact, but conscious
failure. Thus in Luke xv. 14, the prodigal son begins to _feel_ his
destitution (middle). But in Matt. xix. 20, the rich young man asks,
'What, as a matter of fact, is wanting to me' (active)? See Gifford,
or S. and H. _in loc._
[6] Cf. app. note C, on recent reactions from the teaching about hell.
{130}
DIVISION II. CHAPTERS III. 21-IV. 25.
_Justification by faith only._
Sec. 1. (III. 21-31.)
_Christ our propitiation._
Now we have been brought to recognize the true state of the case as
between ourselves and God--the facts about ourselves as we are in God's
sight. We were meant for fellowship in the divine glory. 'The glory
of God,' says an old Father, 'is the living man: the life of man is the
vision of God.' But, meant for fellowship in the divine glory, we have
fallen short of it and have come to appreciate our failure. We have
sinned, and that universally and wilfully. We are such that God cannot
accept us as we are: the 'day of His appearing' could be for us but a
'day of wrath.' And in this dire situation we are helpless. We can
supply no remedy. 'Can the Ethiopian change his {131} skin, or the
leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do
evil[1].' But to acknowledge this--to abandon the claim so dear to the
human heart, that we can be independent and manage our own life
successfully: to repudiate all our false pride, and to come before God
all of us on the same level, confessing our failure and our sin--this
is to let man's necessity be God's opportunity, and to open the
flood-gates of the divine righteousness. God is righteous in all the
richest meaning of that word, and that righteousness of His He is now
extending to us and giving us admittance into it. And this He does
purely and simply as His gift. On His side it is pure and gratuitous
giving, on our side simple and unmeritorious receiving. We contribute
nothing. No distinctions are admitted between those inside the law and
those outside it. The gift is quite apart from the law, though law and
prophets bore witness to it. No questions are admitted as to what we
have done or what we have left undone. Purely and simply out of the
freedom of His love, who is our Creator and our Father, now, when a
bitter experience has taught us again our true attitude towards Him, He
offers us {132} admission into His righteousness, all on the same
level, if we will simply believe in Jesus Christ His Son, that is, take
Him at His word and believe His promises (vers. 21-24).
And what is this offer? It is, first of all, what befits the captives
of sin: it is redemption. God, who of old bought His people out of
captivity in Egypt, without any co-operation of theirs, by a pure act
of His power, has now again, without any co-operation of ours, but by a
manifestation this time of self-sacrificing love, in the person of
Jesus Christ, bought our freedom from sin. And this redemption He
offers to us first of all in the form which befits sinners conscious of
sin and guilt, as the mere gift of forgiveness, the mere power to break
with the past, the mere right to stand and face the future with a clean
record. For as the brazen serpent was lifted up before the eyes of
rebellious Israel, bitten of the fiery serpents, and those who looked
unto it lived, so upon the open stage of history God set forth Jesus
Christ shedding His life-blood--obedient, that is, to God and
righteousness unto death, even the death of the cross. And this
sacrificial shedding of the life-blood of the Son of God--to which we
{133} contributed nothing[2]--is accepted by the Father as
propitiatory, that is, as something which enables Him to show His true
character of righteousness, and to acquit or accept among the
righteous, irrespective of what he has done or been, every one who has
faith in Jesus (vers. 24-26).
And why (we in our age are disposed to ask) did not God simply declare
His forgiveness? why this roundabout method of a propitiatory
sacrifice? It was (St. Paul's language suggests) to prove or vindicate
His righteousness, which means both holiness and mercy. All the long
ages past of the times of ignorance, God had been 'overlooking' or
'passing over' sins in His forbearance, never 'suffering His whole
displeasure to arise,' but allowing all nations to walk in their own
ways and to find out their own mistakes and helplessness[3]. The
result of their being thus left to themselves was that men did indeed
become conscious of their misery {134} and need, but also came to
entertain all sorts of slack or unworthy ideas about God. A mere
declaration of forgiveness might have left men with an impression of an
easy-going or 'good-natured' God who would make light of sin. But the
awful burden laid upon Jesus on account of human sin, the awful
sacrifice of His life which He readily offered, restores the sterner
element to our thoughts about God, just at that crisis or opportunity
in the divine dealings, when by God's declaration of free forgiveness
we are made to feel His love. God does forgive us, but it costs Him
much. And no one who under these conditions comes and takes at the
hand of Jesus the gift of pardon can fail to receive with it the awful
impression of the divine holiness and of the severity of the divine
requirements. All the former 'passing over of the sins done aforetime'
was made morally possible because God had in view that 'now at the
present season,' or opportunity, He would 'show,' or prove, His whole
righteousness, and be before men's eyes the righteous being that He is
in fact (righteous rather than merely 'just'); and be able, without the
danger of a great misunderstanding, to give His righteousness full
scope by admitting into {135} it, by a pure act of pardon, every one
who comes simply taking Jesus at His word[4].
