the Mosaic or any other, will flesh
ever succeed in finding acceptance with
God. Let mortal man, clothed in works
of law, present himself before the Most
High, and His verdict must always be:
Unrighteous.
Vers. 21-26. The universal need of a Gospel has now been demonstrated, and the Apostle proceeds with his exposition of this Gospel itself. It brings what all men need, a righteousness of God (see on i. 17); and it brings it in such a way as to make it accessible to all. Law contributes nothing to it, though it is attested by the law and the prophets; it is a righteousness which is all of grace. Grace, however, does not signify that moral distinctions are ignored in God’s procedure: the righteousness which is held out in the Gospel is held out on the basis of the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. It is put within the sin- ner’s reach at a great cost. It could never be offered to him—it could never be manifested, or indeed have any real existence—but for the propitiatory virtue of the blood of Christ. Christ a propitia- tion is the inmost soul of the Gospel for sinful men. If God had not set Him forth in this character, not only must we
20—23.
21. Nuvi δὲ χωρὶς νόµου δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ πεφανέρωται, µαρτυρου- µένη ὑπὸ τοῦ νόµου καὶ τῶν προφητῶν: 22. δικαιοσύνη δὲ Θεοῦ διὰ
609
i Matt.v. 17; Acts xiii.
, > ~ aie) , A a , 1 4 , 15. πιστεως Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ, εἰς πάντας καὶ ETL πάντας” τοὺς πιστεύοντας - k Ch. x. 12;
> , 5 κ [ή , 9 ee A“ οὐ ydp ἐστι "διαστολή. 23. πάντες γὰρ ἥμαρτον, καὶ ὑστεροῦνται 5,
1 Cor. xiv.
1 και επι παντας; SO S°DFGKL, but om. ΔΙΑΒΟ. The words are omitted by Lachm., Tischdf., Tregelles, W. and H., but retained by Weiss, who explains the
omission by homeeoteleuton.
As επι παντας alone is found in very good MSS. of
the vulg. and in John of Damascus, the received text may be a combination of this
and the true reading.
despair for ever of attaining to a Divine righteousness ; all our attempts to read the story of the world in any consistency with the character of God must be baffled. Past sins God seemed simply to ignore: He treated them apparently as if they were not. But the Cross is ‘‘ the Divine theodicy for the past history of the world ” (Tholuck) ; we see in it how seriously God deals with the sins which for the time He seemed to pass by. It is a demon- stration of His righteousness—that is, in the widest sense, of His consistency with His own character,—which would have been violated by indifference to sin. And that demonstration is, by God’s grace, given in such a way that it is possible for Him to be (as He intends to be) at once just Himself, and the justifier of those who believe in Jesus. The pro- pitiatory death of Jesus, in other words, is at once the vindication of God and the salvation of man. That is why it is cen- tral and fundamental in the Apostolic Gospel. It meets the requirements, at the same time, of the righteousness of God and of the sin of man.
Ver. 21. vuvi δὲ: but now. All time is divided for Paul into “now” and “then”. Cf. Eph. ii. 12 f., τῷ καιρῷ ἐκείνῳ « . « νυνὶ δέ; 2 Cor. v. 16, ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν: the reception of the Gospel means the coming of anew world. χωρὶς γόµου: legal obedience contributes no- thing to evangelic righteousness. It is plain that in this expression vépos does not signify the O.T. revelation or religion as such, but that religion, or any other, conceived as embodied in statutes, It is statutory obedience which (as Paul has learned by experience) cannot justify. Hence νόμος has not exactly the same sense here as in the next clause, ὑπὸ τοῦ γόµου κ. τῶν προφητῶν, where the whole expression is equal to the O.T., and the meaning is that the Gospel is not alien to the religion of Israel, but really finds attestation there. This is worth remark- ing, because there is a similar variation