347739:
διαφθοράν.
37. dv δὲ ὁ Θεὸς ἤγειρεν, οὐκ εἶδε διαφθοράν.
297 38.
Γνωστὸν οὖν ἔστω ὑμῖν, ἄνδρες ἀδελφοί, ὅτι διὰ τούτου 1 ὑμῖν ἄφεσις
ἁμαρτιῶν καταγγέλλεται: 39. kal? ἀπὸ πάντων ὧν οὐκ ἠδυνήθητε ἐν
τῷ νόµῳ Μωσέως δικαιωθῆναι, ἐν τούτῳ was ὁ πιστεύων δικαιοῦται,
1 δια τοντου NAB ®CDLP, so all edd. ; δια τοντο B* 15, 18, 1830— Weiss here follows
above authorities.
2xat BC*(D)ELP, Sah., Boh., Syrr. P. and H., Arm., Aethro., Chrys., W.H., Weiss, R.V. (T.R.); om. SAC, Vulg. (am. fu. demid.), Aethpp., Tisch., Blass; και might easily drop out after TAI (Weiss). D 137, Syr. H. mg. add παρα θεῳ after δικαι.
Ver. 37. tyetpev: more than resur- rection from the dead, ‘‘hic non notatur resuscitatio ex mortuis; quippe que ipsa in conclusione evincitur: sed quem Deus suscitavit est Sanctus Dei, ver. 35, ut hzc Subjecti descriptio contineat ztio- logiam,” Bengel.
Ver. 38. yvwordv οὖν: ‘“incipit ad- hortatio quz ord@tionem claudit,”’ Blass.— ἄφεσις ἁμαρ.: the keynote of St. Paul’s preaching, cf. xxvi. 18, as it had been of St. Peter’s, ii. 38, v. 31, x. 43; and as it had been of the preaching of the Baptist, and of our Lord Himself.—é.1a τούτου, i.e., Christ—through Him Who died, and was risen again—the phrase is characteristically Pauline, cf. x. 43.
Ver. 30. So far the words represent the entire harmony between the preach- ing of St. Peter and St. Paul, and there is no reason to attribute this verse, as also x. 43, with Jiingst, to any reviser ; δικαιοῦσθαι ἀπό only elsewhere in Rom. vi. 7. Butzf St. Paul’s next words seem to imply that within certain limits, {.ε., so far as it was obeyed, the law of Moses brought justification, they affirm at the same time the utter inefficacy of all legal obedience, since one thing was certain, that the law exacted much more than Israel could obey ; complete justification must be found, if anywhere, elsewhere. Can we doubt that St. Paul is here giving us what was really his own experience? (See Briggs, Messiah of the Apostles, p. 76.) In spite of all his efforts to fulfil the law, there was still the feeling that these efforts were hopelessly deficient; there was an area of transgression in which the law, so far from justifying, condemned. But in the Messiah, the Holy One of God, he saw a realisation of that perfect holiness to which in the weakness of the flesh he could not attain, and in Him, Who died, and rose again, for us—that Righteous One, Whom he saw, not only on the road to Damascus, but ever on his right hand by the eye of faith—he found complete and full justi-
fication. That this forgiveness of sins is not connected specially with the Death . of Christ, but with His Resurrection, or tather with His whole Messianic char- acter, to which the Resurrection put the final seal, is certainly not to be regarded as an indication of a non-Pauline view, cf. Romans iv. 25, viii. 34, 2 Cor. v. 15. Moreover, if we consider the connection ef the whole address, the Resurrection is not regarded apart from the Death of Christ: vv. 26-29 show us that the Message of Salvation starts from the Death of Christ, and is based upon that, cf. Bethge, Die Paulinischen Reden, p. 54. It is unreasonable to complain that St. Paul’s conception of justification in this address falls below his characteristic and controlling idea of it (McGiffert, p. 186). We could not justly expect that the Apostle’s utterances, thus summarised by St. Luke, would contain as full and complete a doctrinal exposition as his Galatian and Roman Epistles. To the former Epistle McGiffert points as giving us what Paul actually taught in Galatia; but there is no contradiction between the teaching given us in St. Luke’s account of the address in Pisidian Antioch and St. Paul’s account of his teaching to his converts in his letter “(Πε coincidences between the two are so striking as to make each the best commentary on the other . . . and there is no such close re- semblance between the Epistle and any other of Paul’s addresses reported in Acts,” Ramsay, Expositor, December, 1898. ‘‘ Historical Commentary on Gal.” see below, and also Lightfoot, on Gal. tii. 11. St. Paul’s teaching is essentially the same in the synagogue at Antioch as when he is writing to his Galatian con- verts: only in Christ is justification, and in the law as such there is no forgiveness of sins. He does not say in so many words that there was no sin from which men could be freed under the law of Moses, but it is evident that the most solemn warning with which the Apostle