CRITICAL NOTES
Romans 3:22. By faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe.—Faith apprehends and appropriates a personal mediator. The righteousness of God.—Our participation by faith in Christ as being the only righteousness that God approves, and thus is here called “the righteousness of God through faith.”
Romans 3:23. The glory of God—viz., the divine approbation.
Romans 3:24.—The English, or rather Latin, word “redemption” is not a perfect synonym of the term employed by the apostle (ἀπολύτρωσις). It means a ransoming off—deliverance on the ground of ransom.
Romans 3:25.—God has openly exhibited Christ to the world as a propitiatory offering for sin, unto all who believe in Him, in order that He might fully exhibit His pardoning mercy (His δικαιοσύνη) in respect to the forgiveness of sins under the past and present dispensations (Stuart).
Romans 3:26.—Righteousness as distinguished from truthfulness and goodness on the one hand, and from mere justice on the other. Because of the pretermission of the former sins.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 3:21-26
Divine justice vindicated.—Some say Christianity is played out. Perhaps the wish is father to the saying. We may seem to have taken a pessimistic view of Christianised society. Not quite. St. Paul’s collection of Old Testament texts cannot be applied to England, and to that we are indebted to Christianity. Our point is that some of the essential failings of Judaism are reproduced in Christianity, and we must be on our guard. We do not admit that Christianity is played out, but we allow that modern Pauls are needed to proclaim the old gospel with new power. The sinfulness of man must be declared, the righteousness of God proclaimed, and the way of salvation opened out by faith, as the result of grace, and through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. The opponents of the mediatorial scheme give grotesque representations of a supposed conflict between justice and mercy. Nevertheless, justice is not to be eliminated from the attributes of a perfect God. He is Himself just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. All the dispensations of God make for righteousness. What we know not now we shall know hereafter. The climactic and indisputable proof of God’s justice is the setting forth of Jesus to be a propitiation.
I. God justifies Himself.—Of course not in the way of making Himself just, for that He always and essentially is; but in the way of showing His justice, and condescending to show to men that all His ways are right. Paul does not bring before us a one-sided Deity—a Being stripped of that attribute which must be the basis of an equitable moral government. Paul vindicates the righteousness of God in His former dealings with the race; and now he brings us to see in the atonement of Christ a crowning proof of justice, as well as a manifestation of love. God is just because He freely forgives men by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
1. God declares His justice. The ancient prophet speaks of a just God and a Saviour. The apostle adopts the utterance. God’s justice declared by the different economies. The history of Israel a testimony. The form of divine justice has never been absent from the march of human events. All tend to the vindication of the eternal rectitude. A twofold love of the Father and the Son speaks to us from Calvary. The voice of justice also heard. The fatherhood of God must not destroy His kingship. Eli was a mild father, the type of the modern God of some, and his sons were ruined. God speaks and rules as a father-king. God is not a great, grim, and relentless justice, neither is He a pliant amiability. The Atonement declares God’s justice, and sets forth the truth that men cannot be saved merely on the ground that God is love.
2. God honours justice. The monarch as the representative of civil government, as the person to whom is delegated the central power around which the commonwealth is to move in circles of social order, must rule in justice tempered by mercy. God is surely more perfect. Around Him must be glorious circles of moral order. The Atonement has not wrested the sceptre from His grasp. He still sits on a throne which has justice and judgment for its foundation. A tyrant may arbitrarily pardon a rebel. A just God must devise means whereby rebels may be pardoned and justice honoured. God honoured justice when He gave His Son, for the Son was willing to be offered. In His case the sweet compulsive power of love was the only constraining force. If a life on earth of pleasure, of greatness, and of renown ending in a triumphant translation to a brighter sphere had been sufficient, God’s love would have demanded no more. If there was any violence in the moral transaction, it was Deity that did violence to His own loving nature in the interests of eternal justice.
3. God harmonises justice. The opponents make justice and mercy two abstractions. These ideal creations are seen wrestling for victory. One determines to punish; the other is equally determined to forgive. Being equally powerful, how is the contest to end? Now justice and mercy are not distinct personalities. They are attributes of the one great personality termed God. And there can be no fierce conflict, speaking after the manner of men. God in the eternal councils deliberates. God the Father and God the Son devise the wondrous method. Behold the result. Mercy and truth meet together. Righteousness and peace kiss each other when they hear the sad triumphant refrain, “It is finished.” Truth springs out of the earth which has been replenished by the stream flowing from the Rock of Ages. Righteousness looks down from heaven in glad approval. All nations must finally rejoice, for the Lord has given that which is good.
