Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

The Jews had God’s Oracles—a Great Advantage: their Unfaithfulness Proves, not Hinders, God’s Just Judgment. Verses 1-8.

Sweeping Fourteen-fold Indictment from Old Testament Scriptures: All Men, Jews and Gentiles, Brought in Guilty before God; and so All Mouths Stopped. Verses 9-20.

Grace, However, for the Guilty! God’s Righteousness by Another Way than Law-through Faith in Jesus Christ. Verses 21-31.

1 What advantage then hath the Jew [over the Gentile]? or what has been the profit of circumcision? 2 Much every way: foremost of all, because they were entrusted with the oracles of God. 3 For what if some were faithless to the trust? shall we at all think that their faithlessness annulled God’s faithfulness? 4 Be it not thought of! Yea, let God be true, though every man aliar; as it is written, That Thou mightest be justified in Thy words, And mightest prevail when Thou comest into judgment [by man]. 5 But if our unrighteousness commendeth the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who visiteth with wrath? (I speak after the manner of men). 6 Be it not thought of! for then how shall God judge the world? 7 But if the truth of God through my lie abounded unto His glory, why am I also still judged as a sinner? 8 and why not (as we are slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say). Let us do evil, that good may come?—whose condemnation is just!

OR TO PARAPHRASE this passage: “What preeminence then (if both Jewhood and circumcision are spiritual and inward only) hath the Jew? Or what has the Divine ordinance of circumcision amounted to? Much in every respect! But first and foremost that to that nation the oracles of God were entrusted. For what if some were faithless (to that trust)? Shall their faithlessness render inoperative the faithfulness of God (in carrying out those oracles)? Far be the thought! Yea, let God be found true, and every man, Gentile and Jew (found) false; as it is written (and that by king David, himself, confessing blood-guiltiness):

‘That Thou mightest be justified in Thy words, And mightest prevail when Thou are judged (by sinful man as to the justice of Thy ways.’)

“But (it is further objected) if the unrighteousness of us Jews has proved and publicly commended the righteousness of God both as to His holy nature and’ as to His truth—(for He plainly prophesied Israel would sin) can we not say that God would be unrighteous to visit us Jews with wrath? (I am speaking thus,—though with horror—because it is the way men talk). Now away with the thought!50 For how then (if it were unrighteous for God to visit a Jew with wrath) could God judge the
WORLD? (as He indeed will). But (the Jewish objector continues) if the truth of God through my falsity has abounded unto His glory, why am I still judged as a sinner? and why not (since our Jewish evil-doings have in the past been made by God to bring about good)—why not keep doing evil that good may come? They are even slanderously reporting our teaching this awful doctrine!—because we preach righteousness by grace and faith and not by good works. The condemnation of those who bring such arguments is self-evident, and on the very face of it, is just!”

Now to us, at this end of the dispensation, this insistence of God upon moral reality before Him of all, including the Jews themselves, “seems simplicity itself; but it was not so simple to those whom it seemed to strip of all their special and Divinely bestowed privileges.” Paul assuredly tells us, in this third chapter, that there is “no distinction” before God between Jews and Gentiles as regards sinner-hood, but he will meet those objections which would arise (vverse 1-8) based in the Jew’s mind on (a) the peculiar position of privilege given by God to Israel as Jehovah’s separate people; and on (b) the righteous character of God Himself as conceived of by the Jew in his privileged position. These objections51 are specious and daring—next to blasphemous: but they must be answered.

The importance of this great passage cannot be overestimated, for if the Jew as that end of the dispensation, or any “religious” person at this end, be allowed to plead special privilege or light as exempting him from judgment, he will spiritually (of course not actually) escape the general sentence of verse 19, where “all the world” is brought under the judgment of God. If a man escapes in spirit from God’s pronouncement of “guilty,” he will never truly rely upon the shed blood of the Guilt-Bearer, Christ!

Now there are three Jewish questions raised in this passage:

Question I

Verses 1 to 4: What advantage52 or preeminence has the Jew and circumcision?

Answer: That nation was entrusted with the oracles of God—inestimable, eternal advantage! despite their unfaithfulness. Every writer of the Bible is, we believe from this, an Israelite. Jewish faithlessness could not annul God’s faithfulness in carrying out those oracles (whether of promise, prophecy, or judgment). God must be found true, though every man be false (to whatever God entrusts to him). Paul instances David’s most humble confession and ascription of righteousness to God, after David’s own great sin had shown David himself faithless to the royal covenant Jehovah had committed to him.

Alford well says: “Because they have broken faith on their part, shall God break faith also on His? Rather let us believe all men on earth to have broken their word and troth, than God His. Whatever becomes of men and their truth, His truth must stand fast.”

