In the light of all this, we can at last read the central passage in Ro S""- : ' On the score of obedience to law, no person will be acquitted in his sight. What the Law imparts is not acquittal but only the consciousness of sin [^•iri7i'anris, St. Paul's favourite word for a full recognition, a sight of the real meaning, of anything or any person]. But now [harking back to 1"] we have a righteousness of God disclosed apart from law altogether [i.e. entirely apart from any human achievement of obedience to law, as above] ; it is attested by the Law and the prophets [i.e. 'apart from law ' does not mean that the revelation has no continuity with the OT], but it is a righteousness of God which comes by believing in Jesus Christ, and it is meant for all who have faith. No distinctions are drawn [the religious interest of Catholicism, • airoAuTpa ais here is as little eschatological as in Ro 3^4.
already noted ; cf. p. 385]. All have sinned, all come short of the glory of God, but they are justi- fied for nothing by his grace through the ransom provided in Christ Jesus [all this was in his mind when he spoke of God's righteousness being revealed in the gospel, 1""-], whom God put forward as the means of propitiation (iXatmJpioi') by his blood, to be received by faith.' Later on, he will explain how God condemned sin through His Son (8'), but here he goes on to note that, while this ' righteous, ness of God ' is made available for believing men apart from the l^aw altogether, the fact that it rests on the Divine self-sacrifice in the death of Christ is enough to prove that God is not taking sin lightly or failing to visit transgressions with their moral due. He has in mind a criticism of his doc- trine of righteousness. It had been objected — or he anticipated the objection — that the Law, with its sacrificial rites and stress on repentance, at least took moral evil seriously ; St. Paul might deride it and criticize it, but surely it was not ojien to the charge of laxity like bis own theory, which asserted that a sinner could be restored to God by faith and nothing more. The Apostle replies by claiming actually that the very reverse is true. God's new means of providing righteousness shows that He is dealing with sin more rigorously tli.an He ever did under the old system of the Law ; the sacrifice of Christ, His Son, exhibits His uncom- promising attitude towards sin, which hitherto had not been displayed to the full. When the gospel bids men seek righteousness outside the code and ritual of the Jewish Law, it is not suggesting that God is now pleased to be satisfied with an inferior type of righteousness, or that He is prepared to annul sin without more ado. To drive this point home, St. Paul now uses Si/caioo-wT; in its narrower sense. In v.""- it denotes the general redeeming purpose of God, as in 1", but in v.-^'- the meaning is closer to that of v.", i.e. the moral integrity of God, which in presence of deliberate sin implies the reaction of His inviolable justice. In order to realize His righteousness for sinful men, God had to vindicate His character of 'justice.' Hence the two-fold purpose of Christ's sacrificial death. It was ' to demonstrate the justice of God in view of the fact that sins previously committed during the time of God's forbearance * had been passed over ; it was to demonstrate his justice at the present epoch (in contrast to the past, when it had not been so exhibited), showing that God is just himself and that he justifies man on the score of faith in Jesus.' Whether iXao-TTjfiiov means propitiatory gift or sacrifice, it is ottered by God Himself, not by men ; and this sacrifice of Christ was necessary for the realization of God's righteousness or redeeming purpose. It is fairly clear from the context, and this interpretation is supported by other data, that the words ' by his blood ' refer to the historical Crucifixion. It is the sacrificial death of Christ, not blood-fellow.ship with the Eisen Christ, which the Apostle hasprimarily in mind.t Whatenables
* Not in the previous life of people who are now saved, but in the sense of Ac 1730, although the eschatological horizon ia more distinct there than here.
i It is true that justification implies the Resurrection (Ro 325), but the relation of the justified to God depends on one who 'was (lead and is alive again' as their Lord. In view of a passage like 5"*"', it is beside the point to lay stress, as Lipsius does, on the absence of any reference to the Cross here. The recent popularity of tliis blood-fellowship interpretation (cf., e.g., G. A. Deissmann in EBi iii. 3034-3036 ; A. Sohettler, Die p'aulhiische Formet ' Durch Christus,' Tubingen, 1907, p. 6; and Otto Schniitz, Die Ojfferanschauunij des gpateren juden- turns, do., 1910, p. 223 f.) is probably due to a right reaction against the idea of righteousness as a purely forensic status, depending on the death of Christ, but it is not necessary from an exegeticai ])oint of view, and it tends to miss the truth that the relationship of righteousness implies a communion with God through Christ in which the sacrificial power of His death is the effective thing (cf. A. Juncker, Die Ethik des ApoKtela Paulus, HaUe, 1904, p. 121 f.).