Romans 4:15-16

“ For the law worketh wrath: and, indeed, where no law is, there is no transgression. Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but also to that which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all;

Faith deprived of its object, the promise made void for those who are under the law, why all this? Simply because the law, when not fulfilled, brings on man God's disapprobation, wrath, which renders it impossible on His part to fulfil the promise. This passage, like so many others already quoted, is incompatible with the idea which Ritschl forms of divine wrath. This critic, as we know (see on Romans 1:18), applies the term wrath, in the Old Testament only, to the sudden punishment with death of exceptional malefactors, who by their crime compromised the existence of the covenant itself. But in these words the apostle evidently starts from the idea that whatever is under the law is ipso facto the object of wrath, which applies to the entire people, and not to a few individuals only. Melanchthon applied the term wrath in this verse to the irritation felt by condemned man against the judgment of God. He forgot that the loss of the divine inheritance results to the sinner, not from his own wrath, but from that of the judge.

The article ὁ, the, before the word law, proves that the subject here is the law properly so called, the Mosaic law.

It would be improper to translate: “for it is the law which produces wrath,” as if wrath could not exist beyond the jurisdiction of the law. Chap. 1 proves the contrary. But the law produces it inevitably where it has been given. The preponderance of egoism in the human heart once granted, the barrier of the law is certain to be overpassed, and transgression is sure to make wrath burst forth.

T. R., with the Byzs., the Greco-Latins, and the oldest versions, connects the second part of this verse with the first by γάρ, for. This reading appears at the first glance easier than that of the Alex.: δέ (now, or but). But this very circumstance is not in its favor. The three γάρ, which have preceded, may have also led the copyists to write the same particle again. The context, carefully consulted, demands a δέ rather than a γάρ. For what says the second member? That without a law transgression is not possible. Now this idea does not logically prove that the law necessarily produces wrath. This second proposition of Romans 4:15 is not therefore a proof, but a simple observation in support of the first; and this connection is exactly marked by the δέ, which is the particle here not of opposition (but), but of gradation (now), and which may be rendered by and indeed. This second proposition is therefore a sort of parenthesis intended to strengthen the bearing of the fact indicated in the first (15a): “In general, a law cannot be the means fitted to gain for us the favor of God; on the contrary, the manifestations of sin, of the evil nature, acquire a much graver character through the law, that of transgression, of positive, deliberate violation of the divine will, and so increase wrath.” Παράβασις, transgression, from παραβαίνειν, to overpass. A barrier cannot be crossed except in so far as it exists. So without law there is no sin in the form of transgression.

The article ὁ is wanting here before νόμος, law. And rightly so; for this saying is a general maxim which does not apply specially to the Jews and the Jewish law (as 15a). The Gentiles have also a law (Romans 2:14-15), which they can observe or violate. In the latter case, they become objects of wrath (chap. 1) as well as the Jews, though in a less degree.