CRITICAL NOTES
Romans 3:27.—Where is then the glorying? Such is the most literal and most correct rendering of the clause. Almost tantamount to the expression, Where is then their glorying?
Romans 3:30-31.—The gospel establishes the law, because it is the most sublime manifestation of the holiness and strictness of God. Sin never appears more fearful than at Golgotha, where, on account of it, “God spared not His own Son” (Olshausen).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 3:27-31
The triumphant conclusion.—St. Paul concludes the chapter with a triumphant assertion of the principles he has been establishing. He has reached a point in the course of his reasoning where it is necessary to summarise and impress upon the minds of his readers the main questions at issue. In doing this he seems to place before us a general unity.
I. One God.—The monotheistic idea was peculiar to the Jew in the early world. He stood alone as the worshipper of the one living and true God. It was not therefore a new doctrine which Paul proclaimed—it was an old doctrine with a new application. The Jew seemed to believe in a Jewish God. One God for the Jew; another God for the Gentile. Paul preaches one God, an all-God, a universal God. If Paul had lived in these days, would the mention of one God have started him on a line of defence against atheism? However, he did not, but appears to take the existence of God as an axiomatic truth, a self-evident proposition. He does not argue, but makes assertions and quotations from heathen poets when speaking to the men of Athens. With Paul and the men of those days to doubt the existence of God is synonymous with doubting their own existence. One God for all, and yet the unit not lost in the whole number, the atom not absorbed in the wide ocean of being.
II. One divine law.—One God, one mind. In the Trinity there is a blessed unity, one glorious personality, one mighty intellect, which is light, which has neither variableness nor shadow of turning, which knows neither the eclipse of uncertainty nor the obscuration of passing from one phase of truth to another, or from old positions which have to be abandoned to new positions which in course of advancing revelations may also have to be resigned. One God, one mind, one law. Superior to all laws is the law of faith. Our scientists may ignore it as having no power in the material realm. The thought world is higher than the material world. Moral forces are mighty. The law of faith reaches further than is dreamt of in our materialistic philosophies. One law for Jew and Gentile, one law of faith stretching out through all dispensations.
III. One method of justification.—One method for the Justifier, and one method for the justified. God justifies freely by His grace all those who believe in Jesus. The man is justified by faith, receives the position and the blessing of justification by faith. Whether by or through, it is of faith, not the deeds of the law. The man by sinfulness has placed himself outside the law. Justification rises to a higher plane. The law condemns. Grace justifies. The works of the law perplex the true heart that is seeking the true good. The act of faith in the propitiatory offering of Jesus removes trouble from the soul, and peace reigns in the soul kingdom, and all its powers move to harmonious measures.
IV. One attitude of mind.—Boasting is excluded, and the attitude is one of humble thankfulness. There is one attitude for the circumcised and the uncircumcised, for the educated and the uneducated, for those who have been good from their birth and for those who have never been brought up, scarcely dragged up, in any moral school. The complacent, self-satisfied mind of some does not appear to say that from them boasting is excluded. If boasting were excluded, would there be so much patronage? Some conduct themselves as if they were lords over God’s heritage, and even over God Himself.
V. One sublime plan of life.—To establish the honour and dignity and supremacy of the law of love, which will prompt to good works. The law of faith generates the law of love. He that keeps the law of love keeps all laws. He is raised above law because it has no power to condemn. Law is not a dread, but a delight. Law is not a hard taskmaster, but a gracious guide. Law is not an executioner, but an invigorating rule of action. The moralist has to spell his way through difficult lessons while the schoolmaster holds the rod. He who is learned in the law of love finds the schoolmaster, a pleasant companion, who can even beguile the tediousness of the way with merry song.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 3:27-31
How faith works.—To the importance of Christ’s death for the remission of sins we teach faith alone to be necessary, whereby it is not our meaning to separate thereby faith from any other quality or duty which God requireth to be matched therewith, but from faith to seclude, in justification, the fellowship of worth through precedent works, as St. Paul doth. Nor doth any faith justify but that therewith there is joined both hope and love; yet justified we are by faith alone, because there is no man whose works, in whole or in particular, can make him righteous in God’s sight. As St. Paul doth dispute for faith without works, so St. James is urgent for works with faith. To be justified, so far as remission of sins, it sufficeth to believe what another hath wrought for us. But whosoever will see God face to face, let him show his faith by his works; for in this sense Abraham was justified—that is to say, his life was sanctified.—Hooker.
