Romans 3:1-8

CRITICAL NOTES

Romans 3:1. What advantage then hath the Jew?—Pre-eminence. Passage brings out the idea of surplus (Wordsworth).

Romans 3:3.—πίστιν τοῦ Θεοῦ—the faith of God—may perhaps be best explained by the assertion, God is faithful.

Romans 3:4. God forbid: yea, let God be true, etc.—More proper is it that men should impute unfaithfulness to themselves than to God. God forbid—i.e., far be it. An idiomatic exclamation. The sense in which David used the Hebrew word “tsadak,” and in which his LXX. translators used δικαιῶν and δικαιοῦσθαι, is the sense in which Paul uses them. And mightest overcome.—Mayest prevail judicially in thy cause.

Romans 3:5. If our unrighteousness commend.—Sets off to advantage, makes conspicuous. I speak more humano, in such a manner as is intelligible to men.

Romans 3:7.—The truth of God, not objectively, but subjectively. Why should I suffer punishment on account of that which contributes to the glory of God?

Romans 3:8.—Whose judgment is in harmony with right.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 3:1

The surplus to the Jew.—The poor Jew has been persecuted, harassed, stripped, and robbed; and yet for the most part he has come forth with a respectable material advantage. The material surplus has been to the Jew. The money-lenders of the nations have been and are still the Jews. They value this surplus. In this respect they are like Christians. The latter profess to despise the former, but there is perhaps more envy than contempt in the feeling. The material surplus is valued more highly than the moral. The bond which we hold for money due is too oft more precious than the bond of God’s oracles, which tells of our indebtedness to the divine Being. Here we have:—

I. A great blessing conferred.—The blessing of being God’s chosen people, and this affirmed and declared to mankind by the seal of circumcision. The natural Israel a type of the spiritual Israel. How thankful we ought to be for God’s distinguishing favours to the Anglo-Saxon race! The most prosperous race on the face of the earth, because God-enlightened. Let us cherish our privileges. True religion our best and only safeguard. Our Victorias may be submerged; our nearly four hundred gallant men may find a watery grave. He that sails in the ark of Christianity sails in an ark that is secure in all deluges and cannot be overturned by any colliding force. The chief blessing which St. Paul alludes to is that unto the Jew were entrusted the oracles of God. Wonderful that a country which has no literary greatness should have produced the noblest literary volume of all time! No; Palestine did not produce the Old Testament. It came from “the better country—that is, the heavenly.” The oracles are not of man, but of God. The bards that sing in these oracles were not taught in the schools of Greece; they learnt the lore of heaven—they speak, but their utterances are in their moral aspect the speakings of God. These oracles are a greater treasure to the Jew than all his material wealth. What honour we render the Jew to-day arises from the fact, not that he is a great money power, but that he has been a great custodian and dispenser of immortal truth. And as we read the New Testament, let us not forget our indebtedness to the Jew. As we study our grand but very difficult epistle, we remember that St. Paul was a Jew. Let us try to realise the fact that unto us have been entrusted the oracles of God. Do we value the truth? Do we put out to usury by scattering the word of God?—for we enrich ourselves by striving to enrich others.

II. A great blessing not diminished by rejection.—What if some did not believe. The oracles of God are no less true because hypercritics point out discrepancies. The sun is no less a sun because spots are shown on its surface; the eyes are no less useful for seeing because the modern optician pronounces them very imperfect organs of vision. What if some do not believe? I devoutly thank God for my eyesight; I prefer it vastly to the aids of modern opticians. I read gladly the oracles, for I find in them a power to heal, to bless, and to guide which no other oracles afford. I sail in the ark Christ Jesus amid all deluges. The sceptics strive to upset this ark as the Victoria was upset in the Mediterranean, but they have not yet built any water-tight moral vessel.

