The Second Isaiah and the later Psalmists had arrived at the thought that the rectitude of God’s character guarantees Israel’s salvation, and must, in some way, impress and bestow itself upon Israel: thus ‘righteousness’ and ‘salvation’ be- come s one terms (Is 461% 38 5148 56! 5918-22 61". Ὁ Pg 225! 5016 98? 143"), Paul seizes and builds upon this identification, which was amply verified ΟΥ̓ the revelation of God made in Christ and the cross. This eternal righteousness—God Himself in moral action—swift to condemn its opposite, eager to impart itself to those capable of it but without it, ‘made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become a righteousness of God in him’ (2Co 5%); in this righteousness the Father ‘spared not his own Son, but for us all gave him Spe pel ary ‘that we should be conformed to the image of his Son’—His own ΠΆΛΕ humanly expressed—‘to the end that he should be first- born among many brethren.’ Manifestly, any righteousness gained by this means is ‘ God’s’ and not ‘one’s own’ (Ro 10%, Ph 3°); it comes only and wholly through ‘believing on him that justifies the ungodly’ (Ro 4°), Cf. Sanday and Headlam on ‘The Righteousness of God," in Intern. Comm., Ro 18-17, See, further, the two articles on RIGHT- EOUSNESS.
(c) The anger of God is called forth wherever righteousness comes into contact with sin, blazing out against those who ‘hold down the trath in un- righteousness’ (Ro 118, 2 Th 2"). Its effects are seen in widespread moral degradation (Ro 1'*™), and in the ruin of particular men and nations (Ro 917-23, 1 Th 916), Its final issue is ‘destruction’ for those who will not ‘know God,’ who persist in that ‘carnal mind’ which is ‘enmity’ to Him (Ro 18 25-8 8&7, 1 Th 5* 9, 2Th 1610). God loves the un- rodly as men (Ro δ᾽, Eph 2°); as sinners they are His ‘enemies,’ and lie helplessly under ‘the law’ that ‘works out wrath’ (Ro 73.585. The know- ledge of God’s Ὁ in Christ deepened the apostle’s sense of the imminence and terribleness of His judicial anger (Ro 1&8 2% 11%, Ac 17%, 2Co Siete), See, further, art. ANGER.
(d) The Law of God.—Along with his conception
PAUL THE APOSTLE
of righteousness, St. Paul’s conception of the law of God was greatly widened, and altered in several respects, by his knowledge of Christ. Here the Jewish and Christian stages of thought are dis- tinctly marked ; but the larger, evangelical view of Law is indicated rather than developed. Familiar usage, emphasized by the legalistic controversy, dictates the frequent and characteristic expressions in which law and faith, law and grace, law and promise, ‘ righteousness that is of law’ and ‘right- eousness that is of God through faith,’ stand opposed ; and we actually have the paradox that ‘apart from law a righteousness of God is mani- fested !’ (Ro 37-4), his last sentence, with its context, gives clear evidence that Paul looked beyond the polemical antithesis; a righteousness ‘distinct from law’ must be a righteousness positing some higher, larger law than legalism had con- ceived of.
The range of Divine law is extended, as in Ro 214. 15. 26. 27. the moral code is found written on the conscience of mankind. When Paul writes, in Ro 5 ‘Sin is not imputed where there is no law,’ he asserts law to be universal as sin and death, whose very connexion is a first article thereof (85). At the bottom, ‘there is no distinction—all the world has become guilty (ὑπόδικος) in relation to God’ (Ro 3%); the Jew, if first in privilege, is first in condemnation (Ro 2!-3?). Jew and Gentile are equally lost if God’s law knows nothing more than ‘the command’ of Mosaism, if His normal relation to men is that expressed in the covenant of Sinai with its maxim, ‘He that doeth these things shall live in them.’ In itself ‘holy and righteous and good,’ the law in effect ‘was found to issue in death for me,’ by its very prohibitions awakening and sharpening lawless desire (Ro 77-*) ; thus it proved to be ‘the power of sin’ (1 Co 15*), whereas ‘the gospel’ is the ‘power of God unto salvation.’ Every man that is ‘under the law’ is ‘under a curse’—the curse that was consum- mated on Calvary and is terminated for those who are in Christ (Gal 3!°-™).
St. Paul’s experience and logic combined to work out to this deadly and comprehensive issue the pee conception of law—true, of course, but atally incomplete and bearing fruit in moral im- potence and death ; to it he had died in Christ (Ro 7)-6 10%, Gal 2). Paul had done with ‘law’ in the old sense, but in a new sense he is more true to law than ever: ‘The law of the Spirit of life has in Christ Jesus freed’ him ‘from the law of sin and death’; he is neither ὑπὸ νόμον nor ἄνομος, but ἔννομος Χριστοῦ (Ro 6% 823,1 Co 9"), Formerly the expression of the normal relation of Israel to God detined by the Mosaic covenant, law is now to be conceived as the normal relation of man to God determined by the new covenant in Christ, whose basis lay deeper than the old, for it was contained in the Abrahamic promise (Gal 83:65). ‘The law of Christ,’ embracing all the essentials of ethics, operates from the heart, as an inward principle not an external and alien ‘command’; love is its fulfilment (Gal δ᾽" 6). It embraces faith and the action of the Holy Spirit as legitimate and decisive factors in God’s dealings with His children ; and the apostle speaks consistently of a ‘law of faith’ and ‘the law of the Spirit of life.’ These are no strained or casual expressions ; the identification is profoundly characteristic. Nothing was more foreign to St. Paul’s nature than Antinomianism A love at variance with righteousness, a faith resting upon no settled principle of the Divine government, neither his reason nor reverence could have tolerated. ‘Do we make void law through our faith (in Christ)? Anything but that ; nay, we establish law !’ (Ro 3%"). Paul combate Jewish legalism in the interests of a larger legality.