Faith doth not shut out repentance, love, and the fear of God, to be joined with faith in any man that is justified; but it shutteth them out from the office of justifying.—Homily on Salvation.
The word “faith “is used to signify the theological virtue, or gracious habit, whereby we embrace with our minds and affections the Lord Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of God, and alone Saviour of the world, casting ourselves wholly upon the mercy of God, through His merits, for remission and everlasting salvation. It is that which is commonly called “justifying faith” whereunto are ascribed in Holy Writ many gracious effects, not as to their primary cause, but as to the instrument whereby we apprehend and apply Christ, whose merits and spirit are the true causes of all those blessed effects.—Bishop Sanderson.
Boasting excluded.—The change from condemnation to justification is very great. Must awaken many new feelings in one’s breast—gratitude, hope, joy. One feeling which it will not awaken—pride. It cuts the tap-root of pride. It leaves no room for boasting. For God is everything here, and man is nothing.
I. Boasting is excluded by the knowledge of the condition of the persons justified.—All who are saved have sinned (Romans 3:23). Some flagrantly. All more than enough to bring condemnation. Certainly failed to keep the commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy heart.” All have sinned to such a degree as that they come short of the glory of God. Cannot secure His approbation, for He will not be satisfied with obedience less than perfect. Some come further short than others. A plank needed to bridge over a chasm. One two feet short, another six inches. The larger one as useless as the shorter for the purpose. The best of men cannot cross the gulf which separates a sinner from the righteous God.
II. Boasting excluded because all are justified freely.—“Justified” means “pronounced righteous.” “Justified” in Romans 3:20 opposed to “pronounced guilty” in Romans 3:19. Justification the act of a judge. When God justifies, He sits in judgment and pronounces a verdict. Every sinner condemned already. If not justified, the sentence is hanging over him, waiting the expiry of day of grace. Yet God is saying, “Come, and let us reason together,” etc. If we ask Him, He is ready. If we agree to His terms, the sentence is at once removed. Not only pardoned, but accepted. Sentence of death cancelled, and receive a title to the kingdom of heaven. He justifies freely—gratis—in the way of a gift. Thus the case of all met. Bibles are cheap, yet some too poor to buy one. None too poor to receive freely. But boasting goes.
III. Boasting excluded because the moving cause of justification is His own grace.—Finds in Himself the reason. Comes out of the goodness of His own heart. This disposes of all pretexts for delay, for God not more gracious to-day than He will be to-morrow. But it takes away all ground for boasting.
IV. Boasting excluded in view of the means by which grace operates: viz., the propitiatory redemption in Christ Jesus.—Justification is part, not all, of the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ. No justification without the payment of His life as the ransom. It is the result of an obedience already given, and to which we can add nothing. This ought to remove the thought that God may be unwilling to justify. If any unwillingness on His part, it would have manifested itself before His Son humbled to death. He cannot be unwilling to see the results produced for which He gave up His Son. This gives another knockdown blow to boasting.
V. Boasting excluded when we know the way in which we receive an interest in that redemption: viz., by simply believing God’s word.—Through faith the propitiatory offering is ours. An Israelite brought a lamb for sacrifice, believing that through its blood being shed his sin would be forgiven. God says, Look at My Lamb as offered for you, and believe that His blood cleanses from all sins. God justifies the man who trusts in Jesus (Romans 3:26). All that is Christ’s becomes ours; His obedience, His sacrifice, is as efficacious as if we had obeyed and suffered. There is no more condemnation. Our trial is just, and we cannot be condemned until He is condemned. The reason of this may not be clear to us. The way of works seems perfectly intelligible. The law of works we can fully understand. But there is a law of faith also, which is as manifestly from God as is the law of works for the sinless. And by it sinners are justified freely. It is a glorious salvation, for which there ought to be much praise to God, but no boasting as regards ourselves.—G. Wallace, D.D.
