Verses 1-31
Chapter 3
3:1-8 What, then, is
the something plus which belongs to a Jew? Or what special advantage
belongs to those who have been circumcised? Much in every way. In the
first place, there is this advantage--that the Jews have been entrusted
with the oracles of God. Yes, you say, but what if some of them were
unfaithful to them? Surely you are not going to argue that their
infidelity invalidates the fidelity of God? God forbid! Let God be shown
to be true, though every man be shown to be a liar, as it stands
written: "In order that you may be seen to be in the right in your
arguments, and that you may win your case when you enter into judgment."
But, you say, if our unrighteousness merely provides proof of God's
righteousness, what are we to say? Surely you are not going to try to
argue that God is unrighteous to unleash the Wrath upon you? (I am using
human arguments:) God forbid! For, if that were so, how shall God judge
the world? But, you say, if the fact that I am false merely provides a
further opportunity to demonstrate the fact that God is true, to his
greater glory, why should I still be condemned as a sinner? Are you
going to argue--just as some slanderously allege that we suggest--that
we should do evil that good may come of it? Anyone can see that
statements like that merit nothing but condemnation.
Here Paul is arguing in the closest and the most difficult way.
It will make it easier to understand if we remember that he is carrying
on an argument with an imaginary objector. The argument stated in full
would run something like this.
The objector: The result of all that you have been saying is
that there is no difference between Gentile and Jew and that they are in
exactly the same position. Do you really mean that?
Paul: By no means.
The objector: What, then, is the difference?
Paul: For one thing, the Jew possesses what the Gentile never so directly possessed--the commandments of God.
The objector: Granted! But what if some of the Jews disobeyed
these commandments and were unfaithful to God and came under his
condemnation? You have just said that God gave the Jews a special
position and a special promise. Now you go on to say that at least some
of them are under the condemnation of God. Does that mean that God has
broken his promise and shown himself to be unjust and unreliable?
Paul: Far from it! What it does show is that there is no
favouritism with God and that he punishes sin wherever he sees it. The
very fact that he condemns the unfaithful Jews is the best possible
proof of his absolute justice. He might have been expected to overlook
the sins of this special people of his but he does not.
The objector: Very well then! All you have done is to succeed in
showing that my disobedience has given God an opportunity to
demonstrate his righteousness. My infidelity has given God a marvellous
opportunity to demonstrate his fidelity. My sin is, therefore, an
excellent thing! It has given God a chance to show how good he is! I may
have done evil, but good has come of it! You can't surely condemn a man
for giving God a chance to show his justice!
Paul: An argument like that is beneath contempt! You have only to state it to see how intolerable it is!
When we disentangle this passage in this way, we see that there
are in it certain basic thoughts of Paul in regard to the Jews.
(i) To the end of the day he believed the Jews to be in a
special position in regard to God. That, in fact, is what they believed
themselves. The difference was that Paul believed that their special
position was one of special responsibility; the Jew believed it to be
one of special privilege. What did Paul say that the Jew had been
specially entrusted with? The oracles of God. What does he mean by that?
The word he uses is logia (Greek #3048),
the regular word in the Greek Old Testament for a special statement or
pronouncement of God. Here it means The Ten Commandments. God entrusted
the Jews with commandments, not privileges. He said to them, "You are a
special people; therefore you must live a special life." He did not say,
"You are a special people; therefore you can do what you like." He did
say, "You are a special people; therefore you must do what I like." When
Lord Dunsany came in safety through the 1914-18 war he tells us that he
said to himself, "In some strange way I am still alive. I wonder what
God means me to do with a life so specially spared?" That thought never
struck the Jews. They never could grasp the fact that God's special
choice was for special duty.
(ii) All through his writings there are three basic facts in
Paul's mind about the Jews. They occur in embryo here; and they are in
fact the three thoughts that it takes this whole letter to work out. We
must note that he does not place all the Jews under the one
condemnation. He puts it in this way: "What if some of them were
unfaithful?"
(a) He was quite sure that God was justified in condemning the
Jews. They had their special place and their special promises; and that
very fact made their condemnation all the greater. Responsibility is
always the obverse of privilege. The more opportunity a man has to do
right, the greater his condemnation if he does wrong.
(b) But not all of them were unfaithful. Paul never forgot the
faithful remnant; and he was quite sure that that faithful
remnant--however small it was in numbers--was the true Jewish race. The
others had lost their privileges and were under condemnation. They were
no longer Jews at all. The remnant was the real nation.