III. This rejection is the result and proof of unrighteousness.—The rejecter of the Bible contends for his moral rectitude, and says that will not allow him to accept what is contrary to reason and to history. He may think himself right; but perhaps he does not know himself as well as he thinks he does. Our metaphysicians examine mind in general, and leave their own mental and moral natures unexplored. A moral twist may turn the intellectual powers in a wrong direction. A rivet may let a bridge fall and destroy many lives. A moral rivet loosely made and set may cause damage. We want, not more intellectual light, but less moral darkness.

IV. The unrighteousness of the rejecter sets forth the eternal rectitude.—Out of chaos comes beautiful order, out of seeming evil good, in the wonderful working of divine proceedings. The rejecters of the oracles have led to the discovery of fresh confirmations of their authenticity. The rejecters have been unwittingly builders. So the unrighteousness of man sets forth the righteousness of God. It shines forth all the more brilliantly by the contrast. The rectitude of God is not capable of swerving from the right line. Jesuitical men may say, Let us do evil that good may come. The righteous God says, Forsake evil, and thereby good will come. If at any time the proceedings of God appear to diverge from the straight line of moral rectitude, let us be sure that the fancied divergence is only in appearance. Whatever befalls let this be our noble creed, that God must be true, though this assertion makes all men liars. The rectitude of God is not disproved by strokes of vengeance. A man revenges himself because he is stirred by passion, by envy, by hatred. A God takes vengeance because it is required in the interests of a moral government. The modern God is the amicable guest who winks at the sins of the host. Paul’s God is a moral governor as well as an all-father. The rectitude of God constitutes the basis of final judgment. All must come right, for God is right. But all cannot come right to the man who is all wrong, and continues in hardness and impenitence to walk in the wrong. All will come right, and on this we calmly rest our souls. We are not troubled, for all must come right, since God is righteous. All will be well, for God is righteous. Whatever condemnation takes place in the future will be just, for a righteous God is an arbiter of all destinies. Our moralists have their ethical systems, and yet how little they know about what is wrong and what is right! God’s rectitude is the eternal standard of true ethics, and that will be vindicated in the final account. The truth of God will abound, even through human falsehoods, to His glory. The truth of God’s rectitude, and, blessed thought! the truth of God’s love and mercy, will abound to His eternal glory. Let us embrace the mercy, and the rectitude need not cause alarm, if we embrace the mercy as revealed in the crucified One.

Romans 3:1. The oracles of God.—Our religious privileges are not to be thought of trifling importance because they do not produce their full effect. They cannot be a substitute for personal holiness; but man’s ingratitude does not cancel his obligations, nor does the abuse of privileges destroy their value. Much, O ye Jews, as ye have abused the divine goodness, it has flowed to you in a special manner; and if you ask what advantage you have had, I reply, Much every way, because unto you were committed the oracles of God.

I. The leading characters of the oracles of God.—

1. Absolute truth and wisdom. Being from God, the question of their wisdom and truth is settled. We cannot admit that there is a Being of infinite perfection without admitting His perfect wisdom and holiness.

2. The subjects of these oracles are of infinite importance. The oracle always speaks on those questions which are vital to our peace and safety, and on those which are curious rather than useful the oracle is silent. Yet knowledge is not prohibited—only delayed: “What thou knowest not now thou shalt know hereafter.” It is sufficient for us now to know how we may be delivered from sin, and from its penalty, eternal death, and how we may daily walk so as to please Him.

3. We have an interesting character given us of the oracles when they are called “lively” oracles. It is this which constitutes the peculiarity of the word of God. It is a word with which the Spirit of God wonderfully works, and which He renders living. No other book has this peculiarity. Show me one which the wicked fear, which lays a secret dread upon the boldest, which cuts deep into the conscience, which comforts and supports, which deprives death of its sting—show me such a one, and you show me the Bible. Nothing explains this but the life which the Spirit imparts. With the oracles of God the author is present, whether you read or hear. You cannot avoid this power. It will make the word either “a savour of life unto life, or a savour of death unto death.”