Many of the fathers were accustomed to use the expression “by faith only” when discoursing on justification. For example, Ambrosiaster, in commenting on Romans 4:5, uses the expression twice over. Such were some of the pleas that were put in, and appropriately and powerfully urged, in defence of Luther. Bengel stands true to the German Megalander, and fell on an ingenious method of vindicating the “only.” He applies arithmetic to the case. Two things only are referred to:
Faith and works
2
Works are excluded
1
Faith remains alone
1
One being subtracted from two, there remains but one. “It is,” says Bengel, “an arithmetical demonstration.” Tholuck says that Erasmus remarks, “Vox SOLA, tot clamoribus lapidata hoc seculo in Luthero, reverenter in patribus auditor”—“The word ‘alone,’ which has been received with such a shower of stones when uttered in our times by Luther, is yet reverently listened to when spoken by the fathers.” Hodge repeats the quotation and the reference. We do not know where Tholuck picked it up. But while the observation seems to bespeak, by its peculiar felicity and piquancy, an Erasmian origin, it is certainly not to be found in that great respository of felicities, and wisdom, and wit, and semi-garrulities—the Liber Concionandi. Now his doctrine of justification by faith in the propitiation of Christ not only meets the wants of men in the direction of pardon for the past—it also meets their wants in the direction of purity for the future. It involves provision for the establishment of the moral influence of moral law. Into whatever soul it finds an entrance, in that soul it raises up, as from the dust, the prostrate law, and makes it stand. It sets-up that which was up-set by sin. It establishes, in the sphere of the soul’s inner and outer activities, an ethical influence, which is really, when we let down our line into the depths of the subject, nothing more, nor less, nor else than the native moral influence of the moral law. There is a point of unity whence both propitiation and legislation respectively start, and whither they return.—Dr. Morrison.
“Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.”
I. Justification by faith without the works of the law is distinctly proclaimed in the former part of this chapter.—
1. This is a wholesome doetrine, and very full of comfort (Art. XI.): full of comfort to the believer in Christ, wholesome in its influence on the believer’s own life.
2. This great gospel truth has been opposed by the enemy of man, for it upsets his kingdom; rejected by man’s pride, for it destroys his self-righteousness (Romans 10:3); perverted by man’s licentiousness, and made even a minister of sin (Galatians 2:17; Jude 1:4).
3. If this doctrine did make void the law, it would not be of God; for God’s law must stand and be magnified. Christ came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it (Matthew 5:17).
4. This doctrine establishes the law.
(1) The law is established, confirmed, honoured, when it is perfectly obeyed.
(2) The law is established, confirmed, honoured, when the transgression of it is visited with God’s just condemnation.
II. The law is thus established in Jesus Christ.—The believer in Jesus rests on Him as his surety, his substitute, who has perfectly obeyed the law and obtained a perfect righteousness for him, who has paid the penalty of the broken law for him by His death. How wonderfully has the law of God been magnified and honoured in the life and death of Jesus!
1. Thus the believer in Jesus has an, answer
(1) for the accuser who takes up the law against him;
(2) for his own conscience, which speaks with the voice of the law. There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).
2. Thus again he has confidence and boldness towards God. God is not only merciful, but faithful and just to forgive. What an encouragement to believers! All God’s perfections are on their side.
3. Perversions and excuses. However good and true this doctrine is, it is not liked by men until they are taught by the Holy Spirit. Men naturally want to be saved by their own goodness, their own righteousness. Hence
(1) attempts are made to bring down God’s law to the level of man’s sinful nature;
(2) outward observances are rested on and made much of;
(3) resolutions and endeavours put for true obedience.
III. The law is also established in the believer’s heart and life.—The law of God reaches to the thoughts of the heart, and requires a loving obedience. The believer in Christ is led by the Holy Spirit of God, given to him, abiding in him. The love of God is shed abroad in his heart. He loves God’s law. He is enabled to obey it by the power of the Spirit dwelling in him. True, his obedience is not perfect. He may at times “be sore let and hindered in the Christian race.” But he desires and aims at nothing short of perfect obedience. He consciously walks after the Spirit, and not according to his own natural, selfish, sinful desires. Hence St. Paul declares that the very purpose of our justification by faith is that the righteousness of the law may be fulfilled in us (Romans 8:4). And St. James reminds us that a faith without works is dead, and that a believer’s life must testify before men the reality of his faith in Christ and the righteousness which that faith receives. Let us never forget
(1) that by grace we have been saved through faith;
(2) and that we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them (Ephesians 2:8-10).—Dr. Jacob.