‘The Gentiles, he says, in explaining how it is
possible for them to be judged by God, though they have no law (in the sense in which Israel had) yet do by nature the things required by the law, and so display ‘the work of the law written in their hearts’ (Ro 3.4), They have the idea of a task to be done, just as the Jews have; and there is a ‘natural legality,’ to use an expression of Chalmers, in men which disposes them to aim at achieving righteousness in this way. ‘The first thought of man, Jew or Gentile, is that he will do the things that are required of him,—in other words, keep the law,—and on the ground of what he thus achieves claim as of right the approbation of God. This is what St. Paul means by attaining righteousness ἐξ ἔργων νόμου, by works of law. The Mosaic law is included, but it is included not as Mosaic, but as legal, and it does not exhaust the concept. The law may be the form that haunts the mind of the ‘natural legalist’ the world over; and to all such alike, Jew or Gentile, St. Paul declares that the way they are treading can never lead to acceptance with God. It does not matter what the special content is which is embodied in the legal form; it may be mainly what we call ritual, as in the Ep. to the Galatians, or mainly what we call ethical, as in the Ep. to the Romans; in no case whatever can statutory obedience con- stitute a claim on God or command His approba- tion. ‘By works of law shall no flesh be justified in his sight’ (Ro 3”).
(8) There is another point to be cleared up in St. Paul’s use of the word. There are passages in which ‘ the law’ is used with a genitive in a way which suggests to a modern, perhaps especially to an English reader, that the word is used with some approach to the sense it now bears in physical science. Thus ‘the law of sin which is in my members’ is interpreted as the sinful mode in which ‘my members’ normally or habitually act (Ro 7%); similarly also ‘the law of the spirit of the life in Christ Jesus’ (Ro 8*). But the passage most relied on to prove this senseis Ro 72 εὑρίσκω doa τὸν νόμον, τῷ θέλοντι ἐμοὶ ποιεῖν τὸ καλόν, ὅτι ἐμοὶ τὸ κικὸν παράκειται. This is often interpreted to mean,
LAW (IN NEW TESTAMENT)
‘I find therefore this regularly recurrent pheno- menon,—this “law ” in the sense of modern science, —that when I would do good, evil is present with me’ (so Winer, ed. Moulton, p. 697, who renders τὸν νόμον normam ; and ef. Meyer or Sanday and Headlam, ad /oc.). But the ‘law’ of modern science belongs to an intellectual world which was not then in being, and there can be little doubt that by εὑρίσκω dpa τὸν νόμον St. Paul means to say, ‘this is what I find as far as the law is concerned,—I mean well, but am perpetually baffled by the presence of evil.’ (So Vaughan). The words τὸν νόμον refer to the law of Moses, under which St. Paul had his experience of legal religion ; but it is the experi- ence also of every one who has tried legal religion in any shape, Mosaic or another. So in the other passages referred to above, ‘the law’ is to be conceived as related to a legislator, and not as in modern physics. ‘The law of God’ (Ro 7”) is the law which God enjoins; the law ‘of the mind’ (v.%) is the law which the νοῦς or practical reason of the man prescribes, or the law of God as re-enacted in conscience ; the law of sin is the mode of life (not in which sin is normally ex- hibited, but) which Sin, personified as a rival to God, enjoins upon man and compels him to follow ; the law of the Spirit of the life in Christ Jesus is the mode of life (not in which spirit acts auto- matically, and on the analogy of a physical force, but) which the Spirit authoritatively prescribes, and, as being in its essence impulse as well as law, enables man freely to realize.
There are, however, cases in which the genitive with νόμος is of a different kind, and in which νόμος itself seems to be used in a larger sense, almost= ‘religion,’ as something instituted by God. Thus in Ro 3” St. Paul says boasting is summarily excluded, and asks διὰ ποίου νόμου ; through what sort of law? In other words, What sort of char- acter must we suppose Christianity as a divine institution to possess, in order that this result must follow? Is it to be characterized by works, or by faith? The latter, says St. Paul: the geni- tives in the verse being those of the characterizing quality. In v.*! of the same chapter νόμον is ambiguous. It may refer to the OT religion as a whole; and then the answer to the question, Do we annul (the) Law through faith? would be given in ch. 4, where St. Paul shows that the justi- fication of Christians has its prototype in that of Abraham,—in other words, that the old order is confirmed (ἱστάνομεν), not subverted, by the new. But véuov may be generic, and the question may mean, Do we then annul Law—all that has ever been known as moral order, all that has ever been supposed to safeguard morality whether of Mosaic or other origin—by our faith, i.e. by our new Christian religion? In this case, the proof of the assertion that we do not annul but establish Law by Faith—that the Christian religion is the only effective guarantee of morality—is given, not in ch. 4, but in chs. 6-8, where Christianity is shown to involve the possession of the Holy Spirit.