What advantage then hath the Jew?...chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. Romans 3:1-2 Moral advantage W. Griffiths. I. THERE IS MUCH ADVANTAGE TO THOSE FAVOURED WITH CLEARER LIGHT AND HIGHER PRIVILEGE, IN EVERY RESPECT. They have the advantage — 1. Of feeling that God cares for them. The heathen had, some of them, lost the knowledge of God altogether, and others were only dimly conscious of His goodness. 2. Of a superior temporal condition. They are delivered from the miseries inflicted by cruel superstitions, are able to cheek the progress of debasing immoralities, and to promote freedom, comfort, peace, and brotherhood. 3. Of better opportunity of performing what their better position demands. The man who possessed five talents had the advantage over his fellow. He had a better command of the market, and could stand a greater shock of adverse circumstances. They would help each other to grow; for five united are more than five times as strong as one, and more than two-and-a-half times as strong as two. An Israelite or a Christian may walk uprightly in his noonday light more easily than a heathen may walk at all in his dim twilight. 4. Of attaining, if faithful, an absolutely higher reward. As two statesmen of equal desert, and equally in favour, take higher and lower positions on account of their different capacities, so those who receive equally the King's commendation, "Well done, good and faithful servant," shall yet differ, as one star differeth from another, in glory. II. THE GREATEST ADVANTAGE IS TO HAVE THE ORACLES OF GOD. 1. The knowledge they impart is a blessing. As day is more blessed than night; as freedom for thought is better than the fetters of ignorance, so the possession of these oracles is unspeakably better than deprivation of them. 2. It is a blessing to have assured Divine communication. As the spirit of a plebeian is lifted by a word or a look from his king; as the heart of an absent child is gladdened by the outside of his father's letter, so is man blessed by the fact that God has spoken to him. 3. It is an advantage to be thus taken into peculiar covenant relationship to God. Every precept of these oracles is a condition of some blessedness which God pledges Himself to bestow; and every promise contains God's oath of faithfulness to all to whom these oracles come. It is a high advantage to know that we are God's and God is ours, as we grasp in faith and obedience His sacred Word. Over our higher privileges it becomes us to "rejoice with trembling." With all thy responsibilities, thy greater required service, and thy heavier doom if faithless, still "Happy art thou, O Israel," "satisfied with favour, and full with the blessing of the Lord." ( W. Griffiths. )

Benson Commentary Romans 3:1 What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Romans 3:1-2 . What advantage then hath the Jew? — The foregoing reasonings being contrary to the prejudices of the Jews, one of that nation is here introduced objecting, If our being the children of Abraham, members of the church of God, and heirs of the promises, will procure us no favour at the judgment, — and if the want of these privileges will not preclude the heathen from salvation; — or, If it be so that God looks only at the heart, and does not regard persons for their external privileges, what is the pre-eminence of a Jew above a Gentile, and, (for there are two questions here asked,) what profit is there of circumcision — And of the other ritual services which are enjoined in the law? To the first of these questions the apostle answers in this chapter, and to the second in chap. 4., beginning at Romans 3:11 . Much every way — Or in every respect. The respects in which the Jews were superior to the Gentiles are enumerated Romans 9:4-5 , where see the notes. Chiefly, because unto them were committed the oracles of God — The Scriptures, in which are contained great and important truths, precepts, and promises. This prerogative Paul here singles out, by which, after removing the objection, he convicts them so much the more. “The Greeks used the word ????? , oracles, to denote the responses which their deities, or rather their priests, made to those who consulted them, especially if they were delivered in prose: for, as Beza observes, they gave a different name, ??????? , to such responses as were uttered in verse. Here oracles denote the whole of the divine revelations; and, among the rest, the law of Moses, which Stephen calls ????? ????? , living oracles, Acts 7:18 , because God spake that law in person. All the revelations of God to mankind, from the beginning of the world to his own times, Moses, by the inspiration of God, committed to writing; and what further revelations God was pleased to make to mankind during the subsistence of the Jewish Church, he made by prophets, who recorded them in books; and the whole was intrusted to the Jews, to be kept for their own benefit