Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
Romans 3:23

Clarke's Commentary

Verse 23. For all have sinned: — And consequently are equally helpless and guilty; and, as God is no respecter of persons, all human creatures being equally his offspring, and there being no reason why one should be preferred before another, therefore his endless mercy has embraced ALL.

And come short of the glory of God — και υστερουνται της δοξης του θεου. These words have been variously translated. Failed of attaining the glory of God: Have not been able to bring glory to God: Stand in need of the glory, that is, the mercy of God. The simple meaning seems to be this: that all have sinned, and none can enjoy God's glory but they that are holy; consequently both Jews and Gentiles have failed in their endeavours to attain it, as, by the works of any law, no human being can be justified.

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

3:21-5:21 THE WAY OF SALVATION (JUSTIFICATION)

Now that he has established that all humankind is sinful and under God’s condemnation, Paul moves on to explain the salvation that God has made available through Jesus Christ. The following outline introduces a number of ideas and words that Paul uses in this section.

God’s love

It is true that God loves sinners and wants to forgive them (2 Peter 3:9; 1 John 4:16; 1 John 4:16), but genuine love also acts justly. It does not ignore wrongdoing. Suppose, for example, that a judge has before him a criminal who has rightly been found guilty. The judge places a fine on him and assures him that if he does not pay he will be sent to jail. The man has no money but pleads not to be sent to jail, so the judge, feeling sorry for him, forgives him and lets him go free. What the judge has displayed is not love, but an irrational emotion that is easily influenced regardless of what is right and just.

Suppose, on the other hand, that the judge acts out of genuine love. He places the same fine on the man and insists that it be paid. Being aware of the man’s personal circumstances, he feels sorry for him, but he knows that genuine love does what is right, even if it is costly. He therefore goes to the man privately and, out of his own pocket, gives the man the money to pay the fine. The same judge who laid down the penalty has paid the fine on the man’s behalf.
This is what God has done for repentant sinners. He is a loving and forgiving God, but he does not ignore sin. He is just and holy, and he cannot treat sin as if it does not matter. He will do only what is pure and honourable, even though it may be costly to himself.

In order to save his guilty human creatures, God entered the stream of human life in the person of Jesus Christ (John 1:14; Philippians 2:6-7). Though he lived in the world of human existence and experienced life’s hardships and frustrations, Jesus lived a perfect life. He never broke God’s law, in thought, attitude, intention or action (1 Peter 2:22; 1 John 3:5; 1 John 3:5), and so was not under God’s judgment. Yet he willingly paid sin’s penalty on behalf of the guilty. That penalty was death (Romans 6:23), and Jesus died in the place of, or as the substitute for, guilty sinners (Romans 5:6; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 Peter 2:24).

We can see now what divine love has done. God the righteous judge laid down the punishment for sin, but through Jesus’ death on the cross, he himself has taken that punishment. His justice is satisfied in paying sin’s penalty, while his love flows out in forgiving the sinner (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Justification

Paul uses the words ‘justify’ and ‘justification’ in what might be called a legal sense. The picture is that of a courtroom, where justification is that act of the judge by which he declares a person to be righteous, or in the right. It is the opposite of condemn, which means to declare a person guilty, or in the wrong (cf. Deuteronomy 25:1; Job 32:2; Matthew 12:37). (The words ‘justify’ and ‘righteous’ are different parts of the same word in the original languages of the Bible.)

Concerning the relationship between sinners and God, justification means that God declares repentant sinners righteous before him. He makes them right with himself. Sinners are not made righteous in the sense that they are made into perfect people who cannot sin any more. Certainly, their lives will be changed so that righteousness, not sin, becomes their chief characteristic (as Paul will explain later in the letter; cf. Romans 6:1-2,Romans 6:15-19; Romans 8:10,Romans 8:12-13). But the truth that is emphasized in justification is that repentant sinners are declared righteous. They are given a righteousness that is not their own. God gives them a new status through Christ, a new standing that makes them fit for the presence of a holy God (Romans 4:6-8; 2 Corinthians 5:21; 2 Corinthians 5:21). God now sees them as being ‘in Christ’, and accepts them not because of anything they have done, but because of what Christ has done through his death and resurrection (Romans 3:27-28; Romans 4:24-25; Philippians 3:9).

Only through the work of Jesus Christ is God able to be righteous in justifying those who have faith in him. Jesus bore their sins in his body on the cross, so that God can give his righteousness to them (Romans 3:24-26; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 Peter 2:24). And once God has declared them righteous, no one can condemn them as sinners or even lay a charge against them (Romans 8:33-34). God does all this freely by his grace, his good favour which they do not deserve (Romans 3:24; Titus 2:11; Titus 3:4-7).

Justification is more than forgiveness

When people do wrong against us we may forgive them, but that does not declare them righteous. When God forgives he also justifies. He does more than remove sin and hostility; he brings sinners into a right relationship with himself (Romans 3:25-26; Romans 5:6-11; Romans 8:1-2). Forgiveness is negative; justification is positive. Forgiveness removes condemnation; justification gives righteousness. Forgiveness is something that believers are always in need of because they are always likely to sin (Matthew 6:12); justification is a declaration once and for all that God accepts them in his Son (Romans 5:1-2).

The forgiveness that believers need constantly concerns not their justification before God but their fellowship with God. Paul will explain later in his letter how believers have a constant battle with the evil effects of sin in the world. When they fail they may disappoint themselves and spoil their fellowship with God, but they can be assured that if they confess their sin God will forgive (1 John 1:9). Their justification, however, is never in question. Christ’s death deals with sin’s penalty for believers of all generations, past, present and future. Likewise it deals with the penalty for all the sins of individual believers, whether those sins be past, present or future (Romans 5:9,Romans 5:16).

Propitiation and reconciliation

Human sin has separated people from God and left them in a condition of spiritual helplessness where they are unable to bring themselves back to God (Isaiah 59:2; Romans 8:7-8; Ephesians 2:3). God always has an attitude of wrath against sin, and nothing sinners can do is able to propitiate God (i.e. pacify him, quiet his anger, remove his hostility or win his favour).

Pagans would sometimes try to calm the wrath of their gods by offering sacrifices; they would try to propitiate their gods. But guilty sinners cannot act towards God like that. Nothing they do can turn away God’s wrath or win his favour. The only way God is propitiated is by the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, who has been ‘set forth as a propitiation’ (Romans 3:25; Hebrews 2:17; 1 John 2:2; 1 John 2:2; 1 John 4:10. RSV says ‘expiation’; NIV says ‘sacrifice of atonement’; GNB says ‘the means by which people’s sins are forgiven’).

Propitiation means, then, that God’s holy wrath against sin has been satisfied by the sacrificial death of Christ, and therefore God can show mercy on believing sinners. Once the cause of hostility (sin) has been removed, sinners can be reconciled, or brought back, to God. This is entirely the work of God. He replaces hostility with peace, and changes enemies into friends (Romans 5:10-11; 2 Corinthians 5:18-19; 2 Corinthians 5:18-19; Colossians 1:20-22).

Faith

All that has been said so far is not true of the whole human race. It is true only of those who believe. Salvation is available to all, but it is effective only in those who have faith. In other words, faith is the means by which a person receives salvation (Romans 1:16; Romans 3:22,Romans 3:25). (In the Greek of the New Testament, ‘faith’ and ‘believe’ are different parts of the same word.)

When the Bible speaks about faith in relation to salvation, it is not speaking about some inner strength that enables people to triumph over difficulties. Faith is more concerned with helplessness than with strength. Faith is reliance. It is an attitude whereby people give up all their own efforts to win salvation, no matter how good they be, and trust completely in Christ, and him alone, for their salvation (Galatians 2:16; Ephesians 2:8-9). It is not merely an intellectual acknowledgment of certain facts (though clearly believers must know what they are trusting in), but a belief wherein people turn to Christ and cling to him with the whole heart. It is not accepting certain things as true, but trusting in a person, Jesus Christ, and all that he has done through his life, death and resurrection (Romans 4:22-25; cf. John 3:14-15; John 20:30-31).

A traveller waiting to board an aircraft may believe that it will fly, and may even understand how it flies, but that belief will not take him to his destination. He must exercise his faith in the aircraft by walking on to it. He commits himself to it, trusts in it, relies upon it. That is what the Bible means by faith. People not merely know about Jesus Christ, but trust in him. They rely upon what Christ has done for them, not on anything they do themselves. Faith in Christ means commitment to him. It takes people out of themselves and puts them into Christ (Romans 3:22; Galatians 2:20-21; Galatians 3:26; 2 Timothy 1:12; 2 Timothy 1:12; 1 John 5:12-13; 1 John 5:12-13).

Yet faith in itself does not save. It is simply the means by which sinners accept the salvation that Christ offers. Salvation is not a reward for faith; it is a gift that no one deserves, but it can be received by faith (Romans 3:25, Romans 5:15).

Faith is not something a person can boast about. All the merit lies in the object of faith, which is Jesus Christ (John 3:16). When the traveller walks on to the aircraft, he has not done anything to boast about. The power to get him to his destination lies in the aircraft, not in him, and he can do no more than put his trust in it. Faith is not trying, but ceasing from one’s own efforts. It is not doing, but relying on what Christ has done. It is not feeling, but accepting God’s promises as true and trusting in them (Romans 4:16; Romans 10:4-5; Titus 3:4-5).

Since faith in Christ means committal to him, it involves turning from one’s self-centredness. It involves a complete change of mind, attitude and behaviour, a turn-around that the Scriptures call repentance. In explaining the doctrinal basis of the gospel for the benefit of the Roman church, Paul emphasizes the importance of faith (Romans 1:16), but when he preached to non-Christians in general he consistently emphasized that true faith is inseparably linked with repentance (Acts 20:21; cf. 3:19; 11:21; Mark 1:15).

Redemption

Another word that the New Testament uses to picture salvation is redemption. In Bible times a slave could be set free from the bondage of slavery by the payment of a price, often called the ransom price. The slave was ‘bought back’, or redeemed, and the whole affair was known as the redemption of the slave (Leviticus 25:47-48). (The words ‘redeem’ and ‘ransom’ are related to the same root in the original languages.) God’s deliverance of Israel from the power of its enemies was also called redemption, the most notable example being his redemption of Israel from bondage in Egypt (Exodus 6:6).

Sinners are in bondage to sin and under sentence of death (John 8:34; Romans 6:17,Romans 6:23), but Jesus gave his life as a ransom to pay the price of sin and release sinners from its power (Matthew 20:28; Romans 3:24; Ephesians 1:7). Again redemption is entirely the work of God. He buys sinners back, and the redemption price is the blood of Christ - his life laid down in sacrifice (Hebrews 9:12; 1 Peter 1:18-19; 1 Peter 1:18-19). Christ has freed believers from the power of sin, and they must show this to be true by the way they live (Romans 6:16-18; 1 Corinthians 7:23; 1 Corinthians 7:23; Hebrews 2:14-15).

Saved by grace, through faith (3:21-31)

The law cannot make people right with God (see v. 20), but God himself can. Because of Christ’s death, God can now declare sinners righteous and still himself be righteous in doing so. He gives sinners a righteousness that makes them acceptable to him. It is not their own righteousness, but comes from God through Christ and is received by faith (21-22). Since all have sinned, all can be justified, but only because of the grace of God and because of what Christ has done (23-24).

When Christ died on the cross, he took the punishment of sin that God’s holy wrath demanded. Now that God’s righteous demands have been satisfied, his grace can flow out in giving a righteous status in Christ to any who will receive it by faith. Even the sins of those who lived before the time of Christ were forgiven on the basis of Christ’s death. God accepted those who had faith in him. Their sacrifices could never remove sin (cf. Hebrews 10:4), but they could be an expression of faith by which they acknowledged their sin as being worthy of God’s punishment and called on God’s mercy to forgive them. God therefore accepted believing sinners, ‘passing over’ their sins, as it were, until Christ came and bore the full punishment (cf. Hebrews 9:15). Christ’s death is the basis on which God justifies all who have faith in him, whether they lived before or after the time of Christ (25-26).

This plan of salvation leaves no room for human boasting, because it depends not on anything that people might do, but entirely on what God does. All that sinners can do is trust in what someone else has done, and there is no cause for boasting in that. This is true for both Jews and Gentiles (27-30). The righteous requirement of the law is therefore upheld. The law demanded death for those who broke it; Christ died to meet its full requirements on behalf of guilty sinners (31).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

For all have sinned any fall short of the glory of God.

This is Paul's statement of the fact of God's justice in making salvation to all who complied with the terms upon which it was extended. All people are in fact sinners; and the same basis for saving one, or making salvation available, is the basis for extending it to all.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

For all have sinned - This was the point which he had fully established in the discussion in these chapters.

Have come short - Greek, “Are deficient in regard to;” are lacking, etc. Here it means, that they had failed to obtain, or were destitute of.

The glory of God - The praise or approbation of God. They had sought to be justified, or approved, by God; but all had failed. Their works of the Law had not secured his approbation; and they were therefore under condemnation. The word “glory” (δόξα doxa) is often used in the sense of praise, or approbation, John 5:41, John 5:44; John 7:18; John 8:50, John 8:54; John 12:43.

Living By Faith: Commentary on Romans & 1st Corinthians

3:23: for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God;

The expression “no distinction” in verse 22 laid the foundation for the point in this verse-all have sinned and come short of God’s glory (compare 2 Chronicles 6:36). Paul realized that all need to come to Christ because of sin, and all can come because justification is available for all. All are stained by sin and all can be cleansed from sin.

Though many frequently say, “I am just as good as the other people at church,” a better statement would be, “I am just as bad as all the other people at church” because all have sinned. The proof of this allegation “is clear and convincing. There is no appeal and no reversal of the verdict” (CBL, Romans, p. 61).

In looking at this verse, a distinction must be noticed. When Paul said that all have sinned, he used a past tense verb. This is even rendered in the past tense (sinned). In the next expression, Paul spoke of those who “fall short” (hustereo). This expression is from a present tense verb that has the sense of failure. The difference in tenses tells us that accountable people do not live perfect lives. Before conversion and even after conversion, the best people still transgress God’s law. No Christian has or will fully overcome sin since Paul said Christians continually fall short.

There are several different words for “sin” in the New Testament, and a brief study of key words for them will be given here. The first word is the term used in this verse (hamartano), a verb usually translated “sin/sinned” in the New Testament. In other places this word is used as a noun (hamartia and hamarema), and this usage is also typically rendered sin in the ASV and KJV. Whether employed as a noun or a verb, Greeks employed this term to describe warriors who cast spears but missed the targets. It was used of people who forgot to turn on a road or “missed their turn.” Poets who chose a subject that could not be treated poetically were described with this word as were artists who tried to go beyond their artistic limits. In the most basic terms, this word meant to miss the mark, and it was the ideal word for New Testament writers to use when speaking about breaking God’s laws.

Because this word was so broad, it has been called the “umbrella” word for sin in the New Testament. Wuest (Studies in the Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament, pp. 95-96) says it means “failing to attain an end, gives it the idea of missing the divinely appointed goal, a deviation from what is pleasing to God, doing what is opposed to God’s will, perversion of what is upright, a misdeed. Thus the word hamartia means a missing of the conformable to and fixed by God. It is interesting to note that in Romans the word dikaiosune which means ‘conformity to the standard’ appears as the opposite of hamartia, a missing of the standard set by God (6:16-18).” Because each person misses at least one of God’s goals (it does not need to be “something big”), all are guilty of sin (Romans 3:23). The price for this sin is “death” (Romans 6:23, a verse which uses the word hamartia). Additional passages related to this point include Romans 5:21 (sin reigns/rules over mankind). Sin is so overwhelming people serve it (Romans 6:17; Romans 6:20); and it is deceitful (Hebrews 3:13). Someone once said if we want to see what a New Testament word is trying to describe, see what kind of company it keeps. Sin rubs shoulders with words like death, master, and our serving it. This term views sin from the standpoint of “controlling power” (Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, 3:33), whereas other terms such as paraptoma (see the commentary below for this word) view wrongdoing from the viewpoint of “a specific sinful act” (ibid) in the writings of Paul.

A second word for wrongdoing (parakoe) is used only three times in the New Testament (Romans 5:19; 2 Corinthians 10:6; Hebrews 2:2), and it denotes a “false step” or a “misstep.” It might be compared to someone stumbling over an object as they begin to walk or are already on their way. In life, stumbling may be accidental. This term, however, “expresses above all a refusal to listen, turning a deaf ear” (Spicq, 3:29). Wuest (Studies in the Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament, p. 96) says it “means ‘a failing to hear, a hearing amiss,’ the idea of active disobedience which follows on this inattentive or careless hearing, being superinduced upon the word.” “The lack of an earnest and honest attempt to know God’s will in any instance, is sin. This carelessness or inattentiveness with respect to the will of God, has its roots in the desire to have one’s own way, and to cover up that desire and the consequent wrongdoing by the excuse that one did not know His will in the particular instance” (ibid).

Definitions such as these can be easily related to modern life. As this word was being studied, I phoned the manager of a large property management company. She said her company managed 550 different pieces of rental properties, and five percent of the tenants were “problem people.” Rules were given to the tenants (just as God has given in His word), but five percent of the renters refused to hear the rules. They were told “no pets,” but they didn’t follow this rule. Rent was scheduled to be collected on a certain day of each month, but some of the tenants do not hear that part of the lease. Such behavior is exactly consistent with what this term describes.

Even in the time of Noah there were people who had this mindset. In one of the places where this term is found (2 Corinthians 10:6), God promises to punish “all” disobedience (parakoe). In this reference the word applies to people who are religious. Whether saved or unsaved, a failure to listen to and follow all of God’s word will result in punishment. It is not, therefore, enough to be somewhat obedient, or mostly obedient, to God’s will. Heaven is not interested in people who will obey 70% of God’s instructions, 90% of what the Bible says, or even 99% of God’s directives. God wants and requires 100% compliance with His word. For an additional comment on this term, especially how it compliments another term for sin, see the commentary below on parabasis.

