Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
Romans 3:26

Clarke's Commentary

Verse 26. To declare, I say, at this time — To manifest now, by the dispensation of the Gospel, his righteousness, his infinite mercy; and to manifest it in such a way, that he might still appear to be the just God, and yet the justifier, the pardoner, of him who believeth in Jesus. Here we learn that God designed to give the most evident displays both of his justice and mercy. Of his justice, in requiring a sacrifice, and absolutely refusing to give salvation to a lost world in any other way; and of his mercy, in providing THE sacrifice which his justice required. Thus, because Jesus was an atonement, a ransom price, for the sin of the world, therefore God can, consistently with his justice, pardon every soul that believeth in Jesus. This is the full discovery of God's righteousness, of his wonderful method of magnifying his law and making it honourable; of showing the infinite purity of his justice, and of saving a lost world.

Hitherto, from the ninth verse, Romans 3:9 the apostle had gone on without interruption, proving that Jew and Gentile were in a state of guilt and condemnation, and that they could be saved only by the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. The Jew, finding his boasted privileges all at stake, interrupts him, and asks:-

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

Whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God: for the showing, I say, of his righteousness at this present season: that he might himself be just and the justifier of him that is of faith of Jesus.

Here the final clause is rendered with respect to the Greek text mentioned in the English Revised Version (1885) margin, the reasons for which are set forth under the preceding verses. This is done to make it clear that Paul was not promising salvation to all them that believe in Christ, but to those who believe in such a way as to be participants in the "faith of Jesus," that is, by being in his spiritual body.

Whom God set forth … These words reveal the initiative of God in the offering of Christ for the world's sin; and, although there were others involved in that offering, one of the preeminent facts of Christianity looms in this verse, namely, that God paid the price of human redemption. There are no less than seven centers of initiative in the crucifixion of Christ, but the first of these is God himself, the fountain source of all authority and power. This is plainly evident thus:

We did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted (Isaiah 53:4).

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to brief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin (Isaiah 53:10).

The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6).

Paul's words here are worthy to be placed alongside the great Old Testament texts which identify God as the payer of the penalty of human transgression. Paul also wrote the Corinthians:

Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Thus, the profound promise of God to Abraham that "God will provide himself a lamb" (Genesis 22:8) was indeed fulfilled. It is precisely in this one tremendous fact that Christianity differs utterly from all the ethnic and natural religions, in which it is always man who pays and pays. It is the fairest maiden bound over to the dragon, the boldest Warrior who gives himself to save others; but in Christianity, God in Christ paid it all.

God was not alone in offering Christ; but God, Christ, Satan, the Jews, the Romans, all people and every man participated in it, as detailed below.

WHO CRUCIFIED CHRIST?

In the verse noted above, it is plain that God crucified Christ. It was the Eternal Father himself who "so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son" (John 3:16); and it was under the broad umbrella of his permissive will that the entire drama of Jesus' crucifixion was enacted upon the darkened summit of Golgotha. It should never be thought, therefore, even for a moment, that Satan was successful in thwarting the will of God upon the Cross. The Cross was in God's plan from the beginning; Jesus was "the lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Revelation 13:8). The very purpose of Christ's coming into the world was to die for the sins of the world. This is emphasized by Jesus' conversation on the Mount of Transfiguration, where he discussed his impending death with Elijah and Moses, not with any attitude of frustration, but in the view that Jesus' death was a magnificent thing which Christ himself should accomplish (Luke 9:30). The mystery of how God overrules all things, while at the same time allowing for the freedom and responsibility of the human will, appears here, as frequently, in scripture. God used evil men in the pursuit of their own evil designs, the pride and vanity of Israel, and even the devil himself, as well as the indifference and blindness of the Romans — all these things being made to subserve the divine purpose in Christ's death upon the cross. Yes, God crucified Christ.

Christ also crucified Christ, being the architect of his own death. This is clearly stated in Luke 9:30; but, beyond that, all of the details of his crucifixion, involving such things as: (1) the charge upon which he elected to receive the death penalty; (2) the exact time of his death, and (3) the place of his execution, were all specifically chosen by Jesus and ordered in keeping with his gracious will. The consent to die was Christ's alone to give; and he declared publicly:

I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one taketh it away from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again (John 10:17-18).

At the very moment when the Pharisees had decided against killing Christ during the Passover, Christ announced to his disciples that he was going up to Jerusalem to die (Matthew 26:1-5), thus bringing it about that his death coincided exactly with the slaying of the paschal lambs on the preparation of the Jewish Passover, antitype perfectly fulfilling the type, as God intended.

Satan crucified Christ, bruising his heel, according to the ancient prophecy in Genesis 3:15:

I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; and it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Yes, Satan crucified Christ. Who but the devil could have contrived the betrayal kiss, or induced a soldier to prick his own fingers gathering thorns for the brow of a man the governor had publicly declared to be innocent? Who but Satan could have inspired the atrocious ugliness, humiliation, suffering, shame, and repugnance that reached such a crescendo upon Calvary? If there was ever an instance of doing a complete job of diabolical cruelty upon any person in human history, Satan did it in the case of Jesus' death. The Cross must have exhausted the capacity of the devil himself for the heaping up of sufferings upon a single individual; for Satan did not merely contrive, with God's permission, the death of Christ on the Cross, he embellished the torture with every conceivable refinement of sadistic cruelty and humiliation. Jesus said, "I am the Alpha and the Omega" (Revelation 1:8), which is the English equivalent of "I am the `A' and the `Z.'" Certainly, Satan threw the alphabet at the Master on the Cross:

"A" is for his arrest, like a criminal hunted by the law.

"B" is for his betrayal by a friend.

"C" is for his crucifixion and the cross.

"D" is for the desertion of his disciples.

"E" is for the encirclement of his enemies.

"F" is for his fainting and falling under the weight of the Cross.

"G" is for the Garden of Gethsemane, scene of tears and blood.

"H" is for the hall of Herod where they mocked him.

"I" is for the inscription above his head.

"J" is for Judas.

"K" is for the kiss.

"L" is for the lies they swore.

"M" is for the malefactors on the right and on the left.

"N" is for the nails in his hands and feet.

"O" is for the order of the governor under which he died.

"P" is for Pontius Pilate, the priests and the Pharisees.

"Q" is for the quaking earth that shuddered as the deed was done.

"R" is for his rejection and the release of Barrabas.

"S" is for the smiting of his cheek, the spitting, and the shame.

"T" is for the thorns with which they crowned him.

"U" is for unjust trials, six in all, unjust, unthinkable, ungodly.

"V" is for the vituperation of his foes.

"W" is for water where Pilate washed his hands.

"Y" is for the yells of those who hated him.

"Z" is for the zeal of those who slew him.

— and if it should be supposed that there is no word for "X," let it be remembered that "X" stands for the unknown, that Christ on Calvary was the Great Unknown, and, in that, perhaps, was the bitterest part of it all for Jesus.

Yes, Satan pressed his attack against the Lord in every conceivable manner, perhaps hoping to the very last that he could make death so repulsive to the Son of God, so humiliating, and repugnant to him, that Christ would simply reject it, call for the legions of angels, abort the mission of redemption, and return to God; in which event, if such a thing had happened, Satan would have thwarted the divine purpose of human redemption.

The Jews crucified Christ; and, despite the findings of Vatican II, which is said to have absolved Israel of the blame, the Jews themselves, in the person of their highest court, and all the leaders of the people, with the concurrence of the hierarchy and the entire ruling establishment in Jerusalem itself, publicly accepted the blame for it in the cry:

His blood be upon us and upon our children (Matthew 27:25).

Not even the alleged clearance of Vatican II can wipe that out; and besides, even Vatican II did not absolve the Jews of any blame whatever, but removed the unjust charge that the Jews ALONE were to blame. The benefit of Vatican II is that it reversed the historic position of the Medieval church to the effect that the Jews were alone guilty of Christ's death, a position which was doubtless the source of much anti-Semitism, and which the Roman church quite properly repudiated. A careful reading of that document, however, will show that there was no intention whatever of clearing the Jews of any guilt at all in Christ's crucifixion, and thus rejecting their King when he came. The Jews indeed were guilty, the only amelioration of it lying in those true Israelites who became Christ's followers and formed the first nucleus of his church. This frequently neglected fact is the glory of the Jews. The great body of the primeval church was Jewish; and Jesus' declaration that "salvation is of the Jews" pertains with great force to the make-up of the original church.

The position of the Medieval church, noted above, was the cause, or one of the causes, of a fierce anti-Semitism which has been a frequent disgrace of history; and the courage of the Roman church to alter that position is commendable. It never was true that Israel alone was guilty of Jesus' murder, not even if all of Israel had concurred in it, which they did not; and even if that generation had totally concurred in it, no possible blame could pertain to their posterity, regardless of their screams for Jesus' blood to be upon them and upon their children (Matthew 27:25). Despite all this, the truth is plain enough that the Jews did crucify Jesus, the nation itself overwhelmingly and officially rejecting him, and contriving his execution by a cunning combination of political pressure, suborned testimony, and mob violence. Speaking of those Jews, it is profoundly correct to say that they were a fourth center of responsibility for the crucifixion of our Lord.

A fifth center of responsibility lies in the Gentiles, particularly the Roman government of that era. Like Israel, the Romans were not alone guilty, but guilty just the same. Romans and Jews had the same status in Christ's crucifixion as that of two men robbing a filling station and killing the operator, both being totally guilty, but neither of them exclusively so. Both Rome and Jerusalem were totally guilty of Christ's death, though neither was exclusively so. Pontius Pilate was the Roman governor of Judaea. The chiliarchs and their legions in the tower of Antonio were under Pilate's command; and Pilate knew and admitted the innocence of Jesus Christ and could have released him. When Pilate said, "I find no fault in him," that should have been the signal to summons the legions and disperse the mob. The military might of Jerusalem was firmly in his hands; and the battle flags that decorated the stage of that dark drama on Golgotha were the storied banners of the Roman legions. The official order under which Christ was put to death bore the seal and signature of the Roman government, in the person of the procurator. True, the Sanhedrin had condemned the Lord, but they were powerless to move against him unless Pilate had allowed it. It was a Roman court of justice, no less than the highest religious tribunal of the Jews, that consented to the Lord's execution. There is no way to diminish the blame that shall attach forever to the name of Pilate and the nation he represented, the proud nation of Rome being itself, therefore, a fifth center of motive and responsibility for the crucifixion of the Son of God.

This brings us to the sixth center of responsibility for Christ's crucifixion, a center as wide as all humanity; for, in a sense, the whole race of man crucified Jesus. In that all have sinned, no one is totally free of blame. The Cross marked the total breakdown of the most respected institutions of all history, Roman justice and Jewish religion alike failing the crucial test, No single race, group, or condition of human beings deserves total blame; but by the same token, no one may deny any guilt at all, or claim absolution from complicity in this profoundest tragedy Of all time. All people, in the collective sense, are guilty, even the disciples of Jesus, for they forsook him and fled. The human race in its entirety crucified Jesus.

The seventh and final center of responsibility is every man's heart, the taint of sin being universal. Every person who knows and fully appreciates the truth can receive this. It was my sins, every man's sins, that nailed him up. The Lord was not crucified by some world-shaking monstrosity of sin, but by the little, ordinary, everyday sins, just as up-to-date as this morning's newspaper. Christ was harried to death because of pride, envy, and scorn. He was betrayed, not for a million dollars, but for about twenty dollars worth of silver. Such petty considerations as social position, political expediency, graft, timidity, cowardice, greed, jealously, lust, and indifference — all on a rather small scale; these were the sins that crucified him. "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" Every man conscious of sin knows that he was indeed there.

To be a propitiation … The Greek usage of the word here translated "propitiation" applies it to the making of sacrifices to gods or men for the purpose of mollifying their anger or procuring their favor; but the scriptural usage of this term is not like that of the ancients. God makes the propitiation, but, at the same time, is the one propitiated; moreover, God does not need to be reconciled to man, but man need to be reconciled to God. As Paul expressed it, "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself" (2 Corinthians 5:19). Other New Testament examples of this word or its root are found in 1 John 2:2; 1 John 4:10; and Luke 18:13. There must certainly be far more in the meaning of this word than people can fully comprehend in this life. Some of the meaning lies in the eternal justice that requires punishment of every sin. God's laying upon Christ "the iniquity of us all" it part of the meaning of "propitiation." There is also in it the mystery of the attraction that the Cross has for people. Jesus said, "If I be lifted up, I shall draw all men unto myself" (John 12:32); and every succeeding century has revealed new dimensions of that mysterious truth.

Greathouse noted that:

When we speak of Christ's sacrifice as a propitiation, we do so against the background teaching of this epistle that "the wrath of God" is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men" (Romans 1:8). Of course, this does not mean that God has to be appeased like an angry man. Such a perversion of the biblical doctrine of propitiation misses the fundamental point made everywhere in the Bible, that it is God himself who puts forward the propitiatory offering for man's sin. Propitiation means that God found a way to uphold the law and safeguard his justice while extending mercy to a guilty sinner who trusts in Christ. "Expiation" means that in Christ the guilty rebel is forgiven of his sin and cleansed from his demerit. William M. Greathouse, op. cit., p. 92.