(c) Paul was always sure that God's rejection of Israel was not
final. Because of this rejection, a door was opened to the Gentiles;
and, in the end, the Gentiles would bring the Jews back within the fold,
and Gentile and Jew would be one in Christ. The tragedy of the Jew was
that the great task of world evangelization that he might have had, and
was designed to have, was refused by him. It was therefore given to the
Gentiles, and God's plan was, as it were, reversed, and it was not, as
it should have been, the Jew who evangelized the Gentile, but the
Gentile who evangelized the Jew--a process which is still going on.
Further, this passage contains two great universal human truths.
(i) The root of all sin is disobedience. The root of the Jew's
sin was disobedience to the known law of God. As Milton wrote, it was
"man's first disobedience" which was responsible for paradise lost. When
pride sets tip the will of man against the will of God, there is sin.
If there were no disobedience, there would be no sin.
(ii) Once a man has sinned, he displays an amazing ingenuity in
justifying his sin. Here we come across an argument that reappears again
and again in religious thought, the argument that sin gives God a
chance to show at once his justice and his mercy and is therefore a good
thing. It is a twisted argument. One might as well argue--it would, in
fact, be the same argument--that it is a good thing to break a person's
heart, because it gives him a chance to show how much he loves you. When
a man sins, the need is not for ingenuity to justify his sin, but for
humility to confess it in penitence and in shame.
3:9-18 What then? Are
we Jews out ahead? By no means. For we have already charged all Jews and
Greeks with being under the power of sin, as it stands written: "There
is none righteous, no not one. There is no man of understanding. There
is none who seeks the Lord. All have swerved out of the way, and all
together have gone bad. There is none whose acts are good, not one
single one. Their throat is an open tomb. They practise fraud with their
tongues. The poison of asps is under their lips. Their mouths are laden
with curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood.
Destruction and wretchedness are in their ways, and they have not known
the way of peace. There is no fear of God before their eyes."
In the last passage Paul had insisted that, in spite of
everything, the Jew had a special position in the economy of God. Not
unnaturally the Jewish objector then asks if that means that the Jews
are out ahead of other peoples. Paul's answer is that Jew and Gentile
alike, so long as they are without Christ, are under the dominion of
sin. The Greek phrase that he uses for under sin is very suggestive,
hupo (Greek #5259) hamartian (Greek #266). In this sense hupo (Greek #5259) means in the power of, under the authority of. In Matthew 8:9 the centurion says: "I have soldiers hupo (Greek #5259) emauton (Greek #1683), under me." That is, I have soldiers under my command. A schoolboy is hupo (Greek #5259) paidagogon (Greek #3807), under the direction of the slave who is in control of him. A slave is hupo (Greek #5259) zugon (Greek #2218), under the yoke of his master. In the Christless state a man is under the control of sin, and helpless to escape from it.
There is one other interesting word in this passage. It is the word in Romans 3:12 which we have translated. "They have gone bad." The word is achreioo (Greek #889),
which literally means to render useless. One of its uses is of milk
that has gone sour. Human nature without Christ is a soured and useless
thing.
We see Paul doing here what Jewish Rabbis customarily did. In Romans 3:10-18
he has strung together a collection of Old Testament texts. He is not
quoting accurately, because he is quoting from memory, but he includes
quotations from Psalms 14:1-3; Psalms 5:9; Psalms 140:3; Psalms 10:7; Isaiah 59:7-8; Psalms 36:1. It was a very common method of Rabbinic preaching to string texts together like this. It was called charaz (see charuwz, Hebrew #2737), which literally means stringing pearls.
It is a terrible description of human nature in its Christless
state. Vaughan has pointed out that these Old Testament quotations
describe three things. (i) A character whose characteristics are
ignorance, indifference, crookedness and unprofitableness. (ii) A tongue
whose notes are destructive, deceitful, malignant. (iii) A conduct
whose marks are oppression, injuriousness, implacability. These things
are the result of disregard of God.
No one saw so clearly the evil of human nature as Paul did; but
it must always be noted that the evil of human nature was to him, not a
call to hopelessness, but a challenge to hope. When we say that Paul
believed in original sin and the depravity of human nature, we must
never take that to mean that he despaired of human nature or looked on
it with cynical contempt. Once, when William Jay of Bath was an old man,
he said: "My memory is failing, but there are two things that I never
forget--that I am a great sinner and that Jesus Christ is a great
Saviour."
Paul never underrated the sin of man and he never underrated the
redeeming power of Jesus Christ. Once, when he was a young man, William
Roby, the great Lancashire Independent, was preaching at Malvern. His
lack of success drove him to despair, and he wished to leave the work.