and for the benefit of the world. Now, this being the chief of all their advantages, as Jews, it alone is mentioned here by the apostle. In like manner, the psalmist has mentioned the word of God as the distinguishing privilege of the Israelites, Psalm 147:19 , He hath showed his word unto Jacob, &c. He hath not dealt so with any nation. The benefits which the Jews derived from the oracles of God, the apostle had no occasion to explain here, because they were all introduced in the boasting of the Jew, described Romans 2:17-23 .” — Macknight. Romans 3:2 Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. Romans 3:3 For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? Romans 3:3-4 . For what if some — And they a considerable number, of those who once possessed these invaluable treasures; did not believe — Them, or did not duly consider what they speculatively believed, and so rejected the gospel to which they were intended to lead; shall their unbelief make without effect — Shall it disannul; the faith of God — His faithful promises made to Abraham and his seed, especially of sending the Messiah, and of effecting our redemption by him? Shall it destroy his fidelity to his promises, and prevent his fulfilling them to them that do believe? God, having promised to give to Abraham and his seed the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and to be their God, the Jews affirmed that if they were cast off from being his people, and driven out of Canaan for not believing on Jesus, the faithfulness of God in performing his promises would be destroyed. Probably the apostles, in their discourses to the Jews, had, if not expressly affirmed, yet obscurely intimated, that for crucifying Jesus they would be punished in that manner. God forbid — That we should insinuate any thing that can be justly considered as derogatory to God’s faithfulness: yea, let God be true — Let the blessed God be acknowledged true to his covenant and his promises, though every man should be esteemed a liar, and unfit to have any confidence reposed in him; or, though every Jew should disbelieve, and be cast off on that account. To understand this more fully, we must recollect, that the performance of the promises to the natural seed of Abraham, is, in the original covenant, tacitly made to depend on their faith and obedience, Genesis 18:19 , and that it is explicitly made to depend on that condition in the renewal of the covenant, Deuteronomy 28:1-14 . Besides, on that occasion, God expressly threatened to expel the natural seed from Canaan, and scatter them among the heathen, if they became unbelieving and disobedient, Leviticus 26:33 ; Deuteronomy 28:64 . The rejection, therefore, and expulsion of the Jews from Canaan, for their unbelief, being a fulfilling of the threatenings of the covenant, established the faithfulness of God, instead of destroying it. As it is written, Psalm 51:4 , That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings — ?? ???? ?????? ??? in thy words; and mightest overcome — Be pronounced holy and just, and clear of all imputation of unrighteousness; when thou art judged — When any presume insolently to arraign the equity of thy conduct, or, when thy proceedings are narrowly examined by right reason. The original expression, however, ?? ?? ????????? ?? , it seems, should rather be rendered, when thou judgest, a translation agreeable to the place whence the quotation is made. God’s words referred to, in which David justified God, or acknowledged him to be just, are those threatenings which Nathan, by God’s order, denounced against him, on account of his crimes of adultery and murder, 2 Samuel 12:9-12 . And God judged, or punished David, when he executed these threatenings on him and his posterity; and David acknowledged God to be just, or clear, in doing this, by receiving the deserved punishment in humility, resignation, and meekness. And the apostle seems to have quoted David’s confession, that God’s punishing him in the manner threatened by Nathan, was no breach of the promises he had made to him and his posterity, because it showed the Jews that God’s promises, like his threatenings, were all conditional, and that, consistently with his promises to Abraham and to his seed, God might reject the Israelites, and drive them out of Canaan, they having forfeited their right to be accounted the seed of Abraham, the father of the faithful, by their infidelity; and the Gentiles, by imitating his faith, being now received for God’s children. Romans 3:4 God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged. Romans 3:5 But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man) Romans 3:5-6 . But — It may be further objected; if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God — Be subservient to God’s glory; or, if our infidelity be so far from making void the faithfulness of God, that it renders it more illustrious, then we ought not to be condemned for