4. The oracles of God not only speak, but make all His other oracles vocal. God has three other oracles—nature, general providence, and personal providence. Nature has its solemn voice: “There is not a speech nor language where their voice is not heard.” This is connected with the spread of the gospel. The voice of nature is not heard where the gospel is not. In heathen countries the heavens are turned into idols, and God is excluded from the thoughts of men. But when the living oracles come, then star and mountain and river proclaim their glorious Maker, and the voice of the oracle falls distinct upon every ear. There is the general providence of God exercised in the government of nations. All its arrangements display the wisdom, power, and truth of God. Yet it is all unknown to those destitute of the divine oracles. The personal providence of God confers upon us all our blessings, appoints us our station in life, and assigns to us our sorrows. Many lessons this providence teaches us. But till the living oracle speaks all is silence, and we derive no lessons of true wisdom from the events of life.

5. The oracles of God present a peculiar character in their form; and in this we perceive an instance of the condescension of the almighty God, who intended thus to attract and fix our attention on what to us is vitally interesting.

6. The last character is the fulness of truth conveyed in the oracles of God. Who can exhaust the doctrines of Holy Scripture—doctrines specially relating to God and Christ, and the depth of all redeeming love? The Bible will be the oracles of God to the Church above. Every part of that holy book will be written upon the memory of each glorified human heart, and be always receiving illustration to the glory of its great Author.

II. These oracles are committed or entrusted to you.—

1. They are entrusted to be read or understood;

2. To interpret honestly;

3. To make them known to others;

4. To apply to practical purposes.—R. Watson.

Romans 3:4. “Let God be true.”—But cannot God be true and man be true also? Does the veracity of the one infer the falsehood of the other? Not absolutely, but in particular instances. There may be, and there often is, an opposition between their testimony; and when this is the case we are not to hesitate a moment by whose claims we shall be decided. If the whole world were on one side and He on the other, let God be true, but every man a liar. And, comparatively, the credibility of the one must always be nothing to that of the other. If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater. And this will appear undeniable from four admissions:—

I. The first regards the ignorance of man and the wisdom of God.—Man is fallible. He not only may err, but he is likely to err. He may be deceived by outward appearances, by the reports of others, by his own reasonings; for his powers are limited. Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom. How much of it is mere opinion and conjecture! With what follies have the greatest minds been charged! But God knows all things, and cannot be mistaken.

II. The second regards the mutability of man and the unchangeableness of God.—Creatures, from their very being, are mutable. Many of the angels kept not their first estate. Adam fell from his original condition. Who needs to be told that man never continues in one stay? New views engender new feelings, and these new pursuits. What pleases to-day may offend to-morrow. But God changes not. What He thinks now He always thought, for with Him there is “no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”

III. The third regards the weakness of man and the all-sufficiency of God.—Man may threaten in fury, but be unable to execute—he may promise sincerely, but cannot fulfil. In this respect he is not always to be judged of by his conduct. But God is almighty. He who made and upholds all things by the word of His power speaks everything in the Scriptures.

IV. The fourth regards the depravity of man and the rectitude of God.—Man goes astray. He often knowingly deceives. Even men who are influenced by religious principles may be overcome of evil, and occasion our saying, “Lord, what is man?” How far from truth was the sentiment of Jonah: “I do well to be angry, even unto death”! How lamentable was the falsehood of Abraham! How dreadful was the perjury of Peter! But God is holiness itself. He is incapable of a wrong bias—He cannot be tempted to deceive. The use to which this fact should be applied is to reduce our confidence in man and increase our confidence in God. And yet the reverse of this is our practice. We yield where we should be cautious, and we hesitate where it is impossible for us to err. We turn from the Rock of Ages, and lean on the broken reed. What is the consequence? “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.” Let us cease, then, from man. Not that we are to become universally suspicious and suppose that there is no sincerity in the world. It was David’s error to say in his haste, “All men are liars.” And when the Scripture says, “There is no faithfulness in them; men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie,” it must be taken with a qualification. Yet instances of inflexible integrity are not abundant. And we should not implicitly rely upon any one, especially in divine things. Let us respect great and good men, but not be enslaved by them; let us suffer no man to have dominion over our conscience, always searching the Scriptures to see whether these things are so in the word of truth; for God is entitled to our absolute confidence. “God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent: hath He said, and shall He not do it? or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good?” Let us trust Him as He deserves. Let us always place a ready and an unshaken reliance on His word. “Yea, let God be true, but every man a liar.”—W. Jay.