Those who read the New Testament will encounter another common word for sin-“ungodliness.” This term occurs as a noun (asebeia), as a verb (asebeo) in only two places (2 Peter 2:6; Judges 1:15), and (a few times) as an adjective (asebes). It can be compared to many English words that are changed into something negative when “un” is added to their prefix. For instance, certified can be quickly changed to uncertified, caring into uncaring, and crushed into uncrushed by adding the prefix un. Greeks did a similar thing but their addition to words was the letter “a.” In this instance they took a word (sebeia) that meant religious awe, fear, honor, worship, etc., added a negative prefix, and changed the word into an opposite term denoting impiety, godlessness, wickedness (asebeia). Outside the New Testament this term was used of people who failed to show proper respect to Roman emperors. When applied to the spiritual realm, those who are guilty of asebeia do the opposite of what God wants. A study of this term shows that this type of lifestyle will result in punishment (Romans 1:18). Such behavior is in the same category as worldly lusts (Titus 2:12). All who live in this manner will be punished (Judges 1:15). Those who choose this way of life should learn from past examples of ungodliness (2 Peter 2:6). We can be thankful that God can save us from all ungodliness (Romans 4:5). Our salvation is possible because Jesus died for the ungodly (Romans 5:6). Jesus died for all, but if the ungodly do not respond, they will be punished (see how this word is also used in 2 Peter 2:5 and 2 Peter 3:7).

Just like the term in the preceding paragraph, the Greeks negated another word, anomia, that was also used by New Testament writers. Greeks took their word for law (nomos), added the negative prefix (“a”), and the result was a word that meant “lawless.” New Testament writers typically used this word as a noun (anomia) and an adjective (anomos). In the New Testament it has great significance. According to the CBL (GED, 1:287), this term “is probably the strongest word for sin that exists.” One of the places where this word is found is Matthew 7:23. Many people who were very religious in life will appear before the Lord on the Day of Judgment and hear they were lawless (people who acted as if there were no laws). These people may have been good citizens and lived exemplary lives, but their spiritual existence, though filled with works done in the name of the Lord, will be declared lawless. The reason? These people acted in a way other than what God described in His word (Matthew 7:21 b). If we make up our own religious rules-whether a few of them or many-we are not following the laws of God and are thus a law unto ourselves (lawless). Translators of the NKJV and NASB actually use the word lawlessness in Matthew 7:23. By using this term in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus forever demonstrated that man cannot decide how he will worship God. We cannot “find a church that we like,” locate “a worship service that makes us feel good,” or something similar. We must do things exactly as God has said or we will, at the end of time, be declared lawless.

Other places anomia can be found include Matthew 13:41; Matthew 23:28; Romans 4:7; Hebrews 1:9. In its adjective form (anomos) this term is applied to the “transgressors” who died beside Jesus (Mark 15:28; Luke 22:37). Peter applied it to those who put Jesus to death (Acts 2:23). In the KJV this term is usually rendered iniquity/iniquities. Wuest (Studies in the Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament, 3:97) notes how this term can be found in Classical Writings. There it is “joined with anarchia, which is defined as ‘the state of a people without government, without lawful government, lawlessness, anarchy.” When people are without a government, there is lawlessness. When religious people fail to abide by the Scriptures and only the Scriptures, they too will be lawless, and the punishment for this choice is eternal death. A further thought on this point can be found in 2 Corinthians 6:14 (here the word is used as a noun). When writing to the Corinthians Paul said “righteousness” can have no fellowship with “unrighteousness” (same word). Today it is not uncommon for congregations of God’s people to join themselves with other religious groups-groups that do not strictly follow the New Testament. This is done to supposedly promote “unity and love,” but God says His church has no right fellowshipping these kinds of groups. There can be no unity between the lawful and the unlawful. God is love, but not even He allows Himself to be joined with the lawless. We must not become united with those who are not in complete harmony with the Scriptures.

Yet another term used by New Testament writers, parabasis, meant “to break the law.” This definition is especially visible in Romans 4:15 (if there is no law, there can be no transgression). We cannot break what does not exist. Laws do exist-in both the spiritual and secular realms-and these can be broken (parabasis). Jesus encountered Pharisees and Scribes who accused him of breaking (same word but used as a verb-parabaino) religious traditions (Matthew 15:2). Jesus responded to their criticism by asking why they broke (same word) God’s commands (Matthew 15:3).

Today there are many who are worried about the breaking of religious traditions and customs but far less concerned about breaking God’s laws. When Paul used this term in Romans 2:23, he showed that breaking God’s law actually brings dishonor to God. Many believe that breaking God’s laws, if done in ignorance, can be excused (overlooked). God said this is untrue (see 1 Timothy 2:14 where this term is rendered transgression). Eve was beguiled (tricked), but it was not an excuse. She broke one of God’s laws and paid the price for her disobedience. This is also the term found in 2 John 1:9. This sin can be thought of as a “sin of commission” (Spicq, 3:29) and another-parakoe, discussed above, is a “sin of omission” (ibid).

A word very similar to parabasis is paraptoma; this word is used in two different ways in the New Testament. Thayer (p. 485) says this describes “a lapse or deviation from truth and uprightness.” It is thus very close to the meaning of parabasis, and “may therefore be regarded as synonymous with parabasis, which designates sin as a transgression of a known rule of life, and as involving guilt…Still the word is not quite as strong as parabasis” (Wuest, Studies in the Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament, p. 98).

While this term has a definite sense of sin, it can also have a lesser sense of wrong, something like a slip, blunder, stepping incorrectly. Trench (p. 246) said Biblical writers sometimes (emphasis mine, BP) used this term “to designate sins not of the deepest dye and the worst enormity.” This sense seems to come through in places like the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:14 -forgive men their trespasses). Jesus also used this same term in Mark 11:26. In these two passages did Jesus have in mind something as serious as federal crimes or the “smaller” things of life (gossip, lies, hateful remarks, a lack of courtesy, etc.)? All sin is sin, but not all sin is equal. To illustrate this we can confidently affirm that all money is money, but not all money is equal. For an Old Testament illustration of how not all sin is “equal,” see Deuteronomy 21:22 (all sin deserved punishment, but not all punishments were equal). Other verses which use this term but the intensity of the wrong seems somewhat “less” include James 5:16 and Galatians 6:1. Perhaps this word and this secondary sense was used by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount to mean we must pay attention to the “smaller sins”-the kinds of sins which are very common and are thus ones that trouble us the most often.

An infrequent term for sin (found only twice in the New Testament) is hettema, a noun that implies a defect. Of the two places this term is found (Romans 11:12 -loss/dimishing and 1 Corinthians 6:7 -defect), the most important passage is 1 Corinthians 6:7. Here translators tried to capture the thought with various renderings: utterly a fault (KJV); utter failure (NKJV); completely defeated (NIV); defeat (NASB, RSV); real defeat (Living Bible and New Living Translation).

In life, many believe that sin, in one form another, will be beneficial or helpful (compare Mark 12:1-9). At some point all eventually learn and admit that sin leads to defeat (hettema). Sin results in such complete defeat the Bible tells us to abstain from it (1 Thessalonians 5:22), flee from it (1 Corinthians 6:18), give no occasion for stumbling (1 Corinthians 10:32), put the old life away (Romans 6:6; Colossians 3:5), crucify the flesh (Galatians 5:24), let not sin be named among us (Ephesians 5:3), purge out the old leaven (1 Corinthians 5:7), do not fulfill the lusts of the flesh (Galatians 5:16), depart from unrighteousness (2 Timothy 2:19), deny ungodliness (Titus 2:12), lay sin aside (Hebrews 12:1) and put away wickedness (James 1:21).

A final term to be considered describes sin from the perspective of ignorance. This term is used as a verb (agnoeo) and a noun (agnoema, agnoia, and agnosia). As a verb it is applied to Jesus’ disciples (Mark 9:32 -this is the first time this term occurs in the New Testament). Paul applied it to people involved in incorrect worship (Acts 17:23) as well as the Jew’s ignorance of the gospel (Romans 10:3) and the Corinthian’s ignorance of spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12:1). It is even applied to our understanding Satan (2 Corinthians 2:11) and Jesus’ second coming (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Paul applied it to his life before conversion (1 Timothy 1:13), and this reference shows that ignorance of God’s will is not an excuse. As a noun the term occurs only a few times in the New Testament. The word agnoema (one of the noun forms of this word) is found only in Hebrews 9:7 where the writer applied it to the “errors” of those who lived under the Old Testament. A second noun form of this word is found only in Acts 3:17; Acts 17:30; Ephesians 4:18; and 1 Peter 1:14. The third (agnosia) occurs only in 1 Corinthians 15:34 and 1 Peter 2:15.

Calvin's Commentary on the Bible

23.There is indeed no difference, etc. He urges on all, without exception, the necessity of seeking righteousness in Christ; as though he had said, “There is no other way of attaining righteousness; for some cannot be justified in this and others in that way; but all must alike be justified by faith, because all are sinners, and therefore have nothing for which they can glory before God.” But he takes as granted that every one, conscious of his sin, when he comes before the tribunal of God, is confounded and lost under a sense of his own shame; so that no sinner can bear the presence of God, as we see an example in the case of Adam. He again brings forward a reason taken from the opposite side; and hence we must notice what follows. Since we are all sinners, Paul concludes, that we are deficient in, or destitute of, the praise due to righteousness. There is then, according to what he teaches, no righteousness but what is perfect and absolute. Were there indeed such a thing as half righteousness, it would yet be necessary to deprive the sinner entirely of all glory: and hereby the figment of partial righteousness, as they call it, is sufficiently confuted; for if it were true that we are justified in part by works, and in part by grace, this argument of Paul would be of no force — that all are deprived of the glory of God because they are sinners. It is then certain, there is no righteousness where there is sin, until Christ removes the curse; and this very thing is what is said in Galatians 3:10, that all who are under the law are exposed to the curse, and that we are delivered from it through the kindness of Christ. The glory of God I take to mean the approbation of God, as in John 12:43, where it is said, that “they loved the glory of men more than the glory of God.” And thus he summons us from the applause of a human court to the tribunal of heaven. ⁽¹¹⁸⁾

(118) [Beza ] gives another view, that the verbὑστεροῦνται, refers to those who run a race, and reach not the goal, and lose the prize. The “glory of God” is the happiness which he bestows; (see Romans 5:2;) of this all mankind come short, however much some seemed to labor for it; and it can only be attained by faith. [Pareus ] , [Locke ] , and [Whitby ] give the same view. Others consider it to be “the glory” due to God, — that all come short of rendering him the service and honor which he justly demands and requires. So [Doddridge ] , [Scott ] , and [Chalmers ] But [Melancthon ] , [Grotius ] and [Macknight ] seemed to have agreed with [Calvin ] in regarding “glory” here as the praise or approbation that comes from God. The second view seems the most appropriate, according to what is said in Romans 1:21, “they glorified him not as God.” — Ed.

Smith's Bible Commentary

Shall we turn in our Bibles now to Romans 3 .

Paul has just told the Jews that having the law does not justify a person. It is the keeping of the law that justifies one. That uncircumcision really has no value in just the ritual itself. Circumcision has no value; it is the circumcision of the heart, spiritual circumcision that God really counts.

Therefore, if a person is really walking after the Spirit, though he may not have had the physical rite of circumcision, still God counts what is in his heart. If circumcision doesn't really do anything for me, if having the law doesn't do anything for me as far as giving me a righteous standing before God, then the question would naturally arise, and Paul brings it up in chapter 3, verse Romans 3:1 .

What advantage then doth the Jew have? ( Romans 3:1 )

Being a Jew, what advantage is it? If circumcision doesn't make me righteous, if the law doesn't make me righteous, then what advantage is there in being a Jew? Paul said,

Much and in every way ( Romans 3:2 ):

Though Paul said, "Much and in every way," he only gives us one advantage here in the text. This one advantage that Paul names, firstly, or the most important advantage. The word first is there used as often in the New Testament to express the first or most important way. That a Jew has an advantage is unto them were committed the oracles of God. For the Word of God was committed unto them. Now that is a tremendous advantage, the advantage of having the Word of God, and never underestimate the value and the advantage of having the Word of God.

God committed unto them His word, and in so doing, they kept the Word of God with great care and with great accuracy, thus, we owe a tremendous debt to them for the way they have preserved so carefully the Word of God and brought it to us as God gave it to them, as pure from error as is any human document or as any human document could be.

When a person was hired as a scribe to copy the scriptures, this, of course, was considered a great honor. It was a sacred trust. They held the Word of God very sacred, and rather than copying the text by words or by sentences, they would copy letter by letter and one would copy, and the other one would check his copy.

In the copying of the scriptures they would not allow any erasers, any strike overs, or any changes. If a mistake was made they had to begin all over again. Now that is not talking about a page, that is talking about a scroll. The entire book of Isaiah was written on a scroll. And if on the end, on the last chapter of Isaiah, if on the last words they made a mistake, they would rip up the scroll and months of labor tossed out for they would not allow for any mistakes at all.

That is why when the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered it was such an exciting thing to Bible scholars, because among the scrolls that were found in the Qumran cave was the scroll of Isaiah, which was 600 years older than any complete copy of Isaiah we have. There was an intense interest in comparing those copies of Isaiah with the Dead Sea scroll, because now you are making a leap of 600 years earlier, closer to the time of Isaiah.

Of course, the fascinating thing was that there was not one significant change in the text.

unto them were committed the oracles of God ( Romans 3:2 ).

They kept those oracles faithfully, recorded them faithfully and passed them on to us. They had such a high reverence for the name of God, that whenever they wrote the word God, the Elohim, or the El, they would wash their pens, wash their hands, and then dip the pen in fresh ink to write the word Elohim, so did they reverence the title of God. But when they wrote the consonants that represented the name of God in writing, the consonants, before they would write them, they would go in and take a bath, change their clothes, and then take a pen, dip it in fresh ink, and write the consonants, YHVH, those consonants that represented the name of God.

There was no vowels written on these consonants because they did not feel that a man even in his mind was worthy of pronouncing the holy name of God. So they took the copying of scripture as a sacred trust. They realized the advantage that was theirs in having the Word of God given to them. Unto them was given the oracles of God. They were committed to them.

Now, what if some of them do not believe? ( Romans 3:3 )

For they did not all believe. They were apostate, many of them.

shall their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? ( Romans 3:3 )

If man is unfaithful, does that mean that God is then unfaithful or the faithfulness of God without effect?

God forbid ( Romans 3:4 ):

Though some of them did not believe, God will still be faithful to them as a people.

let God be true, and every man a liar; as it is written, That you might be justified when you speak, and might overcome when you are judged ( Romans 3:4 ).

He is quoting the fifty-first Psalm, where David is confessing his sin with Bathsheba before the Lord. He is crying out for mercy, "Have mercy on me, O God, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions, for against thee and thee only have I sinned and done this great iniquity in thy sight, that thy might be justified when you speak. And righteous when you judge." So he is quoting here that fifty-first Psalm of David, declaring that God when He speaks is right, He is justified in speaking. He is righteous in His judgment.

But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who takes vengeance? [He said,] (I am speaking as a man) ( Romans 3:5 )

Now he is using some of the super silliest kind of arguments that man sometimes takes a truth of God, and then they began to postulate on that truth, they begin to give hypothetical cases or they begin to try to reason out with the human intellect. This is the particular argument that Paul is saying. Here I am. God declares that all men are sinners and that the grace of God abounds to sinners, and God loves to show His grace in the forgiveness of sinful man. Therefore, by my going out and sinning, I am giving God an opportunity to show His righteousness through faith and His glorious grace. So my unrighteousness really is magnifying the righteousness of God, therefore, why would God judge me for being unrighteous? I am just showing how good He is when He forgives. And Paul says,

God forbid: how then can God judge the world? [And then another person says,] Well, the truth of God has really abounded more through my lie ( Romans 3:6-7 )

Now there are people who have some very exciting and remarking testimonies. They are complete lies, but they are exciting and a lot of people get all excited over these glorious testimonies. And many people have accepted the Lord after hearing some of these marvelous testimonies of what God did. Now there are just some pathological liars out there that are going around in pulpits and giving marvelous, interesting stories of how God saved them.

Several years ago there was some fellow who came here to Santa Ana, declared that he was a scientist working in the space program and all of this kind of stuff. He was talking about some new types of machines that had been developed and how that in connecting these machines on people there was the needle that would go positive or negative. So they connected it upon some fellow who was dying, and he was a rank sinner and the thing went off the peg on the negative side, but they connected it to some dear little saint who was dying, and it measures the communication outward. They went off the peg on the positive side and he was getting people all excited. And God appeared to him in a ball of fire and sat next to him in the car, all this kind of stuff. He was around the Orange County area here for a while and spoke in many churches, and gave his remarkable testimony of conversion once he saw that thing peg off to the right, and realized that the communication was going way out beyond man's ability. Many people got excited and he talked about how that caused him to get on his knees and realize that God was true.

If the truth of God abounded by his lie, then why would God condemn him for lying? Look how many people got saved by his glorious testimony. There are some people that have that kind of a rationale, that the end justifies the means.

More recently in Orange County there was a fellow who claimed to be a rabbi. He was a teacher of one of the large churches in Orange County for a long time claiming to be a rabbi, and his wife has recently written a book exposing the truth about this fellow. But again, declaring to be a converted rabbi, a lot of people were really moved by his testimony and by his teaching of the scripture, because now we have a rabbi teaching from a Christian perspective.

