St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans (Vol. 1&2). Gore Charles
What is of interest here is to notice that St. Paul reproduces the argument of his Jewish opponent with great sympathetic force. It had clearly been weighed in his own mind. It was urged, no doubt, against his own teaching, that it gave an excuse for sinning by suggesting that the greatness of the sin only glorified the super-abundant greatness of the pardoning love. It is only too probable that some of his followers were persuaded by some such argument or acted as if they were. Thus St. Paul states it with vigour, but thereby only makes all the more apparent the meagreness of his reply. Not that the argument is such as makes reply difficult. In a slightly different form St. Paul deals with it elaborately in chapters ix-xi. But here he clearly treats it as contemptible when its true character has once been disclosed. And why? Because it is professedly an explanation of the ways of God with man, which is at the same time an excuse for immorality. It is an intellectual exercise at the expense of conscience. And St. Paul shows, by the very contempt with which he treats it, that a man who will play false with his conscience, and then proceed to find intellectual justifications, is not to be met in the intellectual region at all. He has been condemned already.
St. Paul then, we find, will not argue with one who reasons at the expense of his conscience; and this is an important principle. When the intellect is acting purely, it must be free, and must be dealt with seriously on its own ground. But the conscience must be followed first of all. Its light is clearer than the light of intellect, and must be left supreme. Whatever be the bewilderment of my intellect, I am self-condemned, God-condemned, if I play false to the moral light. And arguments to the contrary, however clever-sounding or philosophical, are in fact sophistry. There is, we must confess, a good deal of such sophistry to-day in the use of arguments drawn from the current philosophy of necessitarianism and the idea of heredity.
[1] Chapters ix-xi.
[2] The points are resumed in ix. 1.
[3] Ps. xxxii.
DIVISION I. § 4. CHAPTER III. 9-20.
Sin and condemnation universal.
At this point the direct argument with an opponent is dropped; and St. Paul restates what he has so far been occupied in proving. It is not that Jews are in a worse position than Gentiles. It is that all together are involved in the same moral failure. To deepen the impression that this is a true statement, St. Paul culls from various psalms and from Isaiah a series of passages describing a general state of depravity, moral blindness, apathy, failure, unprofitableness, falsity, hatred, and outrage against God and man. These utterances of the book of 'the law' (here used for the Old Testament scriptures generally) are meant for those first to whom this law belonged. They condemn Jews as well as Gentiles. They show all equally to be under divine judgement. They prove that if the written law could teach men God's will, it could not, by the works that it enjoined, enable him to satisfy God. It had its function only in teaching him to know his sinfulness by contrast to his plainly declared duty. The conclusion is then that all men, Jews and Gentiles alike, are involved in sin, are under the wrath of a holy God, and are in utter need of a deliverance which they are incapable of procuring for themselves.
What then? are we in worse case than they? No, in no wise: for we before laid to the charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin; as it is written,
There is none righteous, no, not one;
There is none that understandeth,
There is none that seeketh after God;
They have all turned aside, they are together become unprofitable;
There is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one:
Their throat is an open sepulchre;
With their tongues they have used deceit:
The poison of asps is under their lips:
Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
Their feet are swift to shed blood;
Destruction and misery are in their ways;
And the way of peace have they not known:
There is no fear of God before their eyes.
Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it speaketh to them that are under the law; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under the judgement of God: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for through the law cometh the knowledge of sin.
1. The 'Scripture proof' which St. Paul here offers of universal human corruption is, according to a recognized Hebrew practice, made up by stringing together a number of separate texts,—Ps. xiv. 1-3, v. 9, cxl. 3, x. 7, Isa. lix. 7, 8, Ps. xxxvi. 1. They represent the impression made by human wickedness upon the righteous observer. The estimate covers Israel as well as, indirectly, the world at large[1]. It is thus an authoritative rebuke to Jewish self-complacency. It is as if an English preacher were to rebuke similar self-complacency in Englishmen by a collection of passages from standard English authorities, in which our nation was judged, in common with others, in a manner most humiliating to its pride. It is this, though, inasmuch as the psalmists and prophets were and are believed to have spoken under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, it is also something more.
It is well known that, as the quotations in the New Testament have frequently affected the Greek text of the Old, so here this conglomerate of quotations came to be attached altogether to Ps. xiv in some Greek MSS., increasing it by four verses. Thence they passed into the later Latin Vulgate. Thence into Coverdale's Bible and into the Great Bible, and so into the Prayer Book version of the Psalms. But our present Bible version remains true to the Hebrew original.
2. 'To be justified,' in ver. 20, means to be acquitted, or proved righteous, or reckoned righteous in the trial before God. This, and not to make righteous, is the meaning of the word 'to justify,' both in the Old and New Testament and elsewhere. There is scarcely an exception. It is a forensic word, that is, a word derived from processes of law, and it describes the favourable verdict after a trial. It is used of vindicating God's character to His people[2], or of vindicating one's own character; of God's judicial acceptance of men or men's judicial acceptance of one another[3]. And so far as real righteousness is necessary for judicial acquittal, the word implies real righteousness, but it does not primarily mean it.
3. Here we find briefly stated St. Paul's apparently wholly original view of 'the law,' as given simply to enlighten the conscience by keeping men informed as to their duty, without supplying them with any moral assistance in performing it. Thus the ultimate aim of the law was to make man know his own sinfulness; to convince him that his attempted independence was a failure, and that he could not save himself; and so to prepare him to cry out for the gift of grace, and to welcome it when it was given. 'The law was given,' as St. Augustine is fond of saying, 'that grace might be sought, and grace was given that the law might be kept.' This antithesis is thoroughly after St. Paul's mind.
This first division of our epistle gives us as a whole a great deal to think about. There are, we may say, two spiritual evils conspicuous to-day. People with consciences in any degree awakened are apt to be nervous, anxious, despondent, complaining, sullen. The second division of our epistle supplies the antidote to this error by consolidating the awakened conscience in divine peace. But there is another, and perhaps more conspicuous, spiritual evil