There is no human experience which fully qualifies as an illustration of what God did for humanity in providing a propitiation for human transgression; but the nearest thing to an adequate illustration of so magnificent a mercy is the legendary story of Lycurgus, semi-mythical character of the ninth century before Christ, said to have been the founder of the Spartan constitution, and whose legendary justice is memorialized on the south frieze of the grand audience chamber of the Supreme Court of the United States. This ancient king of Sparta proclaimed a law carrying the penalty of blindness for violators. The law was unpopular, and the king's son, and heir apparent, was maneuvered into breaking it. Calmly, Lycurgus ordered the executioner to heat the blinding irons, commanded the trembling prince to kneel, and the executioner burned out one of his eyes; whereupon the king interrupted the executioner, explained that the law required two eyes to be blinded, and that the king himself would give one of his own, thus sparing his son. Whether fact or fable, that ancient story illustrates the administration of justice tempered with mercy, and suggests the far greater thing that God did for his human children when he paid the penalty of their sins by dying upon the Cross in the person of his Son.

The fact noted above, that God is at once the propitiation and the propitiated, is strongly suggestive of the similar paradox in Hebrews 9:11-12, where Christ is typified at one and the same time both by the victim whose blood is shed and by the high priest by whom it was offered.

"Propitiation" is thought by some commentators to suggest the covering of the ark of the covenant, which also served as the platform upon which was enthroned the mercy seat in the ancient tabernacle, such authors as Wuest, Lenski, Macknight, and Locke holding that view, with others, as Hodge, offering detailed arguments to the contrary. Leaving the resolution of such questions to those more able to decide them, this student finds the possible allusion to the mercy seat stimulating and helpful. This allusion, if that is what it is, is in line with what Paul had already said concerning the witness of the law and the prophets to the great realities of the new covenant (Romans 3:21); and it was exactly in that ancient device called the mercy seat, especially in its peculiar position above and on top of the ark of the covenant, that one finds the most dramatic symbol in the Old Testament suggesting Gods' mercy as being enthroned even above God's law. There, in the placement of that mercy seat, was revealed the key fact of God's dealings with the race of man. There it was clear that, even under the Old Testament, mercy was higher than law. No more significant truth than this was ever revealed by the typical devices of the old covenant. Thus it is most appropriate that Jesus Christ our Lord, who is the agent and the grounds of that mercy, should be called (in this interpretation of the word) the base of the mercy seat and the covering of the law.

Either view of what is meant by propitiation leads directly to the heart of Paul's teaching here; which is simply this, that Christ is the sole ground of salvation. He is the basis of that mercy which outranks the law of God itself. Here too is the basis of the scriptural teaching that salvation is free, unmerited, the gift of God, or of the grace of God. Regardless of the conditions set forth in the word of God (and there ARE conditions), there can never be any thought of man's achieving, earning, or meriting salvation. It is indeed the gift of God. Even an obedient faith which must be manifested by all who aspire to receive God's unspeakable gift of salvation, can never be thought of as adequate grounds of it, the true basis of it being Jesus Christ alone. Christ's perfect faith (as a man), and his perfect obedience, produced the sum total of human righteousness ever achieved on earth; and since Christ is the God-man, it is nothing less than God's righteousness which is in Christ. Without that perfection of the Saviour, there could have been no such thing as salvation for people.

Through faith in his blood … This expression stands in the KJV without having the comma after "faith," making the meaning to be "through faith in the efficacy of Christ's blood," or "faith in the sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice"; however, RSV, Phillips, and the New English Bible refer "in his blood" back to the beginning of the sentence, thus:

Whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith (RSV).

God has appointed him as the means of propitiation, a propitiation accomplished by the shedding of his blood, to be received and made effective in ourselves by faith (Phillips).

It will be observed that the obvious reason for rearranging this verse is to have Paul say that we are saved "by faith," which is true, of course, only if it be understood as a synecdoche. The meaning in the KJV is far preferable; and, since there is an admitted change in the meaning, the reasons for such change must be looked upon with suspicion. Both the translations cited close the verse with "by faith"; but the Greek New Testament has the word for "faith" (twenty words earlier) in that verse; and from this, we are certain that a distortion of Paul's meaning has been made. Moses E. Lard commented on this place, justifying the meaning given in the KJV, thus:

Now the conditional efficacy of his blood seems to me to be the very point the apostle is guarding, by placing "through belief" where it stands. Christ is an atoning sacrifice through belief. Without belief he is not one. We must believe in his blood in order to be ransomed by it. This is the fact which the apostle is seeking to protect. Moses E. Lard, op. cit., p. 119.

To show his righteousness … Here in the heart of this magnificent passage, called by Olshausen "the Acropolis of the Christian faith," Charles Hodge, op. cit., p. 94. a true definition of the kind of righteousness which constituted Paul's principal theme in Romans is delivered. It is the intrinsic righteousness of God. It is true that there is some reference to the other class of righteousness (imputed, or forensic); but, throughout this great letter, it is the character of God that Paul discussed. At the beginning of this verse, Paul mentioned the offering of Christ; and here, in these words, the reason for God's so doing is stated. It was for the purpose of showing, or making known to all people, the righteous character of God. God was not merely winking at sin in those long pre-Christian ages; in the fullness of time, God would sacrifice the Son himself, "whom he made to be sin on our behalf," that he might show just what a terrible thing sin is, and to demonstrate that no sin will at last be tolerated by God. Such a view of God's eternal righteousness could never have been known until God gave his only begotten Son.

Because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime … These words have resulted in questions of what is meant: (1) Does it mean that the ancients were forgiven of their sins, or (2) does it mean that their sins were "passed over," in a sense ignored, without adequate explanation of the reason for God's so doing, the position here being that the latter meaning is correct. There are learned arguments to the effect that God actually forgave the sins of ancients, but Paul's statement that under Moses law there was "a remembrance of sins year by year" (Hebrews 10:3) disproves that thesis. It may well be doubted that there was ever any such thing on earth as the forgiveness of sins, prior to the death of Christ; and, even if it should be allowed, as some affirm, that there was forgiveness before Calvary, it would have been on the basis of what God would do on the Cross, in the same way that the forgiveness of people since Calvary is founded upon what God has already done there. Jeremiah's treatment of the subject of forgiveness in his grand prophecy of the new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-35) makes forgiveness to be a distinctive hallmark of the new covenant, which it could not have been if sins were truly forgiven under the old.

The particular aspect of showing God's righteousness which is here given as one of the reasons for the offering of Christ seems to take into account some of the things people might have unjustly thought concerning God and his government of man. For example, from of old, the absolute righteousness of God is the basic attribute of his character; but people might have thought otherwise, when it was considered by them that God had passed over the sins of ancients without either punishing them or displaying any adequate grounds of their forgiveness. For example, when Abel died, he was a sinner like all the others who had ever lived; but upon his death the angels bore his soul away to the mansions of the blessed (called in later generations Abraham's bosom); and, as Milligan noted,

If there was a time when any of God's creatures might be supposed to be ready to charge him with partiality and injustice, it seems to me that that was the time. The fact that man had sinned was known in heaven, earth, and hell; and the fact that justice demanded satisfaction was also known. But when, where, and how had this satisfaction been given? Nothing had yet appeared within the horizon of even the tallest angel in glory that was sufficient to justify such an event as the salvation of a soul that had been defiled by sin. Robert Milligan, The Scheme of Redemption (St. Louis, Missouri: The Bethany Press, 1960), p. 229.

The fact that such allegations against the character of God actually did occur in the thoughts of people is proved by Paul's tacit acknowledgment of them in their refutation. Paul's words here show that God's righteousness in passing over ancient sins was grounded in his holy purpose of ultimately paying the penalty of their sins himself in the person of Christ. The pledge, in fact, that God would indeed do that very thing was constantly reiterated throughout the entire pre-Christian era, as more fully explained under Romans 3:25.

The purpose of the death of Christ, as mentioned in this verse, should be understood in the sense of "one of the purposes" of his death, and not in an exclusive sense. The death of Christ was of such overwhelmingly extensive importance that any single citation of what was accomplished by it could by no means exhaust the subject. As Hodge pointed out:

The death of Christ answers a great number of infinitely important ends in the government of God. It displays his manifold wisdom (Ephesians 3:10-11); it was designed to purify unto himself a people zealous of good works (Titus 2:14); to break down the distinctions between the Jews and Gentiles (Ephesians 2:15); to effect the reconciliation of both Jews and Gentiles unto God (Ephesians 2:16); to deliver us from this present evil world (Galatians 1:4); to secure the forgiveness of sins (Ephesians 1:7); to vindicate his ways to men, in so long passing by, or remitting, their sins (Romans 3:25); to reconcile the exercise of mercy with the requirements of justice (Romans 3:26); etc. Charles Hodge, op. cit., p. 95.

To the above list, cited by Hodge, should be added: the fact that the death of Christ condemned sin in the flesh (Romans 8:3); that it fulfilled the words of the prophets who had foretold it (1 Corinthians 15:3); and that it had the effect of drawing all people unto Christ (John 12:32).

In the forbearance of God … This phrase proves what was said above regarding God's "passing over" the sins of the ancients. In the fullness of time, all would be made plain; but for generations, it must have appeared to many that God "winked at" human wickedness (Acts 17:30 KJV). Those long periods of God's forbearance, however, would at last be explained and understood in Christ's death on the Cross. There it was perfectly plain that not one little sin would ever crawl by the eyes of the eternal God without the execution of its due penalty. And behold how terrible is the penalty of sin, as demonstrated in the death of Christ. The personal meaning for every descendant of Adam, as revealed in Christ's crucifixion, is that God will exact the penalty due every sin, unless it shall be remitted in Jesus Christ. Sanday has this:

(One) object of the death of Christ was to remove the misconceptions that might be caused by the apparent condoning of sins committed in times anterior to the Christian revelation. A special word is used to indicate that those sins were not wiped away and dismissed altogether, but rather "passed over" or "overlooked." This was due to the forbearance of God, who, as it were, suspended the execution of his vengeance. Now the apostle shows by the death of Christ that justice that had apparently slept was vindicated. W. Sanday, Ellicott's Commentary on the Whole Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1970), p. 218.

For the showing, I say, of his righteousness at this present season … This is a repetition, for emphasis, of what Paul had already said.

That he himself might be just … means "that God might be just in the eyes of men." The death of the Son of God served notice upon all creation that the eternal justice was absolute and that all sin must suffer punishment, unless covered by the blood of Christ.

And the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus … As the English Revised Version (1885) margin shows, this clause in the Greek New Testament reads, "the justifier of him that is of faith of Jesus," and the true meaning of the passage is not that the believer's "faith, faith alone, has God's righteousness." R. C. H. Lenski, op. cit., p. 265. "Him that is of the faith of Jesus" does not indicate that the believer's faith is the ground of salvation, but that the faith of the Son of God is the ground of it. Who is he that is "of the faith of Jesus"? Such a one is the person "in Christ," who is dead to himself, walking in newness of life, sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, and having been baptized into God's corporate reality, the spiritual body of Christ, and who is, therefore, possessed of a new identity, being no longer his own self, but Christ. As Paul wrote, "For me to live is Christ" (Philippians 1:20). No person whatsoever may expect salvation upon any other foundation than his total identity with Christ. Only the faith of Christ is sufficient to save any person; and the believer's faith, which is merely one of the conditions upon which he may become possessor of Christ's faith, can never justify him, apart from his being in the Lord Jesus Christ, and actually having put on Christ, in the sense of clothing himself with the Lord, and having taken upon him the name of Christ. As to when a person has such status, the Scriptures are clear. When does the believer put on Christ?

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ (Galatians 3:27).

And when does the believer take the name of Christ?

They were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts 19:5).

For neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

And when does the believer enter that "one body" (Christ) wherein is EVERY spiritual blessing?

For in one Spirit were ye all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free (1 Corinthians 12:13).

And how is it stated in the word of the Lord that people are admitted "into Christ"?

All we … were baptized into Christ (Romans 6:3).

And how do believers die to themselves and participate in the newness of life in Christ, and when do they begin to do so?

We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4).

When the believer dies through the denial and repudiation of himself and begins to live the new live in Christ, what is such a change called, and how is it accomplished?

Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God (John 3:5).

And when is the believer sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, indicating that he is truly "in Christ"?

After that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise (Ephesians 1:13).

It should be noted that the English Revised Version's use of the past participle does not alter the truth that reception of the Holy Spirit comes AFTER the sinner has faith, and that it is something apart from faith; but if the believer stops short of receiving the Holy Spirit, is he nevertheless a child of God?

But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his (Romans 8:9).

But is not the reception of the Holy Spirit achieved when people believe, and without regard to any other condition? Peter addressed a group of believers on the day of Pentecost thus:

Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38).

Thus, the Holy Spirit "of promise," mentioned above, has reference to this and proves that it was promised conditionally to believers, the reception of the Spirit being contingent upon their repentance and baptism (they were already believers). And may the Holy Spirit be received apart from the new birth which makes people sons of God?

And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts (Galatians 4:6).

Thus, the reception of the Holy Spirit is contingent also upon the recipient's being already a son of God. The Spirit is sent not to make him a son, but because he is so. But, since the Holy Spirit "of promise" (and to be distinguished from certain miraculous manifestations, as in the case of Cornelius) is received only upon fulfillment of the conditions mentioned on Pentecost, the deduction is absolutely mandatory that no person is a Son of God without repentance and baptism.