II. God justifies believers.—When God justifies Himself, He shows His justice. When God justifies the believer, He receives him as justified. God has made men moral agents, and does not justify them, the volition refusing the benefit. All are not justified because all are not willing—i.e., all who have heard. There is a condition. It is the simple one of faith, loving acceptance, the doctor’s prescription, the brazen serpent. Believe and live. Look and be saved. Take and be healed.
1. Believing involves a confession of guilt and of helplessness. Guilt is the awakened sense of moral sickness. The extent of feeling no matter. This is the world’s want—the power to feel as well as to understand.
2. Believing implies God’s right to punish. So that the man who believes in Christ does not make void the law and the authority of God. The believer suffers in himself the pangs of remorse, feels the pains of condemnation; but what would the judge say to or think of the criminal who should plead his pangs and his feelings as an atonement for his crimes?
3. Believing in Jesus Christ carries in it the declaration of human inability. Good works cannot save. High resolves cannot redeem. Noble endeavours cannot lift out of the pit. All the tears of a Niobe, should the race be concentrated in one image, and should the tears flow from the dawn of time to its close, cannot wash away sin. There is a fountain opened for sin and uncleanness. There is a propitiatory offering. Faith in Jesus Christ is the grand starting-point for noble endeavour, for moral enterprise, and for all holy living. Here are healing for the sick, bright raiment for the naked, precious gold for the poor, satisfying bread for the hungry, peace for the troubled, joy for the sorrowful, and laughter for the weepers.
4. Believing in Jesus Christ supposes loving consecration. The imperfection of many professing Christians must be admitted; but the candid soul must confess that the world’s noblest heroes have been produced by Christianity. A religion which could produce a Paul has in that one fact a good deal to say in its defence. And what should be said of a religion which has produced thousands who have followed in his train, though they have failed to reach his high measure of nobility?
The righteousness of God.—“But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.” It is of sin and righteousness that the apostle speaks so fully and so minutely throughout this whole epistle.
I. It is the righteousness of God.—It is a divine, not a human, righteousness. That righteousness which we had lost in Adam was, after all, but a human thing, finite like him who lost it; but that which we gain is a divine righteousness, and by being divine forms an infinite compensation for that which Adam lost for us; and we in receiving it are made partakers of a most glorious exchange. It is called the righteousness of God, because it is a righteousness provided by Him—a righteousness which was conceived by Him and carried out in every part by Him. Again, it is called the righteousness of God, because it is a righteousness made up of the doings of the Son of God. It is not merely with His sufferings that this righteousness has to do, but it is with His doings as well. These two things enter into its composition, so that without both of them it would be imperfect. Further, it is called the righteousness of God, because it provides such a compensation for human unrighteousness, that it not only takes it all away, but brings in a new and far higher and surer footing for the sinner to rest on.
II. It is a righteousness without the law.—He does not mean that it is in any sense an unlawful righteousness—a righteousness not based on law; but it means a righteousness which, in so far as we are concerned, has nothing to do with law at all. It is not a righteousness which asks any doing or working to make it what it is—“the righteousness of God”; for did it require anything of this kind on our part, it would cease to be what it is here represented to be, “the righteousness of God,” and would become, to a large extent at least, “the righteousness of man.” This righteousness does not send us to the law in order to be justified. Let us hold fast then this truth of the gospel, this foundation truth—righteousness without law, righteousness founded in no sense upon our keeping of the law; but wholly and absolutely upon this fact, that another has kept the law for us, and that other no less than the Son of God Himself.
III. This righteousness has been “manifested.”—“Now,” he says, “the righteousness of God is manifested”; it has been clearly brought to light, so that there can be no mistake concerning it and no mystery in it. It is not a thing hidden, wrapped up, reserved, held back, veiled from our view. It has been clearly manifested. In every way God has sought to guard it against the possibility of being mistaken by man. In every way has He taken precautions against this being hidden from view or darkened by the words of man’s wisdom.