If the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why does God judge me as a sinner? ( Romans 3:7 )

I was lying, but it was for God's glory that I was lying. Some people were saying about Paul, they said Paul is saying,

(I was slanderously reported, as saying,) Let us do evil, that good might come out of it. [Paul said,] whose damnation is just ( Romans 3:8 ).

If I were God I would have put them away a long time ago. He is patient, so patient to my consternation.

How the world can be thankful I am not God. Man, a person cuts in front of me on the freeway, zap. I appreciate God's patience towards me. I appreciate that He is long-suffering towards me. I don't necessarily appreciate His patience towards you. I need it, I want it, oh God, help me. God help me.

But this rationale that people can get caught up in, like we are sort of a special class. God has special toleration for us, because look what we are doing for God. Look at all of this glorious fruit for the kingdom of God, but therefore, God has special toleration for me. Wrong. God will judge.

Paul then asked the question,

are we then better than they? ( Romans 3:9 )

That is, the Jew better than the Gentile?

No, in no wise: for we have already proved that both the Jews and Gentiles are all under sin ( Romans 3:9 );

So it doesn't make any difference, we all are under sin. So you are no better off being a Jew or Gentile as far as this is concerned; we are all sinners.

As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: there are none that understands, there is none that seeks after God ( Romans 3:10-11 ).

Now this is an amazing statement Paul is quoting from the Psalms, but this is an amazing statement that God has declared. He said, "There is none who are seeking after God." So often we hear people say, "Well, all religions lead to God. After all, if a person is sincere won't God accept his sincerity? Look at the ways these people are seeking after God. You know, they cut themselves they afflict themselves. They spend these hours in meditation, surely God will accept them, because they are seeking after God." The scripture says they are not seeking after God. If they are not seeking after God, then what are they seeking after?

The motivation behind most of this, as they will tell you, is that they are seeking after a peace of mind. Those who get into that meditation bit, they testify of that peace of mind, that tranquility that they come to, and that is what they are seeking is a tranquility of mind. They are not really seeking God, but seeking their own tranquility seeking their own peace.

They are all of them gone out of the way ( Romans 3:12 ),

That is, the way of God.

they are together become unprofitable; there is none that is doing good, no, not one ( Romans 3:12 ).

Now he goes on to quote many more scriptures. From the Psalms,

Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: their 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 ( Romans 3:13-18 ).

Now this is God's indictment, God is speaking through the psalmist and declaring the condition of man apart from God.

Now we know that what things soever the law says, it says to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin ( Romans 3:19-20 ).

Here is one basic mistake that man has made concerning the law of God. God never gave the law to make a person righteous by obeying the law, that was never the intention of the law. For the law cannot make a person righteous. Even if you kept the law, which you haven't, by the law is the knowledge of sin. That was the purpose of the law: to make the whole world guilty before God, or make the whole world cognizant of their guilt before God. That is why God gave the law.

There are so many who seek to sort of promote and exalt their own righteous works, their own goodness, and there are many people who are daring to come before God on the basis I am a good person or I am a moral person. It is interesting to me today that the Jewish people, for the most part, are seeking an acceptance by God on the basis of their good works.

Last Friday night was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It used to be under the covenant that God made with them on the Day of Atonement, the priest would go into the Holy of Holies with the blood of the goat to offer before God for the sins of the nation. But now the Day of Atonement is not the day of the great sacrifice, but the Day of Atonement is the day of reflection where you sit and reflect over the past year over the work that you have done. And you seek to balance out your life so that your good works over balance your bad works. Yom Kippur is now the day of reflection over the good works and over the evil works that you have done, and there is, of course, that endeavor the week before to do enough good works so that when you reflect that day you can tip the scales in the right side. My good works have out numbered my evil.

The law was not given to make one righteous, for if righteousness could come by the law, any law, if God could give us rules tonight to make us righteous, then Christ did not need to die. In fact, His death was in vain. So the law spoke to those who were under the law to stop every mouth. That is, to stop every mouth from boasting in their own righteousness. By the deeds of the law no flesh can be justified in God's sight, for by the law is only the knowledge of sin. It just shows me where I have failed. Now this is to have a proper understanding of the law, which the Pharisees did not have in the days of Jesus.

They were so misinterpreting the law and using it for the wrong purposes entirely. They were using the law to sort of fortify their feeling of self-righteousness, and Paul talks about his experience as a Pharisee and that righteousness that he had through the law. He said, "Concerning the law, I was blameless. I had it made as a Pharisee," as far as the righteousness that they sought to achieve through the keeping of the law. But he said, "Those things that were for gain for me I counted loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ for whom I suffer the loss of all things, that I may know Him and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness which is of the law, but the righteousness now which is of Christ through faith" ( Philippians 3:7-9 ).

Jesus said, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees you are not going to enter the kingdom of heaven" ( Matthew 5:20 ). Now, for any of you who want to be righteous on your own work, by your own efforts, that ought to discourage you once and forever, because no one was more diligent in their endeavor to keep the law than were the scribes and Pharisees. Unless your righteousness exceeds them you are not going to make it in.

Then Jesus gave the five illustrations that showed the fallacy of their understanding of the law. For in each of the illustrations He was showing that they were interpreting the law in a physical sense, but the law was intended in a spiritual sense. "You have heard that it was said in the law, 'Thou shall not kill;' and whosoever kills is in danger of the judgment, but I say unto you, whosoever hates his brother without a cause shall be in danger of judgment" ( Matthew 5:21-22 .) "You have heard that it hath been said, 'Thy shall not commit adultery,' but I say unto you, whosoever looks on a woman and lust after her in his heart has violated that command" ( Matthew 5:27-28 .)

So realizing that the law is spiritual then I realize, though I may have kept the law outwardly, I have violated the law spiritually, thus I am guilty before God and that is the purpose of the law--to make you know that you are guilty before God so that you will seek now a new righteousness.

For the law was a schoolmaster to teach us and to drive us to Jesus Christ. To make us despair of our own selves, to make us try to make us quit trying in our own flesh. To attain a righteous standing before God. That was the purpose of the law, just to make you despair of your own flesh once and forever, so that you would seek the righteousness that God has provided through faith in Jesus Christ. Now if you twist the law, and you use it as an instrument to make you feel very righteous, and you have this sense, "Well, I have kept the law. I am living an honest life. I do my best. I try to be good and all, and I don't live like those heathens out there," then you have misunderstood the intent of the law completely and you are missing the righteousness of God.

As Paul was pointing out that the Jew, because he didn't follow God's righteousness, did not attain righteousness. However, the poor Gentile who just knew how desperately lost he was discovered the righteousness of God. So by the law no flesh is going to be justified, by the law is the knowledge of sin. But because the law has brought me the knowledge of sin,

Now the righteousness of God without the law is made manifest, it is witnessed to both in the law and in the prophets ( Romans 3:21 );

This righteousness which is by faith, God said to the prophet of Hosea, "The just shall live by faith." God said to Abraham, "He believed God and it was accounted unto him for righteousness." This righteousness that God has now given to us apart from the law is revealed.

Even the righteousness of God which is by the faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all of them that believe; for there is no difference: for all of us have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; But all of us can be justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ( Romans 3:22-24 ):

Tonight if you are aware of your inability to live a righteous life, you have struggled, you have cried out, you have done everything to live the righteous life, but you realize you can't, you are in good shape. You are a good candidate now for that righteousness that God has revealed through the faith of Jesus Christ. Having come to a despairing in myself and of myself, I am brought to Jesus Christ and now this relationship with God through Him.

Through the redemption that God has provided in Christ Jesus,

For God hath set him forth to be a propitiation through the faith in his blood, to declare God's righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, when he justifies him who believe in Jesus Christ ( Romans 3:25-26 ).

God is faced with a problem. God created man that He might have fellowship with man, that was God's intent. Creating a creature with God-like capacities. A creature in His image that would be a self-governing creature as God is self-governing. The capacity to love as God loves, the capacity to know that infinity exists. That he might come into fellowship a loving relationship with that infinite God.

One thing was necessary and that was that this creation use that choice to express his love for God through obedience through faith. Therefore, there had to be an alternate choice, which in this case was the tree in the midst of the garden acknowledging good and evil, so that man could exercise choice. Then God declared, "Of all of the trees that are in the garden you may freely eat except the tree in the middle. For in the day that you eat of that tree you will die a spiritual death." You will lose your relationship with God. For the effect of sin in a person's life is always broken relationship with God. "God's hand is not short that He can not save, His ear is not heavy that He can not hear, your sins have separated you from God" ( Isaiah 59:1-2 ). So when man sinned, he put himself out of fellowship with God. That relationship with God was broken, thus the purposes of God were thwarted.

Now God still desired fellowship with man, but as long as sin was there man could not fellowship with God. Something had to be done with man's sin, or else there is no fellowship. Therefore, in order that God might renew fellowship with man, during the old covenant with the Jewish nation, He established a method by which you could take the guilt of your sin and transfer it onto an animal by faith. Bring your ox to the priest, lay your hands on its head and confess on the head of that ox all of your sins. Then the priest would kill the ox and offer it unto God as a sin offering, whereby your sins could be covered by faith, because the ox had died in your place. The death that you deserved because of your sins, because the soul that sins shall surely die. So that was the righteous basis by which God could restore fellowship with man in the Old Testament. As a man would bring the substitute and let it die in his place and then fellowship with God could be restored until man sinned again. If that were still true today and we had sacrifices here and you had to come and bring your animal for a sacrifice and your sins could be forgiven and you could sit here for a little while just fellowshipping with God and enjoy the blessing of God's presence and all in your life, it probably wouldn't last too long. Just driving from here to the freeway, just getting out of the parking lot you might blow it. Thus, you would have to, before you could fellowship with God again, bring another sacrifice and get things all cleaned up once more. These sacrifices were all done in faith, because they were looking forward to the sacrifice that God was going to provide for man's sins.

There is that beautiful story of Abraham when God said unto him, "Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac and offer him as a sacrifice on a mountain that I will show you" ( Genesis 22:2 ). Put that alongside of John 3:16 ,"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." "Take now thy son, thine only son, Isaac and offer as a sacrifice on the mountain in which I will show you." So Abraham took his servants and his son Isaac, and they began to journey toward this mount from Hebron. "And after three days they came to the mount and Abraham said to his servant, 'You stay here and I and the lad will go and worship and will come again.'" As Isaac and his father were walking towards Mount Moriah Isaac said, "Dad, here is the wood for the sacrifice and the fire, but where is the sacrifice?" Abraham said, "Son, the Lord will provide Himself a sacrifice."

So they came to the mount and Abraham began to put Isaac upon the altar, raised the knife, and God said, "Abraham, that is far enough. We've got the picture. Behold, the ram is caught by its horns there in the thicket, take it and offer it as a sacrifice." Abraham called the place Jehovah-Jirah, the Lord will provide or the Lord sees, and then he said, "For in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen." Mount Moriah, where Abraham said God will provide Himself a sacrifice so that all of those sacrifices that later were instituted in the law of Moses all looked forward to the fulfillment of the prophecy of Abraham when God would provide Himself a sacrifice. And 2000 years later on Mount Moriah God provided Himself a sacrifice, for it was on the top of Mount Moriah that Jesus was crucified.

God declared His righteousness toward us, and God is righteous when He justifies us, for Jesus took our sins upon Himself. And thus, the judgment of God, righteous judgment of God for sin and death, spiritual death has been fulfilled. So that God is now righteous when He justifies me. There is a righteous basis, for if someone else has stepped in and died in my place. That's the whole gospel that deals with God being just when He justifies the ungodly.

God has justified me; He has declared me righteous before Him through my faith in the blood of Jesus Christ through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ. Thus, I have received the remission of my sins which are past. So God has shown His righteousness as He is just when He justifies those who believe in Jesus Christ.

Where does that put boasting then? It is excluded ( Romans 3:27 ).

You see, I can't boast tonight of all of the good that I have done. Of all of the sacrifices that I have made, of the great difficulties of getting those seven golden apples guarded by the multi headed dragon that I bravely faced and killed with my sword after a terrible struggle.

Boasting is excluded, because I am declared righteous by my faith in Jesus Christ, and if there is any boasting to be done it has to be done in Jesus. As Paul said, "God forbid that I should boast save in the cross of Jesus Christ." All my boasting has to be in what Jesus has done for me, not what I have done for Him. Now it is unfortunate that so often in church the emphasis is on what man should be doing for God. And God help me, He has forgiven me for years I was placing the church under deep guilt trips as I was telling them their failure because they ought to be doing more for God. You ought to be sacrificing more, or you ought to be giving more, you ought to be doing more, you ought to be praying more, you ought to be anything more. And I was emphasizing the work that man should be doing for God. Even helping them, outlining works, giving them little charts to put their stars on, do be a do be and don't be a . . . you know, the do be's. God help us. Because the New Testament points us not to what we have done or can do for God, but it points us to what God has done for us.

It points us to the cross, and God forbid that I should glory except in the cross. If I am diligent and I spend two hours a day in prayer, and if I spend four hours a day in the Word of God, and three hours a day on the beach witnessing, then I like to stand up and say, "I'd like to thank the Lord for His goodness to me and I am just glad that I can go out three hours a day and witness on the beach for Jesus. And those four hours a day in the Word are just so precious to me. And those two hours of prayer, my, I wouldn't give them up for anything." I am boasting in what I am doing. Everybody says, "Oh, wow! Isn't he a righteous person?" Now, I am a sinner. I am a hopeless sinner if it were not for the grace of God; I deserve His judgment. But God loved me even though I was a sinner. And He sent His son who also loved me and who took the guilt and the responsibility for my sin and died in my place, and now offers me forgiveness, righteousness, justification, fellowship with God, if I will just believe in the sacrifice and in the work that He has wrought in my behalf.

Therefore, I cannot boast in my works or in my goodness. And when you get to heaven, it isn't going to be a big bragging session and we all get around and tell of all the marvelous things we did for God on the earth. Though, when we get to heaven we will just be that glorious, "Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Sin hath left its crimson stain, but He washed me white as snow." And through the ages to come we will be rejoicing in the grace of God through Jesus Christ, whereby I have access to the Father--fellowship with God. Where is boasting then? It is excluded.

By what law? By the law of works? No ( Romans 3:27 );

No, no. If I can be righteous by works then boasting would be in vogue. But it is excluded,

because of the law of faith ( Romans 3:27 ).

How can I boast in the faith that God has given to me?

Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds [or the works] of the law ( Romans 3:28 ).

That is the conclusion.

For is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also the God of the heathen? Yes, of the heathen also: Now seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumcision through faith. Do we then make void the law through faith? No, God forbid: we are establishing the law ( Romans 3:29-31 ).

In other words, we are establishing the law for the purpose that the law was given. It forces me to take God's alternate. The law shows me that I can't be having a standing before Him through my own efforts, and so I've established the law for the purpose which God gave the law by declaring that the law cannot justify me or make me righteous, but the law can only bring me to despair of myself so that I take God's alternate plan of faith in Jesus Christ.

"

Contending for the Faith

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

For all have sinned: This is the other side of the coin revealed in the previous verse. In verse 22, the righteousness God grants is available to all men upon the condition of faithful submission to the gospel. Here, there is also no difference in the need all men have for the righteousness from God, for all have sinned—both Jew and Gentile. Upon the ground of merit, all men are alike—they do not have any claim to righteousness. They have sinned—all of them, without exception.

This verse sums up the argument begun in Romans 1:18 and concluded in Romans 3:20. As Paul’s argument has risen to a crescendo, he has emphasized this point again and again (3:9-12, 20, 22). All men have sinned.

and come short of the glory of God: By the expression "glory of God," Paul refers to God’s heavenly glory, likely entailing the relationship Adam and Eve had with God prior to the fall. The phrase also refers to what Peter styles "the restitution of all things" (Acts 3:21). All believers hope to attain the glory of God, which is a home in heaven (compare Romans 5:2; Romans 8:18; Romans 8:21; Romans 8:30); tragically, as a result of sin, all men have fallen short of the glory of God.

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

A. The description of justification 3:21-26

Paul began by explaining the concept of justification. [Note: See Carl F. H. Henry, "Justification: A Doctrine in Crisis," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 38:1 (March 1995):57-65, for discussion of the crisis that Protestant Catholic rapprochement poses for the doctrine of justification.]

"We now come to the unfolding of that word which Paul in Chapter One declares to be the very heart of the gospel . . ." [Note: Newell, p. 92.]

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

All must come to God by faith in Jesus Christ because all have sinned and fallen short of (i.e., lack) God’s glory (cf. Mark 10:21). The glory of God refers to the outward manifestation of what God is. It includes especially the majesty of His powerful person and the sublimity of His supremely elevated position. [Note: Mickelsen, p. 1192; Harrison, p. 41.] Sin separates people from fellowship with a holy God. We lack both the character of God and the fellowship of God because of sin.

Barclay's Daily Study Bible

Chapter 3

GOD'S FIDELITY AND MAN'S INFIDELITY ( Romans 3:1-8 )

3:1-8 What, then, is the something plus which belongs to a Jew? Or what special advantage belongs to those who have been circumcised? Much in every way. In the first place, there is this advantage--that the Jews have been entrusted with the oracles of God. Yes, you say, but what if some of them were unfaithful to them? Surely you are not going to argue that their infidelity invalidates the fidelity of God? God forbid! Let God be shown to be true, though every man be shown to be a liar, as it stands written: "In order that you may be seen to be in the right in your arguments, and that you may win your case when you enter into judgment." But, you say, if our unrighteousness merely provides proof of God's righteousness, what are we to say? Surely you are not going to try to argue that God is unrighteous to unleash the Wrath upon you? (I am using human arguments:) God forbid! For, if that were so, how shall God judge the world? But, you say, if the fact that I am false merely provides a further opportunity to demonstrate the fact that God is true, to his greater glory, why should I still be condemned as a sinner? Are you going to argue--just as some slanderously allege that we suggest--that we should do evil that good may come of it? Anyone can see that statements like that merit nothing but condemnation.