Any theory of justification by "faith only" on the sinner's part is refuted by the above considerations, and countless others. Of supreme significance is the fact that all such things mentioned above, namely, reception of the Holy Spirit, repentance, baptism, putting on Christ, being born again, walking in newness of life, etc., are possible only for those who are already believers. No unbeliever can be baptized, although he might be wet; no unbeliever can put on Christ, etc. Therefore, all of the above named conditions of salvation are conditions to be fulfilled by believers and are thus conditions in addition to faith which are anterior to justification, making it impossible to believe that justification is by "faith only." But not even these conditions, faith included, are the ground of justification; THAT GROUND is in Christ alone; and all conditions people must fulfill as prerequisites to entering Christ are utterly void of any power in themselves to justify. The profound mistake of the past half a millennium has been in the supposition that ANYTHING, even faith, on the sinner's part, can justify. In the passages that affirm salvation to be "by faith," or justification "by faith," the language is only accommodative, the idea being that a person complying with the divine conditions of being "in Christ" is thereby justified, not on the grounds of his compliance, but upon the ground of Christ into whom the sinner is thus brought and swallowed up completely in the identity of the Saviour. People are saved by their own faith in exactly the same sense that they are saved "by baptism" (1 Peter 3:21), namely in the secondary sense of these things being prerequisite to salvation, true justification "in Christ" being not at all due to ANYTHING that the sinner might either believe or perform, but entirely founded upon Christ's perfect faith and obedience, the true righteousness of God, in Christ. Accessory to this view is the obvious truth that synecdoche is used in all of those passages where it is declared that people are saved "by faith," "by baptism," "by grace," "by hope," etc., or justified "by works" — in all such places, it is never affirmed by scripture, though often by people, that "only" is a lawful word to use with any of these things.

What, then, of the New Testament passages which speak of persons "saving" themselves?

Save yourselves from this crooked generation (Acts 2:40).

Thou shalt save both thyself and them that hear thee (1 Timothy 4:16).

Work out your own salvation (Philippians 2:12).

Arise and be baptized and wash away thy sins (Acts 22:16).

All such language is accommodative and has respect to the fact that a person who does indeed perform what God has required does, in a certain limited sense, save himself, no human faith or performance being sufficient of itself to save. But this is not inconsistent with the truth that faith and certain acts of obedience are absolutely prerequisite to salvation.

The foregoing Romans 3:21-26 are the theme of Romans; it is the doctrine of salvation "in Christ." The resolution of the problem of how God can make men righteous is determined thus: God himself, in the person of Christ, entered our earth life, lived the absolutely perfect life, fulfilling all the law of God, and paying the penalty of all sin through death upon the Cross. Through God's regard for the perfect righteousness of Christ, called by Paul "the faith of Christ," a descendant of Adam, through perfect union with and identification with Christ, can receive the benefits of Christ's righteousness (the righteousness of God) as his own, not while retaining his identity as a sinner, but upon the condition of his dying to himself, clothing himself with Christ, even taking his name, and being faithful to that new identity "in Christ." The righteousness which God, by such a device, "imputes" to people is no mystical or magical by-product of sinners' faith, but is a BONA FIDE, honest-to-goodness righteousness that was lived and wrought by Jesus Christ upon this earth; and all who receive it shall not be able to do so within the perimeter of their own identity, but only through their identity and union with Christ.

And what of any who might not remain "in Christ"? Jesus himself declared,

If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned (John 15:16).

It is thus, not merely true that one must be "in Christ" to be saved, but he must also remain "in Christ." It is one thing to have been in Christ and a far different thing to be "found in him." "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord" (Revelation 14:13).

There is no hesitation on the part of this writer to accept the corollary that to be "in Christ" is to be "in the church." It is impossible to think of the body of Christ as being anything other than the church, as far as earth is concerned. The book of Ephesians makes it clear that all things in heaven and upon earth will eventually be part of that body; but, in the present dimensions of time and place, the church is the body of Christ. If it should be objected that this makes too much of the church, let it be replied that Christ shed his blood for the church, and none other than Paul himself made the blood of Christ to be the purchase price of the church (Acts 20:28), a fact which, by any interpretation whatsoever, makes the church an absolutely essential organization. It is precisely here that the theory of the exegetes that salvation is by "faith only" collides with and is shattered upon the rock of eternal truth. By any fair interpretation whatever, the "faith only" theory offers salvation without and apart from the church; and that view reduces the crucifixion and shedding of Christ's blood to the status of a mere murder. There are difficulties in the interpretation accepted here, but these do not touch the essential heart of it, that the church is Christ's body. What of the claims of various institutions that they are the church, the true body of Christ? What of the prevalence of so much deadwood in every church? No man can fully answer such questions. The marred image of the church which confronts all who look for the real thing in this generation is pitiful indeed; but the deformities and aberrations are of Satan and not of Christ. The major premise stands that the church is the spiritual body of Christ and that to be in either is to be in both. Only in Christ's spiritual body is it possible for people to be accounted righteous in God's sight. Sinedes expressed it thus:

When we ask what the body of Christ is, we must remember that it is the community committed to the ongoing service of reconciliation in the power of the cross. Within the community, faith is directed to the cross. The life the community lives is the life styled by the cross — the sacrificial life of loving service. The cross stands at the center of the reality of the body. Lewis B. Smedes, All Things Made New (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970), p. 230.

The final necessity of finding Christ's spiritual body in the form of an earthly community, the church, is imperative; and the responsibility for finding, to the best of his ability, devolves upon every man, who with bended knee and open Bible must seek and find the Lord.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

At this time - The time now since the Saviour has come, now is the time when he manifests it.

That he might be just - This verse contains the substance of the gospel. The word “just” here does not mean benevolent, or merciful, though it may sometimes have that meaning; see the Matthew 1:19 note, also John 17:25 note. But it refers to the fact that God had retained the integrity of his character as a moral governor; that he had shown a due regard to his Law, and to the penalty of the Law by his plan of salvation. Should he forgive sinners without an atonement, justice would be sacrificed and abandoned. The Law would cease to have any terrors for the guilty, and its penalty would be a nullity. In the plan of salvation, therefore, he has shown a regard to the Law by appointing his Son to be a substitute in the place of sinners; not to endure its precise penalty, for his sufferings were not eternal, nor were they attended with remorse of conscience, or by despair, which are the proper penalty of the Law; but he endured so much as to accomplish the same ends as if those who shall be saved by him had been doomed to eternal death.

That is, he showed that the Law could not be violated without introducing suffering; and that it could not be broken with impunity. He showed that he had so great a regard for it, that he would not pardon one sinner without an atonement. And thus he secured the proper honor to his character as a lover of his Law, a hater of sin, and a just God. He has shown that if sinners do not avail themselves of the offer of pardon by Jesus Christ, they must experience in their own souls forever the pains which this substitute for sinners endured in behalf of people on the cross. Thus, no principle of justice has been abandoned; no threatening has been modified; no claim of his Law has been let down; no disposition has been evinced to do injustice to the universe by suffering the guilty to escape. He is, in all this great Transaction, a just moral governor, as just to his Law, to himself, to his Son, to the universe, when he pardons, as he is when he sends the incorrigible sinner down to hell. A full compensation, an equivalent, has been provided by the sufferings of the Saviour in the sinner’s stead, and the sinner may be pardoned.

And the justifier of him ... - Greek, “Even justifying him that believeth, etc.” This is the uniqueness and the wonder of the gospel. Even while pardoning, and treating the ill-deserving as if they were innocent, he can retain his pure and holy character. His treating the guilty with favor does not show that be loves guilt and pollution, for he has expressed his abhorrence of it in the atonement. His admitting them to friendship and heaven does not show that he approves their past conduct and character, for he showed how much he hated even their sins by giving his Son to a shameful death for them. When an executive pardons offenders, there is an abandonment of the principles of justice and law. The sentence is set aside; the threatenings of the law are departed from; and it is done without compensation. It is declared that in certain cases the law may be violated, and its penalty “not” be inflicted. But not so with God. He shows no less regard to his law in pardoning than in punishing. This is the grand, glorious, special feature of the gospel plan of salvation.

Him which believeth in Jesus - Greek, “Him who is of the faith of Jesus;” in contradistinction from him who is of the works of the Law; that is, who depends on his own works for salvation.

Living By Faith: Commentary on Romans & 1st Corinthians

3:25b-26: to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God; 26 for the showing, (I say), of his righteousness at this present season: that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.

One of the reasons Jesus died is found at the end of verse 25. His death was designed “to show” (endeixis-used twice in verse 25 and literally means declare) God’s righteousness (justice). Before Jesus came, God did not punish all who sinned (see Acts 17:30) because He had been forbearing. Earlier in this book (2:4), we learned that God was forbearing (anoche, same word as in Romans 2:4) so people had the opportunity to repent. For additional information about God’s forbearance, see the information below. Since Christ has come, all men now have a very clear choice. They may sin and give their eternal soul as payment for their sins, or they can allow Christ to be their justifier. Jesus came to the earth to release people from sin (Luke 19:10).

The life of Jesus and the benefits of His death demonstrate God’s righteousness. If God had done nothing about sin and let mankind be lost, His grace, love, and mercy would not have been adequately demonstrated. If God extended salvation to mankind without a proper basis, He would have been lacking in justice. Somehow, God’s love had to be balanced with His perfect sense of justice. The Bible says God’s love and justice were blended together in the life and death of Jesus. Jesus’ death satisfied the payment for all sin and God was able to justly extend forgiveness to all sinners. Justification is received in an on-going manner because justifier in 26b is in the present tense.

Some have compared the sacrifice of Christ to a story. A king decreed that anyone in his kingdom would receive double punishment if he hurt a fellow citizen. One day the king’s son poked out the eye of a fellow citizen. For the king to remain just and righteous, he had to enforce the law. However, he also saw the need to extend compassion and love to his son. The king ruled that his son would have one eye removed and the king would have one of his own taken out too. In this way, the king was just, he showed mercy, and the rule of law was upheld. When God gave His Son, He was just, He showed mercy, and the dignity of the law was upheld (adopted from Lanier, p. 19).

The meaning of “passing over sins” in verse 25 (paresis) is controversial. According to Gingrich and Danker (p. 626) the meaning is, “Letting go unpunished.” This lexicon also says that in the classics the idea of “remitting” debts and obligations was expressed by this term. McGuiggan said that “Whatever ‘parsis’ (passing over, BP) means here, 1) God is said to have done it; 2) God didn’t neglect or disregard sin; 3) in the next Chapter Paul speaks of full forgiveness of sins done aforetime” (page 137). Earle (p. 155) said “This does not mean that there was no punishment for sin during the OT period. It simply means that God did not deal fully and adequately with sin until Calvary.” One source that tries to tie all these definitions together (the CBL, GED, 5:89) says this term means God withheld His judgment. Judgment was suspended on sins done “aforetime” (proginomai), a word occurring only here in the New Testament. This term means happened earlier (Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, 3:153). Another key word is “forbearance” (anoche) in verse 26. In the New Testament this term occurs only twice (here and Romans 2:4). Writers of Classical Greek employed this word to describe a “pause” or a “delay.” When used in the plural it described a “truce” or “armistice.” Josephus connected this word with military actions. A good definition for this word is “tolerance,” but it is a tolerance based upon time. God’s forbearance is a “truce, a temporary arrangement until a peace agreement can take place” (CBL, GED, 1:291). Stated another way, “God retains His wrath and His judgment on sin. This does not at all mean that the judgment is canceled; it is only suspended. The execution of judgment is postponed to allow time for the possibility of a settlement” (ibid). In Romans 2:4 the emphasis is on individuals receiving enough time to obey the Lord and receive remission of sins. Romans 3:25 uses the term to describe the plan of salvation. God allowed enough time to complete a plan that both justifies sinners and allows Him to be righteous.

Calvin's Commentary on the Bible

26.For a demonstration, ⁽¹²¹⁾ etc. The repetition of this clause is emphatical; and Paul resignedly made it, as it was very needful; for nothing is more difficult than to persuade man that he ought to disclaim all things as his own, and to ascribe them all to God. At the same time mention was intentionally made twice of this demonstration, that the Jews might open their eyes to behold it. — At this time, etc. What had been ever at all times, he applies to the time when Christ was revealed, and not without reason; for what was formerly known in an obscure manner under shadows, God openly manifested in his Son. So the coming of Christ was the time of his good pleasure, and the day of salvation. God had indeed in all ages given some evidence of his righteousness; but it appeared far brighter when the sun of righteousness shone. Noticed, then, ought to be the comparison between the Old and the New Testament; for then only was revealed the righteousness of God when Christ appeared.