IV. This righteousness is a righteousness “to which the law and the prophets bear witness.”—By this expression we understand the whole of the Old Testament. It is not something (he means to tell us) now come to light for the first time, not understood in the ages gone by; it is something which has been proclaimed from the beginning hitherto. Righteousness shone down upon the pilgrimage of Old Testament worthies, and in the light of which they walked. On this righteousness they rested, in it they rejoiced. It is no new righteousness which we preach. It is no new foundation of which we tell. It is the old one, the well-proved one. It has been abundantly sufficient in past ages, and it has lost none of its efficiency now in these last days.
V. This righteousness is a righteousness which is by the faith of Jesus Christ.—“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.” He means to say by this expression that it is a righteousness which comes to us by believing in Jesus Christ. It is not our faith that is our righteousness; it is not our act of believing that justifies. If your faith were your righteousness, then faith would be just reduced to the level of all other works, and would be itself a work. If it were our faith, our act of faith, that justified, then should we be justified by our own acts, by our own deeds. The expression, then, “the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ,” means simply that it is a righteousness which passes over to us, and becomes available for us, by believing in Him whose righteousness it is—that is, by believing the Father’s testimony concerning Jesus Christ. Or it is just as if we were saying, I have no righteousness, seeing I am wholly a sinner; but I take this righteousness of the Son of God, and I draw near, expecting to be treated by God just as if I and not He were the righteous person. I cannot present any suffering to Him in payment of penalty; but I take this suffering of the Son of God, and I claim to have it reckoned to me as payment of my penalty. Thus it is “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.”
VI. This righteousness is a righteousness for the unrighteous.—It “is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” It is not righteousness for the good, but for the evil. It is not righteousness for the worthy, but for the unworthy. How foolish, then, to say as men, when convinced of sin, or when going back into former iniquity, are sometimes found saying, I am too great a sinner to be forgiven. Why, if you were not such a sinner, you would not need such a righteousness. This righteousness for the unrighteous is said by the apostle to be “unto all.” It is a righteousness which is like the sun in the heavens. It is one sun; yet it is enough for every one, it is free to every one. You open your eye and enjoy its beams without asking any questions. Again, it is a righteousness which is “upon all them that believe.” It is “unto all”; but it is only “upon” them that believe. The moment that we believe through grace we are accepted in the Beloved, redeemed from condemnation and from wrath. Again, the apostle affirms, regarding this righteousness for the unrighteous, that “there is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” There is no difference as to its fitness for the sinner, whatever his sin may be; and there is no difference as to the fitness of the sinner for the righteousness. There is this twofold fitness: the fitness of the righteousness for the sinner, and the fitness of the sinner for the righteousness. There is no question as to the kind of your unrighteousness, the length of time, the amount or degree—there is no question about that: the simple question is, Are you an unrighteous man? Then it suits your case. And it is a righteousness near to each one of you; it is not afar off; it is not in heaven above, so that you have to climb to the seat of God to obtain it; and it is not down so low that you must dig to earth’s centre to find it: it is near, it is at your very side; and if you reject it, it cannot be because of its distance. God has brought it near.—H. Bonar.
Romans 3:24. Justification an act of God’s free grace.—Justified by grace—i.e., God’s part; not by blood—i.e., Christ’s part (Romans 5:9); not even by faith—i.e., man’s part (Romans 5:1); still less by works—i.e., the proof and manifestation of all the rest (James 2:24). Justification is contemplated from the side of God.
I. Justification itself.—“Being justified.” Rome versus Geneva—the former tending to the view that justification includes the removal of sin, not simply the removal of condemnation, as held by the latter. The structure of this epistle seems to favour the latter. The apostle begins with chaps. 1–5, discussing that awful liability to punishment which rests on Jew and Gentile alike; and only when this is disposed of does he come in chaps. 6–8 to treat of the removal of sin and the gift of eternal life. God comes first as a judge to pardon or absolve, and His second act is that of the Spirit imparting the regenerating seed of spiritual life. Justification is a change of relations, not of nature.