Here Paul is arguing in the closest and the most difficult way. It will make it easier to understand if we remember that he is carrying on an argument with an imaginary objector. The argument stated in full would run something like this.

The objector: The result of all that you have been saying is that there is no difference between Gentile and Jew and that they are in exactly the same position. Do you really mean that?

Paul: By no means.

The objector: What, then, is the difference?

Paul: For one thing, the Jew possesses what the Gentile never so directly possessed--the commandments of God.

The objector: Granted! But what if some of the Jews disobeyed these commandments and were unfaithful to God and came under his condemnation? You have just said that God gave the Jews a special position and a special promise. Now you go on to say that at least some of them are under the condemnation of God. Does that mean that God has broken his promise and shown himself to be unjust and unreliable?

Paul: Far from it! What it does show is that there is no favouritism with God and that he punishes sin wherever he sees it. The very fact that he condemns the unfaithful Jews is the best possible proof of his absolute justice. He might have been expected to overlook the sins of this special people of his but he does not.

The objector: Very well then! All you have done is to succeed in showing that my disobedience has given God an opportunity to demonstrate his righteousness. My infidelity has given God a marvellous opportunity to demonstrate his fidelity. My sin is, therefore, an excellent thing! It has given God a chance to show how good he is! I may have done evil, but good has come of it! You can't surely condemn a man for giving God a chance to show his justice!

Paul: An argument like that is beneath contempt! You have only to state it to see how intolerable it is!

When we disentangle this passage in this way, we see that there are in it certain basic thoughts of Paul in regard to the Jews.

(i) To the end of the day he believed the Jews to be in a special position in regard to God. That, in fact, is what they believed themselves. The difference was that Paul believed that their special position was one of special responsibility; the Jew believed it to be one of special privilege. What did Paul say that the Jew had been specially entrusted with? The oracles of God. What does he mean by that? The word he uses is logia ( G3048) , the regular word in the Greek Old Testament for a special statement or pronouncement of God. Here it means The Ten Commandments. God entrusted the Jews with commandments, not privileges. He said to them, "You are a special people; therefore you must live a special life." He did not say, "You are a special people; therefore you can do what you like." He did say, "You are a special people; therefore you must do what I like." When Lord Dunsany came in safety through the 1914-18 war he tells us that he said to himself, "In some strange way I am still alive. I wonder what God means me to do with a life so specially spared?" That thought never struck the Jews. They never could grasp the fact that God's special choice was for special duty.

(ii) All through his writings there are three basic facts in Paul's mind about the Jews. They occur in embryo here; and they are in fact the three thoughts that it takes this whole letter to work out. We must note that he does not place all the Jews under the one condemnation. He puts it in this way: "What if some of them were unfaithful?"

(a) He was quite sure that God was justified in condemning the Jews. They had their special place and their special promises; and that very fact made their condemnation all the greater. Responsibility is always the obverse of privilege. The more opportunity a man has to do right, the greater his condemnation if he does wrong.

(b) But not all of them were unfaithful. Paul never forgot the faithful remnant; and he was quite sure that that faithful remnant--however small it was in numbers--was the true Jewish race. The others had lost their privileges and were under condemnation. They were no longer Jews at all. The remnant was the real nation.

(c) Paul was always sure that God's rejection of Israel was not final. Because of this rejection, a door was opened to the Gentiles; and, in the end, the Gentiles would bring the Jews back within the fold, and Gentile and Jew would be one in Christ. The tragedy of the Jew was that the great task of world evangelization that he might have had, and was designed to have, was refused by him. It was therefore given to the Gentiles, and God's plan was, as it were, reversed, and it was not, as it should have been, the Jew who evangelized the Gentile, but the Gentile who evangelized the Jew--a process which is still going on.

Further, this passage contains two great universal human truths.

(i) The root of all sin is disobedience. The root of the Jew's sin was disobedience to the known law of God. As Milton wrote, it was "man's first disobedience" which was responsible for paradise lost. When pride sets tip the will of man against the will of God, there is sin. If there were no disobedience, there would be no sin.

(ii) Once a man has sinned, he displays an amazing ingenuity in justifying his sin. Here we come across an argument that reappears again and again in religious thought, the argument that sin gives God a chance to show at once his justice and his mercy and is therefore a good thing. It is a twisted argument. One might as well argue--it would, in fact, be the same argument--that it is a good thing to break a person's heart, because it gives him a chance to show how much he loves you. When a man sins, the need is not for ingenuity to justify his sin, but for humility to confess it in penitence and in shame.

THE CHRISTLESS WORLD ( Romans 3:9-18 )

3:9-18 What then? Are we Jews out ahead? By no means. For we have already charged all Jews and Greeks with being under the power of sin, as it stands written: "There is none righteous, no not one. There is no man of understanding. There is none who seeks the Lord. All have swerved out of the way, and all together have gone bad. There is none whose acts are good, not one single one. Their throat is an open tomb. They practise fraud with their tongues. The poison of asps is under their lips. Their mouths are laden with curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and wretchedness are in their ways, and they have not known the way of peace. There is no fear of God before their eyes."

In the last passage Paul had insisted that, in spite of everything, the Jew had a special position in the economy of God. Not unnaturally the Jewish objector then asks if that means that the Jews are out ahead of other peoples. Paul's answer is that Jew and Gentile alike, so long as they are without Christ, are under the dominion of sin. The Greek phrase that he uses for under sin is very suggestive, hupo ( G5259) hamartian ( G266) . In this sense hupo ( G5259) means in the power of, under the authority of. In Matthew 8:9 the centurion says: "I have soldiers hupo ( G5259) emauton ( G1683) , under me." That is, I have soldiers under my command. A schoolboy is hupo ( G5259) paidagogon ( G3807) , under the direction of the slave who is in control of him. A slave is hupo ( G5259) zugon ( G2218) , under the yoke of his master. In the Christless state a man is under the control of sin, and helpless to escape from it.

There is one other interesting word in this passage. It is the word in Romans 3:12 which we have translated. "They have gone bad." The word is achreioo ( G889) , which literally means to render useless. One of its uses is of milk that has gone sour. Human nature without Christ is a soured and useless thing.

We see Paul doing here what Jewish Rabbis customarily did. In Romans 3:10-18 he has strung together a collection of Old Testament texts. He is not quoting accurately, because he is quoting from memory, but he includes quotations from Psalms 14:1-3; Psalms 5:9; Psalms 140:3; Psalms 10:7; Isaiah 59:7-8; Psalms 36:1. It was a very common method of Rabbinic preaching to string texts together like this. It was called charaz (see charuwz, H2737) , which literally means stringing pearls.

It is a terrible description of human nature in its Christless state. Vaughan has pointed out that these Old Testament quotations describe three things. (i) A character whose characteristics are ignorance, indifference, crookedness and unprofitableness. (ii) A tongue whose notes are destructive, deceitful, malignant. (iii) A conduct whose marks are oppression, injuriousness, implacability. These things are the result of disregard of God.

No one saw so clearly the evil of human nature as Paul did; but it must always be noted that the evil of human nature was to him, not a call to hopelessness, but a challenge to hope. When we say that Paul believed in original sin and the depravity of human nature, we must never take that to mean that he despaired of human nature or looked on it with cynical contempt. Once, when William Jay of Bath was an old man, he said: "My memory is failing, but there are two things that I never forget--that I am a great sinner and that Jesus Christ is a great Saviour."

Paul never underrated the sin of man and he never underrated the redeeming power of Jesus Christ. Once, when he was a young man, William Roby, the great Lancashire Independent, was preaching at Malvern. His lack of success drove him to despair, and he wished to leave the work. Then came a seasonable reproof from a certain Mr Moody, who asked him, "Are they, then, too bad to be saved?" The challenge sent William Roby back to his work. Paul believed men without Christ to be bad, but he never believed them too bad to be saved. He was confident that what Christ had done for him Christ could do for any man.

THE ONLY WAY TO BE RIGHT WITH GOD ( Romans 3:19-26 )

3:19-26 We know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are within the law, and the function of the law is that every mouth should be silenced and that the whole world should be known to be liable to the judgment of God, because no one will ever get into a right relationship with God by doing the works which the law lays down. What does come through the law is a full awareness of sin. But now a way to a right relationship to God lies open before us quite apart from the law, and it is a way attested by the law and the prophets. For a right relationship to God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God, but they are put into a right relationship with God, freely, by his grace, through the deliverance which is wrought by Jesus Christ. God put him forward as one who can win for us forgiveness of our sins through faith in his blood. He did so in order to demonstrate his righteousness because, in the forbearance of God, there had been a passing over of the sins which happened in previous times; and he did so to demonstrate his righteousness in this present age, so that he himself should be just and that he should accept as just the man who believes in Jesus.

Here again is a passage which is not easy to understand, but which is full of riches when its true meaning is grasped. Let us see if we can penetrate to the basic truth behind it.

The supreme problem of life is, How can a man get into a right relationship with God? How can he feel at peace with God? How can he escape the feeling of estrangement and fear in the presence of God? The religion of Judaism answered: "A man can attain to a right relationship with God by keeping meticulously all that the law lays down." But to say that is simply to say that there is no possibility of any man ever attaining to a right relationship with God, for no man ever can keep every commandment of the law.

"Not the labours of my hands

Can fulfil thy law's demands."

What then is the use of the law? It is that it makes a man aware of sin. It is only when a man knows the law and tries to satisfy it that he realizes he can never satisfy it. The law is designed to show a man his own weakness and his own sinfulness. Is a man then shut out from God? Far from it, because the way to God is not the way of law, but the way of grace; not the way of works, but the way of faith.

To show what he means Paul uses three metaphors.

(i) He uses a metaphor from the law courts which we call justification. This metaphor thinks of man on trial before God. The Greek word which is translated to justify is diakioun ( G1344) . All Greek verbs which end in "-oun" mean, not to make someone something, but to treat, to reckon, to account him as something. If an innocent man appears before a judge then to treat him as innocent is to acquit him. But the point about a man's relationship to God is that he is utterly guilty, and yet God, in his amazing mercy, treats him, reckons him, accounts him as if he were innocent. That is what justification means.

When Paul says that "God justifies the ungodly," he means that God treats the ungodly as if he had been a good man. That is what shocked the Jews to the core of their being. To them to treat the bad man as if he was good was the sign of a wicked judge. "He who justifies the wicked is an abomination to the Lord" ( Proverbs 17:15). "I will not acquit the wicked" ( Exodus 23:7). But Paul says that is precisely what God does.

How can I know that God is like that? I know because Jesus said so. He came to tell us that God loves us, bad as we are. He came to tell us that, although we are sinners, we are still dear to God. When we discover that and believe it, it changes our whole relationship to God. We are conscious of our sin, but we are no longer in terror and no longer estranged. Penitent and brokenhearted we come to God, like a sorry child coming to his mother, and we know that the God we come to is love.

That is what justification by faith in Jesus Christ means. It means that we are in a right relationship with God because we believe with all our hearts that what Jesus told us about God is true. We are no longer terrorized strangers from an angry God. We are children, erring children, trusting in their Father's love for forgiveness. And we could never have found that right relationship with God, if Jesus had not come to live and to die to tell us how wonderfully he loves us.

(ii) Paul uses a metaphor from sacrifice. He says of Jesus that God put him forward as one who can win forgiveness for our sins.

The Greek word that Paul uses to describe Jesus is hilasterion ( G2435) . This comes from a verb which means to propitiate. It is a verb which has to do with sacrifice. Under the old system, when a man broke the law, he brought to God a sacrifice. His aim was that the sacrifice should turn aside the punishment that should fall upon him. To put it in another way--a man sinned; that sin put him at once in a wrong relationship with God; to get back into the right relationship he offered his sacrifice.

But it was human experience that an animal sacrifice failed entirely to do that. "Thou hast no delight in sacrifice; were I to give a burnt offering, thou wouldst not be pleased" ( Psalms 51:16). "With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" ( Micah 6:6-7.) Instinctively men felt that, once they had sinned, the paraphernalia of earthly sacrifice could not put matters right.

So Paul says, "Jesus Christ, by his life of obedience and his death of love, made the one sacrifice to God which really and truly atones for sin." He insists that what happened on the Cross opens the door back to a right relationship with God, a door which every other sacrifice is powerless to open.

(iii) Paul uses a metaphor from slavery. He speaks of the deliverance wrought through Jesus Christ. The word is apolutrosis ( G629) . It means a ransoming, a redeeming, a liberating. It means that man was in the power of sin, and that Jesus Christ alone could free him from it.

Finally, Paul says of God that he did all this because he is just, and accepts as just all who believe in Jesus. Paul never said a more startling thing than this. Bengel called it "the supreme paradox of the gospel." Think what it means. It means that God is just and accepts the sinner as a just man. The natural thing to say would be, "God is just, and, therefore, condemns the sinner as a criminal." But here we have the great paradox--God is just, and somehow, in that incredible, miraculous grace that Jesus came to bring to men, he accepts the sinner, not as a criminal, but as a son whom he still loves.

What is the essence of all this? Where is the difference between it and the old way of the law? The basic difference is this--the way of obedience to the law is concerned with what a man can do for himself; the way of grace is concerned with what God can do, and has done, for him. Paul is insisting that nothing we can ever do can win for us the forgiveness of God; only what God has done for us can win that; therefore the way to a right relationship with God lies, not in a frenzied, desperate, doomed attempt to win acquittal by our performance; it lies in the humble, penitent acceptance of the love and the grace which God offers us in Jesus Christ.

THE END OF THE WAY OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT ( Romans 3:27-31 )

3:27-31 Where, then, is there any ground for boasting? It is completely shut out. Through what kind of law? Through the law of works? No, but through the law of faith. So, then, we reckon that a man enters into a right relationship with God by faith quite apart from works of the law. Or, is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of the Gentiles? Yes, he is the God of the Gentiles too. If, indeed, God is one, he is the God who will bring those who are of the circumcision into a right relationship with himself by faith, and those who never knew the circumcision through faith. Do we then through faith completely cancel out all law? God forbid! Rather, we confirm the law.

Paul deals with three points here.

(i) If the way to God is the way of faith and of acceptance, then all boasting in human achievement is gone. There was a certain kind of Judaism which kept a kind of profit and loss account with God. In the end a man often came to a frame of mind in which he rather held that God was in his debt. Paul's position was that every man is a sinner and God's debtor, that no man could ever put himself back into a right relationship with God through his own efforts and that grounds for self-satisfaction and boasting in one's own achievement no longer exist.

(ii) But, a Jew might answer, that might be well enough for a Gentile who never knew the law, but what about Jews who do know it? Paul's answer was to turn them to the sentence which is the basis of the Jewish creed, the sentence with which every synagogue service always began and still begins. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one God" ( Deuteronomy 6:4). There is not one God for the Gentiles and another for the Jews. God is one. The way to him is the same for Gentile and Jew. It is not the way of human achievement; it is the way of trusting and accepting faith.

(iii) But, says the Jew, does this mean an end of all law? We might have expected Paul to say, "Yes." In point of fact he says, "No." He says that, in fact, it strengthens the law. He means this. Up to this time the Jew had tried to be a good man and keep the commandments because he was afraid of God, and was terrified of the punishment that breaches of the law would bring. That day has for ever gone. But what has taken its place is the love of God Now a man must try to be good and keep God's law, not because he fears God's punishment, but because he feels that he must strive to deserve that amazing love. He strives for goodness, not because he is afraid of God, but because he loves him. He knows now that sin is not so much breaking God's law as it is breaking God's heart, and, therefore, it is doubly terrible.

Take a human analogy. Many a man is tempted to do a wrong thing, and does not do it. It is not so much that he fears the law. He would not greatly care if he were fined, or even imprisoned. What keeps him right is the simple fact that he could not meet the sorrow that would be seen in the eyes of the one who loves him if he made shipwreck of his life. It is not the law of fear but the law of love which keeps him right. It must be that way with us and God. We are rid forever of the terror of God, but that is no reason for doing as we like. We can never again do as we like for we are now for ever constrained to goodness by the law of love; and that law is far stronger than ever the law of fear can be.

-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)

Gann's Commentary on the Bible

Romans 3:23

    An important verse!

for -- This verse also begins with γάρ (gar), “for,” explaining why there is no difference among human beings as to the manner of their salvation. None can be saved by law through works; all must be saved by grace through faith—because all have sinned, and grace through faith is the only possible way for sinners to be saved. Once a person has sinned even once, he has forfeited all possibility of salvation by law-righteousness (James 2:10). - CPNIV

for all have sinned -- This was the point which he has fully established in the discussion in chapters 1 and 2.

have come short -- - Greek, “Are deficient in regard to;” are lacking, etc. Here it means, that they had failed to obtain, or were destitute of.

...the present tense suggests the falling short is a present condition - CPNIV

the glory of God -- The praise or approbation of God. They had sought to be justified, or approved, by God; but all had failed. Their works of law had not secured his approbation; and they were therefore under condemnation.

