Romans Chapter 3

Verse 1    “What advantage then hath the Jew?  Or what profit is there of circumcision?”

The subject is still the wrath of God being revealed in the gospel. Here it is directed against the Jew in his failure in the things of God. The purpose of such revelation, however, is to enlighten men spiritually by exposing naturalistic Judaism as a spiritual fraud, despite its general acceptance as being good and true. It wrought only natural good when the purpose for which God gave the law was heavenly and eternal. Here Paul shows the character and nature of Judaism, its advantages, and also how the natural Jew failed to avail himself of this. The law, as accepted and practiced, had failed to redeem man’s failure in natural theology. Generally, man’s response to God in both systems had resulted in failure. On God’s part, this was foreknown and was purposeful. Thereby the gospel has come to meet man as a manifested failure and to lift him out of it.

The chief superiority of the Jew and the profit of circumcision is then revealed. The Jew in the system of law enjoys superiority over the nations. Again, this is spiritual and not natural. In spiritual potential he is lifted up into a superior spiritual life and realm. He has profit in circumcision, providing he responds aright to God as being alive in true circumcision toward Him.

Verse 2    “Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God.”

Paul declares, by inspiration as an apostle of Christianity, that he had come to realise the great superiority and profit of the Jew. He came to realise it after he had been called out of the sort of Judaism in which he had once served God after the manner of his forefathers. The true advantage of Judaism can be seen by spiritually enlightened men. “The law was our schoolmaster leading us to the Christ” Gal.3:24. Much advantage and profit came from God to the Jew, yet it conferred no worldly superiority or profit upon him above the nations. The Jew was not constituted a Jew by God to make him better, wiser and greater than the Gentile in the present world in a natural way.

The first superiority and profit was the entrusting of holy oracles to them. God called and gifted them to receive and rightly respond to the reception of that which is heavenly and spiritual. God entrusted to them that which is of Himself, the God who had become a God of self-revelation for the realising of His eternal purpose. In the law, a system was established on earth in which holy oracles were received. The giving of the law to the Jew has chiefly resulted in the completion of the Old Testament Scriptures. Under the law they might have been made great enough spiritually to complete the work of God, the right handling of that which transcends nature. The law marked a fresh, oricular intervention by God in the spiritual history of humanity to make eternal purpose sure.

Verse 3    “For what if some did not believe?  Shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?”

For what? What purpose was really being served by a system in which, generally, the nation was found in spiritual failure? No concrete product seems to have been realised on earth as a result of this divine intervention. Thus it would appear that if God’s purposes were spiritual and heavenly, they seemed to have been in failure.

If what Paul had declared was true, then the spiritual failure of Israel, its unbelief and unfaithfulness, would appear to have vitiated divine purpose. Yet obviously it is impossible for man’s failure to bring divine purpose down. The Jewish failure had culminated in their natural failure to receive the Christ, for the law was given to prepare them for this. Even worse, the nation failed to realise the truth preached by the apostles as a result of the glorification of the Christ in the heavens. Yet this became the means by which God displays His faithfulness in the face of Jewish perfidy.

Some have not believed. This is the spiritual situation amongst the Jews at the coming and preaching of Paul’s gospel. Some had believed and by such a human response to the receiving of the fresh oracles from heaven, the new system of Christianity came to be established on earth. In this system, Paul was, as here, completing the Word of God. So the giving of the Old Testament Scriptures did produce the spiritual effect which God desired, by which eternal purpose is sure to be realised. This is so despite the unbelief of some.

Shall this unbelief make the faithfulness of God have no effect? The realising of God’s eternal purpose depends upon the sure foundation that God remains faithful to His Word. He cannot deny Himself even if the Jew denies Him. Their erroneous response to God does not change the character of God, nor change the means by which God shall effect His revealed eternal purpose. This is by means of entrusting holy oracles to man. The fact that God did thereby evoke a faithful response in some manifests the efficacy of His eternal power and wisdom on earth. Thereby the New Testament Scriptures, the fulness of revealed truth, came to be written. The faith of God remains on earth.

Verse 4    “God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.”

Far be the thought. The very fact that the disbelieving Jew could entertain such a though, such an interpretation of the events which had taken place, served to condemn them.

Let God be true, though every man be false. Even if every Jew had failed spiritually at the time of God’s visitation, this would not have proved God a liar. God’s Word will not return to Him void, Isa.55:11. The Jew must approach this new spiritual situation, brought about by the manifestation of God’s faithfulness in the face of their unfaithfulness, in the basic confession that God is true. This might imply that every man, the whole nation, ws found to be a failure.

This is the scarcely credible judgment which the Jew who heard Paul’s gospel must face. Let God be true and every man false. God is true and hence His promises and purpose stand sure. This is so even if the nation as such be found false in its response to God.

