Romans 3:7

f. These verses are extremely difficult, and are interpreted variously according to the force assigned to the τί ἔτι κἀγὼ of Romans 3:7. Who or what supplies the contrast to this emphatic “I also”? Some commentators, Gifford, for instance, find it in God, and God's interest in the judgment. If my lie sets in relief the truth of God, and so magnifies His glory, is not that enough? Why, after God has had this satisfaction from my sin, “why further am I also on my side brought to judgment as a sinner?” It is a serious, if not a final objection to this, that it merely repeats the argument of Romans 3:5, which the Apostle has already refuted. Its very generality, too for any man, as Gifford himself says, may thus protest against being judged, lessens its relevance: for Paul is discussing not human evasions of God's judgment, but Jewish objections to his previous arguments. Lipsius finds the contrast to κἀγὼ in the Gentile world. A Jew is the speaker, or at all events the Apostle speaks in the character of one: “if my unbelief does magnify His faithfulness, is not that all that is required? Why am I, too, like the rest of the world, whose relation to God is so different, and whose judgment is so necessary, still brought into judgment?” This would be legitimate enough, probably, if it were not for what follows. But the slander of Romans 3:8, which forms part of the same question as τί ἔτι κἀγὼ κ. τ. λ., and to which reference is made again in chap. Romans 6:1; Romans 6:15, had not the Jews, but the Apostle in his Christian character, for its object; hence it seems preferable to take the κἀγὼ as referring strictly to himself. That Paul would come into judgment, in spite of the fact that his faithlessness in becoming a Christian had only set off the faithfulness of God to Israel, no unbelieving Jew questioned: and Paul turns this conviction of theirs (with which, of course, he agrees, so far as it asserts that he will be judged) against themselves. If he, for his part, cannot evade judgment, on the ground that his sin (as they think it) has been a foil to God's righteousness, no more can they on their part: they and he are in one position, and must be judged together: to condemn him is to expose themselves to condemnation; that is his point. The argument of Romans 3:7 is both an argumentum ad hominem and an argumentum ad rem: Paul borrows from his opponents the premises that he himself is to be judged as a sinner, and that his lie has set off God's truth: there is enough in these premises to serve his purpose, which is to show that these two propositions which do not exclude each other in his case do not do so in their case either. But, of course, he would interpret the second in a very different way from them. The question is continued in Romans 3:8, though the construction is changed by the introduction of the parentheses with καθὼς and the attachment to λέγειν ὅτι of the clause which would naturally have gone with τί μή; If judgment could be evaded by sinning to the glory of God, so Paul argues, he and other Christians like him might naturally act on the principle which slander imputed to them that of doing evil that good might come. No doubt the slander was of Jewish origin. The doctrine that righteousness is a gift of God, not to be won by works of law, but by faith in Jesus Christ, can always be misrepresented as immoral: “sin the more, it will only the more magnify grace” Paul does not stoop to discuss it. The judgment that comes on those who by such perversions of reason and conscience seek to evade all judgment is just. This is all he has to say.