     The word “glory” (δόξα doxa) is often used in the sense of praise, or approbation, John 5:41, John 5:44; John 7:18; John 8:50, John 8:54; John 12:43.

the glory of God -- Means the reflected glory of God ...the “glory of God” is “his image or glory in which all were made but which all fail to live up to” (Stott, 109). - CPNIV

(Genesis 1:26) (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:7; Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24; James 3:9)

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

For all have sinned,.... This is the general character of all mankind; all have sinned in Adam, are guilty by his sin, polluted with it, and condemned for it; all are sinners in themselves, and by their own actual transgressions; this is the case of the whole world, and of all the men in it; not only of the Gentiles, but of the Jews, and the more righteous among them: hence there is no difference in the state and condition of men by nature; nor is there any reason from and in themselves, why God saves one and not another; nor any room to despair of the grace and righteousness of Christ, on account of persons being, in their own view, the worst of sinners:

and hence it is, that they are all

come short of the glory of God; either of glorifying of God; man was made for this purpose, and was capable of it, though now through sin incapable; and it is only by the grace of God that he is enabled to do it: or of glorying: before him; sin has made him infamous, and is his shame; by it he has forfeited all external favours, and has nothing of his own to glory in; his moral righteousness is no foundation for boasting, especially before God: or of having glory from God; the most pure and perfect creature does not of itself deserve any glory and praise from God; good men, in a way of grace, will have praise of God; but sinners can never expect any on their own account: or of the glorious grace of God, as sanctifying and pardoning grace, and particularly the grace of a justifying righteousness; man has no righteousness, nor can he work out one; nor will his own avail, he wants a better than that: or of eternal glory; which may be called the glory of God, because it is of his preparing, what he calls persons to by his grace, and which of his own free grace he bestows upon them, and will chiefly lie in the enjoyment of him; now this is represented sometimes as a prize, which is run for, and pressed after; but men, through sinning, come short of it, and must of themselves do so for ever: or rather of the image of God in man, who is called "the image and glory of God", 1 Corinthians 11:7, which consisted externally in government over the creatures; internally, in righteousness and holiness, in wisdom and knowledge, in the bias of his mind to that which is good, and in power to perform it; of all which he is come short, or deprived by sinning.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.   20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.   21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;   22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:   23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;   24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:   25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;   26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.   27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.   28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.   29 Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also:   30 Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith.   31 Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.

      From all this Paul infers that it is in vain to look for justification by the works of the law, and that it is to be had only by faith, which is the point he has been all along proving, from Romans 1:17; Romans 1:17, and which he lays down (Romans 3:28; Romans 3:28) as the summary of his discourse, with a quod erat demonstrandum--which was to be demonstrated. We conclude that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the law; not by the deeds of the first law of pure innocence, which left no room for repentance, nor the deeds of the law of nature, how highly soever improved, nor the deeds of the ceremonial law (the blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin), nor the deeds of the moral law, which are certainly included, for he speaks of that law by which is the knowledge of sin and those works which might be matter of boasting. Man, in his depraved state, under the power of such corruption, could never, by any works of his own, gain acceptance with God; but it must be resolved purely into the free grace of God, given through Jesus Christ to all true believers that receive it as a free gift. If we had never sinned, our obedience to the law would have been our righteousness: "Do this, and live." But having sinned, and being corrupted, nothing that we can do will atone for our former guilt. It was by their obedience to the moral law that the Pharisees looked for justification, Luke 18:11. Now there are two things from which the apostle here argues: the guiltiness of man, to prove that we cannot be justified by the works of the law, and the glory of God, to prove that we must be justified by faith.

      I. He argues from man's guiltiness, to show the folly of expecting justification by the works of the law. The argument is very plain: we can never be justified and saved by the law that we have broken. A convicted traitor can never come off by pleading the statute of 25 Edward III., for that law discovers his crime and condemns him: indeed, if he had never broken it, he might have been justified by it; but now it is past that he has broken it, and there is no way of coming off but by pleading the act of indemnity, upon which he has surrendered and submitted himself, and humbly and penitently claiming the benefit of it and casting himself upon it. Now concerning the guiltiness of man,

      1. He fastens it particularly upon the Jews; for they were the men that made their boast of the law, and set up for justification by it. He had quoted several scriptures out of the Old Testament to show this corruption: Now, says he (Romans 3:19; Romans 3:19), this that the law says, it says to those who are under the law; this conviction belongs to the Jews as well as others, for it is written in their law. The Jews boasted of their being under the law, and placed a great deal of confidence in it: "But," says he, "the law convicts and condemns you--you see it does." That every mouth may be stopped--that all boasting may be silenced. See the method that God takes both in justifying and condemning: he stops every mouth; those that are justified have their mouths stopped by a humble conviction; those that are condemned have their mouths stopped too, for they shall at last be convinced (Jude 1:15), and sent speechless to hell, Matthew 22:12. All iniquity shall stop her mouth,Psalms 107:42.

      2. He extends it in general to all the world: That all the world may become guilty before God. If the world likes in wickedness (1 John 5:19), to be sure it is guilty.--May become guilty; that is, may be proved guilty, liable to punishment, all by nature children of wrath,Ephesians 2:3. They must all plead guilty; those that stand most upon their own justification will certainly be cast. Guilty before God is a dreadful word, before an all-seeing God, that is not, nor can be, deceived in his judgment--before a just and righteous judge, who will by no means clear the guilty. All are guilty, and therefore all have need of a righteousness wherein to appear before God. For all have sinned (Romans 3:23; Romans 3:23); all are sinners by nature, by practice, and have come short of the glory of God--have failed of that which is the chief end of man. Come short, as the archer comes short of the mark, as the runner comes short of the prize; so come short, as not only not to win, but to be great losers. Come short of the glory of God. (1.) Come short of glorifying God. See Romans 1:21; Romans 1:21, They glorified him not as God. Man was placed at the head of the visible creation, actively to glorify that great Creator whom the inferior creatures could glorify only objectively; but man by sin comes short of this, and, instead of glorifying God, dishonours him. It is a very melancholy consideration, to look upon the children of men, who were made to glorify God, and to think how few there are that do it. (2.) Come short of glorying before God. There is no boasting of innocency: if we go about to glory before God, to boast of any thing we are, or have, or do, this will be an everlasting estoppel--that we have all sinned, and this will silence us. We may glory before men, who are short-sighted, and cannot search our hearts,--who are corrupt, as we are, and well enough pleased with sin; but there is no glorying before God, who cannot endure to look upon iniquity. (3.) Come short of being glorified by God. Come short of justification, or acceptance with God, which is glory begun--come short of the holiness or sanctification which is the glorious image of God upon man, and have overthrown all hopes and expectations of being glorified with God in heaven by any righteousness of their own. It is impossible now to get to heaven in the way of spotless innocency. That passage is blocked up. There is a cherub and a flaming sword set to keep that way to the tree of life.

      3. Further to drive us off from expecting justification by the law, he ascribes this conviction to the law (Romans 3:20; Romans 3:20): For by the law is the knowledge of sin. That law which convicts and condemns us can never justify us. The law is the straight rule, that rectum which is index sui et obliqui--that which points out the right and the wrong; it is the proper use and intendment of the law to open our wound, and therefore not likely to be the remedy. That which is searching is not sanative. Those that would know sin must get the knowledge of the law in its strictness, extent, and spiritual nature. If we compare our own hearts and lives with the rule, we shall discover wherein we have turned aside. Paul makes this use of the law, Romans 7:9; Romans 7:9, Therefore by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight. Observe, (1.) No flesh shall be justified, no man, no corrupted man (Genesis 6:3), for that he also is flesh, sinful and depraved; therefore not justified, because we are flesh. The corruption that remains in our nature will for ever obstruct any justification by our own works, which, coming from flesh, must needs taste of the cask, Job 14:4. (2.) Not justified in his sight. He does not deny that justification which was by the deeds of the law in the sight of the church: they were, in their church-estate, as embodied in a polity, a holy people, a nation of priests; but as the conscience stands in relation to God, in his sight, we cannot be justified by the deeds of the law. The apostle refers to Psalms 143:2.

      II. He argues from God's glory to prove that justification must be expected only by faith in Christ's righteousness. There is no justification by the works of the law. Must guilty man then remain eternally under wrath? Is there no hope? Is the wound become incurable because of transgression? No, blessed be God, it is not (Romans 3:21; Romans 3:22); there is another way laid open for us, the righteousness of God without the law is manifested now under the gospel. Justification may be obtained without the keeping of Moses's law: and this is called the righteousness of God, righteousness of his ordaining, and providing, and accepting,--righteousness which he confers upon us; as the Christian armour is called the armour of God,Ephesians 6:11.

      1. Now concerning this righteousness of God observe, (1.) That it is manifested. The gospel-way of justification is a high-way, a plain way, it is laid open for us: the brazen serpent is lifted up upon the pole; we are not left to grope our way in the dark, but it is manifested to us. (2.) It is without the law. Here he obviates the method of the judaizing Christians, who would needs join Christ and Moses together--owning Christ for the Messiah, and yet too fondly retaining the law, keeping up the ceremonies of it, and imposing it upon the Gentile converts: no, says he, it is without the law. The righteousness that Christ hath brought in is a complete righteousness. (3.) Yet it is witnessed by the law and the prophets; that is, there were types, and prophecies, and promises, in the Old Testament, that pointed at this. The law is so far from justifying us that it directs us to another way of justification, points at Christ as our righteousness, to whom bear all the prophets witness. See Acts 10:43. This might recommend it to the Jews, who were so fond of the law and the prophets. (4.) It is by the faith of Jesus Christ, that faith which hath Jesus Christ for its object--an anointed Saviour, so Jesus Christ signifies. Justifying faith respects Christ as a Saviour in all his three anointed offices, as prophet, priest, and king--trusting in him, accepting of him, and adhering to him, in all these. It is by this that we become interested in that righteousness which God has ordained, and which Christ has brought in. (5.) It is to all, and upon all, those that believe. In this expression he inculcates that which he had been often harping upon, that Jews and Gentiles, if they believe, stand upon the same level, and are alike welcome to God through Christ; for there is no difference. Or, it is eis pantas--to all, offered to all in general; the gospel excludes none that do not exclude themselves; but it is epi pantas tous pisteuontas, upon all that believe, not only tendered to them, but put upon them as a crown, as a robe; they are, upon their believing, interested in it, and entitled to all the benefits and privileges of it.

      2. But now how is this for God's glory?

      (1.) It is for the glory of his grace (Romans 3:24; Romans 3:24): Justified freely by his grace--dorean te autou chariti. It is by his grace, not by the grace wrought in us as the papists say, confounding justification and sanctification, but by the gracious favour of God to us, without any merit in us so much as foreseen. And, to make it the more emphatic, he says it is freely by his grace, to show that it must be understood of grace in the most proper and genuine sense. It is said that Joseph found grace in the sight of his master (Genesis 39:4), but there was a reason; he saw that what he did prospered. There was something in Joseph to invite that grace; but the grace of God communicated to us comes freely, freely; it is free grace, mere mercy; nothing in us to deserve such favours: no, it is all through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ. It comes freely to us, but Christ bought it, and paid dearly for it, which yet is so ordered as not to derogate from the honour of free grace. Christ's purchase is no bar to the freeness of God's grace; for grace provided and accepted this vicarious satisfaction.

      (2.) It is for the glory of his justice and righteousness (Romans 3:25; Romans 3:26): Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation, c. Note, [1.] Jesus Christ is the great propitiation, or propitiatory sacrifice, typified by the hilasterion, or mercy-seat, under the law. He is our throne of grace, in and through whom atonement is made for sin, and our persons and performances are accepted of God, 1 John 2:2. He is all in all in our reconciliation, not only the maker, but the matter of it--our priest, our sacrifice, our altar, our all. God was in Christ as in his mercy-seat, reconciling the world unto himself. [2.] God hath set him forth to be so. God, the party offended, makes the first overtures towards a reconciliation, appoints the days-man proetheto--fore-ordained him to this, in the counsels of his love from eternity, appointed, anointed him to it, qualified him for it, and has exhibited him to a guilty world as their propitiation. See Matthew 3:17; Matthew 17:5. [3.] That by faith in his blood we become interested in this propitiation. Christ is the propitiation; there is the healing plaster provided. Faith is the applying of this plaster to the wounded soul. And this faith in the business of justification hath a special regard to the blood of Christ, as that which made the atonement; for such was the divine appointment that without blood there should be no remission, and no blood but his would do it effectually. Here may be an allusion to the sprinkling of the blood of the sacrifices under the law, as Exodus 24:8. Faith is the bunch of hyssop, and the blood of Christ is the blood of sprinkling. [4.] That all who by faith are interested in this propitiation have the remission of their sins that are past. It was for this that Christ was set forth to be a propitiation, in order to remission, to which the reprieves of his patience and forbearance were a very encouraging preface. Through the forbearance of God. Divine patience has kept us out of hell, that we might have space to repent, and get to heaven. Some refer the sins that are past to the sins of the Old-Testament saints, which were pardoned for the sake of the atonement which Christ in the fulness of time was to make, which looked backward as well as forward. Past through the forbearance of God. It is owing to the divine forbearance that we were not taken in the very act of sin. Several Greek copies make en te anoche tou Theou--through the forbearance of God, to begin Romans 3:26; Romans 3:26, and they denote two precious fruits of Christ's merit and God's grace:--Remission: dia ten paresin--for the remission; and reprieves: the forbearance of God. It is owing to the master's goodness and the dresser's mediation that barren trees are let alone in the vineyard; and in both God's righteousness is declared, in that without a mediator and a propitiation he would not only not pardon, but not so much as forbear, not spare a moment; it is owning to Christ that there is ever a sinner on this side hell. [5.] That God does in all this declare his righteousness. This he insists upon with a great deal of emphasis: To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness. It is repeated, as that which has in it something surprising. He declares his righteousness, First, In the propitiation itself. Never was there such a demonstration of the justice and holiness of God as there was in the death of Christ. It appears that he hates sin, when nothing less than the blood of Christ would satisfy for it. Finding sin, though but imputed, upon his own Son, he did not spare him, because he had made himself sin for us, 2 Corinthians 5:21. The iniquities of us all being laid upon him, though he was the Son of his love, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him, Isaiah 53:10. Secondly, In the pardon upon that propitiation; so it follows, by way of explication: That he might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth. Mercy and truth are so met together, righteousness and peace have so kissed each other, that it is now become not only an act of grace and mercy, but an act of righteousness, in God, to pardon the sins of penitent believers, having accepted the satisfaction that Christ by dying made to his justice for them. It would not comport with his justice to demand the debt of the principal when the surety has paid it and he has accepted that payment in full satisfaction. See 1 John 1:9. He is just, that is, faithful to his word.

      (3.) It is for God's glory; for boasting is thus excluded, Romans 3:27; Romans 3:27. God will have the great work of the justification and salvation of sinners carried on from first to last in such a way as to exclude boasting, that no flesh may glory in his presence, 1 Corinthians 1:29-31. Now, if justification were by the works of the law, boasting would not be excluded. How should it? If we were saved by our own works, we might put the crown upon our own heads. But the law of faith, that is, the way of justification by faith, doth for ever exclude boasting; for faith is a depending, self-emptying, self-denying grace, and casts every crown before the throne; therefore it is most for God's glory that thus we should be justified. Observe, He speaks of the law of faith. Believers are not left lawless: faith is a law, it is a working grace, wherever it is in truth; and yet, because it acts in a strict and close dependence upon Jesus Christ, it excludes boasting.

      From all this he draws this conclusion (Romans 3:28; Romans 3:28): That a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.

      III. In the close of the chapter he shows the extent of this privilege of justification by faith, and that it is not the peculiar privilege of the Jews, but pertains to the Gentiles also; for he had said (Romans 3:22; Romans 3:22) that there is no difference: and as to this, 1. He asserts and proves it (Romans 3:29; Romans 3:29): Is he the God of the Jews only? He argues from the absurdity of such a supposition. Can it be imagined that a God of infinite love and mercy should limit and confine his favours to that little perverse people of the Jews, leaving all the rest of the children of men in a condition eternally desperate? This would by no means agree with the idea we have of the divine goodness, for his tender mercies are over all his works; therefore it is one God of grace that justifies the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumcision through faith, that is, both in one and the same way. However the Jews, in favour of themselves, will needs fancy a difference, really there is no more difference than between by and through, that is, no difference at all. 2. He obviates an objection (Romans 3:31; Romans 3:31), as if this doctrine did nullify the law, which they knew came from God: "No," says he, "though we do say that the law will not justify us, yet we do not therefore say that it was given in vain, or is of no use to us; no, we establish the right use of the law, and secure its standing, by fixing it on the right basis. The law is still of use to convince us of what is past, and to direct us for the future; though we cannot be saved by it as a covenant, yet we own it, and submit to it, as a rule in the hand of the Mediator, subordinate to the law of grace; and so are so far from overthrowing that we establish the law." Let those consider this who deny the obligation of the moral law on believers.

Kelly Commentary on Books of the Bible

The circumstances under which the epistle to the Romans was written gave occasion to the most thorough and comprehensive unfolding, not of the church, but of Christianity. No apostle had ever yet visited Rome. There was somewhat as yet lacking to the saints there; but even this was ordered of God to call forth from the Holy Ghost an epistle which more than any other approaches a complete treatise on the fundamentals of Christian doctrine, and especially as to righteousness.

Would we follow up the heights of heavenly truth, would we sound the depths of Christian experience, would we survey the workings of the Spirit of God in the Church, would we bow before the glories of the person of Christ, or learn His manifold offices, we must look elsewhere in the writings of the New Testament no doubt, but elsewhere rather than here.

The condition of the Roman saints called for a setting forth of the gospel of God; but this object, in order to be rightly understood and appreciated, leads the apostle into a display of the condition of man. We have God and man in presence, so to speak. Nothing can be more simple and essential. Although there is undoubtedly that profoundness which must accompany every revelation of God, and especially in connection with Christ as now manifested, still we have God adapting Himself to the very first wants of a renewed soul nay, even to the wretchedness of souls without God, without any real knowledge either of themselves or of Him. Not, of course, that the Roman saints were in this condition; but that God, writing by the apostle to them, seizes the opportunity to lay bare man's state as well as His own grace.