The “faithlessness” here of the Jew is not his failure to believe God’s oracles. (That subject Paul takes up in Chapters 9 to 11.) What is here before us, is the Jew’s attitude toward the great primary privilege and responsibility of that nation as the depositary of the Divine oracles. In verse 5, Paul makes the Jews call their conduct “our unrighteousness.” It consisted in:

1. National disobedience to God’s oracles from Sinai onward.

2. Such neglect of these oracles, that at times (as in Josiah’s day), a single copy of the Law was a rarity!

3. Pride, however, over their position as the possessors of these oracles,53 even to the despising of nations that had them not, instead of ministering them to others (as Psalm 67 shows was Israel’s real business).

4. Appalling ignorance of the spiritual meaning of the Divine oracles, and of the “voices of their prophets,” so they even killed the Righteous One! (Acts 13:27).

Question II

Verses 5 and 6: If God makes use of human sin to set forth His glory (as He will) would it not be unrighteous to punish that sin with wrath? Here Paul enters into the Jewish consciousness: “If our unrighteous Jewish history has commended the righteousness of God, what shall we say? God went right on fulfilling what His oracles said, despite the unfaithfulness of us to whom they had been committed, and, in fact, by means of our sinful Jewish history God’s prophecies concerning our disobedience were fulfilled before the whole world, from Moses on.”

Read here Deuteronomy 31:14 to 32:47. For it is about Israel that Deuteronomy 32:35 to 47 is written. The Jew, knowing well his past disobedient history, yet holds fast to his national place of outward favor, resisting Paul’s word of Chapter Two, “He is not a Jew that is one outwardly”; and daring to regard God as “unrighteous” who would “visit with wrath” individuals of His favored nation—for they had only carried out God’s predictions!

Paul, in even bringing up such a question as God’s acting unrighteously in visiting disobedient Israelites with wrath, instantly puts in the reverent parenthesis: “I speak after the manner of men”; as, “putting himself in the place of the generality of men, and using an argument such as they would use.”

Answer: “Far be such a thought! for then (if God should be unrighteous in visiting a Jew with wrath) how shall God judge the world?” The Judge of all the earth will do right, and He will judge the whole world (Acts 17:31) which involves the infliction of wrath upon any and all impenitent, as all Scripture shows.

Note that Paul assumes, and so do even these cavillers, that there will be a day of judgment: “God who visiteth with wrath.” What the apostle is attacking is the false hopes of men to evade that judgment. Christ has been judged and smitten in our stead. But, alas, how a man hates to come to the cross as one “to whom that stroke was due” (Isaiah 53:8). But if you manage to escape conviction of sin, and thus miss personal faith in the Crucified One, you will go to hell forever.

Question
III

Verses 7 and 8: “If God’s truth (as to His warnings and promises) was enhanced through my falsity—if He got glory through my (Jewish) sin, why does He find fault with me as a sinner?” Here the very words of the resisting Jew are, as it were, quoted.

Answer: While such cavilling Paul will not deign to answer (for it answers itself!) Paul does return into the gainsaying Jews’ teeth the constant slander against salvation by grace,—that it led to license: “The condemnation of such trifling is just! For it is evident both to the hearer and to the asker of such a question that doing evil that good may come, does not change the character of the evil, nor take away its guilt from him who commits it.”

“Slander” against the gospel of grace is still going on, and will go on until the Lord comes in righteousness. Moule well says, “The mighty paradox of justification (without works) lent itself easily to the distortions, as well as to the contradictions, of sinners. ‘Let us do evil that good may come’ no doubt represented the report which prejudice and bigotry would regularly carry away and spread after every discourse and every argument about free forgiveness. It is so still: ‘If this is true, we may live as we like’; ‘If this is true, then the vilest sinner makes the best saint.’”54

The Jews, deluded by pride, and falsely basing God’s favor to their nation upon their own deserts, absolved themselves from judgment. Judgment they relegated to the “goyim,” the “ethnç,” the Gentiles. Paul himself shows the Jewish consciousness in his rebuke to Peter in Galatians 2: “We being Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles.” And the Pharisees said even of the common, non-religious sinners of the Jewish nation: “This multitude that knoweth not the Law, are accursed!” (John 7:49).

But if we, professing Christians, consign this whole passage to the Jew, we fall directly into the same terrible trap. Whole multitudes today in Christendom, sheltered in their imagination by the fact that they have “joined” some church, resent the very doctrines that Paul here insists on. Thousands of so-called “church-members” not only have never been brought under real conviction of sin and guilt and personal danger, but rise in anger like the Jews of Paul’s day when one preaches their danger directly to them!

Now if God paid no attention whatever to the claim of the Jew to be exempt from judgment because he was a Jew, neither will He pay any attention to the claim of the “Baptist” or “Presbyterian,” “Episcopalian” or “Methodist,”—as suchapter For all men are alike guilty, common sinners! What avails before a holy God the special religious names sinners may call themselves? This book of Romans will do you and me no good if we apply it to Jews or Mormons only!