Romans 3:5. God’s justice not to be ignored.—Sinful men, in their eagerness to exculpate themselves, are given to think and say such a horrid thing as this: If a sinner’s sin cause God’s justice and truth to shine forth more clearly, God has no right to punish the man for that very action by which God Himself, so to speak, has profited. If the Eternal reap good out of my evil, then I deserve no longer blame, at His hands at all events, but rather thanks. This is the perverted logic of evil which is expressed twice over in these words of our text: If our unrighteousness commend (or, set forth in greater clearness) God’s righteousness, what shall we say? That God in inflicting vengeance upon us does an unjust thing? For example: If through a lie of mine the truth of God is made to appear more admirable, to His greater glory, why am I to be still judged as a sinner for it? Every pious heart must sympathise with the indignant rejection by the apostle of so hateful an inference as this. But the arguments by which he rebuts it are very instructive. They are two: neither of them speculative, nor professing to explain the deep mysteries of this tremendous subject—I mean of the relation of God to that sin which He permits and punishes; but both of them simply exposing the practical results which would follow from such a position. It would prove fatal, he argues, both to religion and to morality. In the first place, if God could not justly punish any sin which He is able to overrule for good, then there could be no judgment of the world at all. Obviously it would always be open to a transgressor to plead in bar of judgment that God’s justice was to be somehow made more conspicuous by that very sin; and if this made it unjust in God to punish, how is God to judge the world? Now the final judgment of God is of all religious truths the most fundamental and the most certain. Any doctrine accordingly which should thus paralyse the hand of the final Judge of men or drive Him from His judgment seat is by that very fact shown to be absurd and incredible. Secondly, this blasphemous inference is as fatal to morals as it is to faith. It cuts through the distinction betwixt good and evil. If an act is no longer to be called bad or to be punished out of which some good comes, then you may do any evil you like for the sake of a good result. Of course this is on the face of it to confound moral right and wrong, and by withdrawing all practical restraint on immorality to open a perfect flood-gate of evil. Any doctrine which sanctions such a conclusion is by that very fact, not absurd only, but atrocious. Yet this immoral maxim had actually been imputed to St. Paul by certain of his contemporaries. As he comes in sight of it he cannot restrain his impatient indignation at such a calumny, but breaks through the construction of his sentence to tell us that some actually charged him with teaching and (what was even worse) with practising the vile principle, Let us do evil that good may come. Who they were that said so, or what pretext for saying it they found in his teaching, we can only guess. But there is no question that the evangelical doctrine of a sinner’s gratuitous justification on the ground of Christ’s righteousness (which St. Paul is here preparing to prove) has often been assailed on this very charge—that it not only confers immunity upon sinners, but actually holds out to a man an inducement to continue in sin that thereby grace may abound at last to the greater glory of God. Such a charge rests indeed upon a misconception of the gospel, as appears further on in this epistle (Romans 6:1 ff.). It is flatly oppugnant to that consuming zeal for righteousness which blazes through every portion of this epistle, and especially through the section we have been examining. Whatever Paul taught, every reader feels that he was not a man to teach anything to weaken in the slightest the paramount claims of virtue, or the guilt and hatefulness of sin, or the majesty of God’s judgment, or the wholesome dread of men for a reckoning to come. On the contrary, his whole argument rests on a basis of natural justice. It assumes that God’s final judgment according to human actions is the surest of all things; that it must be impartial; that no religious privilege can lessen responsibility, but must increase it; that you cannot sophisticate sin into anything else than sin; and that God is always just in punishing every soul of man that doeth evil. You feel, therefore, that Paul is speaking out of the very heart of his faith, as well as out of the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, when he flings back with all his strength this hateful calumny, protests against the gospel, any more than the Hebrew law, being made a minister to sin, and declares that every man who ventures to do evil that good may come shall meet with a condemnation which shall be just. On the whole, then, the lesson of this section is to warn us against the insidious temptation, so near to the human heart, to break down the edge of God’s justice against sin, in the hope that somehow He will prove as placable in the last judgment as He is kind and patient now, or to fancy that, because He makes His own use of sin, He will not avenge it on the sinner very strictly—especially in the case of people who belong to the true religion. All this is most perilous. We who live in Christendom are the privileged class nowadays, as Jews were once. Our superiority over the heathen is enormous “in every way”; but it confers on us no immunity to sin. It makes our evil deeds not less evil, but more so, that we do them under cover of the Christian name. In our own righteousness, therefore, we dare as little meet God at last with any hope to escape His wrath as an unbaptised infidel dare. Practically we are shut up under sin—guilty before God, with no apology to plead in bar of judgment. Hope—if we have any hope—lies neither in our knowledge of the Bible, nor in our membership in the Church, nor in any fact about ourselves at all, but only in the grace of God through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Gratuitous justification through the righteousness of our Surety—to that we are shut up by the apostle’s logic. May God shut us all up to it by what is better than logic, the constraint of His convicting and regenerating Spirit!—Oswald Dykes, D.D.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 3:1