That he might be just, etc. This is a definition of that righteousness which he has declared was revealed when Christ was given, and which, as he has taught us in the first chapter, is made known in the gospel: and he affirms that it consists of two parts — The first is, that God is just, not indeed as one among many, but as one who contains within himself all fullness of righteousness; for complete and full praise, such as is due, is not otherwise given to him, but when he alone obtains the name and the honor of being just, while the whole human race is condemned for injustice: and then the other part refers to the communication of righteousness; for God by no means keeps his riches laid up in himself, but pours them forth upon men. Then the righteousness of God shines in us, whenever he justifies us by faith in Christ; for in vain were Christ given us for righteousness, unless there was the fruition of him by faith. It hence follows, that all were unjust and lost in themselves, until a remedy from heaven was offered to them. ⁽¹²²⁾

(121) There is a different preposition used here, πρὸς, while εἰς is found in the preceding verse. The meaning seems to be the same, for both prepositions are used to designate the design, end, or object of any thing. This variety seems to have been usual with the Apostle; similar instances are found in Romans 3:22, as toεἰς and ἐπὶ, and in Romans 3:30, as toἐκ and διὰ. “By both,” says [Wolfius ] , “the final cause (causa finalis ) is indicated.” [Beza ] renders them both by the same preposition, ad , in Latin; and [Stuart ] regards the two as equivalent. There is, perhaps, more refinement than truth in what [Pareus ] says, — thatεἰς intimates the proximate end — the forgiveness of sins; andπρὸς, the final end — the glory of God in the exhibition of his justice as well as of his mercy. There is, at the same time, something in the passage which seems favorable to this view. Two objects are stated at the end of the passage, — that God might appear just, and be also the justifier of such as believe. The last may refer toἐις, and the former to πρὸς; and this is consistent with the usual style of the Apostle; for, in imitation of the Prophets, where two things are mentioned in a former clause, the order is reversed in the second. — Ed.

(122) A parallel passage to this, including the two verses, Romans 3:25, is found in Hebrews 9:15; where a reference, as here, is made to the effect of Christ’s death as to the saints under the Old testament. The same truth is implied in other parts of Scripture, but not so expressly declared. [Stuart ] makes here an important remark — that if the death of Christ be regarded only as that of a martyr or as an example of constancy, how then could its efficacy be referred to “sins that are past?” In no other way than as a vicarious death could it possibly have any effect on past sins, not punished through God’s forbearance. — 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

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; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.

The words in these two verses reveal the heart and soul of the scheme of redemption formulated in the mind of God even before the creation of the world. Godet calls this passage "the marrow of theology" (150).

Whom God hath set forth: The word translated "set forth" (proe/qeto) is from proti/qemi, and it occurs only two other times in the New Testament (1:13; Ephesians 1:9). All three times it appears in the middle voice, which makes it difficult to translate. The reason for the difficulty is that in the middle voice this verb can mean either "to set forth publicly, display publicly, make available publicly…Romans 3:25 or to have something in mind beforehand, plan, propose, intend…Ephesians 1:9…Romans 1:13 (BDAG 889). Perschbacher defines it as "to place before; to set forth, propose publicly, Romans 3:25…to purpose determine, design beforehand, Romans 1:13; Ephesians 1:9" (AGLP 357)). Considerable controversy in determining the proper rendering has been evident among scholars for centuries. In favor of the first definition cited, "to display publicly: (BDAG 889), it has been argued that the immediate context contains a number of terms indicating the concept of public display (for example: "is manifested" in verse 21 and Christ Jesus being "a propitiation…by his blood" in verse 25). The cross was something accomplished publicly before the eyes of all men. But the counter-argument points out that in both of the other New Testament usages the verb clearly means "to purpose." Cranfield adds the weight that eight of this word’s twelve cognates in the New Testament also carry the idea of purposing (73). Cranfield leans heavily to the idea of purpose. He concludes:

While it is true that the idea of publicity is present in the context, a reference to God’s eternal purpose strikes us as even more apposite just here than a reference to the public character of God’s deed in the passion of Christ. We take it that by the first words of v. 25 Paul means to emphasize that it is God who is the origin of redemption which was effected in Christ and also that this redemption has its origin not in some sudden new idea or impulse on God’s part but in His eternal purpose of grace (73).

As usual, Cranfield’s argument is weighty and powerful. There can be no question either that God originated the scheme of redemption, or that it was worked out according to His eternal purpose rather than by impulse. Robertson says, however, that both ideas are conveyed by this word. He says, "God set before himself (purposed) and did it publicly before (pro) the whole world" (347). This explanation seems to satisfy both the definition of the word and the demands of the context. It also retains the validity of the worthy comments of Cranfield. The fact is that Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross was both a public display of God’s righteous punishment of sin vicariously upon Jesus and the solemn working out of His eternal purpose through such a public display.

to be a propitiation: The word "propitiation" (i(lasth/rion) means that which serves as an instrument for regaining the goodwill of a deity; concretely a "means of propitiation or expiation, gift to procure expiation" (BDAG 474). Determining Paul’s intention, however, is not always as simple as defining the words he used. In this case it has been noted by numerous scholars and from earliest times that since this word refers in twenty-one of its twenty-seven occurrences in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament and also in its only other New Testament usage (Hebrews 9:5) to the mercy seat, it is conclusive that Paul used it that way here. According to this argument, Paul portrays Christ here as the antitype of the Old Testament mercy seat. Macknight, Nygren, and Bengel all adopt this explanation as correct.

Numerous other equally prestigious interpreters (Cranfield, Godet, Beet, Shepherd, Whiteside, and McGarvey) opt for a more general meaning, such as that given by Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich and Danker above. Bromiley notes that:

Whether Paul has the [mercy seat] in view in Romans 3:25 is not wholly certain but he undoubtedly means "that which expiates sin" and thus reveals God’s righteousness and brings redemption. God Himself is the subject of the action, so that divine expiation rather than human propitiation is the point (365).

Vine adds:

The phrase "by his blood" is to be taken in immediate connection with propitiation. Christ, through his expiatory death, is the Personal means by whom God shows the mercy of his justifying grace to the sinner who believes (Vol. III 224).

Paul’s meaning is that God purposed in His mind, even before the foundation of the world (1 Peter 1:19-21), to set forth Jesus Christ publicly upon the cross. The purpose was that He, by the sacrifice of Himself, might provide the atoning settlement whereby God’s righteous judgment against sin could be satisfied and His mercy righteously extended to sinners who believe in Jesus. On the cross, Jesus became the sin offering for all mankind (2 Corinthians 5:21); and through Him, God punished the sins of all men.

through faith: Belief in Jesus Christ is the condition upon which God promises to declare men righteous. The kind of faith Paul alludes to here is delineated at length in chapter four. He means to indicate that when men have the kind of faith Abraham had, they will be justified. In Romans 1:5; Romans 16:25-26, Paul styles it as faith that produces obedience.

The faith by which men are saved is much more than mental assent. It is assent that calls forth personal surrender on the part of the believer to God’s will and is evidenced by his obedient conduct to God’s commands.

in his blood: If these words are taken in connection with faith (that is, "faith in his blood") as it is rendered in the King James Version, then it means that God grants pardon to all who have faith in Christ’s blood that was shed for the remission of sins. As Macknight says:

[All who] trust to the merit of [Christ’s] sacrifice for the pardon of their sin; who approach God with reverence and confidence through the mediation of Christ; and who discerning with admiration the virtues which Christ exercised in His sufferings and endeavor to imitate them. This I think is "faith in his blood" (Vol. I 241).

If, on the other hand, one connects this phrase with the word "propitiation" as most modern English translations do, then the meaning revealed is that God purposed by the shedding of Christ’s blood to present Him as a propitiatory sacrifice that man may appropriate to himself by faith (Cranfield 72).

In either case, the point is technical and the meaning essentially the same. Numerous passages concerning the blood of Christ should be compared with this one (5:9; Acts 20:28; Ephesians 1:7; Ephesians 2:13; Colossians 1:20; Hebrews 9:11 ff; Hebrews 10:19; Hebrews 10:29; Hebrews 13:12; Hebrews 13:20; 1 Peter 1:2; 1 Peter 1:19; 1 John 1:7; 1 John 5:6; Revelation 1:5; Revelation 5:9; Revelation 7:14; Revelation 12:11; Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; 1 Corinthians 11:25; 1 Corinthians 10:16).

to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God: The righteousness Paul has in mind here is not the system whereby God declares unrighteous sinners to be righteous as it is in verses 21 and 22. Instead, the reference in this verse declares God’s own personal character of absolute righteousness. This understanding is required by the clause in verse 26 "that he might be just and the justifier." Paul points to the propitiatory sacrifice of Jesus as essential to the declaration of God’s own personal righteousness in forgiving men of their sins. God’s righteousness is vindicated by Christ’s vicarious sacrifice both with respect to the justification of men living before the cross and men living after the cross.

The words "sins that are past" refer to the sins of all men who lived prior to the cross. These are placed in contrast to God’s forgiveness of sins in the present time (verse 26). Similar words are used in Hebrews 9:15:

And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.

Another passage to be considered in conjunction with this one is Acts 17:30: "And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent" (one might also note Acts 14:16).

The word rendered "remission" in the King James Version occurs only once in the New Testament. The Greek word is pa/resin. The word ordinarily and properly rendered "remission" is a&fesin (see Acts 2:38). Pavresin means "deliberate disregard, passing over or letting go unpunished" (BDAG 776).

The difference between a&fesin (remission) and pa/resin (passed over or pretermissed) is subtle but significant. According to Bromiley, both words mean essentially to forgive sins (88). Trench explains their difference to be that pa/resin primarily looks forward "leaving it open in the future either entirely to remit or else adequately to punish [sins], as may seem good to Him who has the power and right to do one or the other" (110). Whereas, a&fesin primarily looks backward and refers to a more settled and fixed conclusion to the matter (112). Trench continues to differentiate these words by the following:

He then, that is partaker of the a/resi$, has his sins forgiven, so that unless he bring them back on himself by new and further disobedience (Matt. xviii.32, 34; 2 Pet. i.9; ii.20), they shall not be imputed to him, or mentioned against him any more. The pa/resi$, differing from this, is a benefit, but a very subordinate one; it is the present passing by of sin, the suspension of its punishment, the not shutting up of all ways of mercy against the sinner, the giving to him of space and helps for repentance…Rom. ii.3-6. If such repentance follow (sic.), then the pa/resi$ will lose itself in a/fesi$, but if not, then the punishment suspended, but not averted, in due time will arrive (Luke xiii.9) (113).

During Old Testament times, God passed over and left unpunished the sins of faithful Jews. He left their sins unpunished provided that: (1) they obeyed the law of Moses in general; (2) they offered the required sacrifices for their occasional sins;(3) they sought always to please God and do His will; and (4) they served God in faith looking for "a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God" (Hebrews 11:10). Hebrews 11:13 defines those Israelites whose sins God pretermissed: "These all died in faith, not having received the promises but having seen them afar off; and were persuaded of them and embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth."

God justifiably passed over (or forgave in this limited sense) their sins in prospect of the propitiatory sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, which He had planned before the foundation of the world (1 Peter 1:19-21). This passing over of sins exhibited God’s forbearance to all. In other words, God’s righteous retributive anger against sin was held back temporarily until Christ could offer Himself as an atoning sacrifice, suffering in His own body the wrath of God against sin. At that point those faithful Jews and Gentiles of previous dispensations whose sins had been pretermissed actually received complete remission by virtue of the shed blood of Christ Jesus.

God’s patient forbearance or restraint enabled Him to endure the sins of men until the Lamb of God could give His life for the sins of the world (John 1:29; John 1:36). Bromiley says, "the noun anoche [forbearance—AWB] in Romans 2:4; Romans 3:25 is God’s ’restraint’ in judgment (linked with his kindness and patience in 2:4 and forgiveness in 3:25)" (58). When Jesus died, those people living prior to the cross, who were of the character of those described in Hebrews 11:13, were finally forgiven. Their pa/resi$ (pretermission) was swallowed up in complete a&fesis (remission). The blood of Jesus Christ flows in both directions from the cross of Calvary. Note that verse 26 reveals its flow to men living on this side of the cross.

To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: The words "at this time" are placed in contrast to "remission of sins that are past" in verse 25. The word nu=n means "now, at the present time" (AGLP 286). kairw=| means "simply, a point of time" (AGLP 216). In other words, these words simply mean "at the present time" (NIV) or "at this point in time."

The object of this phrase is to establish that God presents Jesus as our atoning sacrifice in order to demonstrate God’s righteousness toward both "sins that are past" and sins that have been committed since the cross of Christ—that is, "sins that are present." As in verse 25, God’s righteousness refers to His own absolute, personal righteousness. Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was the "proof" (e&ndeicin) (BDAG 332) of God’s righteousness.

that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus: The expiatory sacrifice of Jesus upon the cross made evident the justice or righteousness of God. In the scriptures God is everywhere presented as absolutely just or righteous (Psalms 48:10; Psalms 145:17; et.al.). By the same token, He is presented as absolutely merciful and loving (Psalms 103:8; Psalms 108:4; 1 John 4:16). Oftentimes these facets of God’s character are presented in tandem in the scriptures (Psalms 89:14; Psalms 98:2-3; Psalms 48:9-10). The question that surfaces in finite human minds is, How can God reconcile in His own mind these seemingly mutually exclusive characteristics? How can He be both just (and punish sin) and the justifier of the sinner? God is not like man. It is impossible for God to lay down a law, affix a penalty to its violation, threaten infliction upon violators, and proceed no further when the law is actually broken (Hebrews 6:18). When man sinned, God’s justice had to be invoked. Sin had to be punished with death (Genesis 2:17). On the other hand, God, who is love, desired to grant mercy to His creation and redeem them from sin. To the limited minds of men, this problem was not solvable; but in God’s infinite mind there was no problem. Even before the dawn of time, God resolved this issue (1 Peter 1:19-21; John 1:29; John 1:36).