9 What then? are we [Jews] superior? Not at all! For we before laid to the charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin; 10 as it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one; 11 There is none that understandeth [divine things], There is none that seeketh after God; 12 They all abandoned the way [of God], together they became unprofitable; There is none that practiseth goodness, no, not so much as one: 13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; With their tongues they have used deceit: The venom of asps is under their lips: 14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: 15 Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 Destruction and misery are in their ways; 17 And the way of peace they have not known: 18 There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Verse 9: What then?—in view of all said of the Jews from Chapter 2.17 to Chapter 3.8.

Are we Jews superior (as we generally think ourselves to be to them—that is, to the Gentiles?) Not at all! Paul here speaks as a Jew,—in sympathy with the Jewish nation, indeed, but rejecting wholly their boast of superiority, in view of the great general indictment of the whole human race, that began in this Epistle at Chapter 1.18 and continues to Chapter 3.20. This is what he means by having before laid to the charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin. “To be under sin means to be under the power of sin, to be sinners, whether the idea of guilt, just exposure to condemnation, or of pollution, or both, be conveyed by the expression” (Hodge).

Now this expression “under sin” is a remarkable and unusual one. We need to note the same expression and context in Galatians 3:22: “The Scripture shut up all things under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.” “All things under sin” is a larger expression than “guilty of sin,” or, “in bondage to sin.” It is a general state described, as of convicts in a prison, or disease-stricken people “under quarantine.” An even stronger expression concerning human beings, Gentiles or Jews, asserts: “God hath shut up all unto disobedience, that He might have mercy upon all” (11:32); and the words, “The Scripture shut up all things under sin, that the promise . . . might be given,” bear out this fact. Moule says, “Being brought under sin, (as the Greek bids us more exactly render), giving us the thought that the race has fallen from a good estate into an evil.”

That the Jews and Greeks alike, that is, the whole world, are “under sin,” is next abundantly shown by Paul from seven Old Testament Scriptures. It will not do to say, as do some, that since the Scriptures were given only to the Jews, therefore the Jews only are in view here, in verses 10 to 18. For we read in Psalm 14, the very first Scripture here quoted:

“Jehovah looked down from heaven upon the children of men,

To see if there were any that did understand.”

“Children of men” is a wider term than Jews. Furthermore, Romans 3:9, which begins this great arraignment, includes both Jews and Greeks as being “all under sin.” This, therefore, is a world-wide indictment.

FOURTEEN HORRIBLE THINGS ABOUT ALL MEN

We shall find God speaking, in these fourteen counts,55 first, as a Judge: verses 10 to 12; next, as a Physician: verses 13 to 15; and third, as a Divine Historian: verses 16 to 18.
I

First, then, as a Judge God describes man’s condition:

Verse 10: To begin with, There is none righteous [before God], no, not one (Psalm 14:1; 53:1; Job 9:2; Ecclesiastes 7:20). No human being has in himself ever been righteous. Even Adam was not righteous: he was innocent—not knowing good and evil. Let us put far from our minds the fond falsehoods of philosophy, science, and human “religions,” that there have been men of our race who have attained to a standing before God in righteousness.

Verse 11: Next, There is none that understandeth [Divine things]. We have added the words “Divine things” even in the Scripture text, because this verb (suniçmi) translated “understandeth” is one of those words which God reserves in Scripture unto a peculiar meaning. (See footnote on 1:31.) Note its use in Matthew 13:13,14,15,19,23,51, as, for instance, verse 19: “When anyone heareth the word of the kingdom and understandeth It not.” It is used twenty-six times in the New Testament, the last time in Ephesians 5:17: “Understand what the will of the Lord is.” Now humanity, by nature, “understands” nothing of God. Men think they do, and write vast books on the subject; but God’s sentence remains: “There is none that understandeth.” “In the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God.” Believe just that: it is true.

The third of these solemn counts is, There is none that: seeketh after God. You say, How can this be possible in view of pagan lands filled with temples, and worshipers thronging them? God’s answer is: “The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God” (I Corinthians 10:20).

Adam, sinning, turned his back and fled from a holy God. God had to take the place of the seeker: “Adam, where art thou?” So it has ever been. No human being has ever sought the holy God. Conscious of his creature weakness, and also of responsibility and guilt, and filled with terrors of conscience, or terrors directly demon-wrought; or perhaps under the delusion that some “god” (really, demon) might grant him this or that favor, man has built his temples and conducts his worship. Banish from your mind the idea that any human being has ever had a holy thought, or love for a holy God, in his natural heart! Grace “praeveniens et efficax” (grace “prevenient and efficacious”) is the old phrase expressing the truth that God Himself takes the place of the seeker, convicter, persuader, giver, and final perfecter of all man’s salvation. His sovereign grace goes ahead of, and brings into being, all human response to God.