II. Modifications of the principal idea.—
1. The source—in the grace of God: “being justified freely by His grace.” Grace is love stooping, love in action—love manifesting itself to man; but love is eternal, therefore the revealed righteousness will endure. This is the key to the apostle’s confidence.
2. The mode—“freely.” Justification not of works, therefore not of wages; but of grace, therefore a free gift. This fathoms at once the sinner’s helplessness, and exhibits the divine munificence. The helplessness is spiritual—not necessarily mental, or even moral. Man may learn, know, hate, love; but he cannot justify himself in the sight of God. The divine munificence is twofold. The free gift is not dependent on any human return, and in itself is the pledge of all other spiritual blessings.
3. The means—“through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Redemption is another word that looks at justification from the divine side. It contains two ideas—ransom paid in vindication of justice and righteousness, and liberation effected for the guilty party. The two combined give the principle of substitution. The price was His “blood,” therefore not “without price,” not freely to Him. And it is “in Christ Jesus”—in Him in that historical sense in which in His own body on the tree the propitiation for sin was offered; and in Him in this legal and substitutionary sense in which justification is ours, only as we are treated in the Saviour’s place and accepted as righteous in Him. We are justified by grace—i.e., the source; by blood—i.e., the channel; by faith—i.e., the reception; by works—i.e., the fruit. “By their fruits ye shall know them.”—John Adams, B.D.
Law cannot justify.—“Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight,” etc. How shall man be just before God? Wherewith shall I come before the Lord? Such questions have presented themselves to men ever since sin found an entrance into this world. Such questions demand an answer now. Let us not shrink from considering them.
I. The very essence of God’s nature is holiness.—The outcome of holiness in effect and action is righteousness; hence God, perfectly righteous Himself, requires righteousness in His rational creatures. To come before God with acceptance we must have righteousness; and righteousness is obeying God’s law—and obeying it perfectly—for God admits of no imperfection.
II. What then is our condition as regards the law of God.—
1. The law condemns us, for we have not perfectly obeyed it. Nay, our very best actions are so mixed with imperfections that they come short of what God’s holiness requires. Every one who thinks with any seriousness of God and of himself—God in His holiness, I in my sins—must necessarily ask, What must I do? how can I escape condemnation? how can I be righteous?
2. Shall we then turn again to God’s law—try to keep it more perfectly, leave off sinning, seek righteousness by our own doings? Vain efforts! The more we try, the more plainly we shall see our failures. By the law is the knowledge of sin, but no righteousness for man. Man, left to deal with God’s law with his own efforts alone, either falls into spiritual blindness and deadness of heart, or betakes him to some vain superstition to bring peace to his conscience before God, which they never can bestow.
III. The gospel of Jesus Christ proclaims the way in which man can be justified.—Accounted righteous before God.
1. This is not by the law. God cannot forgo the claims of His law, cannot clear the guilty.
2. But the gospel does for us what the law cannot do.
3. The Lord Jesus, made man for us, standing in our place, bearing our sins, rendering a perfect obedience to the law as man, has redeemed us from the just condemnation of the law.
4. He is declared in the language of prophecy to be “Jehovah our righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:6). All that believe in Him are justified—they have a righteousness given to them by God. They are even said to “be made the righteousness of God” in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21).
IV. By this marvellous work of God, wrought out for us in and by the Lord Jesus, the most blessed results ensue.—
1. All God’s glorious attributes shine forth. His holiness is vindicateu, His justice satisfied, His law honoured, His love triumphant. The glorious contradiction of Exodus 34:6 finds its blessed solution: “Forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty.” Christ taking the place of the guilty—the believer’s sins forgiven.
2. Hence God can be just, and yet justify the ungodly. Hence He is not only merciful, but “faithful and just to forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9).