Importance of the third chapter of this epistle.—The third chapter of the Epistle to the Romans has, from a very early period of the Christian era, been a special study to Paul’s students. It has been regarded—and with great justice—as of very peculiar significance in relation to some of the most important doctrines of theology. As regards more particularly the vital doctrine of justification by faith, it is perhaps the principal locus classicus that is to be found in the Bible. At that part of the chapter in which we find the culminating point of the apostle’s exhibition of this great and favourite theme, Luther, in a marginal note attached to his German translation, arrests the attention of the reader, saying, “Take heed to what is here said. It is the central and most important passage of the epistle, and indeed of the entire Scripture.” Calvin coincided with Luther in opinion. “There is probably,” he remarks, “no passage in the whole Bible of greater significance as regards the justifying righteousness of God.” Corresponding opinions are expressed by multitudes of other theologians and critics whose judgments are entitled to consideration. It is hence the case that, if there be, in an exposition of the third chapter of the Epistle to the Romans anything approximating to a thorough investigation of the broader aspects as well as of the minuter elements of the apostle’s teaching, there will be the realisation of theological results of no inconsiderable magnitude and moment. The mind will most probably acquire a very definite conception of that “article of a standing or a falling Church,” justification by faith without works. Such other articles, too, as are inseparably connected with that doctrine—the articles which refer to man’s need of a gratuitous method of justification, and to God’s provision of propitiation as the ground or “meritorious cause” of gracious justification, will probably be apprehended, and to a certain extent even comprehended. In this third chapter of Romans the apostle portrays in a most elaborate manner man’s need of gratuitous justification. He likewise exhibits in some most weighty and far-reaching observations the necessity of propitiation, and its relation to justification. He says something, too, of very great significance regarding redemption and the pretermission, as well as the remission, of sins.—Morrison.