It was the fixed belief of the fleshly nation in naturalistic Judaism that it was essential to the realising of divine purpose on earth. This in fact was false.

Paul then quotes from Psalm 51:4. This is the Psalm written by David as a result of his experience under the hand of God after he had committed adultery and murder. God used this fact in order that this Psalm might be written, to set forth the righteous principles upon which God deals with His people. David failed spiritually and yet God used this to give His holy oracles to Israel.

God and His Words were the important factors in Judaism, not the fleshly nation and its works, for the realising of the eternal purpose for which God had chosen a people. David revealed how God was justified in His Words in the fact of His own perverting of truth in the case of Bath-Sheba. David had sinned spiritually against the law and not only morally. “Against Thee only have I sinned”. Yet the Word of God thereby came to him in holy oracle to reveal the blessedness of the man whose sin God had covered. The state of David was more blessed after the sin and its covering than it had been before. God had succeeded in giving His Words, that which is eternal, in the face of this human failure. This is the position arrived at in Christianity.  Its apostles, who were by nature Jews, caused holy oracles to be completed. God is thus justified in His Words in giving His Word to a people who failed in their reception of it.

So also God overcomes when He acts in judgment. He had judged and rejected the nation’s response to receiving the Old Testament Scriptures. Yet He overcame the powers standing between Himself and the realising of eternal purpose by giving the New Testament Scriptures to man in the failure of the Jew. The most frustrating power spiritually is the unbelief in the Jew. Yet God overcame this in producing by the gospel, in Jews like Paul, the complete understanding of the purpose of God and the ways in which He will cause eternal purpose to be realised. This is, in particular, the subject of the epistle.

Verse 5    “But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say?  Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man).”

In verses 5-8 Paul is answering possible objections which could be raised against his doctrine. His reasoning implied, as seen in verse 8, Jewish knowledge of the gospel. Yet their appreciation of it was distorted or perverted. The doctrine of the gospel is that our unrighteousness brings out God’s righteousness. “Our” signifies the Jews, as in verse 9. The Jews in naturalistic Judaism would hold that unrighteousness was the means of condemnation. The preaching of the gospel is, however, that human failure brought about the conditions amidst which God acted to save in perfect righteousness. God acted in character, without compromising with evil, in respect of the spiritual evil perpetrated by the nation against Himself.

What shall we say? Paul now speaks as a converted Jew. What he says here is set in contrast with what was being attributed to him in verse 9. He is reasoning with his opponents, who were governed by a humanistic interpretation of the Word of God. He is setting forth the true implications for the nations of the basic statement of the gospel that our unrighteousness had commended the righteousness of God.

Is God unrighteous who inflicts wrath? (JND). The gospel declares that Judaism, as practised by Jewry, had been rejected by God in His righteous activity on earth for human salvation. That form of response to the Scriptures had existed in the end to bear divine rejection. God commends His righteousness but at the same time inflicts wrath. He is not unrighteous in doing so. The work which brought forth divine righteousness resulted in the coming of a gospel which rejected naturalistic Judaism and established God’s perfect system whereby men can approach Him clothed in His righteousness.

In thus reasoning with his opponents, Paul was forced to speak as a man. He is setting forth divine truth in such a way that man, governed only by human wisdom, may understand. The gospel condemns the nation’s spiritual failure plainly. It is necessary that the Jew realise the condemnation of his practices in the system in which he had taken it for granted that he had served God’s purposes. He had done so but only so as to evoke wrath from God in a way which commended divine righteousness. The righteousness of man, which is really unrighteousness, had been judged in such a way that divine righteousness might come to him.

Verse 6    “God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world?”

Far be the thought. Such a way of thinking is declared to be sinful. The Jew is called upon to accept the judgment of his failure in the law as revealed in the gospel. Thereby he can come to enjoy the blessedness of which David has spoken.

Since how shall God judge the world? Paul here accuses the Jew of not really knowing the character of their God. The nation dismissed the proposition as monstrous that God would, after making use of them nationally to give them His holy oracles, law and circumcision, then proceed to reject them in judgement. Because of the failure of the nations to be governed by the knowledge of God in creation, God had taken up Israel for His purpose. Their nationhood and its continued profitability to God was really dependent upon their being governed by the knowledge of God contained in the holy oracles. They were held responsible for the truth of God made available to them. They were being called into account, and in fact being judged for spiritual failure nationally, by the gospel. Yet this revelation of wrath was for the introduction of the highest blessing. So will it be when God judges the world. All are responsible to the light God has given to man. Otherwise God would be setting a standard of acceptability, of righteousness, and when man failed to reach it He would be ignoring His own standards. God cannot deny Himself but must remain faithful to His Word.

Verse 7    “For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto His glory, why yet am I also judged a sinner?”

