Romans 3:7,8

“ For if the truth of God hath abounded through my lie unto His glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner? And not, Let us do evil as we are accused of doing, and as some falsely pretend that we teach that good may come? whose condemnation is just. ”

Many commentators (Calvin, Grotius, Philippi) have fallen into a strange error in regard to Romans 3:7. They imagine that this verse reproduces once more the objection of Romans 3:5. The for serves, they say, to justify the question: “Is not God unrighteous?” In reality the apostle is made to add: after the advantage which He has derived from my lie for His glory, how does He still judge me? But for what reason should the for relate to Romans 3:5 rather than Romans 3:6, which immediately precedes? This would be to forget the answer given in Romans 3:6, and so to confess its weakness! In this case we should require rather to adopt the reading εἰ δέ, but if, of the Sinaït. and Vatic., and to make Romans 3:7 an objection to the answer given in Romans 3:6. But this reading is inadmissible, because this new objection raised would remain without answer in the sequel. This same reason tells also against the explanation which makes Romans 3:7 a simple reaffirmation of the objection of Romans 3:5. How could an objection, reproduced so forcibly, possibly be left without any other answer than the relegating of those who dare to raise it to the judgment of God (Romans 3:8)? For a mind like Paul's this would be a strange mode of arguing! Romans 3:7 is simply, as the for indicates, the confirmation of the answer given in Romans 3:6: “How would God judge the world? In reality (for) every sinner might come before the judge and say to Him, on his own behalf: And I too by my lie, I have contributed to Thy glory. And he must be acquitted.”

By the phrase truth of God Paul returns to the beginning of the discussion (Romans 3:3-4). What is in question is the moral uprightness of God; in like manner the term lie brings us back to the every man a liar (Romans 3:4). This lie consists in voluntary ignorance of goodness, to escape the obligation of doing it. The verb ἐπερίσσευσεν, has abounded, strictly: flowed over, denotes the surplus of glory which God's moral perfection extracts from human wickedness in each case. ῎Ετι, yet, signifies: even after so profitable a result has accrued from my sins. Κἀγώ, I also: “I who, as well as all the rest, have contributed to Thy glory.” It is as if one saw the whole multitude of sinners appearing before the judgment-seat one after the other, and throwing this identical answer in God's face; the judgment is therefore brought to nothing. Thus is confirmed the answer of Romans 3:6 to the objection of Romans 3:5.

This so suitable meaning appears to us preferable to a more special sense which might present itself to the mind, especially if one were tempted to apply the term the world (Romans 3:6) to the Gentile, in opposition to the Jewish world (Romans 3:5). The sense would be: “For the judgment comes to nought for me Gentile, as well as for thee Jew, since I can plead the same excuse as thou, my Gentilehood contributing to glorify God's truth as much as thy unbelief to exalt His righteousness.” For the application to the Gentiles of the two expressions: God's truth, and lie, see Romans 1:25. But to make this meaning probable, Paul would require to have brought out in chap. 1 the idea that idolatry had contributed to God's glory; and as to the restricted meaning of τὸν κόσμον, the world, see at p. 137.

The apostle pushes his refutation to the utmost (Romans 3:8): Why even not go further? Why, after annihilating the judgment, not say further, to be thoroughly consequent: “And even let us furnish God, by sinning more freely, with richer opportunities of doing good! Will not every sin be a material which He will transform into the pure gold of His glory?” The words καὶ μή, and not, should properly be followed by the verb: let us do evil? ποιήσωμεν τὰ κακά, as we have translated it. But in Greek the sentence is interrupted by the insertion of a parenthesis, intended to remind the reader that such is precisely the odious principle which Paul and his brethren are accused by their calumniators of practising and teaching. And when, after this parenthesis, he returns in Romans 3:8 to his principal idea: ποιήσωμεν, let us do, instead of connecting it with the conjunction, and (that) not, he makes it depend directly on the last verb of the parenthesis, teach: “As we are accused of teaching, let us do evil. ” The ὁτι, that, is the ὁτι recitative so common in Greek (transition from the indirect to the direct form of discourse). The construction which we have just indicated is a form of anacolouthon, of which numerous examples are found in classic authors.

The verb we are accused has for its object the understood clause: of doing so, of practising this principle. If we understood: “Accused of teaching,” the following words would be a mere superfluous repetition. The term βλασφημεῖσθαι seems deliberately chosen to suggest the idea that the principle calumniously imputed to him is itself blasphemous in its nature. The second part of the parenthesis adds the idea of professing (λάλειν) to that of practising. The words form a climax, for it is graver to lay down a blasphemous maxim as a principle than to put it into practice in a few isolated cases. Hofmann has proposed another construction; he understands ἐστιν after καὶ μή, and makes the following καθώς dependent on it: “And it is not the case with me, as we are accused of practising and teaching, that it only remains to do evil that”...But it is harsh to make the καθώς depend on ἐστί; and Meyer rightly observes that Paul would have required to say καὶ οὐ, and not καὶ μή; comp. the interrogations, 1 Corinthians 6:7; Luke 19:23, etc.

The sort of malediction which closes the verse is applied by most commentators to those who really practise and teach the maxim which is falsely applied to Paul. But the apostle would not have confined himself in that case to the use of the simple relative pronoun ὧν, whose; he would necessarily have required to indicate, and even characterize, the antecedent of the pronoun, which cannot refer to any substantive expressed or understood in the preceding proposition. It must have for its antecedent the preceding τινές, some, and we must apply this severe denunciation to the calumniators of the apostle's life and teaching. Those who raise such accusations wrongly and maliciously against his person and doctrine themselves deserve the condemnation which they call down on the head of Paul. But it should be well observed that the apostle does not express himself thus till he has satisfied all the demands of logical discussion.

Observations on the passage, Romans 3:1-8.

Notwithstanding its temporary application to the Jewish people, this passage, which will find its complete explanation in chap. 11, has a real permanent value. It has always been sought to justify the greatest crimes in history by representing the advantages in which they have resulted to the cause of humanity. There is not a Robespierre who has not been transformed into a saint in the name of utilitarianism. But to make such a canonization valid, one would require to begin by proving that the useful result sprang from the evil committed as its principle. Such is the teaching of Pantheism. Living Theism, on the contrary, teaches that this transformation of the bad deed into a means of progress, is the miracle of God's wisdom and power continually laying hold of human sin to derive from it a result contrary to its nature. On the first view, all human responsibility is at an end, and the judgment becomes a nullity. On the second, man remains fully responsible to God for the bad deed as an expression of the evil will of its author, and despite the good which God is pleased to extract from it. Such is scriptural optimism, which alone reconciles man's moral responsibility with the doctrine of providential progress. The apostle has laid the foundations of this true theodicée in the remarkable piece which we have just been studying.

It is curious to see how Holsten seeks to explain this passage, the meaning of which has, as we think, been made so clear, by a polemical intention against the alleged Jewish-Christianity of the Christians of Rome. We do not waste time in giving a refutation which seems to us to arise of itself from the preceding.

The apostle has drawn in two great pictures the reign of God's wrath (1) over the Gentile world (chap. 1); (2) over the Jewish people (chap. 2); and by way of appendix he has added a passage to this second picture, intended to sweep away the objections which, from the ordinary Jewish point of view, seemed opposed to the statement that this elect people could possibly become, notwithstanding their unbelief, the object of divine animadversion. Now, to the judgment which follows from the preceding context with respect to the whole of mankind, he affixes the seal of Scripture sanction, without which he regards no proof as finally valid.