God’s justice against sin was meted out righteously on Jesus Christ, the divinely appointed vicarious sacrifice. He bare in His own body our sins upon the tree (1 Peter 2:24); that is, He suffered the punishment of God’s righteous anger against sin. In 2 Corinthians 5:21, Paul says, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

Paul does not mean to say that Jesus became a sinner or that He became sinful, for neither of these concepts is according to God’s word (Hebrews 4:15; 1 Peter 2:22). He means to say that Jesus became our divinely appointed sin offering (Hebrews 9:11-14; Hebrews 9:26; 2 Corinthians 5:21).

Not only so, but also at the same time He revealed in His sacrifice the grace and mercy of God, who is love, by enabling God to declare not only His justice but also His mercy; for God is the justifier of those who believe in Jesus. The salvation offered to men by virtue of Christ’s expiatory sacrifice is available to all men (1 Timothy 2:5-6); however, it is actually granted only to those who seek it upon the basis of faith in Christ—submissive, compliant, obedient faith in Jesus. No salvation is offered to any man outside of Christ. No one who fails to believe in Jesus can be saved.

The Exclusion of Boasting (Verses 27-31)

From Romans 1:18 through the end of that chapter, Paul effectively destroys the vain-glorying of the Gentiles who are trusting in their intellectual achievements for security. He reveals that everyone had violated the moral code written on man’s heart and consequently had no hope. They were all sinners—guilty before God. In Romans 2:1 to Romans 3:20, Paul turns the same accusing finger against the Jews. They, too, were all guilty of sin and hopelessly lost. The boastful and self-righteous spirit of the Jew is demolished. In verse 20 of chapter three, Paul reaches his first great conclusion: "Therefore by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified." Then, in verses 21-26, Paul begins to turn the tide of the sordid story of man’s fall and his inability to live in perfect obedience to the law. He begins to unfold the plan of God to redeem man from the morass of sin.

In this short section, Paul argues that when men are declared righteous according to God’s plan, all glorying or boasting is ruled out. No man can establish a claim on God on the ground of His own work because "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (3:23). The law of Moses and the moral law could justify men meritoriously only through perfect obedience to their precepts, and no man can establish such a claim. Because of all that precedes these verses, one must conclude that all glorying by men as a result of their salvation is excluded. This exclusion is made evident by the inexorable proof that justification comes only by the law of faith—the gospel, according to which men are justified graciously only on condition of their faith in Christ. Thus, it is in verse 28 that Paul reaches his second great conclusion: "Therefore we concluded that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law." In the concluding verses of chapter three, he reveals that God is the God of all men and that these principles, rather than voiding the law, were God’s intentions for the law of Moses from the beginning. This last point he further elucidates in chapter four by revealing the case of Abraham as confirmation that glorying has been excluded (4:1-25).

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

This verse explains the significance of Jesus Christ’s death since the Cross. It demonstrates God’s righteousness, the subject of Romans, by showing that God is both just in His dealings with sin and the Justifier who provides righteous standing for the sinner. Note that it is only those who have faith in Jesus who stand justified.

Romans 3:21-26 constitute an excellent explanation of God’s imputation of righteousness to believing sinners by describing justification. These verses contain "God’s great statement of justification by faith." [Note: Newell, p. 92.] To summarize, God can declare sinners righteous because Jesus Christ has paid the penalty for their sins by dying in their place. His death satisfied God’s demands against sinners completely. Now God declares those who trust in Jesus Christ as their substitute righteous.

"Justification is the act of God whereby He declares the believing sinner righteous in Christ on the basis of the finished work of Christ on the cross." [Note: Wiersbe, 1:522.]

". . . the direct exposition of the righteousness by faith ends with the twenty-sixth verse. If the epistle had ended there it would not have been incomplete. All the rest is a consideration of objections [and, I might add, implications], in which the further unfolding of the righteousness is only incidental." [Note: Stifler, p. 67.]

The characteristics of justification are that it is apart from the Law (Romans 3:21), through faith in Christ (Romans 3:22 a), for all people (Romans 3:22-23), by grace (Romans 3:24), at great cost to God (Romans 3:24-25), and in perfect justice (Romans 3:26). [Note: Wiersbe, 1:523-24.]

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 3:26

to demonstrate at the present time -- The time now since the Saviour has come, now is the time when he manifests (declares or demonstrates) His righteousness.

at the present time -- The word translated “time” means usually occasion, “special time,” “due time.” Same word as Romans 5:6. Such a sense is natural here. The “declaration” of God’s righteousness in pardon was made not only “at this time,” as distinct from a previous age (that of the O. T.), but “at this due time,” the crisis fixed by the Divine purpose. - CBSC

His righteousness -- God’s justice, His integrity and character as a moral sovereign is demonstrated by all His actions.

that He might be just -- God is consistent in maintaining the essential purity of his nature, his righteousness.

    "Sin" demanded death, and in the wisdom and integrity of God He allowed Christ to take the place of sinners and die in their stead without compromising His justice.

Succinctly summarizes the two key themes in the paragraph: Christ’s sacrificial death enables God to (1) justify sinful people (2) while he remains just. - NIVZSB

and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus -- Greek, “Even justifying him that believeth, etc.”- BN

him which believeth -- Lit. him who is out of, or from, faith. This Gr. idiom may mean “one who belongs to the class of faith,” i.e. of the faithful, the believing. Nearly the same Gr. occurs Hebrews 10:39. - CBSC

him which believeth in Jesus -- - Greek, “Him who is of the faith of Jesus;” in contradistinction from him who is of the works of the Law; that is, who depends on his own works for salvation. - BN

The "faith" system is the way by which God now ("this present time") justifies a person, and not a "law" system.

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

To declare, I say, at this time, his righteousness,.... This end is further explained, it being to declare the righteousness of God "at this time", under the Gospel dispensation; in which there was such a display of the grace, mercy, and goodness of God:

that he might be just; that is, appear to be so: God is naturally and essentially just in himself; and he is evidentially so in all his works, particularly in redemption by Christ; and when and while he is

the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus: Jesus, the Saviour, is the object of faith, as he is the Lord our righteousness; the believer in Jesus is a real, and not a nominal one; God is the justifier of such in a declarative way, and God only, though not to the exclusion of the Son and Spirit; and which sentence of justification is pronounced by him on the foot of a perfect righteousness, which neither law nor justice can find fault with, but entirely approve of; and so he appears just and righteous, even though he justifies the sinner and the ungodly.

Mitchell's Commentary on Selected New Testament Books

God has revealed to us the Gospel of God, the Gospel concerning His Son, who was a real

Man, God manifest in the flesh. He was the Son of God raised with power. When I think of what we have here in the Book of Romans, my heart goes out that every Christian might be established in the wonderful truth of the grace of God as it is given to us in this amazing book, this most foun­dational book of all of the epistles.

I say very frankly, my friend, if you are not es­tablished in the Book of Romans, then you are not established in the Gospel that God has for us.

Paul has just said, in chapter two, Romans 2:25-29, that empty profession isn’t worth a thing. Outward ordinances are empty if your heart is not right with God. So he raises a question:

Mitchell's Commentary on Selected New Testament Books

Mitchell's Commentary on Selected New Testament Books

Romans 3:25 a. Whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith.

You see, we are dealing now with what God sees at the cross. In fact, both verses 25 and 26 tell us where the righteousness of God was dis­played—at the cross of Calvary. God set forth His Son as a sacrifice which satisfies Him.

You remember that Isaiah 53:11 says, “As a re­sult of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied.” Propitiation is a divine satisfaction. When Jesus Christ died on the cross, He vindi­cated, satisfied, the holy, righteous character of God. This is what the cross means to God. And, may I say, this is the most important part of the work of Christ.

It is not what man sees. It’s what God sees. When you and I think of the cross, we think of Christ’s being a Saviour, giving His life a ransom, dying on the cross for us sinners. We think about what we receive from it.

Did you ever stop to think that God has more involved in the work of Christ at the cross than you and I do? When Christ died on the cross, He did not die to secure the righteousness of man; but he died to reveal and to vindicate the right­eousness of God. The issue is not how to fit man for the presence of God. There has been a tremen­dous misunderstanding of the very character of God.

The question is how can you bring a holy, right­eous, sovereign, eternal God down to man whereby man can be fitted to come into relationship and fellowship with Him.

In other words, there is something that must be done before a man can be fitted for the presence of God. And we find this wonderful truth in this doc­trine of propitiation.

How can God remain righteous and yet declare ungodly sinners righteous?

Now here we have it. At the cross, Jesus Christ met all the demands of God’s character and jus­tice; and God is perfectly satisfied with what He did. He is perfectly satisfied with the work of His Son at Calvary, so He is also satisfied with those who put their trust in the Son.

Christ satisfied the very righteous character of God. He made it possible for God to show mercy to sinful man. It is not that man is satisfied with the work of Christ. But God is satisfied. That’s what God has at the cross. The barrier is gone; access is ours. There is a throne of grace to which we can come, and Christ need never die again. God set Him forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood.

Romans 3:25 b. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed.

Man has a misconception of the character of God. In Genesis 2:1-25, God said to Adam and Eve, “I make only one request of you, one law. Do not touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That’s all. You can have all the rest; just do not touch that tree.”

But man did touch it. He took the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and ate it. Now God had said, “In the day that you eat thereof you will surely die.” But, you see, man didn’t die.

“But Mr. Mitchell, he died spiritually,” you say.

That’s true, but I believe that when God said, “In the day you eat thereof you shall surely die,” He meant the whole man—spirit, soul and body.

I want to tell you that even before man sinned, God already had planned a Redeemer. From the time Adam sinned, right through until Jesus died on the cross, God looked at man in the light of the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. You have it in this verse: “To demon­strate His righteousness, because in the forbear­ance of God He passed over the sins previously committed.”

How do you think the Old Testament saints were saved? They looked forward to the One who should come. They had been taught by God to put their trust in the One who should come. It’s true. God covered their sins and put them away at the cross. God saved men and women in the Old Testament on the ground that His Son would come to put away those sins.

What I’m trying to get to your heart is the most important thing, my friend. When Christ Je­sus died on the cross, He did it because of His Fa­ther. He did it to vindicate the righteousness of God as you have it in verse 26.

Romans 3:26. For the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Remember in Psalms 85:10, we read, “Lovingkindness and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” How could God in His righteousness manifest mercy to sinners who have no righteousness? Je­sus Christ came and put away our sin. He vindi­cated the righteous character of God and made it free for God to come down to man. Oh, no wonder we sing such songs as

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost but now am found,
was blind but now I see.”

“I need no other argument.
I need no other plea.
It is enough that Jesus died
and that He died for me.”

“On Christ the solid rock I stand,
all other ground is sinking sand.”

And, if God is perfectly satisfied with the work of His Son, are you? The writer of Hebrews could say in chapter 4, verse 16, “Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in (every) time of need.”

My friend, God’s heart is opened up to us. All the misunderstanding from Adam down has been cleared. That’s why Paul could say to the philoso­phical Athenians in Acts 17:30-31, “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent.” God let the nations go their own way to do what they wanted to do. But now, something has happened. Jesus Christ has died and satisfied the holy character of God. God today is willing to save all who come to Him.

God is satisfied. Are you satisfied?

In Exodus 34:7, do you remember what God says? He says He will forgive their “iniquity, trans­gression and sin.” As someone has said, “God for­gave men on credit.” He knew that His Son would come.

And the marvelous thing I’m telling you today is that the heart of God is open to us now. God spared not His own Son. Or as 1 John 4:10 says, “In this is love, not that we loved God.” Don’t you love it? “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

In 1 John 4:9, “God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.” This is repeated in the 10th verse with this change, He “sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

In other words, He transforms the judgment throne into a mercy throne—from a judgment seat to a mercy seat.

Why doesn’t God today judge the world? Why doesn’t God blot man out for his rebellion? for his corruption? for his lawlessness? for his sin? for his vileness? Why doesn’t God do something?

My friend, aren’t you thankful that “the Lord is not slow about His promise, as some men count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

Without the death of Christ, justification, salva­tion and redemption would have been impossible. But, because He died, we live. His righteousness is put to our account.

Someone is going to say, “Why, Mr. Mitchell, how can I receive this righteousness?” And so we come to verse 27.

Light of Israel Bible Commentary

TRUE RIGHTEOUSNESS COMES ONLY BY FAITH

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Romans 3:19

Now Paul moves back to discuss what true righteousness is all about and how that righteousness relates to the law. Here Paul is leading up to his great statement concerning the law in the next verse (v. 20). Obviously the law was not given to make people righteous but to point out their sins. Paul says later in Romans 7:7, "…For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, 'Do not covet.'" Thus the law makes the whole world accountable to God for sin and shuts all mouths. The Phillips paraphrase sums it up well, "it is the straight-edge of the Law that shows us how crooked we are."

"Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin" (3:20). No doubt this verse fell like a bombshell on the Jews of the first century. It continues to do the same in the present day. Here it is, short and simple, "No Jewish person or anyone else will be declared righteous by keeping the requirements of the law." Thus the law for righteousness and justification is a "dead-end street." How can Paul, a Jew, say such an unthinkable thing?