it. But Dr. Whitby understands, by the righteousness of God, the righteousness of faith, which indeed is generally the meaning of the phrase in this epistle; and, as in the first chapter the necessity of this faith is shown with respect to the Gentiles, because otherwise they, being unrighteous, could not be justified before God, or escape his wrath revealed against all unrighteousness; and in the second chapter the same is proved respecting the Jews by reason of their unrighteousness, which arguments plainly serve to commend and establish this way of righteousness by faith in Christ, from the necessity of it to the justification both of Jews and Gentiles; he therefore considers the import of the objection to be, “If the unrighteousness both of Jews and Gentiles tend so visibly to illustrate and recommend the wisdom and grace of God, in appointing this way of justification by faith in Christ, is it righteous in God to punish both Jews and Gentiles, as you say he has done and will do, for that unrighteousness that tends so highly to advance the glory of divine grace displayed in the gospel?” What shall we say — What inference shall we draw? Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance — Must we grant that God acts unjustly in punishing those practices which so illustrate his mercy, faithfulness, and other perfections? I speak as a man — As a mere natural man, not acquainted with the revealed will of God, or not influenced by his Spirit; or as human weakness would be apt to speak. God forbid — That I should harbour such a thought, or allow such a consequence; for then — If it were unjust in him to punish that unrighteousness which is subservient to his own glory, how should God judge the world — Since all the unrighteousness in the world will then commend the righteousness of God. Add to this, the very idea of God’s judging the world, implies that it shall be done in righteousness. For if any person were to have injustice done him on that occasion, it would not be judgment, but a capricious exercise of power, whereby the Judge would be dishonoured. On this idea is founded the answer which Abraham made to God, respecting the destruction of Sodom, which answer perhaps the apostle had now in his eye, Genesis 18:25 ; Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? Romans 3:6 God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world? Romans 3:7 For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner? Romans 3:7-8 . For — Or but (the objector may reply) if the truth of God hath more abounded — Has been more abundantly shown; through my lie — If my lie, that is, practice contrary to truth, conduces to the glory of God, by making his truth shine with superior advantage; why am I yet judged as a sinner — And arraigned for that which is attended with such happy consequences? Can my conduct be said to be sinful at all? Ought I not to do what would otherwise be evil, that so much good may come? To this the apostle does not deign to give a direct answer, adding, whose damnation, or condemnation, is just. The condemnation of all, who either speak or act in this manner. Here the apostle teaches expressly the unlawfulness of doing evil, any evil, on the pretence of promoting what is good. Such a pretence, if allowed, would justify the greatest crimes. This, however, the apostle here signifies they were slanderously reported as teaching; probably on a misinterpretation of their doctrine, that the greatness of the sins of which the Gentiles were guilty, rendered God’s goodness in sending Christ to die for them the more illustrious. Romans 3:8 And not rather , (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just. Romans 3:9 What then? are we better than they ? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; Romans 3:9-18 . What then — Well then, (may a Jew further urge,) since you grant that the Jews have the advantage of the Gentiles in point of privileges, having the oracles of God, the promises which he will never fail to observe, and the principles of righteousness which he will never himself violate in his conduct, are we not in a better condition for obtaining justification by our own obedience to his law? No, in no wise — The apostle answers, that all are equal in that point, both Jews and Gentiles. For we have before proved — Namely, in the two former chapters; both Jews — By the breach of the written law; and Gentiles — By transgressing the law of nature; that they are all — Every one of them, without exception; under sin — Under the guilt and power of it: and so are equally excluded from the possibility of being justified by works. And therefore gospel righteousness, or justification by faith, is no less necessary for the one than for the other. As it is written — Here he proves further, concerning the Jews, that they were unrighteous before God, by testimonies taken from their own prophets concerning their universal corruption, and he rightly