V. This great gospel truth of justification by faith in Christ, almost lost in the visible Church in the times of mediæval darkness, but recovered and proclaimed anew in the Reformation, is now in the opened Scriptures set full in view for us. Let us receive it, hold it fast, rejoice in it, and let us prove in our own life that it is a doctrine according to godliness.—Dr. Jacob.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 3:21-26
Salvation undeserved.—Here we have an answer to the most important of all inquiries, “How shall man be just with God?” To be justified is to be acquitted from the charge brought against us, and absolved from the condemnation with which we were threatened. With regard to us the condemnation was deserved and the charge was true. This renders the case so difficult and peculiar, and calls for the apostle’s development. But, in exposing the source of the privilege, he seems to use a tautology: “Being justified freely by His grace.” If it be done freely, it must be of grace; and if it be gracious, it must be free. Yet this is not saying too much. Paul knew that men were proud and vain, and that as Simon Magus thought of purchasing the Holy Ghost with money, so they, in dealing with God about their souls, wish to be merchants rather than suppliants, and would seem to buy while they are compelled to beg. But surely, if it be saying too much, it is saying enough. Surely, after this, the freeness and graciousness of the thing cannot be questioned; it is not only free and gracious as opposed to constraint, but as opposed to worthiness. Merit in a sinner is impossible—his desert lies all on the other side. There he is worthy of death. A man who asks a favour may have no claim upon you; but you may also have no demand upon him, and therefore, though you may justly refuse him, yet you have no right to apprehend and punish him. But God had a right to punish us, and it is of His mercies that we are not consumed. It is also free and gracious as opposed to desire. This is undeniable with regard to the constitution and accomplishment of the plan itself, for these long preceded even our being; but is it true with regard to the application of it? The publican prayed, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” and went down to his house justified. And you sought and found. But what induced you to seek? A sense of your want of the blessing. But how came you to feel this after being so long insensible of it? Hearing such a preacher. But who made this preacher, and sent him, and placed him in your way, and applied what he said to your heart? And the same may be asked with regard to any other instrumentality. Go as far back as you please, when you arrive you will find Him there before you, with all His preparations and excitements, and will hear Him say as you approach, “Come, for all things are now ready.”—W. Jay.
Mistaken view of cause.—A commentator on this chapter gives six causes of justification.
I. The principal cause.—The love of God the Father.
II. The meritorious cause.—The active and passive obedience of the Son.
III. The efficient cause.—The operation of the Holy Ghost.
IV. The instrumental cause.—The ministry of the word and the sacraments.
V. The instrumental cause for the reception on our part.—Faith in Christ’s blood.
VI.—The final cause.-—Eternal life by virtue and holiness.
Now with all due deference this appears to be a strange jumbling of causes, and even the schoolmen could not have gone any further. John Stuart Mill was not a theologian, perhaps a sceptic, but he was an able logician, and he teaches us to distinguish between the cause and the antecedent; and in the case of these six causes we should say that a distinction should be observed between the cause and both the antecedent and the consequent. Some of these so-called causes are no causes. They are not even antecedents, but consequents. How can the final cause be an antecedent of justification? Virtue and holiness come after justification. They are its blessed results, the effects of that sanctifying process which is being carried on in the justified. If the ministry of the word and the sacraments be the instrumental cause of justification, then the Saviour’s mediatorial work is not complete. The Twenty-fifth Article of the Church of England does not make the sacraments into a cause of justification: “Sacraments ordained of Christ be not only badges or tokens of Christian men’s profession, but rather they be certain sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace, and God’s good will toward us, by the which He doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken but also strengthen and confirm our faith in Him.” The Christian man is surely a justified man, and the sacraments are tokens of his profession. If the sacraments are a cause of justification, then the article on justification by faith must be altered, for it says, “We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works or deservings.”