The fourth solemn count is that of universal human apostasy: They all abandoned the way [of God]. The same Greek word is used only twice elsewhere in the New Testament: “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them that are causing the divisions and occasions of stumbling, contrary to the doctrine which ye learned: and turn away from them” says Paul (Chapter 16:17). The separation was to be absolute, and of choice. And in I Peter 3:11, the saints are told (quoting Psalm 34): “Turn away from evil, and do good,”—again a direct choice. In Psalm 14:3 it is: “They are all gone aside”; and in Psalm 53:3: “Every one of them is gone back.” To Israel it was said: “Ye shall observe to do therefore as Jehovah your God hath commanded you” (Deuteronomy 5:32). But Isaiah speaks of them (and we know the application becomes universal): “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6); while Malachi in the closing sad message of the Old Testament bewails: “Ye are turned aside out of the way” (2:8).

To understand Romans 3:12, we must conceive of a race of creatures turned out of God’s way, as really as are Satan’s angels, or the demons. The whole race of man is by nature in that awful case!

As a result you have the fifth count: They are together become unprofitable.56 The human race is useless, and worse than useless, to God. This word translated “unprofitable” was used by the Greeks concerning rotten fruit, or whatever was utterly, irrevocably bad, and therefore useless. Ask any housewife what can be done with rotten fruit! In Psalms 14:3 and 53:1, from which this is quoted, it is translated “become filthy.” Unless we hold firmly in mind these statements of truth concerning humanity, we shall fail to see what man is, and so what God’s grace sets before him.

The sixth count is, There is none that practiseth goodness, no, not so much as one. Corruption rather than holiness, selfishness rather than goodness, cruelty rather than kindness, is the way of apostate mankind everywhere. Thus declares the Judge who looks upon men as they are.
II

Verse 13: Next, God speaks as the all-wise, holy Physician, in diagnosis: Their throat is an open sepulchre. Doctors always insist first on looking down our throats: and we all know that the throat and tongue denote the state of health. There could be nothing more horrible than what we have here: death, decay, moral stench, and that not hidden, but open! Unhidden, unashamed putridity:—thus a holy God describes the throat of every one of us by nature! As Bishop Howe says: “Emitting the noisome exhalations of a putrid heart.” We must remember we are here seeing man through God’s all-holy eyes.

With their tongues they have been using deceit [since man’s fall]. The verb is in the imperfect tense, which denotes the habitual practice of the human race. This includes your tongue and mine, reader. But the case is still worse; for the Physician continues:

The venom of asps is under their lips: The fangs of a deadly serpent lie, ordinarily, folded back in its upper jaw, but when it throws up its head to strike, those hollow fangs drop down, and when the serpent bites, the fangs press a sack of deadly poison hidden “under its lips,” at the root, thus injecting the venom into the wound. You and I were born with moral poison-sacks like this. And how people do claim the right to strike others with their venom-words! to use their snake-fangs!

Verse 14: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness (Psalm 10:7) : To prove this, you need only take your stand upon any street, and strike upon the mouth a passerby. As well strike a hornets’ nest! How men do curse others! Bitterness is ever ready! What fearful folly for a race speaking thus to imagine that by “being baptized,” and “joining the church” they are ready to “go to heaven,” and be in the holy company on high, with the meek and lowly Son of God and the holy angels,—and all this without a thought of being forgiven, washed, born again!

Verse 15: Their feet are swift to shed blood (Isaiah 59:7): I saw a child under two years raise its puny fist against another, crying, “I’ll kill ’oo!” Murder is so common, now, that new hideous expressions are invented: “I’ll get him”; “Bump him off”; “Put him on the spot”; “Take him for a ride”; or, as the awful Communistic phrase puts it, “Liquidate him.” When the restraining grace of God is withdrawn, it will be given to the Red Horse Sitter “to take peace from the earth, and that they should slay one another” (Revelation 6:4). Men’s feet, like tigers’, are ready and swift for blood-shedding: “For further details, read your daily papers!”

III

Third, God speaks as the All-seeing Historian of fallen man:

Verse 16: Destruction and misery are in their ways (Isaiah 59:7). What an epitome of human history. It is said that the ancient Troy of which Homer sang was built upon the ruins of an earlier Troy,—and that seven other Troys, each constructed upon the ruins of a former, have been found! As Meyer vividly renders: “Where they go is desolations (fragments) and misery (which they produce).” Those who so loudly proclaim that the human race is “improving,” “progressing,” are blind deceivers,—blind to history, blind to present day facts, blind to the rising tide of human violence. “As it was in the days of Noah,” our Lord said, “so shall be the coming of the Son of Man.” In those days of Noah the earth became “full of violence” (Genesis 6:11).