cites David and Isaiah, (see the margin,) though they spoke primarily of their own age, and expressed what manner of men God sees when he looks down from heaven, not what they become when renewed by his grace. There is none righteous — That lives exactly according to the rule of God’s law. This is the general proposition, the particulars follow; their dispositions and designs, Romans 3:11-12 ; their discourse, Romans 3:13-14 ; their actions, Romans 3:16-18 . There is none that understandeth — The things of God, till God, by giving them the spirit of wisdom and revelation, open the eyes of their understanding; there is none that seeketh after God — To know, worship, and serve him aright; to obtain his favour, recover his image, and enjoy communion with him; that is, till God, by his grace, incline them to seek after him. They are all gone out of the way — Namely, of truth into error, of righteousness into sin, of happiness into misery. They are together — One and all; become unprofitable — Unfit and unable to bring forth any good fruit, and to profit either themselves or others. There is none that doeth good — From a right principle, to a right end, by a right rule, and in a right spirit; or perfectly, according to the exact meaning of the law which they are under. Their throat is an open sepulchre — Noisome and dangerous as such; or, their speech is offensive, corrupt, and loathsome. Observe the progress of evil discourse; proceeding out of the heart, through the throat, tongue, lips, till the whole mouth is filled therewith. The poison of asps — Infectious, deadly, tale-bearing, evil-speaking, backbiting, slandering, is under (for honey is on) their lips. An asp is a venomous kind of serpent. Whose mouth is full of cursing — Against God; and bitterness — Provoking language against their neighbour: the most shocking profaneness mingles itself with that malignity of heart toward their fellow-creatures which breathes in every word. Their feet are swift — To run toward the places where they have appointed; to shed the blood — Of the innocent. Destruction — To others; and misery — As to themselves; are in their ways — In their desires and designs, their dispositions, words, and actions. And the way of peace — Which can only spring from righteousness; they have not known — By experience, nor regarded. And, to sum up all in one word, the great cause of all this depravity is, that there is no fear of God before their eyes — Much less is the love of God in their hearts: they have no sense of religion, to restrain them from the commission of these enormities. Romans 3:10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: Romans 3:11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. Romans 3:12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Romans 3:13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Romans 3:14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: Romans 3:15 Their feet are swift to shed blood: Romans 3:16 Destruction and misery are in their ways: Romans 3:17 And the way of peace have they not known: Romans 3:18 There is no fear of God before their eyes. Romans 3:19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Romans 3:19-20 . Now what things soever the law saith — That is, the Old Testament, for these quotations are not made from any part of the five books of Moses, but from the Psalms and Prophets; it saith to them that are under the law — That is, to those who own its authority, to the Jews, and not to the Gentiles. The apostle quoted no scripture against them, knowing it would have answered no end to do so, as they did not acknowledge the authority of the Scriptures; but he pleaded with them only from the light of nature; that every mouth — Full of cursing and bitterness: Romans 3:14 , and yet of boasting, Romans 3:27 , may be stopped — And have nothing to plead; and the whole world — Not only the Gentiles, but the Jews also; may become guilty — May be fully convicted as guilty, and evidently liable to most just condemnation. These things were written of old, and were quoted by Paul, not to make men guilty, but to prove them so. Therefore by the deeds of the law — By works of complete obedience to the law of God, whether natural or revealed; there shall no flesh be justified — Or pronounced righteous. That the word law must here be taken in this extent, appears evidently from the conclusion which the apostle here draws, and from the whole tenor of his subsequent argument; which would have had very little weight, if there had been room for any to object: Though we cannot be justified by our obedience to the law of Moses, we may be justified by our obedience to God’s natural law. And nothing can be more evident, than that the premises from which this conclusion is drawn refer to the Gentiles as well as the Jews; and consequently that law has here, and in many subsequent passages, that general sense. “Every one failing,” says Locke, “of