Romans 1:1-32. From the very first we have these characteristics of the epistle disclosing themselves. The apostle writes with the full assertion of his own apostolic dignity, but as a servant also. "Paul, a bondman of Jesus Christ" an apostle "called," not born, still less as educated or appointed of man, but an apostle "called," as he says "separated unto the gospel of God, which he had promised afore by his prophets." The connection is fully owned with that which had been from God of old. No fresh revelations from God can nullify those which preceded them; but as the prophets looked onward to what was coming, so is the gospel already come, supported by the past. There is mutual confirmation. Nevertheless, what is in nowise the same as what was or what will be. The past prepared the way, as it is said here, "which God had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, [here we have the great central object of God's gospel, even the person of Christ, God's Son,] which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh" (ver. 3). This last relation was the direct subject of the prophetic testimony, and Jesus had come accordingly. He was the promised Messiah, born King of the Jews.

But there was far more in Jesus. He was "declared," says the apostle, "to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead" ( ἐξ ἀναστάσεως νεκρῶν , ver. 4). It was the Son of God not merely as dealing with the powers of the earth, Jehovah's King on the holy hill of Zion, but after a far deeper manner. For, essentially associated as He is with the glory of God the Father, the full deliverance of souls from the realm of death was His also. In this too we have the blessed connection of the Spirit (here peculiarly designated, for special reasons, "the Spirit of holiness"). That same energy of the Holy Ghost which had displayed itself in Jesus, when He walked in holiness here below, was demonstrated in resurrection; and not merely in His own rising from the dead, but in raising such at any time no doubt, though most signally and triumphantly displayed in His own resurrection.

The bearing of this on the contents and main doctrine of the epistle will appear abundantly by-and-by. Let me refer in passing to a few points more in the introduction, in order to link them together with that which the Spirit was furnishing to the Roman saints, as well as to show the admirable perfectness of every word that inspiration has given us. I do not mean by this its truth merely, but its exquisite suitability; so that the opening address commences the theme in hand, and insinuates that particular line of truth which the Holy Spirit sees fit to pursue throughout. To this then the apostle comes, after having spoken of the divine favour shown himself, both when a sinner, and now in his own special place of serving the Lord Jesus. "By whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith." This was no question of legal obedience, although the law came from Jehovah. Paul's joy and boast were in the gospel of God. So therefore it addressed itself to the obedience of faith; not by this meaning practice, still less according to the measure of a man's duty, but that which is at the root of all practice faith-obedience obedience of heart and will, renewed by divine grace, which accepts the truth of God. To man this is the hardest of all obedience; but when once secured, it leads peacefully into the obedience of every day. If slurred over, as it too often is in souls, it invariably leaves practical obedience lame, and halt, and blind.

It was for this then that Paul describes himself as apostle. And as it is for obedience of faith, it was not in anywise restricted to the Jewish people "among all nations, for his (Christ's) name: among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ" (verses 5, 6). He loved even here at the threshold to show the breadth of God's grace. If he was called, so were they he an apostle, they not apostles but saints; but still, for them as for him, all flowed out of the same mighty love, of God. "To all that be at Rome, beloved of God, called saints" (ver. 7). To these then he wishes, as was his wont, the fresh flow of that source and stream of divine blessing which Christ has made to be household bread to us: "Grace and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ" (ver. 7). Then, from ver. 8, after thanking God through Jesus for their faith spoken of everywhere, and telling them of his prayers for them, he briefly discloses the desire of his heart about them his long-cherished hope according to the grace of the gospel to reach Rome his confidence in the love of God that through him some spiritual gift would be imparted to them, that they might be established, and, according to the spirit of grace which filled his own heart, that he too might be comforted together with them "by the mutual faith both of you and me" (vv. 11, 12). There is nothing like the grace of God for producing the truest humility, the humility that not only descends to the lowest level of sinners to do them good, but which is itself the fruit of deliverance from that self-love which puffs itself or lowers others. Witness the common joy that grace gives an apostle with saints be had never seen, so that even he should be comforted as well as they by their mutual faith. He would not therefore have them ignorant how they had lain on his heart for a visit (ver. 13). He was debtor both to the Greeks and the barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise; he was ready, as far as he was concerned, to preach the gospel to those that were at Rome also (ver. 14, 15). Even the saints there would have been all the better for the gospel. It was not merely "to those at Rome," but "to you that be at Rome." Thus it is a mistake to suppose that saints may not be benefited by a better understanding of the gospel, at least as Paul preached it. Accordingly he tells them now what reason he had to speak thus strongly, not of the more advanced truths, but of the good news. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (ver. 16).

Observe, the gospel is not simply remission of sins, nor is it only peace with God, but "the power of God unto salvation." Now I take this opportunity of pressing on all that are here to beware of contracted views of "salvation." Beware that you do not confound it with souls being quickened, or even brought into joy. Salvation supposes not this only, but a great deal more. There is hardly any phraseology that tends to more injury of souls in these matters than a loose way of talking of salvation. "At any rate he is a saved soul," we hear. "The man has not got anything like settled peace with God; perhaps he hardly knows his sins forgiven; but at least he is a saved soul." Here is an instance of what is so reprehensible. This is precisely what salvation does not mean; and I would strongly press it on all that hear me, more particularly on those that have to do with the work of the Lord, and of course ardently desire to labour intelligently; and this not alone for the conversion, but for the establishment and deliverance of souls. Nothing less, I am persuaded, than this full blessing is the line that God has given to those who have followed Christ without the camp, and who, having been set free from the contracted ways of men, desire to enter into the largeness and at the same time the profound wisdom of every word of God. Let us not stumble at the starting-point, but leave room for the due extent and depth of "salvation" in the gospel.

There is no need of dwelling now on "salvation" as employed in the Old Testament, and in some parts of the New, as the gospels and Revelation particularly, where it is used for deliverance in power or even providence and present things. I confine myself to its doctrinal import, and the full Christian sense of the word; and I maintain that salvation signifies that deliverance for the believer which is the full consequence of the mighty work of Christ, apprehended not, of course, necessarily according to all its depth in God's eyes, but at any rate applied to the soul in the power of the Holy Ghost. It is not the awakening of conscience, however real; neither is it the attraction of heart by the grace of Christ, however blessed this may be. We ought therefore to bear in mind, that if a soul be not brought into conscious deliverance as the fruit of divine teaching, and founded on the work of Christ, we are very far from presenting the gospel as the apostle Paul glories in it, and delights that it should go forth. "I am not ashamed," etc.

And he gives his reason: "For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, The just shall live by faith." That is, it is the power of God unto salvation, not because it is victory (which at the beginning of the soul's career would only give importance to man even if possible, which it is not), but because it is "the righteousness of God." It is not God seeking, or man bringing righteousness. In the gospel there is revealed God's righteousness. Thus the introduction opened with Christ's person, and closes with God's righteousness. The law demanded, but could never receive righteousness from man. Christ is come, and has changed all. God is revealing a righteousness of His own in the gospel. It is God who now makes known a righteousness to man, instead of looking for any from man. Undoubtedly there are fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, and God values them I will not say from man, but from His saints; but here it is what, according to the apostle, God has for man. It is for the saints to learn, of course; but it is that which goes out in its own force and necessary aim to the need of man a divine righteousness, which justifies instead of condemning him who believes. It is "the power of God unto salvation." It is for the lost, therefore; for they it is who need salvation; and it is to save not merely to quicken, but to save; and this because in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed.

Hence it is, as he says, herein revealed "from faith," or by faith. It is the same form of expression exactly as in the beginning of Romans 5:1-21 "being justified by faith" ( ἐκ πίστεως ). But besides this he adds "to faith." The first of these phrases, "from faith," excludes the law; the second, "to faith," includes every one that has faith within the scope of God's righteousness. Justification is not from works of law. The righteousness of God is revealed from faith; and consequently, if there be faith in any soul, to this it is revealed, to faith wherever it may be. Hence, therefore, it was in no way limited to any particular nation, such as those that had already been under the law and government of God. It was a message that went out from God to sinners as such. Let man be what he might, or where he might, God's good news was for man. And to this agreed the testimony of the prophet. "The just shall live by faith" (not by law). Even where the law was, not by it but by faith the just lived. Did Gentiles believe? They too should live. Without faith there is neither justice nor life that God owns; where faith is, the rest will surely follow.

This accordingly leads the apostle into the earlier portion of his great argument, and first of all in a preparatory way. Here we pass out of the introduction of the epistle. "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness" (ver. 18). This is what made the gospel to be so sweet and precious, and, what is more, absolutely necessary, if he would escape certain and eternal ruin. There is no hope for man otherwise; for the gospel is not all that is now made known. Not only is God's righteousness revealed, but also His wrath. It is not said to be revealed in the gospel. The gospel means His glad tidings for man. The wrath of God could not possibly be glad tidings. It is true, it is needful for man to learn; but in nowise is it good news. There is then the solemn truth also of divine wrath. It is not yet executed. It is "revealed," and this too "from heaven." There is no question of a people on earth, and of God's wrath breaking out in one form or another against human evil in this life. The earth, or, at least, the Jewish nation, had been familiar with such dealings of God in times past. But now it is "the wrath of God from heaven;" and consequently it is in view of eternal things, and not of those that touch present life on the earth.

Hence, as God's wrath is revealed from heaven, it is against every form of impiety "against all ungodliness." Besides this, which seems to be a most comprehensive expression for embracing every sort and degree of human iniquity, we have one very specifically named. It is against the "unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness." To hold the truth in unrighteousness would be no security. Alas! we know how this was in Israel, how it might be, and has been, in Christendom. God pronounces against the unrighteousness of such; for if the knowledge, however exact, of God's revealed mind was accompanied by no renewal of the heart, if it was without life towards God, all must be vain. Man is only so much the worse for knowing the truth, if he holds it ever so fast with unrighteousness. There are some that find a difficulty here, because the expression "to hold" means holding firmly. But it is quite possible for the unconverted to be tenacious of the truth, yet unrighteous in their ways; and so much the worse for them. Not thus does God deal with souls. If His grace attract, His truth humbles, and leaves no room for vain boasting and self-confidence. What He does is to pierce and penetrate the man's conscience. If one may so say, He thus holds the man, instead of letting the man presume that he is holding fast the truth. The inner man is dealt with, and searched through and through.

Nothing of this is intended in the class that is here brought before us. They are merely persons who plume themselves on their orthodoxy, but in a wholly unrenewed condition. Such men have never been wanting since the truth has shone on this world; still less are they now. But the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against them pre-eminently. The judgments of God will fall on man as man, but the heaviest blows are reserved for Christendom. There the truth is held, and apparently with firmness too. This, however, will be put to the test by-and-by. But for the time it is held fast, though in unrighteousness. Thus the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against (not only the open ungodliness of men, but) the orthodox unrighteousness of those that hold the truth in unrighteousness.

And this leads the apostle into the moral history of man the proof both of his inexcusable guilt, and of his extreme need of redemption. He begins with the great epoch of the dispensations of God (that is, the ages since the flood). We cannot speak of the state of things before the flood as a dispensation. There was a most important trial of man in the person of Adam; but after this, what dispensation was there? What were the principles of it? No man can tell. The truth is, those are altogether mistaken who call it so. But after the flood man as such was put under certain conditions the whole race. Man became the object, first, of general dealings of God under Noah; next, of His special ways in the calling of Abraham and of his family. And what led to the call of Abraham, of whom we hear much in the epistle to the Romans as elsewhere, was the departure of man into idolatry. Man despised at first the outward testimony of God, His eternal power and Godhead, in the creation above and around him (verses 19, 20). Moreover, He gave up the knowledge of God that had been handed down from father to son (ver. 21). The downfall of man, when he thus abandoned God, was most rapid and profound; and the Holy Spirit traces this solemnly to the end ofRomans 1:1-32; Romans 1:1-32 with no needless words, in a few energetic strokes summing up that which is abundantly confirmed (but in how different a manner!) by all that remains of the ancient world. "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man," etc. (verses 22-32.) Thus corruption not only overspread morals, but became an integral part of the religion of men, and had thus a quasi-divine sanction. Hence the depravity of the heathen found little or no cheek from conscience, because it was bound up with all that took the shape of God before their mind. There was no part of heathenism practically viewed now, so corrupting as that which had to do with the objects of its worship. Thus, the true God being lost, all was lost, and man's downward career becomes the most painful and humiliating object, unless it be, indeed, that which we have to feel where men, without renewal of heart, espouse in pride of mind the truth with nothing but unrighteousness.

In the beginning ofRomans 2:1-29; Romans 2:1-29 we have man pretending to righteousness. Still, it is "man" not yet exactly the Jew, but man who had profited, it might be, by whatever the Jew had; at the least, by the workings of natural conscience. But natural conscience, although it may detect evil, never leads one into the inward possession and enjoyment of good never brings the soul to God. Accordingly, in chapter 2 the Holy Spirit shows us man satisfying himself with pronouncing on what is right and wrong moralizing for others, but nothing more. Now God must have reality in the man himself. The gospel, instead of treating this as a light matter, alone vindicates God in these eternal ways of His, in that which must be in him who stands in relationship with God. Hence therefore, the apostle, with divine wisdom, opens this to us before the blessed relief and deliverance which the gospel reveals to us. In the most solemn way he appeals to man with the demand, whether he thinks that God will look complacently on that which barely judges another, but which allows the practice of evil in the man himself (Romans 2:1-3). Such moral judgments will, no doubt, be used to leave man without excuse; they can never suit or satisfy God.

Then the apostle introduces the ground, certainty, and character of God's judgment (verses 4-16). He "will render to every man according to his deeds: to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: to them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first and also of the Gentile."

It is not here a question of how a man is to be saved, but of God's indispensable moral judgment, which the gospel, instead of weakening asserts according to the holiness and truth of God. It will be observed therefore, that in this connection the apostle shows the place both of conscience and of the law, that God in judging will take into full consideration the circumstances and condition of every soul of man. At the same time he connects, in a singularly interesting manner, this disclosure of the principles of the eternal judgment of God with what he calls "my gospel." This also is a most important truth, my brethren, to bear in mind. The gospel at its height in no wise weakens but maintains the moral manifestation of what God is. The legal institutions were associated with temporal judgment. The gospel, as now revealed in the New Testament, has linked with it, though not contained in it, the revelation of divine wrath from heaven, and this, you will observe, according to Paul's gospel. It is evident, therefore, that dispensational position will not suffice for God, who holds to His own unchangeable estimate of good and evil, and who judges the more stringently according to the measure of advantage possessed.

But thus the way is now clear for bringing the Jew into the discussion. "But if [for so it should be read] thou art named a Jew," etc. (ver. 17.) It was not merely, that he had better light. He had this, of course, in a revelation that was from God; he had law; he had prophets; he had divine institutions. It was not merely better light in the conscience, which might be elsewhere, as is supposed in the early verses of our chapter; but the Jew's position was directly and unquestionably one of divine tests applied to man's estate. Alas! the Jew was none the better for this, unless there were the submission of his conscience to God. Increase of privileges can never avail without the soul's self-judgment before the mercy of God. Rather does it add to his guilt: such is man's evil state and will. Accordingly, in the end of the chapter, he shows that this is most true as applied to the moral judgment of the Jew; that uone so much dishonoured God as wicked Jews, their own Scripture attesting it; that position went for nothing in such, while the lack of it would not annul the Gentile's righteousness, which would indeed condemn the more unfaithful Israel; in short, that one must be a Jew inwardly to avail, and circumcision be of the heart, in spirit, not in letter, whose praise is of God, and not of men.

The question then is raised in the beginning ofRomans 3:1-31; Romans 3:1-31, If this be so, what is the superiority of the Jew? Where lies the value of belonging to the circumcised people of God? The apostle allows this privilege to be great, specially in having the Scriptures, but turns the argument against the boasters. We need not here enter into the details; but on the surface we see how the apostle brings all down to that which is of the deepest interest to every soul. He deals with the Jew from his own Scripture (verses 9-19). Did the Jews take the ground of exclusively having that word of God the law? Granted that it is so, at once and fully. To whom, then, did the law address itself? To those that were under it, to be sure. It pronounced on the Jew then. It was the boast of the Jews that the law spoke about them; that the Gentiles had no right to it, and were but presuming on what belonged to God's chosen people. The apostle applies this according to divine wisdom. Then your principle is your condemnation. What the law says, it speaks to those under it. What, then, is its voice? That there is none righteous, none that doeth good, none that understandeth. Of whom does it declare all this? Of the Jew by his own confession. Every mouth was stopped; the Jew by his own oracles, as the Gentile by their evident abominations, shown already. All the world was guilty before God.

Thus, having shown the Gentile in Romans 1:1-32 manifestly wrong, and hopelessly degraded to the last degree having laid bare the moral dilettantism of the philosophers, not one whit better in the sight of God, but rather the reverse having shown the Jew overwhelmed by the condemnation of the divine oracles in which he chiefly boasted, without real righteousness, and so much the more guilty for his special privileges, all now lies clear for bringing in the proper Christian message, the. gospel of God. "Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets" (verses 20, 21).

Here, again, the apostle takes up what he had but announced in chapter 1 the righteousness of God. Let me call your attention again to its force. It is not the mercy of God., Many have contended that so it is, and to their own great loss, as well as to the weakening of the word of God. "Righteousness" never means mercy, not even the "righteousness of God." The meaning is not what was executed on Christ, but what is in virtue. of it. Undoubtedly divine judgment fell on Him; but this is not "the righteousness of God," as the apostle employs it in any part of his writings any more than here, though we know there could be no such thing as God's righteousness justifying the believer, if Christ had not borne the judgment of God. The expression means that righteousness which God can afford to display because of Christ's atonement. In short, it is what the words say "the righteousness of God," and this "by faith of Jesus Christ."