Then came a seasonable reproof from a certain Mr Moody, who asked him,
"Are they, then, too bad to be saved?" The challenge sent William Roby
back to his work. Paul believed men without Christ to be bad, but he
never believed them too bad to be saved. He was confident that what
Christ had done for him Christ could do for any man.
3:19-26 We know that
whatever the law says, it says to those who are within the law, and the
function of the law is that every mouth should be silenced and that the
whole world should be known to be liable to the judgment of God, because
no one will ever get into a right relationship with God by doing the
works which the law lays down. What does come through the law is a full
awareness of sin. But now a way to a right relationship to God lies open
before us quite apart from the law, and it is a way attested by the law
and the prophets. For a right relationship to God comes through faith
in Jesus Christ to all who believe. For there is no distinction, for all
have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God, but they are put
into a right relationship with God, freely, by his grace, through the
deliverance which is wrought by Jesus Christ. God put him forward as one
who can win for us forgiveness of our sins through faith in his blood.
He did so in order to demonstrate his righteousness because, in the
forbearance of God, there had been a passing over of the sins which
happened in previous times; and he did so to demonstrate his
righteousness in this present age, so that he himself should be just and
that he should accept as just the man who believes in Jesus.
Here again is a passage which is not easy to understand, but
which is full of riches when its true meaning is grasped. Let us see if
we can penetrate to the basic truth behind it.
The supreme problem of life is, How can a man get into a right
relationship with God? How can he feel at peace with God? How can he
escape the feeling of estrangement and fear in the presence of God? The
religion of Judaism answered: "A man can attain to a right relationship
with God by keeping meticulously all that the law lays down." But to say
that is simply to say that there is no possibility of any man ever
attaining to a right relationship with God, for no man ever can keep
every commandment of the law.
"Not the labours of my hands
Can fulfil thy law's demands."
What then is the use of the law? It is that it makes a man
aware of sin. It is only when a man knows the law and tries to satisfy
it that he realizes he can never satisfy it. The law is designed to show
a man his own weakness and his own sinfulness. Is a man then shut out
from God? Far from it, because the way to God is not the way of law, but
the way of grace; not the way of works, but the way of faith.
To show what he means Paul uses three metaphors.
(i) He uses a metaphor from the law courts which we call
justification. This metaphor thinks of man on trial before God. The
Greek word which is translated to justify is diakioun (Greek #1344).
All Greek verbs which end in "-oun" mean, not to make someone
something, but to treat, to reckon, to account him as something. If an
innocent man appears before a judge then to treat him as innocent is to
acquit him. But the point about a man's relationship to God is that he
is utterly guilty, and yet God, in his amazing mercy, treats him,
reckons him, accounts him as if he were innocent. That is what
justification means.
When Paul says that "God justifies the ungodly," he means that
God treats the ungodly as if he had been a good man. That is what
shocked the Jews to the core of their being. To them to treat the bad
man as if he was good was the sign of a wicked judge. "He who justifies
the wicked is an abomination to the Lord" (Proverbs 17:15). "I will not acquit the wicked" (Exodus 23:7). But Paul says that is precisely what God does.
How can I know that God is like that? I know because Jesus said
so. He came to tell us that God loves us, bad as we are. He came to tell
us that, although we are sinners, we are still dear to God. When we
discover that and believe it, it changes our whole relationship to God.
We are conscious of our sin, but we are no longer in terror and no
longer estranged. Penitent and brokenhearted we come to God, like a
sorry child coming to his mother, and we know that the God we come to is
love.
That is what justification by faith in Jesus Christ means. It
means that we are in a right relationship with God because we believe
with all our hearts that what Jesus told us about God is true. We are no
longer terrorized strangers from an angry God. We are children, erring
children, trusting in their Father's love for forgiveness. And we could
never have found that right relationship with God, if Jesus had not come
to live and to die to tell us how wonderfully he loves us.
(ii) Paul uses a metaphor from sacrifice. He says of Jesus that
God put him forward as one who can win forgiveness for our sins.
The Greek word that Paul uses to describe Jesus is hilasterion (Greek #2435).
This comes from a verb which means to propitiate. It is a verb which
has to do with sacrifice. Under the old system, when a man broke the
law, he brought to God a sacrifice. His aim was that the sacrifice
should turn aside the punishment that should fall upon him. To put it in
another way--a man sinned; that sin put him at once in a wrong
relationship with God; to get back into the right relationship he
offered his sacrifice.
But it was human experience that an animal sacrifice failed
entirely to do that. "Thou hast no delight in sacrifice; were I to give a
burnt offering, thou wouldst not be pleased" (Psalms 51:16).