Let us consider what the law is and what the law is not. As we have said, the law was given to convict people of sin. It was the prosecuting attorney, so to speak, and not the defense counsel. In Galatians 3:24, Paul uses another picture to point out that the law was the stern schoolmaster to lead us to Christ. The Bible says that there is nothing wrong with the law – that it is perfect (Psalm 19:7). The problem is that there is something wrong with us – we are imperfect. We simply cannot keep the law. A good example of this is seen in Psalm 119. This Psalm is the longest chapter in the whole Bible and it is a Psalm extolling the law. The Psalmist declares many times how he loves the law and how he will keep it always. Unfortunately, the Psalm ends in verse 176 with these mournful words "I have strayed like a lost sheep. Seek your servant…"

Not only does the law not bring us to righteousness or justification, but it actually brings us to condemnation. The law has a built-in curse for all who do not keep it perfectly. In Galatians 3:10 Paul says, "For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law'" ((cf. Deuteronomy 27:26). In other words, to break a commandment whether great or small was in a sense to break them all. Thank God, Paul does not leave us in this dismal and hopeless situation. He says in Galatians 3:13, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.'"

Now Paul moves on to discuss the righteousness provided by faith in Christ, who died on a pole or tree for us all, "But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify" (3:21). We should understand that using the expression "the Law and the Prophets" is another way of making reference to the whole of the Old Testament. "Paul's point is that a new era in God's plan has arrived now and that his way of bringing people into relationship with himself takes place outside the confines of that old era, of which the Mosaic Law was a central component."<footnote>Moo, Romans, vs. 3:21-26.</footnote>

Everywhere in the Old Testament we see evidence of this development prophesied. Particularly in the book of Isaiah it is predicted. Pett remarks how it was Isaiah's constant theme (cf. Isaiah 45.8; 46.13; 51.5, 6, 8; 56.1; 61.10), that the Lord would send his righteousness and salvation in order to redeem his people.<footnote>Pett, Readings in Romans, vs. 3:21-31.</footnote> In the beautiful Servant Songs of Isaiah, beginning with chapter 42 and continuing through chapter 53, we see this righteous Servant of the Lord portrayed. We realize in this section that the Messianic Servant comes to help Israel, who was supposed to be God's appointed servant, but who failed in the task. We see that the Messianic Servant not only helps and rescues Israel but also brings justice to the Gentiles (42:1). In fact, Isaiah 49 makes plain that the Messianic Servant not only has the job of caring for Israel and restoring her, but that he also has the job of being a light to the Gentiles (Isaiah 49:6).

Of course, the most graphic account of the Servant is found from Isaiah 50 onward. We see that the Servant suffers greatly on behalf of his people, Israel. We see him beaten, abused, mocked, spat upon and disgraced (Isaiah 50:6-7). Finally from Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12, the full scope of his awful suffering is revealed. We see him disfigured, despised, pierced, and at last slaughtered for the sins of his people. As Isaiah 53:8 states, "…For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken." In Isaiah 53:12, it is said of him, "…For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

Thus, it is God who makes righteousness possible for us through the suffering and death of his Messiah. Paul adds, "This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile," (3:22). So, we see that God's own righteousness is displayed and offered to us in the Messianic Servant, whom we Christians know as Jesus or Yeshua. His very name in the Hebrew means "salvation." This righteousness and salvation is now offered to Jews and to all other people. The only requirement for us to receive this grace of a full salvation is that we must believe. Ephesians 2:8 states it succinctly, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God…" We see here that even faith is not from us, but it is also a gift from God. As Morris remarks, "It is no more than the means through which the gift is given."<footnote>Quoted in Guzik, Romans, Romans, David Guzik's Commentaries on the Bible, v. 3:21.</footnote>

Someone has said that faith is like the hand of a beggar reaching up to God for help, and that is what we are. We are just sinful beggars in the sight of a holy and righteous God. The apostle reminds us again of our fallen state, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…" (3:23). Here Paul states a universal gospel truth that is absolutely critical for understanding the human race. All humans are sinners. They are sinners whether they are Jews or Gentiles. It is not only that they have sinned, but that by their very nature they are sinners. They are "dominated by a fundamentally evil dynamic."<footnote>Briscoe, Romans, p. 77.</footnote> It is almost as if sin were part of their genetic makeup.

Since the fall of the human race in the Garden of Eden all humans have been sinners. They are born in sin (Psalm 51:5) and continue in sin because every human impulse is tainted with this "original sin," as it is sometimes called. This is also what theologians refer to as "total depravity." Because all have sinned, all people have "fallen short" or "missed the mark" of God's glory and of his creative plan. Because all have sinned, all are doomed to final judgment and eternal destruction.

Now there are a lot of folks on earth who do not believe this anymore. Probably many people would laugh or even scoff at it today. There are also a lot of folks on earth who have probably never even heard this information. There was a time in the US, however, when the bulk of people knew it and believed it to be true. In fact, even the un-churched generally believed it because it was a part of the fabric of our great Christian heritage.

I can remember as a young pastor in the early 1960s how we used to win people to the Lord by just showing them in the Bible what we called the "Roman Road to Salvation." The "road" began with this verse in Romans 3:23, that all are sinners. We then progressed to Romans 5:8, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Then we led them to Romans 6:23, "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." We finished with Romans 10:9, 10 and 13, "That if you declare with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved…For, 'Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'"

Later in the rebellious 1960s, people began to throw away the Bible and the gospel heritage, and now these verses make less and less sense in our postmodern world. For instance, many people we would talk with today would have little or no concept of sin. They might know what it is to go on a "Peanut Butter Binge" or to have "Chocolate Decadence" but they do not know what it is to have original sin. It is almost as if the measure of sin today is caloric.<footnote>Hannah, Our Legacy, p. 341.</footnote> They also have no concept of what death is in an eternal and everlasting sense. Because we have essentially lost the gospel in our society, they would not understand the need for Christ dying for us, nor would they understand his resurrection. In short, they would not understand salvation or the need to have it.

Modern and postmodern minds have become polluted with humanistic ideas that people are essentially good and whole. They believe this even in spite of a growing avalanche of proof to the contrary. All we have to do is turn on the TV to see the latest outrage in human depravity, where someone else has gunned down innocent people and for no reason. Yet, far be it for folks today to believe the Bible truth that all people are afflicted with the evil sin microbe. People do not believe it regardless of the fact that the Bible's analysis relates squarely with reality while other religious systems, including humanism, fail miserably.

It is sad to say that the Jewish people follow a similar humanistic line of thinking and they too do not believe in original sin. To them, sin is described as an "evil impulse" (Hebrews yetzer ha ra) which comes from the outside, while man himself is thought to be essentially good and whole. This is certainly not what Paul is saying.

He hastens to add that because we are all sinners we "are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus" (3:24). His great grace is a free gift from heaven only because of the redemption that came by Christ. "It had been Paul's purpose in 1:18 – 3:20, to show that all stand under God's wrath; it is now his purpose to show that all are objects of God's grace."<footnote>Edwards, Romans, p. 101.</footnote>

"God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood – to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished – " (3:25). The "sacrifice of atonement" (Gk. ilasthrion) mentioned here is very significant. In this passage it speaks of the mercy seat that was found in the Holy of Holies. It was the place where the blood was sprinkled and where the atonement was made for Israel by her High Priest. Barnes remarks how Christ finally became the "medium, the offering, the expiation, by which reconciliation is produced between God and man."<footnote>Barnes, Albert Barnes' Notes on the New Testament, v. 3:25.</footnote>

Bruce in quoting Manson states, "But in Christ 'the mercy seat' is no longer kept in the sacred seclusion of the most holy place; it is brought out into the midst of the rough and tumble of the world and set up before the eyes of hostile, contemptuous, or indifferent crowds."<footnote>Quoted in Bruce, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, p. 107.</footnote>

Perhaps the exchange and interchange mentioned in this passage is expressed best in an old hymn penned by Samuel Webbe (1740-1816), entitled Come Ye Disconsolate.

Come, ye disconsolate, where'er ye languish
Come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel
Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish:
Earth has no sorrow that heav'n cannot heal.

In the above verse (3:25), we see that God granted "remission" toward the sins committed during the Old Testament era. The Greek word used here for remission (paresin) does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament or in the Septuagint. It has the idea of "passing by" or "not noticing" the sins that were committed.<footnote>Barnes, Albert Barnes' Notes on the New Testament, v. 3:25. Also, several of our translations besides the NIV bring out this truth clearly, "because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed" (NASB); "God let the sins of earlier times go without punishment" (BBE); "because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed" (NRSV); "because in His divine forbearance He had passed over and ignored former sins without punishment" (AMP). The sins previously committed would have to wait on the blood of Christ. However, the whole idea of the blood sacrifice of atonement has come to be a repulsive idea to many in this postmodern age. As Briscoe states, "Theologians have been quick to denounce what they have called 'the gospel of gore,' and congregations have voted to ban hymns which extol the virtues of 'the blood.'" (Briscoe, p. 93).</footnote> Wuest says that it means a "passing over" or "letting pass" and it should be translated "pretermission."<footnote>Wuest, Romans in the Greek New Testament: Wuest's word studies from the Greek New Testament, v. 3:25.</footnote>

God is a God of justice. Because he is a God of justice, it is impossible for him to be unjust in his dealings with sin. In Old Testament times if God had simply waved his hand to forgive sin he would not have been dealing justly according to his own word (cf. Proverbs 17:15; 24:25). In the Bible he says, "I will not acquit the guilty" (Exodus 23:7). Stott comments, "How can the righteous God act un-righteously, and so overthrow the moral order, turning it upside down? It is unbelievable! Or rather it would be, if it were not for the cross of Christ."<footnote>Stott, The Message of Romans, p. 112.</footnote>

It is likely that we have here in this section one of the most astounding portions of scripture in the whole Bible. Stott relates how Dr. Leon Morris suggests this may be "possibly the most important single paragraph ever written."<footnote>Quoted in Stott, The Message of Romans, pp. 108-109.</footnote>

Here Paul gives us a heavenly insight regarding the treatment of sins in the Old Testament. It is something we could not know unless it came to us by revelation. We remember that Paul had visited in the heavenly places (2 Corinthians 12:2-4) and in addition he had received powerful revelations of God's truth (2 Corinthians 12:7). We remember that he was a founding apostle of the church and it should not surprise us that he had special insight into the matters of sin and forgiveness.

What the apostle is saying here is that sin was never fully dealt with by the Old Testament sacrificial system. The scripture bears this out saying, "it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins" (Hebrews 10:4). Guzik remarks, "The idea is that through the animal sacrifice of the Old Testament, those who looked in faith to the coming Messiah had their sins 'covered' by a sort of an 'IOU' or promissory note. That temporary covering was redeemed for full payment at the cross."<footnote>Guzik, Romans, Romans, David Guzik's Commentaries on the Bible, vs. 3:25-26.</footnote> God was, "…not remitting but only forbearing to punish them, or passing them by, until an adequate atonement for them should be made."<footnote>Brown, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, v. 3:25. I once heard a preacher compare this to a credit card. While it has no value in itself, it is the promise of eventual payment.</footnote> Thus we see that God in his great forbearance was willing to leave the sins of the Old Testament era unpunished until Jesus as the Lamb of God could receive the full punishment for them all at Calvary. What an awful burden of sin our Savior bore!

Now we can see the partial nature of atonement in the Old Testament. We can understand why the faithful people of the old covenant at their death were confined to a shadowy place called Sheol, or the abode of the dead. They were being kept in a suspended state because their redemption was not complete until Jesus died on the cross and paid the full price for their sin. We see a reflection of this in Hebrews 11:40, "…God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect." We also see it reflected in Hebrews 9:15b, which states of Christ, "…he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant." Obviously the writer is speaking in this passage of all those who believed in Old Testament times. It is truly interesting that after Jesus was crucified and resurrected many holy people of the past came from their tombs and appeared to numerous people in Jerusalem (Mt. 27:53).

Brown comments regarding this important section of scripture how translators have often missed the great truth here. They have taken "the sins that are past" as a reference to the sins of believers which were committed before they came to faith. They have also seen the word "remission," to mean "the remission of sins," while in fact it means only a "passing by." Brown remarks how this would make the "remission of sins" come through the "forbearance of God," and this is certainly not the case.<footnote>Ibid.</footnote>

Paul says, "he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus" (3:26). Here the apostle brings out why God could only "pass by" sins under the Old Covenant. Had he forgiven them fully based on the offering up of bulls and goats, there would have really been no need for the offering of the Messiah centuries later. However, the blood of animals could not erase the sins of humankind as we have seen, and therefore God would have been unjust to have forgiven them fully.

The offering of animals was a sort of "virtual reality" awaiting the final offering of Jesus. Of course, it was absolutely necessary for faithful people of old to make these animal offerings. They were being obedient to the types and shadows of scripture. Once the Messiah had made his offering on the cross, the sins of all those who had believed in God were paid for and forgiven. So we understand that the death of Christ was just as important to those who lived before him as for those who have lived after him. Edwards remarks about this, saying that "animal sacrifice had a proleptic function; it was a harbinger of a final sacrifice which would remit the full consequences of sin."<footnote>Edwards, Romans, p. 106.</footnote>

James Denney provides us with a beautiful summary of this whole paragraph:

There can be no gospel unless there is such a thing as a righteousness of God for the ungodly. But just as little can there be any gospel unless the integrity of God's character be maintained. The problem of the sinful world, the problem of all religion, the problem of God in dealing with a sinful race, is how to unite these two things. The Christian answer to the problem is given by Paul in the words, "Jesus Christ whom God set forth a propitiation (or, in propitiatory power) in his blood."<footnote>Quoted in Moo, Romans, v. 3:25.</footnote>

Those who now have faith in Jesus are justified. Clearly this is not a process but an act of God. It is not something we must hope for or even wait for. It is a judicial verdict that was made before the world began and it becomes effective for us the moment that we believe in Jesus the Lamb of God and as the Messiah.

