Ver. 2. Their good qualities compel his affection. {ῆλον θεοῦ ἔχουσιν: they have a zeal for God, are intensely (though mistakenly) religious. Cf. Gal. i. 14. An unbelieving Jew could inter- pret his opposition to the lawless gospel of Paul as zeal for the divinely-given tule of life, and his opposition to the crucified Messiah as zeal for the divinely- given promises. It was God’s honour for which he stood in refusing the Gos-
66ο:
X. 1. ᾽ΑΔΕΛΦΟΙ, ἡ μὲν εὐδοκία τῆς ἐμῆς καρδίας, καὶ ἡ δέησις ἡ 1332005. ιό προς τὸν Θεὸν ὑπὲρ τοῦ Ισραήλ ἐστιν eis σωτηρίαν. 2. μαρτυρῶ » Acts xvii.
-” - ” 3 3 , yap αὐτοῖς ὅτι ζῆλον Θεού” Exouow, ἀλλ οὐ KaT ἐπίγνωσιν.
ar Ey Tim. 1. 13 c Gal. vi. 5.
a - aA sar , oa a ied ἀγνοούντες’ γὰρ τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ δικαιοσύνην, καὶ τὴν ἰδίαν “δικαιοσύνην ” 1d Phil. iii. 9.
[ητούντες στῆσαι, τῇ δικαιοσύνη τού Θεού οὐχ ὑπετάγησαν.
e Mark iii. 26; Heb. Vii. 3.
4. τέλος”
1 η before προς τον θεον om. SABDF. For tov Ισραηλ εστιν read avtwy with
SABDFP 47, etc.
2 env ιδιαν δικαιοσυνην NFGKL and most cursives, is adopted by Tischdf., but most edd. with ABDP 47, vulg. omit δικαιοσυνην.
pel. ἀλλ᾽ οὐ κατ᾿ ἐπίγνωσιν: this re- ligious earnestness is not regulated by adequate knowledge. For ἐπίγνωσις see Eph. iv. 13, Phil. i. 9, Col. i. 9, 10, να ποια Πορ Επι Π. «ση ας is especially used of religious knowledge, and suggests attainment in it (ἄρτι γιν- ώσκω ἐκ µέρους, τότε δὲ ἐπιγνώσομαι, 1 Cor. xiii. 12).
Ver. 3. This verse goes to the root of the matter, and explains the failure of the Gospel among the Jews. It was due to their ignorance of the righteousness of God. All men need and crave righteous- ness, and the Jews, in their ignorance of God’s, sought to establish a righteous- ness of their own. Their own is the key to the situation. Their idea was that they could be good men without becom- ing God’s debtors, or owing anything at all to Him. Such an idea, of course, shows complete ignorance of the essen- tial relations of God and man, and when acted on fatally perverts life. It did so with the Jews. When the Gospel came, revealing the righteousness of God—that for which man must be absolutely in- debted to God’s grace, and which he can never boast of as ‘‘his own”—it cut tight across all the habits and prejudices of the Jews, and they did not submit themselves to it. Paul interprets the position of his nation through the recol- jection of his own experience as a Phari- see—no doubt rightly on the whole. For ὑπετάγησαν in middle sense see Vili. 7, xiii, 1, Heb. xii. 9, Jas. iv. 7, 1 Pet. ii. 13.
Ver 4. Further proof that the pursuit of a righteousness of one’s own by legal observances is a mistake, the act of men ‘‘in ignorance”. τέλος γὰρ νόµου χριστὸς εἰς δικαιοσύνην παντὶ τῷ πιστεύοντι: For Christ is law’s end, etc. The sense required—a sense which the words very naturally yield—is that with Christ in the field law as a means of attaining righteousness has ceased and
determined. The moment a man sees Christ and understands what He is and what He has done, he feels that legal religion is a thing of the past: the way to righteousness is not the observance ot Statutes, no matter though they have been promulgated by God Himself; it is faith, the abandonment of the soul to the redeeming judgment and mercy of God in His Son, The meaning is virtually the same as that of our Lord’s words in Luke xvi. 16. νόµου without the article is “law” in the widest sense; the Mosaic law is only one of the most im- portant instances which come under this description; and it, with all statutory conceptions of religion, ends when Christ appears. It is quite true to say that Christ consummates or fulfils the law (hence Calvin would prefer comple- mentum or perfectio to finis as a render- ing of τέλος); quite true also that He is the goal of the O.T. dispensation, and that it is designed to lead to Him (cf. Mt. v.17, Gal. iii. 24); but though both true and Pauline, these ideas are irrelevant here, where Paul is insisting, not on the connection, but on the in- compatibility, of law and faith, of one’s own righteousness and the righteousness of God. Besides, in limiting νόμος to the Mosaic O.T. law, this interpretation does less than justice to the language, and misses the point of παντὶ τῷ πιστεύ- οντι: there is no believer, Gentile or Few, for whom law, Mosaic or other, retains validity or significance as a way to δικαιοσύνη, after the revelation of the righteousness of God in Christ. -