Romans 3:26

The first words of this verse: during the forbearance of God, depend naturally on the word πάρεσις, tolerance: “the tolerance (shown) during the forbearance of God.” It is less simple to connect this clause with the participle προγεγονότων : “committed formerly during the forbearance of God.” For the principal idea in what precedes, that which needs most to be explained, is that of the tolerance, and not that expressed by this participle. Meyer gives to the preposition ἐν the meaning of by: “the tolerance exercised toward the sins that are passed by the forbearance of God.” But the following antithesis: at this time, imperatively requires the temporal meaning of the clause ἐν τῇ ἀνοχῇ.

At the first glance it seems strange that in a proposition of which God is the subject, the apostle should say, not: “during his forbearance,” but: “during the forbearance of God. ” The reason of this apparent incorrectness is not, as has been thought, the remoteness of the subject, nor the fact that Paul is now expressing himself as it were from his own point of view, and not from that of God (Mey.). Rather it is that which is finely given by Matthias: by the word God the apostle brings more into relief the contrast between men's conduct (their constant sins) and God's (His long-suffering).

We have seen that Romans 3:26 should begin with the words reproduced from Romans 3:25: for the demonstration of His justice. To what purpose this repetition? Had not the reason which rendered the demonstration of righteousness necessary been sufficiently explained in Romans 3:25 ? Why raise this point emphatically once more to explain it anew? This form is surprising, especially in a passage of such extraordinary conciseness. De Wette and Meyer content themselves with saying: Repetition of the εἰς ἔνδειξιν (for the demonstration), Romans 3:25. But again, why the change of preposition: in Romans 3:25, εἰς; here, πρός ? We get the answer: a matter of style (Mey.), or of euphony (Gess), wholly indifferent as to meaning. With a writer like Paul our readers, we hope, are convinced of this such answers are insufficient. Rückert and Hofmann, to avoid these difficulties, think that the words: for the demonstration...should not be made dependent, like the similar words of Romans 3:25, on the verb προέθετο, had established, but on the substantive forbearance: “during the time of His forbearance, a forbearance which had in view the manifestation of His justice at a later period.” De Wette replies, with reason, that were we to connect these words with so subordinate an idea, the reader's mind would be diverted from the essential thought of the entire passage. Besides, how can we fail to see in the πρὸς ἔνδειξιν (for the manifestation) of Romans 3:26 the resumption of the similar expression, Romans 3:25 ? The fact of this repetition is not, as it seems to us, so difficult to explain. The moral necessity of such a manifestation had been demonstrated by the tolerance of God in the past; for it had thrown a veil over the righteousness of God. But the explanation was not complete. The object to be gained in the future by this demonstration must also be indicated. And this is the end served by the repetition of this same expression in Romans 3:26: “for the demonstration, I say, in view of ”...Thus at the same time is explained the change of preposition. In Romans 3:25 the demonstration itself was regarded as an end: “whom he set forth beforehand as a propitiation for the demonstration (εἰς, with a view to)”...But in Romans 3:26 this same demonstration becomes a means, with a view to a new and more remote end: “ for the demonstration of His justice, that He might be (literally, with a view to being) just, and the justifier”...The demonstration is always the end, no doubt, but now it is only the near and immediate object such is exactly the meaning of the Greek preposition πρός, which is substituted for the εἰς of Romans 3:25 -compared with a more distant and final end which opens up to view, and for which the apostle now reserves the εἰς (with a view to): “ with a view to being just, and the justifier.” Comp. on the relation of these two prepositions, Ephesians 4:12: “ for (πρός) the perfecting of the saints with a view to a (εἰς) work of ministry.” Here we may have a convincing proof that nothing is accidental in the style of a man like Paul. Never did jeweller chisel his diamonds more carefully than the apostle does the expression of his thoughts. This delicate care of the slightest shades is also shown in the addition of the article τήν before ἔνδειξιν in Romans 3:26, an addition sufficiently attested by the four Alex. Mjj., and by a Mj. from each of the other two families (D P). In Romans 3:25 the notion of demonstration was yet abstract: “ in demonstration of righteousness.” In Romans 3:26 it is now known; it is a concrete fact which should conspire to a new end; hence the addition of the article: “for that manifestation of which I speak, with a view to”...The following words: at this time, express one of the gravest thoughts of the passage. They bring out the full solemnity of the present epoch marked by this unexampled appearance, preordained and in a sense awaited by God Himself for so long. For without this prevision the long forbearance of the forty previous centuries would have been morally impossible; comp. Acts 17:30 (in regard to the Gentiles), and Hebrews 9:26: “But now once in the end of the ages hath He appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (in regard to Israel).

