Yet such was not the view of St Paul, himself once the most honest and disinterested Jewish zealot in the world. He had seen THE LORD. And so he had seen himself. The deadly mixture of motive which may underlie what nevertheless we may have to call an _honest_ hatred of the Gospel had been shewn to him in the white light of Christ. In that light he had seen--what it alone can fully shew--the condemnableness of all sin, and the hopelessness of self-salvation. From himself he reasons, and rightly, to his brethren. He knows, with a solemn sympathy, how much they are in earnest. But his sympathy conceals no false liberalism; it is not cheaply generous of the claims of God. He does not think that because they are in earnest they are saved. Their earnestness drives his heart to a deeper prayer for their salvation.
[Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For knowing not the righteousness of our (τοῦ) God,= His way of being just, yet the Justifier, =and seeking to set up their own righteousness,= to construct for themselves a claim which should "stand in judgment," =they did not submit to the righteousness of our (τοῦ) God,= when it appeared before them, embodied in "the Lord our Righteousness." They _aspired_ to acceptance. God bade them _submit_ to it. In their view, it was a matter of attainment; an ascent to a difficult height, where the climber might exult in his success. As He presented it, it was a matter of surrender, as when a patient, given over, places himself helpless in a master-healer's hands, for a recovery which is to be due to those hands alone, and to be celebrated only to their praise.[169]
Alas for such "ignorance" in these earnest souls; for such a failure in Israel to strike the true line of "knowledge"! For it was a guilty failure. The Law had been indicating all the while that their Dispensation was not its own end, but one vast complex means to shut man up to a Redeemer who was at once to satisfy every type, and every oracle, and to supply "the impossible of the Law" (viii. 3), by giving Himself to be the believer's vicarious Merit. [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =For the Law's end,= its Goal, its Final Cause in the plan of redemption, =is--Christ, unto righteousness,= to effect and secure this wonderful acceptance, =for every one who believes.= Yes, He is no arbitrary sequel to the Law; He stands organically related to it. And to this the Law itself is witness, both by presenting an inexorable and condemning standard as its only possible code of acceptance, and by mysteriously pointing the soul away from that code, in its quest for mercy, to something altogether different, at once accessible and divine. [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =For Moses writes down (γράφει)= thus =the righteousness= got =from the Law, "The man who does[170] them, shall live in it"[171]= (Levit. xviii. 5); it is a matter of personal action and personal meriting alone. Thus the code, feasible and beneficent indeed on the plane of national and social life, which is its lower field of action, is necessarily fatal to fallen man when the question lies between his conscience and the eternal Judge. [Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =But the righteousness= got =from faith,= the acceptance received by surrendering trust, =thus speaks= (Deut. xxx. 12-14)--in Moses' words indeed, (and this is one main point in the reasoning, that _he_ is witness,) yet as it were with a personal voice of its own, deep and tender; ="Say not in thy heart, Who shall ascend to the heaven?" that is, to bring down Christ,= by human efforts, by a climbing merit; [Sidenote: Ver. 7.] ="or, Who shall descend into the abyss? that is, to bring up Christ from the dead,=" as if His victorious Sacrifice needed your supplement in order to its resurrection-triumph. [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =But what does it say? "Near thee is the utterance,= the explicit account of the Lord's willingness to bless the soul which casts itself on Him,[172] =in thy mouth,= to recite it, =and in thy heart,"= to welcome it. And =this= message =is the utterance of faith,= the creed of acceptance by faith alone, =which we proclaim;= [Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =that if you shall confess in your mouth Jesus as Lord,[173]= as divine King and Master, =and shall believe in your heart= that God =raised Him from the dead,= owning in the soul the glory of the Resurrection, as revealing and sealing the triumph of the Atonement, =you shall be saved.= [Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =For with the heart faith is exercised, unto righteousness,= with acceptance for its resultant; =while (δὲ) with the mouth confession is made, unto salvation,= with present deliverance and final glory for its resultant, the moral sequel of a life which owns its Lord as all in all. [Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =For the Scripture says= (Isai. xxviii. 16), ="Everyone who believes on Him shall not be ashamed,"[174]= shall never be disappointed; shall be "kept, through faith, unto the salvation ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Pet. i. 5).