The truth in God is now said to have abounded. This is the final effect of God’s judgment of the Jew and of the introduction of the gospel into the world. He is speaking as a Jew who had left Judaism in response to the gospel. He had embraced the christian system and defends doing so. As a result of his ‘lie’, revealed truth had abounded. His ‘lie’ lay in his alleged departure from the truth of God in the Old Testament Scriptures. The gospel had separated the Jewish nation into two camps. There were those who professed the truth merely in a fleshly way at a natural level. Those who had come to live by faith through the gospel had come to see that divine truth is spiritual. Paul now states that his ‘lie’ had caused the truth of God to abound to His glory. This is the very failure of man in nature and in the law for which he is now being judged by revealed wrath. Paul declares that his gospel and the spiritual insight which this gives into the Old Testament Scriptures makes them truly comprehensible. They assume eternal significance by the power acting in Paul, which had been called the lie by the spiritually ignorant Jew. The gospel confers upon man the power to cause the truth of God to abound to His glory. Paul presents this to his opponents as proof that his response is God-glorifying, rather than man-glorifying as in the system from which he had departed.

It was also a known fact that the gospel had introduced the knowledge of God into the midst of heathendom, even in Rome itself. The gospel had displayed that it had such power that it had caused spiritually ignorant Gentiles to accept the Old Testament Scriptures as the Word of God. Even in one generation it had succeeded in doing what the Judaism of the Jews had not been able to accomplish throughout the course of its existence.

Verse 8    “And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say), “let us do evil that good may come?” whose damnation is just.”

If the Jews were to judge Paul and his gospel, they should judge from the objective results thereby produced instead of slandering him and it. They injuriously charged those Jews who embraced and taught the gospel, that their teaching was that if man practised evil then good would result. In fact the gospel does teach that a man judged a sinner by God has a positive spiritual advantage. It does not reach that sinful deeds in a man’s life are good. The gospel had been preached in heathendom to deliver men from fleshly religious practices as an acceptable way of serving God’s eternal purpose.

Paul in his turn accuses these slandering Jews that not only had they been unfaithful to God in the law but were now the open enemies of this abounding truth of God on earth. The Judgment of such shows the justice of God in visiting them in wrath for slandering the grace of God, whose judgment is just.

The first objection which the Jew raised to the gospel was that it destroyed that which they took to be the distinctiveness and advantages of Judasim. Paul answers this by showing that the fault lay with the Jews who, because of their basic spiritual failure to understand eternal truth, did not realise the true nature of God’s gifts and calling. The oracles of God had been entrusted to them so as to make it easier for them to understand the gospel. They should have appreciated how God would be true to His promises and purpose when the gospel was formulated. The gospel is the key to interpreting the Old Testament Scriptures. Instead they believed that the advantages of the law were earthly, tied up with their national existence and earthly circumstances.

The second objection was that they believed the gospel contravened the covenant which God had made with them. They thought this confined God to act amongst the Jews exclusively. Their God was limited to the confines of their Judaism. They had a false conception of their own importance and of the faithfulness of their form of service. It was because they had failed in the law that they were condemned by the message of the gospel. This Jewish objection to the gospel is a refusal to accept their guilt and hence a refusal to accept the benefits of the gospel.

The third objection was that the gospel was not in keeping with their knowledge of the character of God. They knew Him to be holy and righteous, who would by no means clear the guilty. They believed this to be true literally. In the gospel the knowledge of sin was reputed to be a positive advantage. By it a self-confessed spiritual failure was both condemned and made righteous.

But in fact Paul is not preaching sin as being good. Its terrible spiritual reality was the starting point of the message of the gospel. The gospel does not call upon men to do evil things.

The gospel acts in a situation already produced in which man is given up to evil. The message does not call upon men to practise evil things, just as it does not call upon him to practise naturally good things to be made righteous. The good things of the gospel are the eternally good things of God. These good things have come from God to man but this is not due to any purposeful activity on man’s part. In the gospel, God has introduced to earth heavenly, eternal good as a result of having permitted or caused evil to flourish first of all. The presence and activity of evil in man served God’s eternal purpose. Now that the gospel has brought eternal purpose to light, 2 Tim.1:10, man is being called by God to live and act toward Himself in a new spiritual system and realm.

The difficulty facing the Jew lay in this doctrine that the God of Christianity would not, in this system, have His people to be concerned with natural things such as morality and religion. Paul declares that this does not mean that the gospel taught that immorality was good. Yet the gospel is not to make men morally upright. Rather it is to make them spiritually righteous. Those Jews who thus criticised the gospel were spiritually blind. Their judgment by the gospel is just. Their judgment was that they remained outside its virtues.

Verse 9    “What then?  Are we better than they?  No, in no wise, for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin.”