And what was the end with a view to which this demonstration of righteousness was required at this time? The apostle answers: that he might be just and justifying that is to say, “that while being and remaining just, God might justify. It was a great problem, a problem worthy of divine wisdom, which the sin of man set before God to remain just while justifying (declaring just) man who had become unjust. God did not shrink from the task. He had even solved the difficulty beforehand in His eternal counsel, before creating man free; otherwise, would not this creation have merited the charge of imprudence? God had beside Him, in Christ (προέθετο, Romans 3:25; comp. Ephesians 1:3-4), the means of being at once just and justifying that is to say, just while justifying, and justifying while remaining just.

The words: that He might be just, are usually understood in the logical sense: “that He might be known to be just.” Gess rightly objects to this attenuation of the word be. The second predicate: and justifying, does not suit this idea of being known. If God did not once show Himself perfectly just, would He be so in reality? Gess rightly says: “A judge who hates evil, but does not judge it, is not just: if the righteousness of God did not show itself, it would not exist.” In not smiting those sinners at once with the thunderbolt of His vengeance, those who had lived during the time of forbearance, God had not shown Himself just; and if He had continued to act thus indefinitely, mankind and the entire moral universe would have had good right to conclude that He was not just. It is obvious that the words: that He might be just, do not, strictly speaking, express a new idea: they reproduce in a different form the reason for the demonstration of righteousness already given in Romans 3:25 in the words: “because of the tolerance exercised toward sins done aforetime.” If this tolerance had not at length issued in a manifestation of justice, justice itself would have been annihilated. The thought is nevertheless of supreme importance here, at the close of this exposition. Men must not imagine, as they might easily do, especially with pardon before them, that the justice of God is somehow completely absorbed in His grace through the act of justifying. There is in the firm and immovable will of God to maintain right and order in the universe

His justice, that is to say the principle of the justification of believers no doubt, but not less certainly that of the judgment of the impenitent. Now, if God did not show Himself just at the moment when He justifies the unjust, there would be in such a pardon what would plunge sinners into the most dangerous illusion. They could no longer seriously suppose that they were on their way to give in an account; and judgment would burst on them as a terrible surprise. This is what God could not desire, and hence He has exercised the divine privilege of pardon only through means of a striking and solemn manifestation of His justice. He would really have given up His justice if, in this supreme moment of His manifestation, He had not displayed it brightly on the earth.

After having secured His righteousness, He is able to justify the unjust; for He has, in Christ, the means of justifying him justly. We have seen that the cross re-establishes order by putting each in his place, the holy God on His throne, rebellious man in the dust. So long as this homage, making reparation for the past, remains without us, it does not save us; but as soon as we make it ourselves by faith in Jesus, it avails for us, and God can justly absolve us. This is what is expressed by the last words, to which the passage pointed from the first: and justifying him who is of the faith in Jesus. By adhering to this manifestation of divine righteousness accomplished in Jesus, the believer makes it morally his own. He renders homage personally to the right which God has over him. He sees in his own person the malefactor worthy of death, who should have undergone and accepted what Jesus underwent and accepted. He exclaims, like that Bechuana in his simple savage language: Away from that, Christ; that's my place! Sin is thus judged in his conscience, as it was in that of the dying Jesus that is to say, as it is by the holiness of God himself, and as it never could have been by the ever imperfect repentance of a sinner. By appropriating to himself the homage rendered to the majesty of God by the Crucified One, the believer is himself crucified as it were in the eyes of God; moral order is re-established, and judgment can take end by an act of absolution. As to the impenitent sinner, who refuses to the divine majesty the homage contained in the act of faith, the demonstration of righteousness given on the cross remains as the proof that he will certainly meet with this divine attribute in the judgment.

The phrase: to be of the faith, has nothing surprising in Paul's style; comp. the εἶναι ἐκ, Romans 2:8; Galatians 3:7; Galatians 3:10, etc. It forcibly expresses the new mode of being which becomes the believer's as soon as he ceases to draw his righteousness from himself and derives it wholly from Jesus.

Three Mjj. read the accusative ᾿Ιησοῦν, which would lead to the impossible sense: “and the justifier of Jesus by faith.” This error probably arises from the abridged form IY in the ancient Mjj., which might easily be read IN. Two MSS. (F G) wholly reject this name (see Meyer). The phrase: “him who is of the faith,” without any indication of the object of faith, would not be impossible. This reading has been accepted by Oltramare. But two MSS. of the ninth century do not suffice to justify it. Nothing could better close this piece than the name of the historical personage to whose unspeakable love mankind owes this eternal blessing.

The Expiation.

We have endeavored to reproduce exactly the meaning of the expressions used by the apostle in this important passage, and to rise to the sum of the ideas which it contains. In what does the apostolical conception, as we have understood it, differ from the current theories on this fundamental subject?