Verse 17: And the way of peace they have not known. (Isaiah 59:8). It is a terrible thing God here reveals, that not one of the human race knows, or is by nature pursuing, the path of peace. It does not seem to me that the Spirit of God speaks here of that peace with God on the ground of accepted sacrifice which Chapter 5:1 describes (and which is always a direct revelation of God to the soul), but rather in consistence with the context and with the passage in Isaiah 59:8 from which it is drawn: “The way of peace they know not;57 and there is no justice in their goings: they have made them crooked paths; whosoever goeth therein doth not know peace.” The unregenerate man does not know, follow, or really desire to know the way of wisdom, all whose paths are peace (Proverbs 3:17). Thomas Scott well says: “They know not the ways in which godly men walk, at peace with God and their neighbors; and so they go on in those paths which lead to misery and ruin both to themselves and to each other.”

Verse 18: There is no fear of God before their eyes (Psalm 36:1). This last is the most awful count of all, and explains all the others. “To fear God consists in having such a due sense of the majesty and holiness and justice and goodness of God, as shall make us thoroughly fearful to offend Him. For each of these attributes of God is proper to raise a suitable fear in every Christian mind.”

A friend once pointed out to me a champion prize-fighter of America, and I heard another man remark, “How I’d hate to be hit by him!” He could fear a fellow-man. But in a few moments the same man’s mouth was using the name of God, and even of Jesus Christ, in profanity! There was “no fear of God before his eyes.” It meant nothing to him that God had said, “The Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.” But what will it mean when that man steps out of this life into the realities of eternity! Bengel aptly notes, “The seat of reverence is in the eyes.” Godet says: “The words ‘before their eyes’ show that it belongs to man freely to evoke or suppress this inward view of God on which his moral conduct depends.” Haldane comments: “They have not that reverential fear of Him which is the beginning of wisdom, and which is connected with departing from evil. It is astonishing that men, while they acknowledge that there is a God, should act without any fear of His displeasure. They fear a worm of the dust like themselves, but disregard the Most High!” And Calvin says: “Out of the contempt of God cometh all wickedness. Seeing that the fear of God is the fountain of wisdom, when we are once departed from it, there abideth nothing right or sincere. If it be wanting, we are loosed unto all kind of licentious wickedness.”

This great passage then, (verses 9 to 18) needs to be pondered, prayed over, thoroughly believed, and preached continually, in these last days, when God-consciousness is dying out. It is no kindness, but a terrible wrong, to hide from a criminal the sentence that must surely overtake him unless pardoned; for a physician to conceal from a patient a cancer that will destroy him unless quickly removed; for one acquainted with the hidden pitfalls of a path he beholds someone taking, not to warn him of his danger!

Verses 19 and 20 concern particularly that nation to whom the Law was given, for Paul plainly in verse 9 applies the passage through verse 18 to “both Jews and Greeks” as “all under sin.” But now he turns directly to those who had the Law:

19 Now we know that whatsoever the Law says it is speaking to them that are under the Law [i.e., to the Jews]; in order that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world [Gentile and Jew”] may come under the judgment of God; 20 because out of works of law no flesh shall be declared righteous before Him; for through law comes knowledge of sin [not righteousness].

In verse 19, we repeat, and not till then, does Paul turn again to the Jews as those who were under law58 to shut off their possible escape from that general arraignment by Scripture of “both Jews and Greeks” beginning at the ninth verse. Thus every mouth was “stopped.” Men’s mouths keep talking of their own goodness or of someone else’s badness, or of both,—as, for example, the Pharisee in Luke 18:9-14. But the moral history of mankind delineated in Chapter One; and the stern principles of God’s judgment which considered neither man’s high notions of himself, nor his religious professions, as shown in Chapter Two; and now, in Chapter Three, the fourteen sweeping statements of Scripture concerning the whole guilty human race, with the double conviction of the Jews as not only sinners, but also transgressors of the very Law they gloried in,—all this stops men’s vain mouths! For they are all brought into the presence of their Judge, and the sentence of guilty is upon them all. Not that they are brought in to have their just penalty executed upon them; but that they may be silent while God their Judge announces—astonishing thing!—that He has himself already dealt with the world’s sin upon a sin-offering, Jesus, His Son; whom, we shall soon see, He set forth at the cross as a righteous meeting-ground between Himself in all His holiness and righteousness; and the sinner, whether Jew or Gentile, in all his guilt,—through simple faith in the shed blood of this Redeemer!

Verse 20: Now Paul declares what the law cannot do, and what it can do. First, no one shall be declared righteous [justified] in God’s sight by works of law [“doing right”]; and second, the business of God’s Law is rather to make known to men their sin, and therefore, their need of a salvation which the Law cannot supply.