"With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on
high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year
old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands
of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the
fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" (Micah 6:6-7.) Instinctively men felt that, once they had sinned, the paraphernalia of earthly sacrifice could not put matters right.
So Paul says, "Jesus Christ, by his life of obedience and his
death of love, made the one sacrifice to God which really and truly
atones for sin." He insists that what happened on the Cross opens the
door back to a right relationship with God, a door which every other
sacrifice is powerless to open.
(iii) Paul uses a metaphor from slavery. He speaks of the
deliverance wrought through Jesus Christ. The word is apolutrosis (Greek #629).
It means a ransoming, a redeeming, a liberating. It means that man was
in the power of sin, and that Jesus Christ alone could free him from it.
Finally, Paul says of God that he did all this because he is
just, and accepts as just all who believe in Jesus. Paul never said a
more startling thing than this. Bengel called it "the supreme paradox of
the gospel." Think what it means. It means that God is just and accepts
the sinner as a just man. The natural thing to say would be, "God is
just, and, therefore, condemns the sinner as a criminal." But here we
have the great paradox--God is just, and somehow, in that incredible,
miraculous grace that Jesus came to bring to men, he accepts the sinner,
not as a criminal, but as a son whom he still loves.
What is the essence of all this? Where is the difference between
it and the old way of the law? The basic difference is this--the way of
obedience to the law is concerned with what a man can do for himself;
the way of grace is concerned with what God can do, and has done, for
him. Paul is insisting that nothing we can ever do can win for us the
forgiveness of God; only what God has done for us can win that;
therefore the way to a right relationship with God lies, not in a
frenzied, desperate, doomed attempt to win acquittal by our performance;
it lies in the humble, penitent acceptance of the love and the grace
which God offers us in Jesus Christ.
3:27-31 Where, then,
is there any ground for boasting? It is completely shut out. Through
what kind of law? Through the law of works? No, but through the law of
faith. So, then, we reckon that a man enters into a right relationship
with God by faith quite apart from works of the law. Or, is God the God
of the Jews only? Is he not the God of the Gentiles? Yes, he is the God
of the Gentiles too. If, indeed, God is one, he is the God who will
bring those who are of the circumcision into a right relationship with
himself by faith, and those who never knew the circumcision through
faith. Do we then through faith completely cancel out all law? God
forbid! Rather, we confirm the law.
Paul deals with three points here.
(i) If the way to God is the way of faith and of acceptance,
then all boasting in human achievement is gone. There was a certain kind
of Judaism which kept a kind of profit and loss account with God. In
the end a man often came to a frame of mind in which he rather held that
God was in his debt. Paul's position was that every man is a sinner and
God's debtor, that no man could ever put himself back into a right
relationship with God through his own efforts and that grounds for
self-satisfaction and boasting in one's own achievement no longer exist.
(ii) But, a Jew might answer, that might be well enough for a
Gentile who never knew the law, but what about Jews who do know it?
Paul's answer was to turn them to the sentence which is the basis of the
Jewish creed, the sentence with which every synagogue service always
began and still begins. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one God" (Deuteronomy 6:4).
There is not one God for the Gentiles and another for the Jews. God is
one. The way to him is the same for Gentile and Jew. It is not the way
of human achievement; it is the way of trusting and accepting faith.
(iii) But, says the Jew, does this mean an end of all law? We
might have expected Paul to say, "Yes." In point of fact he says, "No."
He says that, in fact, it strengthens the law. He means this. Up to this
time the Jew had tried to be a good man and keep the commandments
because he was afraid of God, and was terrified of the punishment that
breaches of the law would bring. That day has for ever gone. But what
has taken its place is the love of God Now a man must try to be good and
keep God's law, not because he fears God's punishment, but because he
feels that he must strive to deserve that amazing love. He strives for
goodness, not because he is afraid of God, but because he loves him. He
knows now that sin is not so much breaking God's law as it is breaking
God's heart, and, therefore, it is doubly terrible.
Take a human analogy. Many a man is tempted to do a wrong thing,
and does not do it. It is not so much that he fears the law. He would
not greatly care if he were fined, or even imprisoned. What keeps him
right is the simple fact that he could not meet the sorrow that would be
seen in the eyes of the one who loves him if he made shipwreck of his
life. It is not the law of fear but the law of love which keeps him
right. It must be that way with us and God. We are rid forever of the
terror of God, but that is no reason for doing as we like. We can never
again do as we like for we are now for ever constrained to goodness by
the law of love; and that law is far stronger than ever the law of fear
can be.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)