Paul confutes gainsayers.—To understand the full scope and design of this passage, we are to observe that of all the apostles of the Lord St. Paul asserts everywhere in the most copious manner the extensive mercy and compassion of God in entering into a covenant of grace with sinners, and fulfilling faithfully the promises of the gospel, notwithstanding the wickedness and infidelity of mankind, who were corrupted at the heart, and in their daily practice betrayed their impiety and want of faith; and yet so far was the sinner from vacating the evangelical promises, and making them of none effect, that his very sins contributed to God’s glory, and made His truth and grace still more illustrious; “for where sin abounded grace did much more abound.” From this doctrine of the apostle, not only the sophisters and impostors took occasion to defame and undermine the authority of St. Paul, but the hypocrites and libertines of the age made use of it to countenance and give them a security in their vices. And no wonder; for if the preaching of the apostle were true, that the sins of men redounded to the glory of God, the divine justice could not reasonably exert itself in the punishment of sinners; there could be no encouragement for virtue or religion—nay, men were obliged to sin more abundantly, that God might receive the more abundant glory; and it would be their duty on all occasions to do evil that good might come. Other aspersions that were thrown upon the apostle by his enemies he confutes by proper arguments. But this he thought unworthy of an answer; the only expostulates with indignation, and resents it as the vilest slander and as a degree of blasphemy.—Bishop Sanderson.

God educes good from evil.—David does not excuse his sin on the ground that in its pardon God’s mercy will be glorified, although he says that this will be the result; but he grieves over his sins, and declares that God will judge the world, and that the wicked shall be punished. God may and does exercise His wisdom and power and love in educing the greatest good from the worst evil; but this is the effect of His own incommunicable attributes, and not of man’s sins, which are not ordinabilia ad bonam finem. God never does evil in order to elicit good from it, nor does He permit any man to do evil in order that good may come. The intention with which a thing is done is indeed of very great importance; but whatever is sinful is not to be done on the plea of good intention.—St. Augustine.

God not an infinite Jesuit.—In some of the more dogmatic commentaries, as in Willet’s, for example, and in that of Pareus, the theological bearing of the jesuitical principle condemned by the apostle is discussed. Willet asks “whether God do not evil that good may come thereof in reprobating—viz., unconditionally—the vessels of wrath, to show His power.” Such is his question. It is pertinent. But he certainly fails to clear, in the light of his peculiar theology, the character of God. He says that the action referred to is not evil:

1. “Because it is God’s will, which is always just and holy.”
2. Because “that which tendeth to God’s glory cannot be evil.”
3. Because “that which is lawfully done cannot be evil.” “God,” he adds, “in rejecting some doth that which He may do by lawful right to dispose of His own as it pleaseth Him, as no man can reprove the potter in making some vessels of honour, some of dishonour, of the same piece of clay.”
4. “But,” continues he, “seeing in the end God’s rejecting and reprobating some—viz., such as by their sins deserved eternal death—appeareth to be most just, it must needs also be good; for that which is just is good.” In the last of these reasons the critic reverses his own theory of unconditional reprobation; and in the former three he only echoingly reiterates the idea that the jesuitical principle may be to God, though not to man, a legitimate and right glorious rule of conduct. Pareus, a short time before Willet, had trodden exactly the same round of apologetic thought; and thus, so far as we can judge, Feurborn is correct when he contends that the great theologian of Heidelberg has violated the apostle’s axiom. His whole reasoning seems simply to amount to this—that God is an infinite Jesuit.—Morrison.

All things will manifest God’s glory.—If the objections were well founded, it would entirely divest God of the character of judge of the world. The reason of this is manifest, for there is no sin that any man can commit which does not exalt some perfection of God in the way of contrast. If, then, it be concluded that because unrighteousness in man illustrates the righteousness of God, God is unrighteous when He taketh vengeance, it must be further said that there is no sin that God can justly punish; whence it follows that God cannot any longer be the judge of the world. The objection, then, is such that, were it admitted, all the religion in the world would at once be annihilated. For the sin of the world, for which men will be punished, will no doubt be made to manifest God’s glory. Such is the force of the apostle’s reply.—Haldane.

For the holiness of the divinity has blazed forth, as it were, into brighter conspicuousness on the dark ground of human guilt and human turpitude.—Chalmers.