If we compare it first with the doctrine generally received in the church, the point on which the difference seems to us to bear is this: in the ecclesiastical theory God demands the punishment of Christ as a satisfaction to Himself, in so far as His justice ought to have an equivalent for the penalty merited by man, to permit divine love to pardon. From the point of view to which the exposition of the apostle brings us, this equivalent is not intended to satisfy divine justice except by manifesting it, and in re-establishing the normal relation between God and the guilty creature. By sin, in short, God loses His supreme place in the conscience of the creature; by this demonstration of justice He recovers it. In consequence of sin, the creature no longer comprehends and feels the gravity of his rebellion; by this manifestation God makes it palpable to him. On this view it is not necessary that the sacrifice of reparation should be the equivalent of the penalty incurred by the multitude of sinful men, viewed as the sum of the merited sufferings; it is enough that it be so as regards the physical and moral character of the sufferings due to sin in itself.

The defenders of the received theory will no doubt ask if, on this view, the expiation is not pointed simply to the conscience of the creature, instead of being also a reparation offered to God Himself. But if it is true that a holy God cannot pardon, except in so far as the pardon itself establishes the absolute guilt of sin and the inviolability of the divine majesty, and so includes a guarantee for the re-establishment of order in the relation between the sinner and God, and if this condition is found only in the punishment of sin holily undertaken and humbly accepted by Him who alone was able to do so, is not the necessity of expiation in relation to the absolute Good, to God Himself, demonstrated? His holiness would protest against every pardon which did not fulfil the double condition of glorifying His outraged majesty and displaying the condemnation of sin. Now, this double end is gained only by the expiatory sacrifice. But the necessity of this sacrifice arises from His whole divine character, in other words, from his holiness, the principle at once of His love and justice, and not exclusively of His justice. And, in truth, the apostle nowhere expresses the idea of a conflict between justice and love as requiring the expiation. It is grace that saves, and it saves by the demonstration of justice which, in the act of expiation, restores God to His place and man to his. Such is the condition on which divine love can pardon without entailing on the sinner the final degradation of his conscience and the eternal consolidation of his sin.

This view also evades the grand objection which is so generally raised in our day against a satisfaction made to justice by means of the substitution of the innocent for the guilty. No doubt the ordinary theory of expiation may be defended by asking who would be entitled to complain of such a transaction: not God who establishes it, nor the Mediator who voluntarily sacrifices Himself, nor man whose salvation is affected by it. But, in any case, this objection does not apply to the apostolic conception as we have expounded it. For whenever the question ceases to be one of legal satisfaction, and becomes a simple demonstration of God's right, no ground remains for protesting in the name of justice. Who could accuse God of injustice for having made use of Job and his sufferings to prove to Satan that he can obtain from the children of the dust a disinterested homage, a free submission, which is not that of the mercenary? Similarly, who can arraign the divine justice for having given to sinful man, in the person of Jesus, a convincing demonstration of the judgment which the guilty one deserved at his hand? Deserved, did I say? of the judgment which will visit him without fail if he refuses to join by faith in that homage solemnly rendered to God's rights, and rejects the reconciliation which God offers him in this form.

It seems to us, then, that the true apostolical conception, while firmly establishing the fact of expiation, which is, historically speaking as no one can deny the distinctive feature of Christianity, secures it from the grave objections which in these days have led so many to look on this fundamental dogma with suspicion.

But some would perhaps say: Such a view rests, as much as the so-called orthodox theory, on notions of right and justice, which belong to a lower sphere, to the legal and juridical domain. A noble and generous man will not seek to explain his conduct by reasons taken from so external an order; how much less should we have recourse to them to explain that of God?