Paul repeats the phrase with which he had begun the chapter. He had revealed the superiority of the Jew spiritually. Now he inquires as to the results produced by them from their spiritual advantage of having holy oracles in God’s system. He compares them with the other nations in the light brought by the gospel. Are we better? Paul here speaks as a Jew who knew the Old Testament. The nation had profited much in every way from God’s work. The question is whether the nation had profited God by its response to His benefits. Though the Jew had profited in every way, the nation had in no way contributed positively to the realising of the true purpose for which God had given it the Old Testament.

We have before charged both the Jews and Greeks with being all under sin. The gospel, preached by the apostles of this new system, first of all comes to charge men with spiritual failure. It does not commend humanity as being in any way deserving of God’s righteousness, His acquittal. It is not a divinely given means of perfecting Jew or Gentile in their previous spiritual systems. It judges them for having come under the power of sin in the way in which they had responded to God therein. The failure of which the gospel charges both Jew and Gentile is spiritual and not merely natural. Instead of being found under the power of God from the work of God toward them, they are found under sin.

Verse 10    “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, no one.”

In answering the objections of the Jewish critics, Paul dismisses all human spiritual merit. If there had been merit it would have been in the law. He then proceeds to bring their spiritual guilt home to them out of that which they accepted as the oracles of God. He quotes Psalm 14:1-3, 5:9, 140:3, 10:7, Isa. 59:7-8 and Psalm 36:1. These Scriptures are a summing-up of the history of Israel’s failure. Then at the end the hope of Israel is expressed, that of divine intervention in Zion to free them from spiritual captivity to sin and to bring the Redeemer. In quoting such Scriptures Paul sows the end of hope based upon any faithfulness on the part of Israel. Blessing will result from the faithfulness of God to His Word. The gospel is the present form in which God is thus acting.

Verse 11-12    “There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.  They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable: There is none that doeth good, no, not one.”

As to their national life and conduct Godwardly, there was none righteous; not one did the good deeds which are of God. They failed to realise the true nature of God’s work, that is, the righteousness which He demanded of them if they would enter into His presence. God had become the God of holy oracles. The nation ought to have become one which was formed and governed by the Word of God. In their naturalistic Judaism and Zionism they receive the divine judgment that they were spiritually unfit for God’s presence. They had no understanding of His Person, the Spirit of Truth contained in the letter. They went out of the way, that is, the only way by which they might have become purposeful Godwardly. Thus the nation became utterly unprofitable for the purpose for which God had called and gifted them. Because of the way in which they misunderstood the true eternal significance of the law and Word of God, there was not one who practised goodness. They were so utterly devoted to the system which, in their spiritual blindness, they had accepted as being good and true, that divine goodness was not wrought by any.

Verse 13-14    “Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit: the poison of asps is under their lips:  Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”

The nation was condemned in holy Scripture for their conduct toward one another in their system. The faith which they professed, their speech, was spiritually corrupt and corrupting. The throat, tongue, lips and mouth, which expressed their response to God within the nation, were given up to the service of the spirit of error. The power of spiritual death, the open sepulchre, was in their throats. Their tongue, ideally, ought to have been a power to profess godliness and live by revealed, eternal truth. They ought to have spoken such truth in love toward one another so that a spiritually perfected nation would result. Instead they used deceit. They were deceivers spiritually, who had been perverted by the deceitfulness of sin in basic essentials. Naturalistic Jewish faith appears to be good in its insistence upon high moral and religious standards. It is in fact evil in frustrating the eternal product which God desired to produce in them by His gifts and calling. The characteristics of the Spirit of evil, rather than godliness, manifested themselves in the nation – deceit, poison, cursing and bitterness.

Verse 15-18    “Their feet are swift to shed blood: Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace they have not known: There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

As to their national life and conduct in the world, they followed the way of other nations. They had become a natural forcewho acted in worldly power because of their domination by the spirit of evil. Bloodshedding, destruction and misery, i.e. the lack of either the peace or fear of God, marked off their national way of life as it was seen by God and by other nations.

Their feet, their ways, their mind and their eyes were the faculties which determined their life and work in the world. This was lived for present self-advantage in the world in its chaotic and unblessed state. They added to the chaos and evil by their deeds. Their way of life was not determined by the thoughts and assessments of God concerning the eternal issues introduced by the giving of the law and the coming of the Word of God to them in it.

Paul is here seeking to convince them by the Word of God by which they professed to live, of their need of the gospel and of its applicability to the state in which they were found. The wrath of God was certain to descend upon them in such a spiritual state. This wrath is revealed in the gospel before it will be manifested in power at a worldly level.

Verse 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.”

Paul then speaks specifically concerning the law, i.e. the ten commandments and what can be known by them. Though the nation had failed, the law had not failed to do the work for which God had given it. The message of the gospel shows the true import of the law. We, those who have embraced the Christian system, know what the law really says to those who are under it. The law was not given to man as a means by which he could justify his natural life and work. It was given to condemn fleshly nature by manifesting the impossibility of man living acceptably before God by it.