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.

Spurgeon's Verse Expositions of the Bible

Justice Satisfied

A Sermon

(No. 255)

Delivered on Sabbath Morning, May 29th, 1859, by the

REV. C. H. Spurgeon

at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." Romans 3:26 .

"Just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John 1:9 .

WHEN THE SOUL is seriously impressed with the conviction of its guilt, when terror and alarm get hold upon it concerning the inevitable consequences of its sin, the soul is afraid of God. It dreads at that time every attribute of divinity. But most of all the sinner is afraid of God's justice. "Ah," saith he to himself, "God is a just God; and if so, how can he pardon my sins? for my iniquities cry aloud for punishment, and my transgressions demand that his right hand should smite me low. How can I be saved? Were God unjust, he might forgive: but, alas! he is not so, he is severely just. 'He layeth justice to the line, and righteousness to the plummet.' He is the judge of all the earth, and he must do right. How then can I escape from his righteous wrath which must be stirred up against me?" Let us be assured that the sinner is quite right in the conviction that there is here a great difficulty. The justice of God is in itself a great barrier to the salvation of sinners. There is no possibility for that barrier to be surmounted, nor even for it to be removed except by one means, which shall this day be proclaimed unto you through the gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord. It is true that God is just. Let old Sodom tell you how God rained fire and brimstone out of heaven upon man's iniquity. Let a drowning world tell you how God lifted the sluices of the fountains of the great deep, and bade the bubbling waters spring up and swallow up man alive. Let the earth tell you; for she opened her mouth when Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rebelled against God. Let the buried cities of Nineveh, and the tattered relics of Tyre and Sidon, tell you that God is just, and will by no means spare the guilty. And direst of all, let hell's bottomless lake declare what is the awful vengeance of God against the sins of man. Let the sighs, and groans, and moans, and shrieks of spirits condemned of God, rise in your ears, and bear witness that he is a God who will not spare the guilty, who will not wink at iniquity, transgression, and sin, but who will have vengeance upon every rebel, and will give justice its full satisfaction for every offence.

The sinner is right in his conviction that God is just, and he is moreover right in the inference which follows from it, that because God is just his sin must be punished. Ah, sinner, if God punish not thy sin, he has ceased to be what he has always been the severely just, the inflexibly righteous. Never has there been a sin pardoned, absolutely and without atonement, since the world began. There has never been an offense yet remitted by the great Judge of heaven, until the law has received the fullest vindication. You are right, O convicted sinner, that such shall be the case even to the end. Every transgression shall have its just recompense of reward. For every offence there shall be its stroke, and for every iniquity there shall be its doom. "Ah," now says the sinner, "then I am shut out of heaven. If God be just and he must punish sin, then what can I do? Justice, like some dark angel, strides across the road of mercy, and with his sword drawn, athirst for blood and winged to slay, he strides across my path, and threatens to drive me backwards over the precipice of death into the ever-burning lake." Sinner, thou art right; it is even so. Except through the gospel which I am about to preach to thee, justice is thine antagonist, thy lawful, irresistible, and insatiable enemy. It cannot suffer thee to enter heaven, for thou hast sinned; and punished that sin must be, avenged that transgression must be, as long as God is God the holy and the just.

Is it possible, then, that the sinner cannot be saved? This is the great riddle of the law, and the grand discovery of the gospel. Wonder ye heavens! be astonished O earth! that very justice which stood in the sinner's way and prevented his being pardoned, has been by the gospel of Christ appeased; by the rich atonement offered upon Calvary, justice is satisfied, has sheathed its sword, and has now not a word to say against the pardon of the penitent. Nay, more, that justice once so angry, whose brow was lightning, and whose voice was thunder, has now become the sinner's advocate, and itself with its mighty voice pleads with God, that whosoever confesses his sin should be pardoned and be cleansed from all unrighteousness.

The business of this morning shall be to show, in the first place, according to the first text, how justice is no longer the sinner's enemy "God is just, and yet the justifier of him that believeth;" and then, in the second place, that justice has become the sinner's advocate, and that "God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

But here let me utter a caution; I shall speak this morning, only to those who feel their guilt, and who are ready to confess their sin. For to those who still love sin, and will not acknowledge their guilt, there is no promise of mercy or pardon. For them there remains nothing but the fearful looking for of judgment. "He that being often reproved hardeneth his heart shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." The soul that neglects this great salvation cannot escape; there is no door of escape provided for it. Unless the Lord has now brought us to feel our need of mercy, has compelled us to confess that unless he gives us mercy we must righteously perish, and unless, moreover, he has made us willing now to be saved on any terms, so that we may be saved at all, this gospel which I am about to preach is not ours. But if we be convinced of sin and are now trembling before the thunders of God's wrath, every word that I am now about to speak will be full of encouragement and consolation to you.

I. First, then, HOW HAS JUSTICE BEEN PUT ASIDE? or rather, HOW HAS IT BEEN SO SATISFIED THAT IT NO LONGER STANDS IN THE WAY OF GOD'S JUSTIFYING THE SINNER?

The one answer to that is, Justice has been satisfied through the substitution of our blessed Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. When man sinned the law demanded that man must be punished. The first offense of man was committed by Adam, who was the representative of the entire race. When God would punish sin, in his own infinite mind he thought of the blessed expedient, not of punishing his people, but of punishing their representative, the covenant head, the second Adam. It was by one man, the first man, that sin entered into the world, and death by sin. It was by another man, the second Adam, who is the Lord from heaven, it was by him that this sin was borne; by him its punishment was endured; by him the whole wrath of heaven was suffered. And through that second representative of manhood, Jesus, the second Adam, God is now able and willing to forgive the vilest of the vile, and justify even the ungodly, and he is able to do so without the slightest violation of his justice. For, mark, when Jesus Christ the Son of God suffered on the tree, he did not suffer for himself. He had no sin, either natural or actual. He had done nothing whatever that could bring him under the ban of heaven, or subject his holy soul and his perfect body to grief and pain. When he suffered it was as a substitute. He died "the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." Had his sorrows been personally deserved they would have had no efficacy in them. But inasmuch as for sins not his own he died to atone; inasmuch as he was punished, not for any guilt that he had done or could do, but for the guilt incurred by others, there was a merit and an efficacy in all that he suffered, by which the law was satisfied, and God is able to forgive.

Let us show very briefly how fully the law is satisfied.

1. Note first the dignity of the victim who offered himself up to divine justice. Man had sinned; the law required the punishment of manhood. But Jesus, the eternal Son of God, "very God of very God," who had been hymned through eternal ages by joyous angels, who had been the favourite of his Father's court, exalted high above principalities and powers, and every name that is named, he himself condescended to become man; was born of the Virgin Mary; was cradled in a manger; lived a life of suffering, and at last died a death of agony. If you will but think of the wondrous person whom Jesus was as very God of very God, king of angels, creator, preserver, Lord of all I think you will see that in his sufferings, the law received a greater vindication than it could have done even in the sufferings of all the men that have ever lived or ever could live. If God had consumed the whole human race, if all the worlds that float in ether had been sacrificed as one mighty holocaust to the vengeance of the law, it would not have been so well vindicated as when Jesus died. For the deaths of all men and all angels would have been but the deaths and sufferings of creatures; but when Jesus died, the Creator himself underwent the pang, it was the divine preserver of the world hanging on the cross. There is such dignity in the Godhead, that all it does is marvellous and infinite in its merit; and when he stooped to suffer, when he bowed his awful head, cast aside his diadem of stars to have his brow girt about with thorns; when his hands that once swayed the sceptre of all worlds were nailed to the tree; when his feet that erst had pressed the clouds, when these were fastened to the wood, then did the law receive an honour such as it never could have received if a whole universe in one devouring conflagration had blazed and burned for ever.

2. In the next place, just pause and think of the relationship which Jesus Christ had towards the great judge of all the earth, and then you will see again that the law must have been fully satisfied thereby. We hear of Brutus that he was the most inflexible of law-givers; that when he sat upon the bench he knew no distinction of persons. Imagine dragged before Brutus many of the noblest Roman senators, convicted of crime: he condemns them, and without mercy they are rent away by the lictors to their doom. You would admire certainly all this justice of Brutus But suppose Brutus' own son brought before him and such was the case imagine the father sitting on the judgment-bench and declaring that he knew no distinction whatever, even of his own children. Conceive that son tried and condemned out of his father's own mouth. See him tied up before his father's own eyes, while, as the inflexible judge, that father bids the lictor lay on the rod, and afterwards cries, "Take him away and use the axe!" See you not here how he loves his country better than his son, and he loves justice better than either. "Now," says the world, "Brutus is just indeed." Now, if God had condemned each of us one by one, or the whole race in a mass, there would certainly have been a vindication of his justice. But lo! his own son takes upon him the sins of the world, and he comes before his Father's presence. He is not guilty in himself, but the sins of man are laid upon his shoulders. The Father condemns his Son; he gives him up to the Roman rod; he gives him up to Jewish mockery, to military scorn, and to priestly arrogance. He delivers up his Son to the executioner, and bids him nail him to the tree; and as if that were not enough, since the creature had not power of itself to give forth all the vengeance of God upon its own substitute, God himself smites his Son. Are you staggered at such an expression? It is scriptural. Read in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, and there you have the proof thereof: "It pleased the Lord to bruise him: he hath put him to grief." When the whip had gone round to every hand, when the betrayer had smitten him, when Pilate and Herod, and Jew and Gentile, had each laid on the stroke, it was seen that human arm was not powerful enough to execute the full vengeance: then did the Father take his sword, and cry, "Awake! O sword, against my shepherd, against the man that is my fellow," and he smote him sternly, as if he had been his enemy, as if he were a common culprit, as if he were the worst of criminals he smote him again and again, till that awful shriek was forced from the lips of the dying substitute, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani," my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Surely, when God smites his Son, and such a Son, when God smites his only begotten and well-beloved, then Justice has more than its due, more than itself could ask, Christ himself did freely give!

3. Furthermore, if you will please for a moment to consider how terrible were the agonies of Christ, which, mark you, he endured in the room, the place, the stead of all poor penitent sinners, of all those who confess their sins and believe in him; I say, when you mark these agonies, you will readily see why Justice does not stand in the sinner's way. Doth Justice come to thee this morning, and say, "Sinner, thou hast sinned, I will punish thee?" Answer thus "Justice, thou hast punished all my sins. All I ought to have suffered has been suffered by my substitute, Jesus. It is true that in myself I owe thee a debt greater than I can pay, but it is true that in Christ I owe thee nothing; for all I did owe is paid, every farthing of it; the utmost drachm has been counted down; not a doit remains that is due from me to thee, O thou avenging justice of God." But if Justice still accuse, and conscience clamour, go thou and take Justice with thee to Gethsemane, and stand there with it: see that man so oppressed with grief, that all his head, his hair, his garments bloody be. Sin was a press a vice which forced his blood from every vein, and wrapped him in a sheet of his own blood. Dost see that man there! canst hear his groans, his cries, his earnest intercessions, his strong crying and tears! canst mark that clotted sweat as it crimsons the frozen soil, strong enough to unloose the curse! dost see him in the desperate agony of his spirit, crushed, broken, bruised beneath the feet of the Justice in the olive press of God! Justice, is not that enough? will not that content thee? In a whole hell there is not so much dignity of vengeance as there is in the garden of Gethsemane. Art thou not yet satisfied? Come, Justice, to the hall of Pilate. Seest thou that man arraigned, accused, charged with sedition and with blasphemy! See him taken to the guard-room, spat upon, buffetted with hands, crowned with thorns, robed in mockery, and insulted with a reed for a sceptre. I say, Justice, seest thou that man, and dost thou know that he is "God over all blessed for ever?" and yet he endureth all this to satisfy thy demands! Art thou not content with that? Dost thou still frown? Let me show thee this man on the pavement. He is stripped. Stand, Justice, and listen to those stripes, those bloody scourges, and as they fall upon his devoted back and plough deep furrows there, dost thou see thong-full after thong-full of his quivering flesh torn from his poor bare back! Art not content yet, Justice? Then what will satisfy thee? "Nothing," says Justice, "but his death." Come thou with me, then thou canst see that feeble man hurried through the streets! Seest thou him driven to the top of Calvary, hurled on his back, nailed to the transverse wood? Oh, Justice, canst thou see his dislocated bones, now that his cross is lifted up? Stand with me, O Justice, see him as he weeps, and sighs, and cries; see his soul-agonies! Canst thou read that tale of terror which is veiled in that flesh and blood? Come, listen Justice, whilst thou hearest him cry, "I thirst," and whilst thou seest the burning fever devouring him, till he is dried up like a potsherd, and his tongue cleaveth to the roof of his mouth for thirst! And lastly, O Justice, dost thou see him bow his head, and die? "Yes," saith Justice, "and I am satisfied; I have nothing that I can ask more; I am fully content; my uttermost demands are more than satisfied."