Hence it is wholly apart from the law, whilst witnessed to by the law and prophets; for the law with its types had looked onward to this new kind of righteousness; and the prophets had borne their testimony that it was at hand, but not then come. Now it was manifested, and not promised or predicted merely. Jesus had come and died; Jesus had been a propitiatory sacrifice; Jesus had borne the judgment of God because of the sins He bore. The righteousness of God, then, could now go forth in virtue of His blood. God was not satisfied alone. There is satisfaction; but the work of Christ goes a great deal farther. Therein God is both vindicated and glorified. By the cross God has a deeper moral glory than ever a glory that He thus acquired, if I may so say. He is, of course, the same absolutely perfect and unchangeable God of goodness; but His perfection has displayed itself in new and more glorious ways in Christ's death, in Him who humbled Himself, and was obedient even to the death of the cross.

God, therefore, having not the least hindrance to the manifestation of what He can be and is in merciful intervention on behalf of the worst of sinners, manifests it is His righteousness "by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe" (ver. 22). The former is the direction, and the latter the application. The direction is "unto all;" the application is, of course, only to "them that believe;" but it is to all them that believe. As far as persons are concerned, there is no hindrance; Jew or Gentile makes no difference, as is expressly said, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the [passing over or praeter-mission, not] remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus" (verses 23-26). There is no simple mind that can evade the plain force of this last expression. The righteousness of God means that God is just, while at the same time He justifies the believer in Christ Jesus. It is His righteousness, or, in other words, His perfect consistency with Himself, which is always involved in the notion of righteousness. He is consistent with Himself when He is justifying sinners, or, more strictly, all those who believe in Jesus. He can meet the sinner, but He justifies the believer; and in this, instead of trenching on His glory, there is a deeper revelation and maintenance of it than if there never had been sin or a sinner.

Horribly offensive as sin is to God, and inexcusable in the creature, it is sin which has given occasion to the astonishing display of divine righteousness in justifying believers. It is not a question of His mercy merely; for this weakens the truth immensely, and perverts its character wholly. The righteousness of God flows from His mercy, of course; but its character and basis is righteousness. Christ's work of redemption deserves that God should act as He does in the gospel. Observe again, it is not victory here; for that would give place to human pride. It is not a soul's overcoming its difficulties, but a sinner's submission to the righteousness of God. It is God Himself who, infinitely glorified in the Lord that expiated our sins by His one sacrifice, remits them now, not looking for our victory, nor as yet even in leading us on to victory, but by faith in Jesus and His blood. God is proved thus divinely consistent with Himself in Christ Jesus, whom He has set forth a mercy-seat through faith in His blood.

Accordingly the apostle says that boast and works are completely set aside by this principle which affirms faith, apart from deeds of law, to be the means of relationship with God (verses 27, 28). Consequently the door is as open to the Gentile as to the Jew. The ground taken by a Jew for supposing God exclusively for Israel was, that they had the law, which was the measure of what God claimed from man; and this the Gentile had not. But such thoughts altogether vanish now, because, as the Gentile was unquestionably wicked and abominable, so from the law's express denunciation the Jew was universally guilty before God. Consequently all turned, not on what man should be for God, but what God can be and is, as revealed in the gospel, to man. This maintains both the glory and the moral universality of Him who will justify the circumcision by faith, not law, and the uncircumcision through their faith, if they believe the gospel. Nor does this in the slightest degree weaken the principle of law. On the contrary, the doctrine of faith establishes law as nothing else can; and for this simple reason, that if one who is guilty hopes to be saved spite of the broken law, it must be at the expense of the law that condemns his guilt; whereas the gospel shows no sparing of sin, but the most complete condemnation of it all, as charged on Him who shed His blood in atonement. The doctrine of faith therefore, which reposes on the cross, establishes law, instead of making it void, as every other principle must (verses 27-31).

But this is not the full extent of salvation. Accordingly we do not hear of salvation as such in Romans 3:1-31. There is laid down the most essential of all truths as a groundwork of salvation; namely, expiation. There is the vindication of God in His ways with the Old Testament believers. Their sins had been passed by. He could not have remitted heretofore. This would not have been just. And the blessedness of the gospel is, that it is (not merely an exercise of mercy, but also) divinely just. It would not have been righteous in any sense to have remitted the sins, until they were actually borne by One who could and did suffer for them. But now they were; and thus God vindicated Himself perfectly as to the past. But this great work of Christ was not and could not be a mere vindication of God; and we may find it otherwise developed in various parts of Scripture, which I here mention by the way to show the point at which we are arrived. God's righteousness was now manifested as to the past sins He had not brought into judgment through His forbearance, and yet more conspicuously in the present time, when He displayed His justice in justifying the believer.

But this is not all; and the objection of the Jew gives occasion for the apostle to bring out a fuller display of what God is. Did they fall back on Abraham? "What shall we then say that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God." Did the Jew fancy that the gospel makes very light of Abraham, and of the then dealings of God? Not so, says the apostle. Abraham is the proof of the value of faith in justification before God. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. There was no law there or then; for Abraham died long before God spoke from Sinai. He believed God and His word, with special approval on God's part; and his faith was counted as righteousness (ver. 3). And this was powerfully corroborated by the testimony of another great name in Israel (David), in Psalms 32:1-11. "For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. Thou art my hiding-place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye."

In the same way the apostle disposes of all pretence on the score of ordinances, especially circumcision. Not only was Abraham justified without law, but apart from that great sign of mortification of the flesh. Although circumcision began with Abraham, manifestly it had nothing to do with his righteousness, and at best was but the seal of the righteousness of faith which he had in an uncircumcised state. It could not therefore be the source or means of his righteousness. All then that believe, though uncircumcised, might claim him as father, assured that righteousness will be reckoned to them too. And he is father of circumcision in the best sense, not to Jews, but to believing Gentiles. Thus the discussion of Abraham strengthens the case in behalf of the uncircumcised who believe, to the overthrow of the greatest boast of the Jew. The appeal to their own inspired account of Abraham turned into a proof of the consistency of God's ways in justifying by faith, and hence in justifying the uncircumcised no less than the circumcision.

But there is more than this in Romans 4:1-25 He takes up a third feature of Abraham's case; that is, the connection of the promise with resurrection. Here it is not merely the negation of law and of circumcision, but we have the positive side. Law works wrath because it provokes transgression; grace makes the promise sure to all the seed, not only because faith is open to the Gentile and Jew alike, but because God is looked to as a quickener of the dead. What gives glory to God like this? Abraham believed God when, according to nature, it was impossible for him or for Sarah to have a child. The quickening power of God therefore was here set forth, of course historically in a way connected with this life and a posterity on earth, but nevertheless a very just and true sign of God's power for the believer the quickening energy of God after a still more blessed sort. And this leads us to see not only where there was an analogy with those who believe in a promised Saviour, but also to a weighty difference. And this lies in the fact that Abraham believed God before he had the son, being fully persuaded that what He had promised He was able to perform. and therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness. But we believe on Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. It is done. already. It is not here believing on Jesus, but on God who has proved what He is to us in raisin, from among the dead Him who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification (verses 13-25).

This brings out a most emphatic truth and special side of Christianity. Christianity is not a system of promise, but rather of promise accomplished in Christ. Hence it is essentially founded on the gift not only of a Saviour who would interpose, in the mercy of God, to bear our sins, but of One who is already revealed, and the work done and accepted, and this known in the fact that God Himself has interposed to raise Him from among the dead a bright and momentous thing to press on souls, as indeed we find the apostles insisting on it throughout the Acts. Were it merely Romans 3:1-31 there could not be full peace with God as there is. One might know a most real clinging to Jesus; but this would not set the heart at ease with God. The soul may feel the blood of Jesus to be a yet deeper want; but this alone does not give peace with God. In such a condition what has been found in Jesus is too often misused to make a kind of difference, so to speak, between the Saviour on the one hand, and God on the other ruinous always to the enjoyment of the full blessing of the gospel. Now there is no way in which God could lay a basis for peace with Himself more blessed than as He has done it. No longer does the question exist of requiring an expiation. That is the first necessity for the sinner with God. But we have had it fully in Romans 3:1-31. Now it is the positive power of God in raising up from the dead Him that was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justifying. The whole work is done.

The soul therefore now is represented for the first time as already justified and in possession of peace with God. This is a state of mind, and not the necessary or immediate fruit of Romans 3:1-31, but is based on the truth of Romans 4:1-25 as well as 3. There never can be solid peace with God without both. A soul may as truly, no doubt, be put into relationship with God be made very happy, it may be; but it is not what Scripture calls "peace with God." Therefore it is here for the first time that we find salvation spoken of in the grand results that are now brought before us in Romans 5:1-11. "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." There is entrance into favour, and nothing but favour. The believer is not put under law, you will observe, but under grace, which is the precise reverse of law. The soul is brought into peace with God, as it finds its standing in the grace of God, and, more than that, rejoices in hope of the glory of God. Such is the doctrine and the fact. It is not merely a call then; but as we have by our Lord Jesus Christ our access into the favour wherein we stand, so there is positive boasting in the hope of the glory of God. For it may have been noticed from chapter 3 to chapter 5, that nothing but fitness for the glory of God will do now. It is not a question of creature-standing. This passed away with man when he sinned. Now that God has revealed Himself in the gospel, it is not what will suit man on earth, but what is worthy of the presence of the glory of God. Nevertheless the apostle does not expressly mention heaven here. This was not suitable to the character of the epistle; but the glory of God he does. We all know where it is and must be for the Christian.

The consequences are thus pursued; first, the general place of the believer now, in all respects, in relation to the past, the present, and the future. His pathway follows; and he shows that the very troubles of the road become a distinct matter of boast. This was not a direct and intrinsic effect, of course, but the result of spiritual dealing for the soul. It was the Lord giving us the profit of sorrow, and ourselves bowing to the way and end of God in it, so that the result of tribulation should be rich and fruitful experience.

Then there is another and crowning part of the blessing: "And not only so, but also boasting in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the reconciliation." It is not only a blessing in its own direct character, or in indirect though real effects, but the Giver Himself is our joy, and boast, and glory. The consequences spiritually are blessed to the soul; how much more is it to Teach the source from which all flows! This, accordingly, is the essential spring of worship. The fruits of it are not expanded here; but, in point of fact, to joy in God is necessarily that which makes praise and adoration to be the simple and spontaneous exercise of the heart. In heaven it will fill us perfectly; but there is no more perfect joy there, nor anything. higher, if so high, in this epistle.

At this point we enter upon a most important part of the epistle, on which we must dwell for a little. It is no longer a question of man's guilt, but of his nature. Hence the apostle does not, as in the early chapters of this epistle, take up our sins, except as proofs and symptoms of sin. Accordingly, for the first time, the Spirit of God fromRomans 5:12; Romans 5:12 traces the mature of man to the head of the race. This brings in the contrast with the other Head, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom we have here not as One bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, but as the spring and chief of a new family. Hence, as is shown later in the chapter, Adam is a head characterized by disobedience, who brought in death, the just penalty of sin; as on the other hand we have Him of whom he was the type, Christ, the obedient man, who has brought in righteousness, and this after a singularly blessed sort and style "justification of life." Of it nothing has been heard till now. We have had justification, both by blood and also in virtue of Christ's resurrection. But "justification of life" goes farther, though involved in the latter, than the end of Romans 4:1-25; for now we learn that in the gospel there is not only a dealing with the guilt of those that are addressed in it; there is also a mighty work of God in the presenting the man in a new place before God, and in fact, too, for his faith, clearing him from all the consequences in which he finds himself as a man in the flesh here below.

It is here that you will find a great failure of Christendom as to this. Not that any part of the truth has escaped: it is the fatal brand of that "great house" that even the most elementary truth suffers the deepest injury; but as to this truth, it seems unknown altogether. I hope that brethren in Christ will bear with me if I press on them the importance of taking good heed to it that their souls are thoroughly grounded in this, the proper place of the Christian by Christ's death and resurrection. It must not be, assumed too readily. There is a disposition continually to imagine that what is frequently spoken of must be understood; but experience will soon show that this is not the case. Even those that seek a place of separation to the Lord outside that which is now hurrying on souls to destruction are, nevertheless, deeply affected by the condition of that Christendom in which we find ourselves.

Here, then, it is not a question at all of pardon or remission. First of all the apostle points out that death has come in, and that this was no consequence of law, but before it. Sin was in the world between Adam and Moses, when the law was not. This clearly takes in man, it will be observed; and this is his grand point now. The contrast of Christ with Adam takes in man universally as well as the Christian; and man in sin, alas! was true, accordingly, before the law, right through the law, and ever since the law. The apostle is therefore plainly in presence of the broadest possible grounds of comparison, though we shall find more too.

But the Jew might argue that it was an unjust thing in principle this gospel, these tidings of which the apostle was so full; for why should one man affect many, yea, all? "Not so," replies the apostle. Why should this be so strange and incredible to you? for on your own showing, according to that word to which we all bow, you must admit that one man's sin brought in universal moral ruin and death. Proud as you may be of that which distinguishes you, it is hard to make sin and death peculiar to you, nor can you connect them even with the law particularly: the race of man is in question, and not Israel alone. There is nothing that proves this so convincingly as the book of Genesis; and the apostle, by the Spirit of God, calmly but triumphantly summons the Jewish Scriptures to demonstrate that which the Jews were so strenuously denying. Their own Scriptures maintained, as nothing else could, that all the wretchedness which is now found in the world, and the condemnation which hangs over the race, is the fruit of one man, and indeed of one act.

Now, if it was righteous in God (and who will gainsay it?) to deal with the whole posterity of Adam as involved in death because of one, their common father, who could deny the consistency of one man's saving? who would defraud God of that which He delights in the blessedness of bringing in deliverance by that One man, of whom Adam was the image? Accordingly, then, he confronts the unquestionable truth, admitted by every Israelite, of the universal havoc by one man everywhere with the One man who has brought in (not pardon only, but, as we shall find) eternal life and liberty liberty now in the free gift of life, but a liberty that will never cease for the soul's enjoyment until it has embraced the very body that still groans, and this because of the Holy Ghost who dwells in it.

Here, then, it is a comparison of the two great heads Adam and Christ, and the immeasurable superiority of the second man is shown. That is, it is not merely pardon of past sins, but deliverance from sin, and in due time from all its consequences. The apostle has come now to the nature. This is the essential point. It is the thing which troubles a renewed conscientious soul above all, because of his surprise at finding the deep evil of the flesh and its mind after having proved the great grace of God in the gift of Christ. If I am thus pitied of God, if so truly and completely a justified man, if I am really an object of God's eternal favour, how can I have such a sense of continual evil? why am I still under bondage and misery from the constant evil of my nature, over which I seem to have no power whatever? Has God then no delivering power from this? The answer is found in this portion of our epistle (that is, from the middle of chapter 5).

Having shown first, then, the sources and the character of the blessing in general as far as regards deliverance, the apostle sums up the result in the end of the chapter: "That as sin hath reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life," the point being justification of life now through Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is applied in the two chapters that follow. There are two things that might make insuperable difficulty: the one is the obstacle of sin in the nature to practical holiness; the other is the provocation and condemnation of the law. Now the doctrine which we saw asserted in the latter part ofRomans 5:1-21; Romans 5:1-21 is applied to both. First, as to practical holiness, it is not merely that Christ has died for my sins, but that even in the initiatory act of baptism the truth set forth there is that I am dead. It is not, as in Ephesians 2:1-22, dead in sins, which would be nothing to the purpose. This is all perfectly true true of a Jew as of a pagan true of any unrenewed man that never heard of a Saviour. But what is testified by Christian baptism is Christ's death. "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized unto Jesus Christ were baptized unto his death?" Thereby is identification with His death. "Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." The man who, being baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, or Christian baptism, would assert any license to sin because it is in his nature, as if it were therefore an inevitable necessity, denies the real and evident meaning of his baptism. That act denoted not even the washing away of our sins by the blood of Jesus, which would not apply to the case, nor in any adequate way meet the question of nature. What baptism sets forth is more than that, and is justly found, not in Romans 3:1-31, but inRomans 6:1-23; Romans 6:1-23. There is no inconsistency in Ananias's word to the apostle Paul "wash away thy sins, calling upon the name of the Lord." There is water as well as blood, and to that, not to this, the washing here refers. But there is more, which Paul afterwards insisted on. That was said to Paul, rather than what was taught by Paul. What the apostle had given him in fulness was the great truth, however fundamental it may be, that I am entitled, and even called on in the name of the Lord Jesus, to know that I am dead to sin; not that I must die, but that I am dead that my baptism means nothing less than this, and is shorn of its most emphatic point if limited merely to Christ's dying for my sins. It is not so alone; but in His death, unto which I am baptized, I am dead to sin. And "how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?" Hence, then, we find that the whole chapter is founded on this truth. "Shall we sin," says he, proceeding yet farther (ver. 15), "because we are not under the law, but under grace?" This were indeed to deny the value of His death, and of that newness of life we have in Him risen, and a return to bondage of the worst description.

In Romans 7:1-25 we have the subject of the law discussed for practice as well as in principle, and there again meet with the same weapon of tried and unfailing temper. It is no longer blood, but death Christ's death and resurrection. The figure of the relationship of husband and wife is introduced in order to make the matter plain. Death, and nothing short of it, rightly dissolves the bond. We accordingly are dead, says he, to the law; not (as no doubt almost all of us know) that the law dies, but that we are dead to the law in the death of Christ. Compare verse 6 (where the margin, not the text, is substantially correct) with verse 4. Such is the principle. The rest of the chapter (7-25) is an instructive episode, in which the impotence and the misery of the renewed mind which attempts practice under law are fully argued out, till deliverance (not pardon) is found in Christ.