In this verse we meet by far the most difficult Divine utterance for the human heart to yield to, that we have met in the entire Epistle. Even those “without law,”—“Gentiles that have not the Law” (of Moses—2:14), we find throughout history so committed to their own ideas of what is “right,” and what will propitiate the demons that they worship, that they will desperately fight for their convictions. (See Paul at Lystra, and at Ephesus, in the Acts.) And how much more difficult the task becomes in dealing with those who, as the Jews, know that they have had a direct revelation from God,—“Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not,” and, “He that doeth these things shall live by them.” When Paul told the Athenians that he acknowledged them to be “very religious” (their city indeed being filled with idols), but that they were ignorant of God, the Creator, who had raised up from the dead One who would be Judge in righteousness: “Some mocked: others said, We will hear thee concerning this yet again.” Now, we say, if men are brought off only with great difficulty from the follies of idolatry, how much greater the task to persuade men to abandon their trust in a holy Law they know to have been given by the true God, from heaven, and on the fulfillment of which all their hopes for eternity have been dependent!59 In just the same way Christendom has become fixed in its defense of its “religious” convictions. Scripture names, doctrines and ordinances—falsely explained—have seized hold upon the convictions of men, so that it is more difficult to dislodge them from their position than the heathen themselves. We know from Scripture, for example, that “days, seasons, months and years,” do not belong to the Christian position in the least degree, but are Jewish or pagan in origin. Christmas, Lent, Easter, the whole “church calendar,” forms, ritualism, the confessional, the mass, clergy,—where are these found in the Epistles of the New Testament? They are not found! Yet try once to dislodge them from those in whose hearts they have been planted! For their heart-hopes are bound up with these false traditions.

None but those taught of God, and they with extreme difficulty and constant watchfulness, escape legal hope. For the question ever before the conscience is, If keeping God’s Law avails me nothing for righteousness in His sight, why did He give it?
WHY DID HE GIVE IT?

And this difficulty becomes all the greater, the more the excellency of the Law is discovered! For our judgment sees these things of the Law to be “holy, and righteous, and good.” And we know (if we are honest) that “God spake all these words”—of the Law.

Therefore, the heart’s only relief is to hear God’s own Word concerning seven questions; to all of which the coming chapters of Romans will give answer: (1) To what nation did He give the Law; (2) Why He gave the Law; (3) What the Law’s ministry was; (4) How it was set aside, or “annulled,” for another principle entirely; (5) What is meant by the words “under grace”; (6) How the walk “in the Spirit” takes the place of walking by external enactments; and, (7) How that only in those not under law is “the righteous state” (dikaioma) of the Law fulfilled!

Now it is apparent that to bring men off from their false hopes in their law-obedience, three things must become evident to them:

(a) That law, having been broken, can only condemn.

(b) That even were men enabled now to begin keeping perfectly any law of God, that could not make up for past disobedience, or remove present guilt.

(c) That keeping law is
NOT God’s way of salvation, or of blessing.

In connection with verse 20, we will emphasize only the third of these points, for that is what is insisted upon in this verse. We quote in the footnote below verse 20, and then a number of plain statements of Scripture to the same effect, that we may compare Scripture with Scripture:60

The knowledge (or recognition) of sin comes through law,—by (1) its revealing what God approved in man, and what God disapproved and forbade; (2) causing man to undertake obedience; and (3) condemning him for failure to obey.

To all seven of the questions above, the coming chapters of Romans, compared with other Scriptures, will, as we have said, fully give the answers. But it will be wise, perhaps, to look a moment more, in this place, at questions 2, 3 and 4:

As to Question Two, Why God gave the Law, we call attention now, as elsewhere, to the fact that in His dealing with Abraham, and, in fact, in all His ways with the patriarchs, there was not the Law, but simply and only the promise. We plainly see in Romans 5:14 that they were not under law. They walked by simple faith, which is, of course, the only principle according to which God has saving relations with man since he became a sinner. But (and this is important) God must show man his sinnerhood and this could not be done but by His revealing His holiness and righteousness, and asking man to conform his life and ways to that holy and righteous rule. God knew he would not and could not do this; but man did not know it, and must discover it through failure. Therefore and thereunto did God give the Law. “By the Law is the knowledge of sin.”

We have now partly answered Question Three, as to what was the appointed ministry of the Law. But the matter needs to be further emphasized. God names the Law a “ministration of condemnation and death” and not of righteousness. As Paul says in Chapter Seven, “Sin, that it might be shown to be sin, wrought death to me through that which was good” (the Law).

As to Question Four, the Law was set aside or “disannulled.” We have God’s oft-repeated and most emphatic assertion, that this has been done: “There is a disannulling of a foregoing commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness (for the Law made nothing perfect), and a bringing in thereupon of a better hope, [Christ’s death, burial and resurrection], through which we draw nigh unto God” (Hebrews 7:18, 19). We repeat this over and over, because that is the way God does—He asserts and re-asserts this great fact: knowing man’s self-righteousness will hardly suffer the Law to be taken away.