And am I not content, too? Guilty though I am and vile, can I not plead that this bloody sacrifice is enough to satisfy God's demands against me? Oh, yes, I trust I can,

"My faith doth lay its hand,

On that dear head of thine,

While like a penitent I stand,

And here confess my sin."

Jesus, I believe that they sufferings were for me; and I believe that they are more than enough to satisfy for all my sins. By faith I cast myself at the foot of thy cross and cling to it. This is my only hope, my shelter, and my shield. It cannot be, that God can smite me now. Justice itself prevents, for when Justice once is satisfied it were injustice if it should ask for more. Now, is it not clear enough to the eye of every one, whose soul has been aroused, that Justice stands no longer in the way of the sinner's pardon? God can be just, and yet the justifier. He has punished Christ, why should he punish twice for one offence? Christ has died for all his people's sins, and if thou art in the covenant, thou art one of Christ's people. Damned thou canst not be. Suffer for thy sins thou canst not. Until God can be unjust, and demand two payments for one debt, he cannot destroy the soul for whom Jesus died. "Away goes universal redemption," says one. Yes, away it goes, indeed. I am sure there is nothing about that in the Word of God. A redemption that does not redeem is not worth my preaching, or your hearing, Christ redeemed every soul that is saved; no more, and no less. Every spirit that shall be seen in heaven Christ bought. If he had redeemed those in hell, they never could have come there. He has bought his people with his blood, and they alone shall he bring with him. "But who are they?" says one. Thou art one, if thou believest. Thou art one if thou repentest of thy sin. If thou wilt now take Christ to be thy all in all, then thou art one of his; for the covenant must prove a lie, and God must be unjust, and justice must become unrighteousness, and love must become cruelty, and the cross must become a fiction, ere thou canst be condemned if thou trustest in Jesus.

This is the way in which Justice ceases to be the enemy of souls.

II. The second text says that not only can God be just, but it says something more: it says, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Now, if I understand this text, it means this: that IT IS AN ACT OF JUSTICE ON GOD'S PART TO FORGIVE THE SINNER WHO MAKES A CONFESSION OF HIS SIN TO GOD. Mark! not that the sinner deserves forgiveness: that can never be. Sin can never merit anything but punishment, and repentance is no atonement for sin. Not that God is bound from any necessity of his nature to forgive every one that repents, because repentance has not in itself sufficient efficacy and power to merit forgiveness at the hand of God. Yet, nevertheless, it is a truth that, because God is just, he must forgive every sinner who confesses his sin. And if he did not and mark, it is a bold thing to say, but it is warranted by the text if a sinner should be led truly and solemnly to make confession of his sins and cast himself on Christ, if God did not forgive him, then he were not the God that he is represented to be in the Word of God: he were a God unjust, and that may God forbid, such a thing must not, cannot be. But how, then, is it that Justice itself actually demands that every soul that repents should be pardoned? It is so. The same Justice that just now stood with a fiery sword in his hand, like the cherubim of old keeping the way of the tree of life, now goes hand in hand with the sinner. "Sinner," he says, "I will go with thee. When thou goest to plead for pardon I will go and plead for thee. Once I spoke against thee: but now I am so satisfied with what Christ has done, that I will go with thee and plead for thee. I will change my language I will not say a word to oppose thy pardon, but I will go with thee and demand it. It is but an act of justice that God should now forgive." And the sinner goes up with Justice, and what has Justice got to say? Why, it says this: "God must forgive the repenting sinner, if he be just, according to his promise." A God who could break his promise were unjust. We do not believe in men who tell us lies. I have known some of so gentle a disposition, that they could never say "No;" if they were asked to do a thing they have said, "Yes." But they have never earned a character for it, when they have said "Yes," and afterwards did not fulfil. It is not so with God. He is no tender-hearted being who promises more than he can perform, and no forgetful one who promises what afterwards shall slip from his memory. Every word which God utters shall be fulfilled, whether it be decree, threatening, or promise. Sinner! go to God with a promise in your hand. "Lord thou hast said, 'He that confesseth his sin, and forsaketh it, shall find mercy.' I confess my sin, and I forsake it: Lord, give me mercy!" Don't doubt but that God will give it you. You have his own pledge in your hand; you have his own bond in your keeping. Take that pledge and that bond before his throne of mercy, and that bond never shall be cancelled till it has been honoured. You shall see that promise fulfilled to the uttermost letter, though your sin be never so black. Suppose the promise you take should be this. "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." "But," says the Law, "thou art one of the greatest sinners that ever lived." "Ay, but the promise says, 'Him that cometh,' and I come, and I claim the fulfillment of it." "No, but thou hast been a blasphemer." "I know it, but the promise says, 'Him that cometh,' and I come, and blasphemer though I am, I claim the promise." "But thou hast been a thief, thou hast deceived thy neighbour, and thou hast robbed men." "I have, but the promise says, 'Him that cometh to me I will in no wise case out;' I come, and I claim the promise. It does not say anything at all about character in the promise: it says, 'Him that cometh,' and I come, and if I be black as the devil, nevertheless God is true, and I claim the promise. I confess all that can be said against me. Will God be untrue, and send a seeking soul away with a promise unfulfilled? Never!" "But," says one, "you have lived many years in this way; your conscience has often checked you, and you have resisted conscience often: it is too late now." "But I have the promise, 'Him that cometh,' there is no time stipulated in it 'Him that cometh;' I come, and O God, thou canst not break the promise!" Challenge God by faith, and you will see that he will be as good as his word to you. Though you are worse than words can tell, God, I repeat it, as long as he is just, must honour his own promise. Go and confess your sin, trust in Christ, and you shall find pardon.

But, again, not only did God make the promise, but according to the text man has been induced to act upon it; and, therefore, this becomes a double bond upon the justice of God. Suppose you made a promise to any man, that if such a thing was done, you would do something else, and suppose that man were to do something quite contrary to his own nature, quite abhorent to himself; but he did it nevertheless, because he expected to get great blessings thereby, do you mean to say you would tempt a man to do that, and put him to vast expense, and care and trouble, and then turn round and say? "There I shall have nothing to do with that promise: I only promised to make you do so-and-so, now, I will not fulfil my engagement." Why the man would turn about and call you base to make a promise to lead him to do something and then not fulfil your promise. Now, God has said, "If we confess our sins and trust in Christ, we shall have mercy." You have done it; you have made the most abject and sincere confession, and you do declare that you have no trust but the blood and righteousness of Christ. Now, on the faith of the promise you have been led into this state. Do you imagine when God has brought you through much pain and agony of mind to repent of sin, to give up self-righteousness, and rely on Christ, he will afterwards turn round and tell you he did not mean what he said? It cannot be it cannot be. Suppose, now you were about to engage a man to be your servant, and you say to him, renounce such a situation, give that up; come and take a house in the neighbourhood where I live, and I will take you to be my servant." Suppose he does it, and you then say, "I am glad for your own sake that you have left your master, still I will not take you." What would he say to you? He would say, "I gave up my situation on the faith of your promise, and now, you break it." Ah! but it never can be said of Almighty God, that, if a sinner acted on the faith of his promise, then that promise was not kept. God ceases to be God when he ceases to have mercy upon the soul who seeks pardon through the blood of Christ. No, he is a just God, "Faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

One more aspect of this case. God's justice demands that the sinner should be forgiven if he seeks mercy, for this reason: Christ died on purpose to secure pardon for every seeking soul. Now, I hold it to be an axiom, a self-evident truth, that whatever Christ died for he will have. I cannot believe that when he paid to his Father the price of blood, and groans and tears, he bought something which the Father will not give him. Now, Christ died to purchase the pardon of sin for all those who believe on him, and do you suppose that the Father will rob him of that which be has bought so dearly? No, God were untrue to his own Son, he would break his oath to his well-beloved and only begotten Son, if he were not to give pardon, peace, and purity to every soul that comes to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Oh, I would that I could preach it as with a tongue of thunder everywhere, God is just, and yet the justifier of him that believeth. God is just to forgive us our sins, if we confess them; just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

III. Now, to close. I must just enter into some little EXPLANATION OF THE TWO GREAT DUTIES THAT ARE TAUGHT IN THE TWO TEXTS. The first duty is faith "believeth in Christ;" the second text is confession "if we confess our sins."

I will begin with confession first. Expect not that God will forgive you until you confess; not in the general confession of a prayer book, but in the particular confession of your own inmost heart. You are not to confess to a priest or a man, unless you have offended against him. In that respect, if you have been an offender against any man, be at peace with him and ask his pardon for aught you have done against him. It is a proof of a noble mind when you can ask pardon of another for having done amiss. Whenever grace comes into the heart it will lead you to make amends for any injury which you have done either by word or deed to any of your fellow-men; and you cannot expect that you shall be forgiven of God until you have forgiven men, and have been ready to make peace with those who are now your enemies. That is a beautiful trait in the character of a true Christian. I have heard of Mr. John Wesley, that he was attended in most of his journeyings by one who loved him very much, and was willing, I believe, to have died for him. Still he was a man of a very stubborn and obstinate disposition, and Mr. Wesley was not perhaps the very kindest man at all times. Upon one occasion he said to this man, "Joseph, take these letters to the post." "I will take them after preaching, sir." "Take them now, Joseph," said Mr. Wesley. "I wish to hear you preach, sir; and there will be sufficient time for the post after service." "I insist upon your going now, Joseph." "I will not go at present" "You won't!" "No, sir." "Then you and I must part," said Mr. Wesley. "Very good, sir." The good men slept over it. Both were early risers. At four o'clock the next morning, the refractory helper was accosted with, "Joseph, have you considered what I said that we must part?" "Yes, sir." "And must we part?" "please yourself, sir." "Will you ask my pardon, Joseph?" "No, sir." "You won't?" "No, sir." "Then I will ask yours, Joseph!" Poor Joseph was instantly melted, and they were at once reconciled. When once the grace of God has entered the heart, a man ought to be ready to seek forgiveness for an injury done to another. There is nothing wrong in a man confessing an offense against a fellow-man, and asking pardon for the wrong he has done him. It you have done aught, then, against any man, leave thy gift before the altar, and go and make peace with him, and then come and make peace with God. You are to make confession of your sin to God. Let that be humble and sincere. You cannot mention every offense, but do not hide one. If you hide one it will be a millstone round your neck to sink you into the lowest hell. Confess that you are vile in your nature, evil in your practice, that in you there is no good thing. Lie as low as ever you can at the footstool of divine grace, and confess that you are a wretch undone unless God have mercy upon you.

Then, the next duty is faith. Whilst thou art lying there in the dust turn thine eye to Christ and say. "Black as I am, and hell-deserving as I confess myself to be, I believe that Jesus Christ died for the penitent; and inasmuch as he died, he died that the penitent might not die. I believe thy merits to be great; I believe thy blood to be efficacious; and more than that, I risk my eternal salvation and yet it is no risk I venture my eternal salvation upon the merit of thy blood. Jesus, I cannot save myself. Cast the skirts of thy blood-red atonement over me. Come, take me in thine arms; come, wrap me in thy crimson vest, and tell me I am thine. I will trust in nothing else but thee. Nothing I can do or ever did shall be my dependence. I rely simply and entirely upon thy mighty cross, upon which thou didst die for sinners."

My dear hearers, as to any probability of your being lost after such a confession and such a faith, I assure you there is neither possibility nor probability thereof. You are saved; you are saved in time, you are saved in eternity. Your sins are forgiven; your iniquities are all put away. In this life you shall be fed, and blessed and kept. Remaining sin within you shall be overcome and conquered; and you shall see his face at the last in glory everlasting, when he shall come in the glory of his Father, and all his holy angels with him. "Whosoever believeth on the Son of God hath eternal life, and shall never come into condemnation." "He that believeth on the Lord Jesus and is baptized, shall be saved; and he that believeth not shall be damned."

And now in conclusion, I have tried to tell out simply and plainly the story of how God's justice is satisfied, and has become the sinners friend, and I look for fruit, for where the gospel is simply preached it is never preached in vain. Only let us go home and pray now, that we may know the Saviour. Let us pray that others may know him too. If you are convinced of sin, my dear friends, do not lose a moment. Go to your chamber as soon as you get home, shut to your door, go alone to Jesus, and there repeat your confession, and once more affirm your faith in Christ; and you shall have that peace with God which the world cannot give, and which the world cannot take away. Your troubled conscience shalt find rest: your feet shall be on a rock; and a new song shall be in your mouth, even praise for evermore.

"From whence this fear and unbelief?

Hast thou, O Father, put to grief

Thy spotless Son for me?

And will the righteous Judge of men

Condemn me for that debt of sin,

Which, Lord, was charged on thee?

Complete atonement thou hast made,

And to the utmost farthing paid

Whate'er thy people owed;

How then can wrath on me take place

If shelter'd in thy righteousness,

And sprinkled with thy blood?

If thou hast my discharge procured,

And freely, in my room, endured

The whole of wrath divine;

Payment God cannot twice demand,

First, at my bleeding Surety's hand,

And then again at mine.

Turn, then, my soul unto thy rest!

The merits of thy great High Priest

Speak peace and liberty:

Trust in his efficacious blood;

Nor fear thy banishment from God,

Since Jesus died for thee."

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.