Thus the latter portion of the chapter is not doctrine exactly, but the proof of the difficulties of a soul who has not realised death to the law by the body of Christ. Did this seem to treat the law that condemned as an evil thing? Not so, says the apostle; it is because of the evil of the nature, not of the law. The law never delivers; it condemns and kills us. It was meant to make sin exceeding sinful. Hence, what he is here discussing is not remission of sins, but deliverance from sin. No wonder, if souls confound the two things together, that they never know deliverance in practice. Conscious deliverance, to be solid according to God, must be in the line of His truth. In vain will you preach Romans 3:1-31, or even 4 alone, for souls to know themselves consciously and holily set free.

From verse 14 there is an advance. There we find Christian knowledge as to the matter introduced; but still it is the knowledge of one who is not in this state pronouncing on one who is. You must carefully guard against the notion of its being a question of Paul's own experience, because he says, "I had not known," "I was alive," etc. There is no good reason for such an assumption, but much against it. It might be more or less any man's lot to learn. It is not meant that Paul knew nothing of this; but that the ground of inference, and the general theory built up, are alike mistaken. We have Paul informing us that he transfers sometimes in a figure to himself that which was in no wise necessarily his own experience, and perhaps had not been so at any time. But this may be comparatively a light question. The great point is to note the true picture given us of a soul quickened, but labouring and miserable under law, not at all consciously delivered. The last verses of the chapter, however, bring in the deliverance not yet the fulness of it, but the hinge, so to speak. The discovery is made that the source of the internal misery was that the mind, though renewed, was occupied with the law as a means of dealing with, flesh. Hence the very fact of being renewed makes one sensible of a far more intense misery than ever, while there is no power until the soul looks right outside self to Him who is dead and risen, who has anticipated the difficulty, and alone gives the full answer to all wants.

Romans 8:1-39 displays this comforting truth in its fulness. From the first verse we have the application of the dead and risen Christ to the soul, till in verse 11 we see the power of the Holy Ghost, which brings the soul into this liberty now, applied by-and-by to the body, when there will be the complete deliverance. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." A wondrous way, but most blessed! And there (for such was the point) it was the complete condemnation of this evil thing, the nature in its present state, so as, nevertheless, to set the believer as before God's judgment free from itself as well as its consequences. This God has wrought in Christ. It is not in any degree settled as to itself by His blood. The shedding of His blood was absolutely necessary: without that precious expiation all else had been vain and impossible. But there is much more in Christ than that to which too many souls restrict themselves, not less to their own loss than to His dishonour. God has condemned the flesh. And here it may be repeated that it is no question of pardoning the sinner, but of condemning the fallen nature; and this so as to give the soul both power and a righteous immunity from all internal anguish about it. For the truth is that God has in Christ condemned sin, and this for sin definitely; so that He has nothing more to do in condemnation of that root of evil. What a title, then, God gives me now in beholding Christ, no longer dead but risen, to have it settled before my soul that I am in Him as He now is, where all questions are closed in peace and joy! For what remains unsolved by and in Christ? Once it was far otherwise. Before the cross there hung out the gravest question that ever was raised, and it needed settlement in this world; but in Christ sin is for ever abolished for the believer; and this not only in respect of what He has done, but in what He is. Till the cross, well might a converted soul be found groaning in misery at each fresh discovery of evil in himself. But now to faith all this is gone not lightly, but truly in the sight of God; so that he may live on a Saviour that is risen from the dead as his new life.

Accordingly Romans 8:1-39 pursues in the most practical manner the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. First of all, the groundwork of it is laid in the first four verses, the last of them leading into every-day walk. And it is well for those ignorant of it to know that here, in verse 4, the apostle speaks first of "walking not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." The latter clause in the first verse of the authorised version mars the sense. In the fourth verse this could not be absent; in the first verse it ought not to be present. Thus the deliverance is not merely for the joy of the soul, but also for strength in our walking after the Spirit, who has given and found a nature in which He delights, communicating withal His own delight in Christ, and making obedience to be the joyful service of the believer. The believer, therefore, unwittingly though really, dishonours the Saviour, if he be content to walk short of this standard and power; he is entitled and called to walk according to his place, and in the confidence of his deliverance in Christ Jesus before God.

Then the domains of flesh and Spirit are brought before us: the one characterized by sin and death practically now; the other by life, righteousness, and peace, which is, as we saw, to be crowned finally by the resurrection of these bodies of ours. The Holy Ghost, who now gives the soul its consciousness of deliverance from its place in Christ, is also the witness that the body too, the mortal body, shall be delivered in its time. "If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by [or because of] his Spirit that dwelleth in you."

Next, he enters upon another branch of the truth the Spirit not as a condition contrasted with flesh (these two, as we know, being always contrasted in Scripture), but as a power, a divine person that dwells in and bears His witness to the believer. His witness to our spirit is this, that we are children of God. But if children, we are His heirs. This accordingly leads, as connected with the deliverance of the body, to the inheritance we are to possess. The extent is what God Himself, so to speak, possesses the universe of God, whatever will be under Christ: and what will not? As He has made all, so He is heir of all. We are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.

Hence the action of the Spirit of God in a double point of view comes before us. As He is the spring of our joy, He is the power of sympathy in our sorrows, and the believer knows both. The faith of Christ has brought divine joy into his soul; but, in point of fact, he is traversing a world of infirmity, suffering, and grief. Wonderful to think the Spirit of God associates Himself with us in it all, deigning to give us divine feelings even in our poor and narrow hearts. This occupies the central part of the chapter, which then closes with the unfailing and faithful power of God for us in all our experiences here below. As He has given us through the blood of Jesus full remission, as we shall be saved by this life, as He has made us know even now nothing short of present conscious deliverance from every whit of evil that belongs to our very nature, as we have the Spirit the earnest of the glory to which we are destined, as we are the vessels of gracious sorrow in the midst of that from which we are not yet delivered but shall be, so now we have the certainty that, whatever betide, God is for us, and that nothing shall separate us from His love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Then, in Romans 9:1-33; Romans 10:1-21; Romans 11:1-36, the apostle handles a difficulty serious to any mind, especially to the Jew, who might readily feel that all this display of grace in Christ to the Gentile as much as to the Jew by the gospel seems to make very cheap the distinctive place of Israel as given of God. If the good news of God goes out to man, entirely blotting out the difference between a Jew and a Gentile, what becomes of His special promises to Abraham and to his seed? What about His word passed and sworn to the fathers? The apostle shows them with astonishing force at the starting-point that he was far from slighting their privileges. He lays down such a summary as no Jew ever gave since they were a nation. He brings out the peculiar glories of Israel according to the depth of the gospel as he knew and preached it; at least, of His person who is the object of faith now revealed. Far from denying or obscuring what they boasted of, he goes beyond them "Who are Israelites," says he, "to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all God blessed for ever." Here was the very truth that every Jew, as such, denied. What blindness! Their crowning glory was precisely what they would not hear of. What glory so rich as that of the Christ Himself duly appreciated? He was God over all blessed for ever, as well as their Messiah. Him who came in humiliation, according to their prophets, they might despise; but it was vain to deny that the same prophets bore witness to His divine glory. He was Emmanuel, yea, the Jehovah, God of Israel. Thus then, if Paul gave his own sense of Jewish privileges, there was no unbelieving Jew that rose up to his estimate of them.

But now, to meet the question that was raised, they pleaded the distinguishing promises to Israel. Upon what ground? Because they were sons of Abraham. But how, argues he, could this stand, seeing that Abraham had another son, just as much his child as Isaac? What did they say to Ishmaelites as joint-heirs? They would not hear of it. No, they cry, it is in Isaac's seed that the Jew was called. Yes, but this is another principle. If in Isaac only, it is a question of the seed, not that was born, but that was called. Consequently the call of God, and not the birth simply makes the real difference. Did they venture to plead that it must be not only the same father, but the same mother? The answer is, that this will not do one whit better; for when we come down to the next generation, it is apparent that the two sons of Isaac were sons of the same mother; nay, they were twins. What could be conceived closer or more even than this? Surely if equal birth-tie could ensure community of blessing if a charter from God depended on being sprung from the same father and mother, there was no case so strong, no claim so evident, as that of Esau to take the same rights as Jacob. Why would they not allow such a pretension? Was it not sure and evident that Israel could not take the promise on the ground of mere connection after the flesh? Birthright from the same father would let in Ishmael on the one hand, as from both parents it would secure the title of Esau on the other. Clearly, then, such ground is untenable. In point of fact, as he had hinted before, their true tenure was the call of God, who was free, if He pleased, to bring in other people. It became simply a question whether, in fact, God did call Gentiles, or whether He had revealed such intentions.

But he meets their proud exclusiveness in another way. He shows that, on the responsible ground of being His nation, they were wholly ruined. If the first book in the Bible showed that it was only the call of God that made Israel what they were, its second book as clearly proved that all was over with the called people, had it not been for the mercy of God. They set up the golden calf, and thus cast off the true God, their God, even in the desert. Did the call of God. then, go out to Gentiles? Has He mercy only for guilty Israel? Is there no call, no mercy, of God for any besides?

Hereupon he enters upon the direct proofs, and first cites Hosea as a witness. That early prophet tells Israel, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God. Jezreel, Lo-ruhamah, and Lo-ammi were of awful import for Israel; but, in presence of circumstances so disastrous, there should be not merely a people but sons of the living God, and then should Judah and Israel be gathered as one people under one head. The application of this was more evident to the Gentile than to the Jew. Compare Peter's use in1 Peter 2:10; 1 Peter 2:10. Finally he brings in Isaiah, showing that, far from retaining their blessing as an unbroken people, a remnant alone would be saved. Thus one could not fail to see these two weighty inferences: the bringing in to be God's sons of those that had not been His people, and the judgment and destruction of the great mass of His undoubted people. Of these only a remnant would be saved. On both sides therefore the apostle is meeting the grand points he had at heart to demonstrate from their own Scriptures.

For all this, as he presses further, there was the weightiest reason possible. God is gracious, but holy; He is faithful, but righteous. The apostle refers to Isaiah to show that God would "lay in Zion a stumbling-stone." It is in Zion that He lays it. It is not among the Gentiles, but in the honoured centre of the polity of Israel. There would be found a stumblingstone there. What was to be the stumbling-stone? Of course, it could hardly be the law: that was the boast of Israel. What was it? There could be but one satisfactory answer. The stumbling-stone was their despised and rejected Messiah. This was the key to their difficulties this alone, and fully explains their coming ruin as well as God's solemn warnings.

In the next chapter (Romans 10:1-21) he carries on the subject, showing in the most touching manner his affection for the people. He at the same time unfolds the essential difference between the righteousness of faith and that of law. He takes their own books, and proves from one of them (Deuteronomy) that in the ruin of Israel the resource is not going into the depths, nor going up to heaven. Christ indeed did both; and so the word was nigh them, in their mouth and in their heart. It is not doing, but believing; therefore it is what is proclaimed to them, and what they receive and believe. Along with this he gathers testimonies from more than one prophet. He quotes from Joel, that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. He quotes also from Isaiah "Whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed." And mark the force of it whosoever." The believer, whosoever he might be, should not be ashamed. Was it possible to limit this to Israel? But more than this "Whosoever shall call." There. is the double prophecy. Whosoever believed should not be ashamed; whosoever called should be saved. In both parts, as it may be observed, the door is opened to the Gentile.

But then again he intimates that the nature of the gospel is involved in the publishing of the glad tidings. It is not God having an earthly centre, and the peoples doming up to worship the Lord in Jerusalem. It is the going forth of His richest blessing. And where? How far? To the limits of the holy land? Far beyond. Psalms 19:1-14 is used in the most beautiful manner to insinuate that the limits are the world. Just as the sun in the heavens is not for one people or land alone, no more is the gospel. There is no language where their voice is not heard. "Yea verily, their sound went forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." The gospel goes forth universally. Jewish pretensions were therefore disposed of; not here by new and fuller revelations, but by this divinely skilful employment of their own Old Testament Scriptures.

Finally he comes to two other witnesses; as from the Psalms, so now from the law and the prophets. The first is Moses himself. Moses saith, "I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are no people," etc. How could the Jews say that this meant themselves? On the contrary, it was the Jew provoked by the Gentiles "By them that are no people, and by a foolish nation I will anger you." Did they deny that they were a foolish nation? Be it so then; it was a foolish nation by which Moses declared they should be angered. But this does not content the apostle, or rather the Spirit of God; for he goes on to point out that Isaiah "is very bold" in a similar way; that is, there is no concealing the truth of the matter. Isaiah says: "I was found of them who sought me not; I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me." The Jews were the last in the world to take such ground as this. It was undeniable that the Gentiles did not seek the Lord, nor ask after Him; and the prophet says that Jehovah was found of them that sought Him not, and was made manifest to them that asked not after Him. Nor is there only the manifest call of the Gentiles in this, but with no less clearness there is the rejection, at any rate for a time, of proud Israel. "But unto Israel he saith, All day long have I stretched out my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people."

Thus the proof was complete. The Gentiles the despised heathen were to be brought in; the self-satisfied Jews are left behind, justly and beyond question, if they believed the law and the prophets.

But did this satisfy the apostle? It was undoubtedly enough for present purposes. The past history of Israel was sketched inRomans 9:1-33; Romans 9:1-33; the present more immediately is before us inRomans 10:1-21; Romans 10:1-21. The future must be brought in by the grace of God; and this he accordingly gives us at the close of Romans 11:1-36. First, he raises the question, "Has God cast away his people?" Let it not be! Was he not himself, says Paul, a proof to the contrary? Then he enlarges, and points out that there is a remnant of grace in the worst of times. If God had absolutely cast away His people, would there be such mercy? There would be no remnant if justice took its course. The remnant proves, then, that even under judgment the rejection of Israel is not complete, but rather a pledge of future favour. This is the first ground.

The second plea is not that the rejection of Israel is only partial, however extensive, but that it is also temporary, and not definitive. This is to fall back on a principle he had already used. God was rather provoking Israel to jealousy by the call of the Gentiles. But if it were so, He had not done with them. Thus the first argument shows that the rejection was not total; the second, that it was but for a season.

But there is a third. Following up with the teaching of the olive-tree, he carries out the same thought of a remnant that abides on their own stock, and points to a re-instatement of the nation, And I would just observe by the way, that the Gentile cry that no Jew ever accepts the gospel in truth is a falsehood. Israel is indeed the only people of whom there is always a portion that believe. Time was when none of the English, nor French, nor of any other nation believed in the Saviour. There never was an hour since Israel's existence as a nation that God has not had His remnant of them. Such has been their singular fruit of promise; such even in the midst of all their misery it is at present. And as that little remnant is ever sustained by the grace of God, it is the standing pledge of their final blessedness through His mercy, whereon the apostle breaks out into raptures of thanksgiving to God. The day hastens when the Redeemer shall come to Zion. He shall come, says one Testament, out of Zion. He shall come to Zion, says the other. In both Old and New it is the same substantial testimony. Thither He shall come, and thence, go forth. He shall own that once glorious seat of royalty in Israel. Zion shall yet behold her mighty, divine, but once despised Deliverer; and when He thus comes, there will be a deliverance suited to His glory. All Israel shall be saved. God, therefore, had not cast off His people, but was employing the interval of their slip from their place, in consequence of their rejection of Christ, to call the Gentiles in sovereign mercy, after which Israel as a whole should be saved. "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? or who hath first liven to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever."

The rest of the epistle takes up the practical consequences of the great doctrine of God's righteousness, which had been now shown to be supported by, and in no wise inconsistent with, His promises to Israel. The whole history of Israel, past, present, and future falls in with, although quite distinct from, that which he had been expounding. Here I shall be very brief.

Romans 12:1-21 looks at the mutual duties of the saints. Romans 13:1-14; Romans 13:1-14 urges their duties towards what was outside them, more particularly to the powers that be, but also to men in general. Love is the great debt that we owe, which never can be paid, but which we should always be paying. The chapter closes with the day of the Lord in its practical force on the Christian walk. In Romans 14:1-23 and the beginning ofRomans 15:1-33; Romans 15:1-33 we have the delicate theme of Christian forbearance in its limits and largeness. The weak are not to judge the strong, and the strong are not to despise the weak. These things are matters of conscience, and depend much for their solution on the degree to which souls have attained. The subject terminates with the grand truth which must never be obscured by details that we are to receive, one another, as Christ has received us, to the glory of God. In the rest of chapter 15 the apostle dwells on the extent of his apostleship, renews his expression of the thought and hope of visiting Rome, and at the same time shows how well he remembered the need of the poor at Jerusalem. Romans 16:1-27; Romans 16:1-27 brings before us in the most. instructive and interesting manner the links that grace practically forms and maintains between the saints of God. Though he had never visited Rome, many of them were known personally. It is exquisite the delicate love with which he singles out distinctive features in each of the saints, men and women, that come before him. Would that the Lord would give us hearts to remember, as well as eyes to see, according to His own grace! Then follows a warning against those who bring in stumbling-blocks and offences. There is evil at work, and grace does not close the eye to danger; at the same time it is never under the pressure of the enemy, and there is the fullest confidence that the God of peace will break the power of Satan under the feet of the saints shortly.

Last of all, the apostle links up this fundamental treatise of divine righteousness in its doctrine, its dispensational bearings, and its exhortations to the walk of Christians, with higher truth, which it would not have been suitable then to bring out; for grace considers the state and the need of the saints. True ministry gives out not merely truth, but suited truth to the saints. At the same time the apostle does allude to that mystery which was not yet divulged at least, in this epistle; but he points from the foundations of eternal truth to those heavenly heights that were reserved for other communications in due time.