The propitiation.—“Freely.” The word “excludes merit,” says Hemming—“not Christ’s indeed, but ours.” “It excludes,” says Aquinas, “the merit of preceding works.” “It excludes more,” says Berga; “it excludes the works that come after faith, as well as the works that go before it.” If the justification be gratuitous on the part of God, it must be to man “without money and without price.” It would no longer be a gift to believers if they purchased or deserved it by their merit. Luther translates the word “without merit” (ohne Verdienst). So does Sharpe. Bellarmin explains it admirably, so far as its theology is concerned, “out of His mere liberality.” Limborch explains it happily, so far as its philology is concerned, as meaning donatitie. So far, then, as we can learn anything from the New Testament usage of the compound term employed by the apostle, we have reason to come to the conclusion that, in the passage before us, it will not denote, barely and abstractly, simply “deliverance.” It will, indeed, denote “deliverance,” but the “deliverance” referred to will be deliverance “on the ground of something that meets all rightful claims.” It will be, in some legitimate sense, “a purchased deliverance.” It will be, in short, deliverance “on the ground of a ransom.” “There is perhaps,” says Dr. Chalmers, “no single passage in the book of inspiration which reveals, in a way so formal and authoritative as the one before us, the path of transition by which a sinner passes from a state of wrath to a state of acceptance. There is no passage—to which, if we would only bring the docility and the compliance of childhood—that is more fitted to guide and to turn an inquiring sinner into the way of peace.” “These six verses,” says C. P. Shepherd, “which contain the first enunciation of the doctrine of justification in this epistle—the first overflow, so to speak, of that matter of which the apostle’s heart and mind were full—contain also in a short compass the completest expression of the Christian doctrine.” If Christ Jesus be set forth as “propitiatory,” then it must be true that He was set forth as a “propitiator,” and set forth as a “propitiation,” and set forth as a “propitiatory sacrifice,” and set forth too as the “antitypical fulfilment of all the symbols of propitiation” that “were divinely instituted under preceding dispensations.” It was Christ Himself, in His theanthropic personality, that was thus “propitiatory.” He was, in His intermingled “satisfactio” and “satispassio,” the meritorious cause of God’s relation of propitiousness to the human family. It is in consideration of His propitiation that God, as the moral governor of the universe, is willing and is ready to forgive and to justify all such of the “ungodly” as will be induced to take up, by means of faith in the propitiator, that one mental position that will insure their voluntary reception of such divine influences as are needed to renew the heart and assimilate the characters to the archetypal character of God.—Dr. Morrison.
Justice and mercy.—The following passage taken in connection with others of a similar character naturally excites a little surprise: “High above all they imagine a great, grim, and relentless justice ever ready to sweep down and crush men out of existence. Long ago this would have happened, men would have been destroyed, the whole universe would have been consumed in wrath, were it not that this great and terrible Judge was pled with, restrained, forcibly held back by the struggling form of an equally powerful mercy. At last Christ appeared; He brings with Him a grand expedient, appeases justice, reconciles it to mercy, and mercy, freed from the conflict and no longer alarmed for men, goes forth and takes up its mission to save. It is not in the writings of the apostle, nor in the writings of any of the sacred penmen, that ideas like these are to be found. They are to be found, not there, but in the books and pictures of mediæval and modern theologians.” We also affirm that such ideas as these are not to be found in the books of modern theologians. If they are, the books are not much read, and therefore it is scarcely worth while to quote them for the sake of refutation. The book would be regarded as a curiosity which contained such teaching. At first sight we are disposed to look with compassion upon the “struggling form” of pleading mercy; but our compassion is turned into wonder when we find that mercy is “equally powerful” with justice. Surely any person capable of writing a book on theology would see that there could be no end to the conflict between two infinitely powerful persons or attributes such as justice and mercy—the one determined to punish and the other to pardon. Equally powerful, the contest would be equal; and on what principle Christ could appear with His “grand expedient” to the settlement of this awful struggle we cannot understand. The appropriateness of the adjectives “grim” and “relentless” when applied to justice may be fairly questioned. The breakers of law, the hardened and impenitent despisers of authority, may be expected to look upon justice as grim; but shall we expect law expounders and enforcers to take this view? It certainly does not seem to us fitting that justice and mercy should be represented as two beings in deadly conflict, as descriptive of the divine procedure; for there can be no violent opposition among the attributes of the Godhead. All work together in harmony. We cannot see anything grotesque in the proceeding when God’s mercy is inclined to save, and when God sees it proper to have regard to the interests of His moral government, and devises a method whereby He may be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 3
Romans 3:23. Pharisaism.—When the late Rev. George Burder, of London, was preaching at Warwick, he was called to attend the execution of three men, one a coiner, and the other two housebreakers. “One circumstance,” says Mr. B., “affected me very deeply. All the men were on ladders, then the mode of execution, with the ropes about their necks, about to be turned off, when the coiner, endeavouring to fortify his mind in this awful situation, uttered words to this purpose, which I distinctly heard, being at a short distance, ‘I never killed anybody; I never hurt anybody: I hope the Lord will have mercy upon me.’ This poor creature seemed nearly to die in the spirit of the Pharisee, ‘I thank God I am not as other men are, or as this publican,’ for I thought he alluded to the two thieves suffering with him. I was so deeply affected that I could scarcely refrain from crying out to the man, ‘Do not trust in your own righteousness: look to Christ.’ This has often occurred to me as one of the most glaring instances of a self-righteous spirit that I ever knew.”