Those who speak thus do not sufficiently reflect that we have to do in this question not with God in His essence, but with God in His relation to free man. Now, the latter is not holy to begin with; the use which he makes of his liberty is not yet regulated by love. The attribute of justice (the firm resolution to maintain order, whose existence is latent in the divine holiness) must therefore appear as a necessary safeguard as soon as liberty comes on the stage, and with it the possibility of disorder; and this attribute must remain in exercise as long as the educational period of the life of the creature lasts, that is to say, until he has reached perfection in love. Then all those factors, right, law, justice, will return to their latent state. But till then, God, as the guardian of the normal relations between free beings, must keep by law and check by punishment every being disposed to trample on His authority, or on the liberty of His fellows. Thus it is that the work of righteousness necessarily belongs to God's educating and redeeming work, without which the world of free beings would soon be no better than a chaos, from which goodness, the end of creation, would be forever banished. Blot out this factor from the government of the world, and the free being becomes Titan, no longer arrested by anything in the execution of any caprice. God's place is overthrown, and the creatures destroy one another mutually. It is common to regard love as the fundamental feature of the divine character; and in this way it is very difficult to reach the attribute of justice. Most thinkers, indeed, do not reach it at all. This one fact should serve to show the error in which they are entangled. Holy, holy, holy, say the creatures nearest to God, when celebrating His perfection (Isaiah 6), and not good, good, good. Holiness, such is the essence of God; and holiness is the absolute love of the good, the absolute horror of evil. Hence it is not difficult to deduce both love and justice. Love is the goodwill of God toward all free beings who are destined to realize the good. Love goes out to the individuals, as holiness to the good itself which they ought to produce. Justice, on the other hand, is the firm purpose of God to maintain the normal relation between all these beings by his blessings and punishments. It is obvious that justice is included no less necessarily than love itself in the fundamental feature of the divine character, holiness. It is no offence therefore to God to speak of His justice and His rights. The exercise of a right is only a shame when the being who exercises it makes it subservient to the gratification of his egoism. It is, on the contrary, a glory to one who, like God, knows that in preserving His place He is securing the good of all others. For, as Gess admirably expounds it, God, in maintaining His supreme dignity, preserves to the creatures their most precious treasure, a God worthy of their respect and love.

Unjustifiable antipathy to the notions of right and justice, as applied to God, has led contemporary thought to very divergent and insufficient explanations of the death of Christ.

Some see nothing more in this event than an inevitable historical result of the conflict between the holiness of Jesus and the immoral character of his contemporaries. This solution is well answered by Hausrath himself: “Our faith gives to the question: Why did Christ require to die on the cross? another answer than that drawn from the history of His time. For the history of the ideal cannot be an isolated and particular fact; its contents are absolute; it has an eternal value which does not belong to a given moment, but to the whole of mankind. Every man should recognize in such a history a mystery of grace consummated also for him ” (Neutest. Zeitgesch. 1:450).

Wherein consists this mystery of grace contained in the Crucified One for every man? In the fact, answer many, that here we find the manifestation of divine love to mankind. “The ray of love,” says Pfleiderer, “such is the true saviour of mankind....And as to Jesus, He is the sun, the focus in whom all the rays of this light scattered elsewhere are concentrated” (Wissensch. Vorträge über religiöse Fragen). On this view, Jesus sacrificed himself only to attest by this act of devotion the full greatness of divine love. But what, then, is a devotion which has no other object than to witness to itself? An exhibition of love, which might be compared to that of the woman who committed suicide, a few years ago, to awake, as she said, the dormant genius of her husband by this token of her love. Besides, how could the sacrifice of his life made by a man for his fellow-men demonstrate the love of God? We may, indeed, see in it the attestation of brotherly love in its most eminent degree, but we do not find the love of the Father.

Others, finally, regard the death of Christ only as the culminating point of His consecration to God and men, of His holiness. “These texts,” says Sabatier, after quoting Romans 6 and 2 Corinthians 5, “place the value of the death of Jesus not in any satisfaction whatever offered to God, but in the annihilation of sin, which this death brings about” (L'ap. Paul, p. 202). To the same effect M. de Pressensé expresses himself thus: “This generous suffering, which Jesus voluntarily accepts, is an act of love and obedience; and hence its restoring and redeeming character....In the name of humanity Christ reverses the rebellion of Eden; He brings back the heart of man to God....In the person of a holy victim, humanity returns to the God who waited for it from the first days of the world” (Vie de Jésus, pp. 642 and 643). Most modern theories (Hofmann, Ritschl), if we mistake not, are substantially the same, to wit, the spiritual resurrection of humanity through Christ. By the holiness he so painfully realized, and of which His bloody death was the crown, Jesus has given birth to a humanity which breaks with sin, and gives itself to God; and God, foreseeing this future holiness of believers, and regarding it as already realized, pardons their sins from love of this expected perfection. But is this the apostle's view? He speaks of a demonstration of justice, and not only of holiness. Then he ascribes to death, to blood, a peculiar and independent value. So he certainly does in our passage, but more expressly still in the words, Romans 5:10: “If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled (justified, Romans 3:9) by His death (His blood, Romans 3:9), much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life (through him, Romans 3:9).” It is by His death, accordingly, that Jesus reconciles or justifies, as it is by his life that he sanctifies and perfects salvation. Finally, the serious practical difficulty in the way of this theory lies, as we think, in the fact that, like the Catholic doctrine, it makes justification rest on sanctification (present or future), while the characteristic of gospel doctrine, what, to use Paul's language, may be called its folly, but what is in reality its divine wisdom, is its founding justification on the atonement perfected by Christ's blood, to raise afterward on this basis the work of sanctification by the Holy Spirit.