Romans 4:23-25

Conclusion of the argument. Οὐκ ἐγράφη δὲ διʼ αὐτὸν μόνον : cf. Romans 14:4 1 Corinthians 9:10; 1 Corinthians 10:6; 1 Corinthians 10:11; Galatians 3:8. The formula for quoting Scripture is not ἐγράφη but γέγραπται : i.e., Scripture conveys not a historical truth, relating to one person (as here, to Abraham), but a present eternal truth, with some universal application. διʼ ἡμᾶς : to show the mode of our justification. οἷς μέλλει λογίζεσθαι : to whom it (the act of believing) is to be imputed as righteousness. μέλλει conveys the idea of a Divine order under which things proceed so. τοῖς πιστεύουσιν is in apposition to οἷς : “believing as we do”. (Weiss.) The object of the Christian's faith is the same as that of Abraham's, God that giveth life to the dead. Only in this case it is Specifically God as He who raised Jesus our Lord. Cf. 1 Peter 1:21, where Christians are described as those who through Christ believe in God who raised Him from the dead. In Abraham's case, “God that quickeneth the dead” is merely a synonym for God Omnipotent, who can do what man cannot. In Paul, on the other hand, while omnipotence is included in the description of God for in Ephesians 1:19, in order to give an idea of the greatest conceivable power, the Apostle can do no more than say that it is according to that working of the strength of God's might which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead omnipotence is not sole object of the Christian's faith. His spiritual attitude toward God is the same as Abraham's, but God is revealed to him, and offered to his faith, in a character in which Abraham did not yet know Him. This is conveyed in the description of the Person in relation to whom the Omnipotence of God has been displayed to Christians. That Person is “Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our offences, and raised for our justification”. The Resurrection of Jesus our Lord entitles us to conceive of God's Omnipotence not as mere unqualified power, but as power no less than infinite engaged in the work of man's salvation from sin. In the Resurrection of Jesus, omnipotence is exhibited as redeeming power: and in this omnipotence we, like Abraham, believe. παρεδόθη is used in LXX, Isaiah 53:12, and its N.T. use, whether God or Christ be the subject of the παραδιδόναι (Romans 8:32 : Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 5:2), may be derived thence. There is considerable difficulty with the parallel clauses διὰ τὰ παραπτώματα ἡμῶν, and διὰ τὴν δικαίωσιν ἡμῶν. It is safe to assert that Paul did not make an abstract separation between Christ's Death and His Resurrection, as if the Death and the Resurrection either had different motives, or served ends separable from each other. There is a sort of mannerism in the expression here, as there is in Romans 14:9, which puts us on our guard against over-precision. This granted, it seems simplest and best to adopt such an interpretation as maintains the same meaning for διὰ in both clauses. This has been done in two ways. (1) The διὰ has been taken retrospectively. “He was delivered up because we had sinned, and raised because we were justified” sc. by His death. But though Paul writes in Romans 5:9, δικαιωθέντες νῦν ἐν τῷ αἵματι αὐτοῦ, it is impossible to believe that he would have written as this interpretation requires him to do that we were justified by Christ's death, and that Christ was therefore raised from the dead by God. Justification is not only an act of God, but a spiritual experience; it is dependent upon faith (Romans 3:25); and it is realised in men as one by one, in the time determined by Providence, they receive the Gospel. Hence διὰ τὴν δικαίωσιν ἡμῶν at least must be prospective. (2) The διὰ has been taken in both clauses prospectively. “He was delivered up on account of our offences to make atonement for them; and he was raised on account of our justification that it might become an accomplished fact.” That this interpretation is legitimate, so far as the language goes, cannot be questioned; and if we avoid unreal separations between things that really form one whole, it is thoroughly Pauline. Paul does ascribe expiatory value to the death or the blood of Christ; in that sense it is true the work of Christ was finished on the Cross. But Paul never A thought of that by itself; he knew Christ, only as the Risen One who had died, and, who had the virtue of His atoning death ever in Him; this Christ was One, in all that He did and suffered the Christ who had evoked in him the faith by which he was justified, the only Christ through faith in whom sinful men ever could be justified; and it is natural, therefore, that he should conceive Him as raised with a view to our justification. But it would have been equally legitimate to say that He died for our justification. It is only another way of expressing what every Christian understands that we believe in a living Saviour, and that it is faith in Him which justifies. But then it is faith in Him as One who not only lives, but was delivered up to death to atone for our offences. He both died and was raised for our justification; the work is one and its end is one. And it is a mistake to argue, as Beyschlag does (Neutest. Theologie, ii., 164), that this reference of faith to the Risen Christ who died is inconsistent with the vicarious nature of His expiatory sufferings. That His sufferings had this character is established on independent grounds; and to believe in the Risen Christ is to believe in One in whom the power of that propitiatory vicarious suffering abides for ever. It is indeed solely because the virtue of that suffering is in Him that faith in the Risen Lord does justify. For an exposition of the passage, in which the retrospective force is given to διὰ, see Candlish in Expositor, Dec., 1893. See also Bruce, St. Paul's Conception of Christianity, p. 160 ff. The identity in principle of Abrahamic and Christian faith is seen in this, that both are faith in God. But Abraham's is faith in a Divine promise, which only omnipotence could make good; the Christian's is faith in the character of God as revealed in the work of redemption wrought by Christ. That, too, however, involves omnipotence. It was the greatest display of power ever made to man when God raised Christ from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places; and the Christ so raised was one who had been delivered to death for our offences. That is only another way of saying that the ultimate power in the world the omnipotence of God is in the service of a love which provides at infinite cost for the expiation of sin. The only right attitude for any human being in presence of this power is utter self-renunciation, utter abandonment of self to God. This is faith, and it is this which is imputed to men in all ages and under all dispensations for righteousness.