36- ο.
3 lol Ιησοῦ.
τῶν ἔργων; οὐχὶ, ἀλλὰ διὰ νόµου πίστεως.
2]. Ποῦ οὖν ἡ καύχησις; ἐξεκλείσθη.
613
διὰ ° ποίου νόµου ; ο Acts iv. 7.
28. λογιζόμεθα οὖν 1
1 ουν: so BCD°KL 17, but yap ΝΑ Ρ)Ε, Origen-interp. The division of authorities here is like that in ver. 25, and the edd. decide in the same way. W. and H. put
γαρ in text, ουν in marg. Weiss puts ουν in text.
but δικαιουσθαι πιστει KIABCD.
‘(God’s character and makes it possible for Him to justify those who believe. The passage itself contains nothing explicit—except in the words ἐν τῷ αὐτοῦ αἵματι. It is pedantic and inept to argue that since God could have demonstrated His righteousness either by punishment o7 by propitiation, there- ‘fore punishment and propitiation have no relation to each other. Christ was a propitiation in virtue of His death ; and however a modern mind may construe it, death to Paul was the doom of sih. To say that God set forth Christ as a propitiation in His blood is the same thing as to say that God made Him to be sin for us. God’s righteousness, there- fore, is demonstrated at the Cross, because thee, in Christ’s death, it is made once for all apparent that.He does not palter with sin; the doom of sin falls by His appointment on the Redeemer. And it is possible, at the same time, to accept as righteous those who by faith unite themselves to Christ upon the Cross, and identify themselves with Him in His death: for in doing so they submit in Him to the Divine sentence upon sin, and at bottom become right with God. It is misleading to render εἰς τὸ εἶναι αὐτὸν δίκαιον κ. δικαιοῦντα, “that He might be just and yet the justifier,”’ etc.: the Apostle only means that the two ends have equally to be secured, not that there is necessarily an antagonism between them. But it is more than misleading to render ‘that He might be just and therefore the justifier”:; there is mo conception of righteousness, capable of being clearly carried out, and connected with the Cross, which makes such language in- telligible. (See Dorner, System of Christian Doctrine, iv., 14, English Translation.) It is the love of God, a€cording to the consistent teaching of the New Testament, which provides the propitiation, by which God’s right- eousness is vindicated and the justi- fication of the ungodly made possible. τὸν ἐκ πίστεως ᾿Ιησοῦ is every one who is properly and sufficiently characterised as a believer in Jesus. There is no
πιστει δικαιουσθαι ΜΑΙ, 17,
difficulty whatever in regarding ᾿Ιησοῦ as objective genitive, as the use of πιστεύειν throughout the N.T. (Gal. ii, 16, e.g.) requires us to do: such expressions as τῷ ἐκ πίστεως "ABpadp (iv. 16) are not in the least a reason to the contrary: they only illustrate the flexibility of the Greek language. See on ver. 22 above.
Vers. 27-31. In these verses the posi- tive exposition of the righteousness of God as offered to faith through the re- demption in Christ Jesus, is concluded. The Apostle points out two inferences which can be drawn from it, and which go to commend it to religious minds. The first is, that it excludes boasting. A religious constitution under which men could make claims, or assume anything, in the presence of God, must necessarily be false ; it is at least one mark of truth in the Christian doctrine of justification that by it such presumption is made im- possible. The second is, that in its uni- versality and its sameness for all men, it is consistent with (as indeed it flows from) the unity of God. There can be no step-children in the family of God: a system which teaches that there are, like that current among the Jews, must be wrong; a system like the Christian, which excludes such an idea, is at least so farright. In ver. 31 an objection is raised. The whole system just expounded may be said to make Law void—to stultify and disannul all that has ever been regarded as in possession of Divine moral authority in the world. In reality, the Apostle answers in a word, its effect is precisely the reverse: it establishes law.