Now it was not that God changed His plan, though to the thoughtless mind He might seem to have done so: (1) by beginning with man on the faith principle—from Abel onward; then (2) conditioning Israel’s relationship and blessing upon their legal obedience; and then (3) “changing back” again, since the cross, to the way of simple faith apart from law. No, there has been no “change” in God. God’s way with man has always been that of faith. Neither was the Law a thing additional to faith to secure God’s favor; nor was God’s “disannulling the foregoing commandment” an evidence that He had been seeking and expecting righteousness in man by the Law; and that now since the Law had failed He resorted to grace, apart from works of the Law. Not at all! The Law came in simply that the trespass might abound,—that is, that by breaking it man might discover his guilt and sinfulness; and his helplessness to relieve himself. Moses had prophesied in Leviticus and Deuteronomy that Israel would utterly fail, and that they would be provoked to jealousy by God’s bringing in the Gentiles, “a foolish nation”; and that the remnant of Israel finally, its whole legal hope cut off, would be restored by God in sovereign mercy (Romans 11:31, 32).

We know we are saying these things over and over. An old German educator said: “The first principle of teaching is repetition; and the second principle of teaching is repetition; and the third principle is repetition.”

So we come to the next great section of the Epistle, Chapter Three, verses 21 to 31. This will describe God’s righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ.

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH IN CHRIST

21 But now apart from law, God’s righteousness hath been manifested,—borne witness to by the Law and the Prophets: 22 God’s righteousness, moreover, through faith concerning Jesus Christ unto all them that believe; for there is no distinction [between Jew and Gentile]; 23 for all sinned, and are falling short of the glory of God; 24 being reckoned righteous gift-wise by His grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ: 25 whom God set forth a propitiation [mercy-seat] through faith in His blood, unto showing forth His [God’s] righteousness in respect of the passing over of the foregoing sins in the forbearance of God: 26 for the showing forth of His righteousness in the present time,—unto the being Himself righteous, and the One declaring righteous-the person having faith in Jesus. 27 Where then is the [Jewish] boasting? It is excluded. By what manner of law? of works? Nay: but by a law of faith. 28 For we reckon that a man is accounted righteous by faith apart from law-works. 29 Or is God the God of Jews only? [who had the Law]. Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yea, of Gentiles also: 30 if so be that God is one! And He shall declare righteous the circumcision on the principle of faith [instead of law], and the uncircumcision through their [simple] faith. 31 Do we then annul law through faith? Far be the thought! on the contrary, we establish law!

We now come to the unfolding of that word which Paul in Chapter One declares to be the very heart of the gospel,—the reason it is “the power of God unto salvation”: namely, “therein is God’s righteousness on the faith-principle revealed to any having faith” (1:17).

The first work of the apostle, as we have seen in studying Chapter 1:18 to Chapter 3:20, was to bring the whole world under the judgment of God, guilty, helpless. His second task (and it is a blessed one!) is to reveal God’s coming out in rightousness at the cross unto us. Let us most diligently read, ponder, yea, and commit to memory verses 21 to 26; for it is God’s great statement of justification by faith. Its first announcement is:

Verse 21: But now apart from law God’s righteousness hath been manifested,—borne witness to by the Law and the Prophets—The first words, “But now,” should be hailed by us joyfully, as beginning an account of something heavenly different from our guilt and helplessness, detailed in the preceding part of the Epistle (1:18-3:20).

The next phrase is: “apart from law”61—lay it to heart! Unfortunately, the King James Version misses the emphasis here. For the Greek puts to the very front this great phrase “apart from law” (chôris nomou), and thus sets forth most strongly the altogether separateness of this Divine righteousness from any law-performance, any works of man, whatsoever. Luther’s rendering was, “without accessory aid of law.” In this revelation of God’s righteousness, law was left out of account. Righteousness is on another principle than our right-doing!

Now the great and most common error in setting forth God’s righteousness here, is, to allow law at least some place. Men cannot, it seems, get over reasoning thus: that since God once promulgated the dispensation of law, which called for human righteousness. He must thereafter be bound by it forever. And this despite Divine assurance, over and over and over, that the present dispensation proceeds on an altogether different principle; that there has been a “disannulling of a foregoing commandment” (Hebrews 7:18); for He who had the right to command had also the right to disannul. It was “because of its weakness and unprofitableness—for the Law made nothing perfect,”—that the “foregoing commandment” was set aside. It had served its purpose—to make the trespass “abound” (5:20).62

It is not that God has not the right to demand legal righteousness from us: but that He does not do it. “Righteousness which is of God” speaks in a way diametrically opposite to man’s law—obedience, of any sort whatsoever.

Men who do not see or believe that the whole history of those in Christ ended at the cross (for they died there, with Christ) must hold that God is still demanding righteousness: for “the law hath dominion over a man so long as he liveth!”

