= ee |
the ἡμεῖς πάντες were in the condition of subjection to the Divine wrath; and that they were so not by deed merely, nor by circumstance, nor by passing into it, but by nature. Their universal sin has been already affirmed. This universal sin is now described as sin by nature. Beyond this Paul does not go in the present passage. But the one is the explanation of the other. Universal sin implies a law of sinning, a sin that is of the nature; and this, again, is the ex- planation of the fact that all are under the Divine wrath. For the Divine wrath operates only where sin is. Here is the essential meaning of the doctrine of original sin. That it finds any justifi- cation here is denied, indeed, by some; even by Meyer, who admits, however, that elsewhere (¢.g., in Rom. vi.) Paul teaches that there is a principle of sin in man by nature, and that man sins actually be- cause of that innate principle. But he argues that it is in virtue not of the principle itself, but of the acts of sin by which that principle expresses itself, that we are in a state of subjection to the Divine wrath. This, however, is to make a nature which originates sinful acts and which does that in the case of all men without exception, itself a neutral thing.
Ver. 4. 6 δὲ Θεὸς, πλούσιος ὧν ἐν ἐλέει : but God (or, God, however), being vich in mercy. A return is now made to the statement which was interrupted at ver. 2. The resumption might have been made by οὖν. The adversative δέ, how- ever, is the more appropriate, as the other side of our case is now to be set forth— the Divine grace which meets the sinful, condemned condition, and which stands over the dark background of our death by sin and our subjection by nature to the Divine wrath. God who is wroth with sin, is a God of grace. His dis- position towards those who are dead by trespasses and sins is one of mercy, and this no stinted mercy, but a mercy that is rich, exhaustless (for πλούσιος, πλου- τίζειν. etc., cf. x Cor. i. 5; 2 Cor. ix. 11; 1 Tim. vi. 17, 18; Jas. ii. 5).---διὰ τὴν πολλὴν ἀγάπην ἣν ἠγάπησεν ἡμᾶς: by veason of His great love wherewith He loved us. The use of the cogn. acc. ἣν adds to the force of the idea; cf. the use of the same phrase by our Lord Himself with reference to His Father’s love, John xvii. 26. If mercy is God’s attitude to sinful men, love is His motive in all that He does with them; and as the mercy is “rich” so the love is “ great”. With this great love God loved us when He chose us, and it is on account of that love (not