It speaks that every mouth may be stopped. In it humanity had been given truth in the form of a direct revelation from God. The nations were judged in the gospel for having basically failed to realise that they had been brought under law in order that they might be condemned openly in the flesh. It was given to stop every mouth. No flesh can boast in the law before God. This result was not arrived at by the Jew in the Jewish religion. Its ideal was to cause man in the flesh to obey the letter. The gospel effectively stops every mouth, thereby effecting the negative purpose for which God had given it to the nation.

By the gospel we have come to know that the whole world was in that state, under judgment to God, as a result of law-giving. Christian enlightenment shows that God has, at a worldly level, done what He intended to do in giving the law to a nation. All the world is seen to be under the judgment of God.

Verse 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.”

The conclusion which Paul reaches in this section, which is devoted to the subject of the revelation of divine wrath in the gospel, is that by works of the law no flesh shall be justified. Human nature cannot perform deeds which can gain acceptance with God. By his inherent powers the Jew cannot render to God the service which God desires of him in response to having given His law. Man being before God, in the presence of the God of self-revelation, is the ideal proposed in the law. Man cannot justify himself as to this divine calling by means of naturally good deeds.

By the law is the knowledge of sin. The law does not fail to produce the effects for which God has given it to fleshly humanity. It has been given to man to produce in him the knowledge that his life and work is sinful in divine estimation. A spiritually honest man will realise the inability of his nature to live up to the law. He will own that the law is of God and will proceed to ask why God has given it. What Paul presents is the knowledge he will then arrive at.

Verse 21    “But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.”

Paul now opens the subject of what God has done in the gospel about the state of humanity, which warrants His judgment and is therefore exposed to His wrath. At a time when humanity’s spiritual failure is revealed to be complete, God has manifested His righteousness. In the previous economies of God, righteousness was sought as a quality to be brought out in man by a righteous response to the truth given to him. The righteousness manifested in the gospel is not something inherent in, or produced by man. It is of God, arising from His work, the activity of His nature. God has acted apart from law. The work of God which has resulted in the gospel is the activity of God rather than of man, in contrast to the law.

It has been witnessed to by the prophets. It has been revealed by the Lord Jesus. It is now being declared by the apostles. The law was given and the prophets acted to bear witness to the coming of divine righteousness, which had then still to be revealed. The law and the prophets really prepared for man’s introduction to a righteousness of God which was still to come. The subject in chapters 3 and 4 is the righteousness of God. This is the work of God by which He perfects those who were by their own works spiritual failures.

The wrath of God revealed in the gospel manifests Him as a righteous judge acting from heaven. He demands of man the spiritual conditions from their response to Him on earth which obtain in heaven. This demand condemns everybody. The righteousness of God revealed in the gospel manifests Him as a Saviour-God. By His work he gives to men the means by which they can meet the demands made of them if they are to enter into His presence. By God’s righteousness man is perfected spiritually. This righteousness is now revealed, when humanity is condemned, being operative toward this state of condemnation.

As to it being manifested, rather than merely witnessed, it came embodied in humanity in the person of the Lord Jesus. He is presented in three ways as being connected with its manifestation:

a.      Verse 22. He is Jesus Christ. This presents the Man Jesus, who assumed a place and took upon Himself a work as the anointed, the Christ. This had to do with the manifestation of the life and nature of God. This is God’s righteousness. Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness, Matt. 8:18. The Lord Jesus was anointed not to assume a place of earthly greatness but to manifest God’s righteousness.

b.     Verse 24. He is Christ Jesus. He is now the Christ who was Jesus, the lowly Man. This name has to do with the glory into which He has entered in heaven. He remains a Man in the glory but has acquired by His life and death in the flesh the ability to justify man redemptively.

c.      Verse 26. He is Jesus. This presents Him as the lowly Man, once alive in flesh. By this self-humiliation He has founded a righteous basis upon which God justifies the believer.

Creation contained a divine manifestation, that of the eternal power and divinity of God. The law contained a revelation, that of Jehovah the faithful God. God became the Spirit contained in the letter. He gave man His oracles and remained faithful to them. The righteousness of God in the gospel is also a revelation. It was revealed in a Person who was its exponent in His life on earth. Righteousness is a manifestation of what God is toward others when He proceeds forth in self-revelation. It is the spiritual demands made of men who would receive the revelation of God.

Verse 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.”

The Lord Jesus in His life on earth was the complete revelation of God in righteousness. In His life every characteristic of God shone forth. He was the light on earth. As a Man He also walked according to the light of divine revelation in perfect response to it. Hence the greatest thing about fleshly human nature was that, in Christ, God assumed it to reveal His righteousness in it. The Lord Jesus, by His life in flesh, also manifested how man must live and act to be acceptable to God.