The “teachers of the Law” (I Timothy 1:7) say: “Behind God, as He talks with you in ‘grace’ is His eternal Law. And He must carry out what He has expressed in that Law. But, because you are not able to perform it, He has ‘graciously’ given Christ, to perform all its requirements for you. And the positive, or ‘active’ requirements are, the observance of all the commands of the Law to the letter,—which (these teachers say) Christ has by His perfect life of obedience to the Law on earth, furnished for you. And the negative, or ‘passive’ obedience, as they call it—that is, the penalty of death for your sins which the Law (say they) demanded, Christ has paid on the cross. So that, now your debts cancelled by Christ’s death, you have Christ’s legal ‘merits’ as your actual righteousness before God: for God must demand (they say) perfect righteousness from you, as measured by His holy Law,”—etc., etc.

This seemingly beautiful talk is both unscriptural and anti-scriptural.

God says that the believer is not under law, that he is dead to law,—to that whole principle, being in the Risen Christ; and Christ is certainly not under law in Heaven! Believers are “in Him”; they are “not in the flesh” (Romans 8:9). They were formerly in the flesh (in the old natural life of Adam); but are now “new creatures” in Christ Risen!

If you put believers under law, you must put their federal Head, Christ, back under law; for “as He is, even so are we in this world.” To do this you must reverse Calvary, and have Christ back again on earth “under law.” For law, we repeat, was not given to a heavenly company, but to an earthly nation. Scripture says it was to redeem that earthly people (Israel) who were under law, that Christ was “born under the Law” (Galatians 4:4). You must thus, if you are “under law,” be joined to a Christ belonging to Israel, a flesh and blood Christ; and must consent to be an Israelite—to which nation He was sent. But alas! You find that such a Christ is not here! That He said He must “abide alone,”—like the grain of wheat unless it “fall into the ground and die.” To an earthly, Jewish Christ, you therefore cannot be united. And so your vain hope of having Moses and Christ is wholly gone. Therefore you must be united with a Risen Christ, or with none at all! But if to a Risen Christ, it is unto One who died unto sin (6:10); and those (Jewish) believers who were under the Law died with Him unto it (7:4). And you, if you are Christ’s, are now wholly, as Christ is, on resurrection ground. This truth will be brought out fully in chapters Six and Seven; we can but note it here.63

The words hath been manifested (of verse 21) Conybeare lucidly paraphrases, “not by law but by another way, God’s righteousness is brought to light.” God had always dealt righteously, although His way was not as yet plain. He pardoned many, and He did not seem wholly to judge sin even in the unsaved world. But at the cross “He spared not His own Son.” Here was revealed, indeed, righteousness to the uttermost!

Borne witness to by the Law and the Prophets—by the Law, in its sacrificial offerings; by the Prophets, in direct statements: “This is His name whereby He shall be called: Jehovah our righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:6); and again, “Thy righteousness”—21 times in the Psalms! as, “I will make mention of Thy righteousness, even of Thine only” (71:2, 15, 16, 19, 24); and Isaiah: “By the knowledge of Himself shall my righteous Servant make many righteous” (53:11).64 Yet it was not brought to light how this should be, until “the fulness of the time” came, and God sent His Son to “suffer for sins, the just for the unjust,” to “put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself,” that God’s righteousness might be “manifested,” both in His dealing with sin, and in glorifying His Son in heaven, who had glorified His Father on earth.

It would have been righteous for God to smite Adam and Eve as He did the angels that sinned. He could have revealed Himself in righteousness of judgment in accord with His holiness and justice. He was not obliged to save any man. But it was God’s will to reveal Himself: for He is Love.

Therefore He now comes forth at the cross in love,—albeit He must there come forth also in righteousness,—for He Himself must righteously and fully judge sin upon the person of His own provided Lamb. The sword “awakened against His Shepherd, the Man who was His Fellow,”—the “fellow” of Jehovah of hosts! The Shepherd was smitten: “He was bruised for our iniquity, the chastisement of our peace [that would procure peace for us] was upon Him.” God spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up, and the penalty for our sin was visited upon Him, Jesus, God’s provided Sacrifice (Zechariah 13:7; Isaiah 53:5, 6).

God is able to come forth to us now in absolute
GRACE, sending out His messengers “preaching peace by Jesus Christ”;—nay, preaching much more than peace. In effect, God says, “Utter and infinite oceans of grace shall roll over the place where judgment and condemnation were!” Forgiving us all our trespasses, He goes further: having raised up Christ from the dead. He says, I will now place you in my Son. I will give you a standing fully and only in Him risen from the dead! Not only did He bear your sins, putting away your guilt, but in His death I released you from your standing and responsibility in Adam the first. You who have believed are now new creatures in Christ: for I have created you in Him.’

And because this is so, it is announced further: “Him who knew no sin, God made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” These astonishing words state the present fact as to all believers,—of all those in Christ: they are the righteousness of God in Him!65