Here then there is no room for pride or glorying. It is utterly
excluded because there is here no consideration of human merit. It is
a pure and unmerited boon of the divine bounty bestowed, without
reference to any law known or observed, simply on those who, utterly
confessing their need, accept in faith the offer of love. Again there
is no reference to any chosen race. Jew and Gentile, circumcision and
uncircumcision, are all in the same case. All have the same need. God
is the same, with the same offer, for all alike. He will accept the
Jew because he believes, and He will accept the Gentile with no other
equipment but his faith. Yet this principle of faith involves no
repudiation of the principle of law; rather, it realizes the very end
which law was intended to serve (vers. 27-31).
But now apart from the law a righteousness of God hath been manifested,
being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of
God through faith in Jesus Christ unto all them that believe; for there
{136} is no distinction; for all have sinned, and fall short of the
glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the
redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth _to be_ a
propitiation, through faith, by his blood, to shew his righteousness,
because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the
forbearance of God; for the shewing, _I say_, of his righteousness at
this present season: that he might himself be just, and the justifier
of him that hath faith in Jesus. Where then is the glorying? It is
excluded. By what manner of law? of works? Nay: but by a law of
faith. We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from
the works of the law. Or is God _the God_ of Jews only? is he not _the
God_ of Gentiles also? Yea, of Gentiles also: if so be that God is
one, and he shall justify the circumcision by faith, and the
uncircumcision through faith. Do we then make the law of none effect
through faith? God forbid: nay, we establish the law.
i.
For our understanding of this famous passage a good deal depends on our
fixing, as exactly as possible, what the 'righteousness of God' here
spoken of means. Beyond all question it means in part God's own moral
character. This is quite certain, as in the Bible generally, so in
this very chapter[5]. But it is also certain that God's character is,
especially in this epistle, viewed as revealed to us in such a sense
that we can take hold of it and become identified with it. {137} Thus
(especially in i. 17) _human_ faith is spoken of as the starting-point
or region for revealing divine righteousness. It extends to and
embraces the believers[6]. It is a righteousness communicated to us
from God on the basis of faith[7]. The 'righteousness of God' is what
we men are to become[8]. This transition of meaning from what God is
in Himself to what we are by the gift of God is of course thoroughly
natural. The grand idea of the Bible is that of a moral fellowship
between man and God. The grand idea of the New Testament is, further,
that of a disclosure and communication to us of the divine life.
And what is this moral quality described by 'righteousness' which
belongs to God and is communicated to us? Righteousness is a term
belonging primarily to man. A righteous man, in the Old Testament, is
one who fulfils all that is expected of him, one who is
blameless--towards man, but especially towards God. But if God expects
such and such conduct in men it is because of what He Himself is. His
requirements express His character. God Himself therefore is believed
to be righteous, incorruptibly and awfully righteous. But a great
{138} strain is put upon this belief in the 'wild and irregular scene'
of this world, the Governor of which appears so often indifferent to
the sufferings of His most faithful servants. Thus the righteous cry
out to God to vindicate Himself, and God's righteousness is, in the Old
Testament, largely identified with God's vindication of His own
character by righteous acts or judgements accomplished in the past or
expected in the future; acts of such a character as that in them the
wicked and insolent are put to confusion, and the meek and holy
justified and exalted. Such righteous judgement is expected to
characterize the kingdom of the Christ. Of course, in the general
lowering of moral ideals among the Pharisaic Jews, the idea of
righteousness suffered with all else. The righteous came to mean those
who strictly keep the outward Jewish law; and God's righteousness was
identified with His expected vindication of those who keep the law,
i.e. the pious Jew, at the coming of the Messiah[9]. Our Lord, and His
disciples after Him, were engaged in nothing so much as in deepening
the idea of righteousness again. Especially it is something much more
than the mere observance of outward ordinances. {139} It was, in fact,
the fundamental error of the Jews to confuse the two. Righteousness in
man must be real likeness to God, and God's righteousness is His holy
character which He is now once more manifesting in the gospel of His
Son; a character which is still shown in acts of justice[10], in
punishing the wicked and rewarding the righteous, but which manifests
itself also more especially as love, and by gracious promises of
forgiveness and acceptance[11]. Thus, in Rom. i. 17, 18, the present
'revelation of divine righteousness' is a gracious manifestation which
is put in contrast to the 'revelation of divine wrath,' the place of
which it is intended to take. And yet, though the quality of mercy is
made emphatic, it is not isolated. God's righteousness is not mere
good nature. It would not be rightly revealed by any mere ignoring or
passing over of sin. God's mercy is inseparable from His holiness, and
His righteousness includes both[12]. It needed the severe requirement
of the atoning sacrifice, as well as {140} the free gift of forgiveness
and new life, to prove or exhibit it.