Romans 3:25. Propitiation.—Cowper, the poet, speaking of his religious experience, says, “But the happy period which was to shake off my fetters and afford me a clear opening of the free mercy of God in Christ Jesus was now arrived. I flung myself into a chair near the window, and seeing a Bible there, ventured once more to apply to it for comfort and instruction. The first verse I saw was the twenty-fifth of the third of Romans: ‘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.’ Immediately I received strength to believe, and the full beams of the Sun of righteousness shone upon me. I saw the sufficiency of the atonement He had made, my pardon sealed in His blood, and all the fulness and completeness of His justification. In a moment I believed, and received the gospel. Whatever my friend Madan had said to me so long before revived in all its clearness, with demonstration of the Spirit, and with power.”
Romans 3:26. One man loses blood to save another.—The other day a man allowed two ounces of blood to be extracted for the purpose of being infused into an invalid. The loss of blood was more than he could bear. The man died as a consequence of the sacrifice. The offering, if not the death, was voluntary. He was not compelled to the suffering. And so Jesus freely offered Himself. He could have paralysed the arm of the Roman soldier that was raised to pierce His sacred side. Even after the wound was made He could have spoken the word of healing; but then the stream would not have flowed for the healing of the nations. Yea, after He had freely undertaken the work of our redemption, He might have stopped short and secured to Himself a glorious body-guard of more than twelve legions of angels. But His love both to God and to man sustained Him in the mighty conflict.
Romans 3:26. Eli believes the sad tidings.—The power which resides in a word, or which operates through a word, requires one (and no more than one) condition for its operation—it must be believed. Old Eli, bowed with the weight of years, sat in the city gate of Shiloh, when a message came to him which had in it a power of death. But if Eli had not believed the fatal tidings of that Benjamite who professed to report the disastrous issue of the day’s engagement, Eli would not have fallen dead in a fit by the side of the gate. The message which another Benjamite spoke at midnight to the Roman jailor had in it, on the contrary, a power of spiritual life. But if that jailor had not received Paul’s record of God concerning His Son, no life could have visited his rude, dark, heathen soul. Faith is no exceptional demand on the gospel’s part. It is the condition of all power which comes by word, whether it be a word that teaches or a word that commands. Though the power of God, operating through His gospel, is an exceptional power, since it is the direct energy of the Holy Ghost which quickens dead souls, yet God has chosen this particular vehicle of speech for His life-giving, saving, spiritual energy, and having chosen it, He respects its ordinary laws. Salvation must come by faith, because faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.—Dykes.
Romans 3:26. Zaleucus.—Zaleucus, the ancient legislator, shared the punishment with his son, and submitted to lose one eye so that his son might not be rendered totally blind, which was the legal penalty for his transgression. Zaleucus, being both legislator and father, devised the method and endured the suffering, so that law might not be dishonoured and that fatherly love might be expressed. It would be an easy task to describe, after the manner of some writers, the contest between the grim, relentless king and the loving father. We might draw a picture that the heroic Zaleucus would not be able to recognise. He did not become three by the transaction. The ego did not stand by as a calm spectator, while the legislator and the father fought out the affair on the fertile plains of the Locri. The stern legislator and the loving father made up the one Zaleucus. The feeling of love and the sense of justice are not separate from but form a part of my personality. Justice, love, and mercy are not personalities standing away from, though still surrounding, the divine Being. They are the essential attributes of a perfect and full-orbed Deity, and are in subjection to the deliberative faculty. Above them is the great divine consciousness speaking after the manner of men. There can be no fierce conflict among the divine attributes. There never was the represented struggle. All work together in blessed harmony. A man may consult with himself; but he does not get into fierce conflict with himself, as he might if consulting with his fellows. And so even God may consult with Himself. We fail to see anything grotesque in the proceeding when God’s mercy is inclined to save, and God, deeming it proper to have regard to the interests of His moral government, devises a method whereby He may be just and yet the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.