Fortunately for us divine activity did not stop at this, otherwise the righteousness of God wold have remained a revealed but unattainable ideal. No man can measure up to the spiritual perfection of the Christ in flesh. The righteousness of God is through faith of Jesus Christ. It is offered to men through faith in Jesus Christ. The revelation of that which may be known of God in creation was presented to the spirit of man. The revelation of God in the law was contained in ordinances and types. It was presented to a nation which ideally ought to have been formed and governed collectively by the law. Now, however, a righteousness of God has been manifested which can be received through faith in Jesus Christ. Faith is a power which God can form in man, not something which is naturally present in him. The Christ of the christian system is a Man who can produce faith in man, thereby conferring divine righteousness upon him. The righteousness of God now acts in conferring upon man the new life, i.e. faith, which is in and through Jesus Christ. He has become unto us wisdom and righteousness from God, 1 Cor. 1:30. Through this “faith of Jesus Christ” we have had His own righteous nature begotten in us. He lived and died in the flesh to gain this faith-begetting ability.

This faith of Jesus Christ, and the righteousness of God which it produces, is said to be toward all and upon all those who believe. This work of God, which operates effectively through Jesus Christ, is applicable to the spiritual state of all humanity. This effective, eternal, power and wisdom of God can reach all men. It produces faith in man and this is how God is now acquiring a people for His new christian system. In the present divine economy on earth there is now no difference between Jew and Greek.

Verse 23    “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”

The extent to which God reveals Himself to man governs the standards demanded of man. The greater the revelation, the greater man must be, spiritually, to receive it. God’s various systems – creation, law, grace – were established with the intention of causing man to be acceptable to God, that he might render service to eternal purpose. The revelation of God in Chris was perfect and complete. God manifested Himself in Christ in all His glory. If man is now to enjoy a relationship with a fully revealed God, it must be according to God. It is not at all connected with man’s own nature. The glory of God in full display is that which man must now be able to regard. Yet all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, even the lesser glory associated with creation and the law. Paul thus presents man’s dilemma, the difficulty which God has resolved. For man to live in divine glory requires that he possess a God-like nature. This is exactly what God proposes to confer through faith of Jesus Christ. This is upon all them that believe. We are begotten of Him through faith, bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh. We are made partakers of the divine nature, 2 Pet.1:4.

Verse 24    “Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

The Christ not only manifested the righteousness of God in life but, in dying, answered the demands of that righteousness upon men, who had sinned and come short of God’s glory. To justify man involves taking him from under the power of evil and setting him in God’s presence in perfect fitness. Righteousness is manifested but grace is also manifested. Grace signifies God coming down in self-humiliation to act at the spiritual level in which man is found in sin, in order to lift him up into the spiritual realm in which God lives. Thereby spiritual fitness is conferred upon the erstwhile sinner. This is the work which Christ wrought by dying and rising out of death.

Redemption is the work by which the deficiency is met between the righteous demands of God in His procession and the state of man to whom He is revealed. It was a work completed by the Christ toward God in respect of the objects of redemption. This deficiency was due to man’s spiritual shortcomings. In His life in flesh the Christ concerned Himself with the revelation of God’s righteousness. On the cross He identified Himself, in the spiritual realm of God’s wrath against sin, with man’s sinful involvement with the spirit of evil. He was made sin for us and bore divine judgment for us. This involved His death in flesh. Thereby He ended His existence in that sort of nature which in other men is sinful, that is, His life in flesh. When He resumed human life in resurrection He did not resume it in flesh, 2 Cor.5:16. He became Christ Jesus in resurrection. Just as He had become Jesus Christ in flesh. Redemption thereby is a completed work, completed between God and the Christ. It exists in Christ Jesus, i.e. in the Lord Jesus alive as a Man in glory. This does not mean that the world has yet been redeemed but that the basis of redemption has been laid so far as God is concerned. By it God can already justify man freely, for nothing. Man contributes nothing to the work by which he is fitted spiritually to come to God.

Verse 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.”

As redeemer, God proposes Christ as a propitiation, a mercy-seat, a covering-over for man’s spiritual deficiencies. The symbolism involved in the mercy-seat concerns God dwelling in the midst of Israel, in His house, that is, in His system of approach. The presence of God dwelt, in a spiritual sense, between the cherubim. These are the angelic beings who, in their perfect knowledge of good and evil, keep from the presence of God that which is spiritually incompatible with it, as in Gen.3:24. These cherubic figures rested upon the base, the ark of the covenant. It contained, amongst other things, the tables of stone – the ten commandments, which were the demands made by God upon His people if they would enjoy His presence on earth. The mercy-seat was the lid which covered the box, separating the cherubic executors of divine righteousness from the absolute demands made by God upon Israel. They looked downwards and regarded the mercy-seat rather than the tables of stone. They saw the platform upon which the high priest had divine authority to place the blood in the day of atonement. In symbol, God thus undertook to meet the righteous demands of the cherubim in His own work of redemption.

In the christian system of approach we have arrived at the antitypical, spiritual reality. God now proposes the Christ in His perfected redemptive work as a propitiation, the antitypical, bloodstained mercy-seat. He has completed a work, the virtue of which becomes a man’s possession when he accepts God’s proposal. God sets forth Jesus Christ and His work as the divine means whereby man can enter into the glory of God’s presence in perfect complacency. In regarding a man thus fitted by redemption, God sees only the efficacy of the blood of Christ. The offended party, God Himself, has furnished the means of man’s acceptance in perfect righteousness. This means is presented to man as the faith ratified in Jesus’s blood. Christ, in his atoning death in the flesh, is presented by God in the gospel to sinners as a carte blanche for admission to the presence of a God now fully revealed in glory.

As a means of acceptance, the death of Christ operates in retrospect and in prospect. In retrospect, it declares God’s righteousness in passing over sins (plural) done aforetime, that is, before Christ came into the world. God has passed over the sins of His people, Israel, because he saw in the blood which they sprinkled the coming, atoning work of the Christ. God was thus committed to the death of the Christ in flesh even before He came in flesh. God, in passing over sins done aforetime, took upon Himself the responsibility for dealing in a righteous way with the sins which he passed over. Now God’s responsibility has been discharged by the redemptive work of Christ. For this cause, amongst others, He came into the world. In fact, the Christ was a lamb slain from the foundation of the world. All God’s dealings with man in forebearance, from Adam onwards, was possible in virtue of this redemptive work which the Christ was to effect.

Verse 26    “To declare, I say, at this time His righteousness, that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.”

Now, at this time, in this dispensation or age of God’s dealings with man, things are different. It is no longer a question of living before God in a nature which is spiritually defective and of casting oneself upon the faithful ability of God to deal with the sinful activities of that nature. That would be to live before God as if the redemptive work of Christ was not finished (as so many believers do). The present time for us is characterised by the fact that God is declaring His righteousness in the gospel. It has been realised and revealed in Christ. It can be accepted by man. The gospel is God’s declaration of that.

It is now the person himself who is justified, apart from the law and human merit, by the work of God Himself. God is not dealing with man according to his fallen nature. Nor is man asked to respond to God in it. The positive virtue in the gospel is wholly in God’s work. It is His righteousness and He is just in conferring it upon everyone who acquires faith. What such a one was by nature is ended in God’s sight by the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God does not lay aside any of His attributes, neither does He compromise with evil but at the same time He justifies him who has been given the faith of Jesus. This, so to speak, is the negative aspect of the gospel. Man in the flesh has been dealt with and his existence in the sight of God is closed forever. Christ in resurrection confers faith in those who respond to divine work. God is just in conferring His righteousness upon a person so justified from his previous spiritual deficiency. What the man was by nature and in practice condemned him before God. What has been secured by Christ is referrable and applicable to condemned humanity. Man in sinful fleshly nature is condemned, as was the Christ when He was made sin and judged by God in that state. God’s condemnation of man was experienced by Christ but He has come out of that state of condemnation. He has been justified, yea been glorified, for His work. God confers this new, justified life upon everyone who is of the faith of Jesus.

Verse 27    “Where is boasting then?  It is excluded, by what law?  of works?  Nay: but by the law of faith.”

The question of naturally good works does not arise. It is now only a question of the sort of life which man possesses, as being in the presence of God. Man can now be justified before God by the faith of another, even of Jesus. In the dispensation of Paul’s gospel, man cannot boast before God that he has rightly used his powers to merit acceptance with God. This is the human conclusion of the gospel – “we conclude”, verse 28. It is now the justification of a person, verse 26, rather than the passing over of sins, verse 25.

It is neither a law of works, verse 27, nor works of law, verse 28, which justifies. Man is not justified by a divinely-given law nor by a human response to it. God Himself justifies and so the justification is the perfect result of His own activities. In the gospel, God is not acting in a circumscribed way but in the full revelation of His person and work toward all. Therefore His righteousness is applicable to Jew and Gentile. Boasting could not be excluded by a law of works. In such a system, man contributes to its upbuilding by the exercise of his own powers. God has now promulgated a law of faith. He completes the work of redemption and offers it to man as the grounds of his acceptance. Man can now live toward God by the new law of faith. Acceptance and obedience of this law is the means by which, or the basis upon which, membership of God’s new spiritual community on earth is gained.

Verse 28    “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.”

Justification means being proved innocent rather than merely being found not guilty. In verse 24, justification is said to be by the grace of God. God has acted at the level at which man is found in spiritual failure on earth to procure eternal redemption. In verse 26 justification is said to be of the faith of Jesus. By His completed work and present position in heaven as the Christ of Christianity, He can confer new life and wisdom. Now justification is declared to be by faith. Those who accept the work of God and the offices of the Christ gain within themselves justifying faith. Here Paul speaks as one of the apostles of the new system of God on earth. “We reckon”. The Holy Spirit had conferred apostleship upon them to preach the message which has resulted from God’s saving act of redemption. Thereby they reckoned that a man is justified by faith, produced by acceptance of the gospel. It is not merely that believers reckon that they are acceptable with God by His work. They had apostolic authority, that is, the complete power and authority of the Holy Spirit acting unhinderedly in this gift which He had conferred upon them. So the grace of God, the faith of Jesus, and the imputing power of the Holy Spirit act together to justify man. It is a complete divine operation, a work as perfect as God can make it. The effective result of the work is to produce faith, which is of God, in man.

It is apart from works of law. In verse 21 it is revealed that apart from law, righteousness of God is manifested. This manifestation of righteousness ultimately and effectively produces faith in man. By this he can lay hold upon eternal things, particularly the truth of righteousness as the basic spiritual essential. Man’s justification before God lies in this. God has succeeded in performing with him the basic result for which He had completed the work of redemption in Christ Jesus. Man does not work for his justification before God.

Verse 29    “Is He the God of the Jews only?  Is He not also of the Gentiles?  Yes, of the Gentiles also.”

Paul is, however, careful to emphasise that it is the God of the Jews who is working, even though He is also now acting as God toward the Gentiles also. Paul asks the Jews if God is the God of the Jews only. They would acknowledge that He was not. In so doing they were in fact admitting that God’s circumscribed dealings with them in the law would not be the final state of things. The law had to do with the Jews exclusively but this was not so with the God who had given the law.

Is He not the God of the nations also? If this were so He would necessarily act toward the nations. This activity would be apart from the Jewish law. In the gospel He now acts toward the nations as nations. That is, He is acting in a fuller way than He did in the law. He acts in His fulness toward the nations, as would be expected seeing He is the God of the nations.

Verse 30    “Seeing it is one God which shall justify the circumcision by faith and uncircumcision through faith.”

Since indeed God is One who so acts, God is One and yet He acts in a variety of ways – in creation, in law and in the gospel, to realise His eternal purpose. The coming of the gospel represents a further development in the ways of God. He will justify the circumcision on the principle, or ground, of faith. The tense here is future, setting forth that which would issue forth as a result of the coming of the gospel. It is on the basis of the blood of Christ alone that God can justify man in righteousness. Natural perfection was impossible by means of circumcision. Yet as a result of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, God will justify men in circumcision despite their natural sinfulness. He will do so in the future, in the day of judgment, because God-produced faith was in them in the system of the law.

He will justify the circumcision on the principle of faith and not because a Jew lives according to the letter of the law moralistically. So also will it be with man in uncircumcision, i.e. man alive before God in the spiritual system established in nature. He will justify circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through the faith. The faith is the doctrine of God, part of which the Jews already held, e.g. that God is One. The Jew looked forward to being justified in the future. This will be so, as with the Gentiles also. The Gentiles, who lived by the truth of God which can be known in creation, will be justified for possessing this power of faith which gives the uncircumcision a knowledge of God. In the gospel, however, the Jews were now to realise that God was not forgiving specific acts of sin by the giving of prescribed sacrifices. Justification signifies the end of the old nature in God’s sight and the possession of new life which cannot sin. To faith the old nature is dead toward God. The Gentiles for their part had to realise that it was this code of faith, incorporating the revelation of the God of the Jews, which is the means of acquiring present justification. Gentiles are not justified here and now by the activity of the thoughts of their hearts, conscience and reasoning.

Verse 31    “Do we then make void the law through faith?  God forbid: yea, we establish the law.”

Far from the law being cancelled by the gospel, it was heightened and given its true place as to the outworking of divine purpose. The apostles established it. The gospel is the spiritual outcome of a sequence which included law. By the law is the knowledge of sin. Human nature had to be shown to be sinful and to have remained so despite every possible effort on God’s part and on man’s part. The gospel showed that the law was given to the circumcision to manifest the spiritual profitlessness of the flesh which they circumcised. It did not make the law itself void and purposeless to God and to man. The Lord Jesus also stated that the Jews were not to think by His new teaching that He had come to destroy the law. He came not to destroy but to fulfil. He manifested its true spiritual significance. It governed His life absolutely and perfectly. His life in the flesh was a perfect exposition of the law.

The apostles of the christian system, in their turn, set forth the true significance of the law. It was given to condemn human nature in the sight of God. It was also given to produce faith in its true hearers. It is a spiritual rule which governs the life of faith and not the life of flesh. This had been lost in the sight of the nation. The gospel establishes this fundamental truth.