an exact conformity of his actions to the immutable rectitude of that eternal rule of right, mentioned Romans 1:32 , will be found unrighteous, and so incur the penalty of the law. That this is the meaning of the expression here used, ???? ????? , works of law, is evident, because the apostle’s declaration is concerning ???? ???? , all flesh. But we know the heathen world were not under the law of Moses.” For by the law — By that written on man’s heart, as well as by that revealed, is the knowledge of sin — Of our sinfulness and guilt, of our weakness and wretchedness. This strongly implies the broken and disordered state of human nature; in consequence of which, the precepts which God gives us, even the moral precepts, serve only, or at least chiefly, to convict us of guilt, and not to produce an obedience by which we can finally be acquitted and accepted. Whereas, were we not fallen and depraved creatures, by his holy law we should have the knowledge of our being righteous; for when weighed in the balance of it, we should not be found wanting. Romans 3:20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. Romans 3:21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Romans 3:21-24 . But now the righteousness of God — That is, the manner of becoming righteous which God hath appointed; without the law — Without that perfect and previous obedience which the law requires; without reference to, or dependance on, the law, ceremonial or moral, revealed or natural; is manifested — In the gospel, being attested by the law and the prophets. The example of Abraham’s justification by faith, recorded Genesis 15:6 , and the passage which the apostle quotes, Romans 4:7 , from Psalm 32:1-2 , as well as that from Habakkuk, quoted Romans 1:17 , are clear testimonies, from the law and the prophets, that there is a righteousness without the law, which God accepts; and that the method of justification revealed in the gospel was the method in which men were justified under the law, and before the law: in short, it is the method of justifying sinners, established from the very beginning of the world. Even the righteousness of God — That which God hath appointed to be, by faith of Jesus Christ — By such a firm, hearty, lively belief of Christ’s being what the gospel declares him to be, a divinely-commissioned and infallible Teacher, a prevalent Mediator between God and man; an all- sufficient Saviour, and a righteous Governor; such a belief as produces a sincere confidence in him, a true subjection to him, a conscientious obedience to his laws, and imitation of his example. Unto all — Which way of justification is provided for, and sincerely and freely offered unto all, and is bestowed upon all them that believe — Whether Jews or Gentiles; for there is no difference — Either as to men’s need of justification and salvation, or the manner of attaining it. For all have sinned — In Adam and in their own persons; by a sinful nature, sinful tempers, and sinful actions; and come short of the glory of God — The supreme end of man; short of his image and nature, and communion with him, and the enjoyment of him in heaven. Or, they have failed of rendering him that glory that was so justly his due, and thereby have not only made themselves unworthy the participation of glory and happiness with him, but stand exposed to his severe and dreadful displeasure. The word ?????????? , here rendered come short, is properly applied to those, whose strength failing them in the race, are left behind. The word, therefore, is very suitable to mankind, who, being weakened by sin, have lost eternal life, the reward which they pursued by their obedience. Being justified — Pardoned and accepted, or accounted righteous; freely, ?????? , of free gift, and not through any merit of their own; by his grace — His unmerited favour, his undeserved goodness, and not through their own righteousness or works, in whole or in part. Freely by his grace — One of these expressions might have served to convey the apostle’s meaning: but he doubles his assertion in order to give us the fullest conviction of the truth, and to impress us with a sense of its peculiar importance. It is not possible to find words that should more absolutely exclude all consideration of our own works and obedience, or more emphatically ascribe the whole of our justification to free, unmerited goodness. Through the redemption which is in, or by, Christ Jesus — Procured for them by his death, the price paid for their redemption. The word ??????????? , here and elsewhere rendered redemption, denotes that kind of redemption of a captive from death, which is procured by paying a price for his life. See note on 1 Timothy 2:6 . The redemption purchased for us by Christ is deliverance from the guilt and power of sin, and the wrath of God consequent thereon, and from the power of our spiritual enemies, the devil, the world, and the flesh. See Ephesians 1:7 ; Colossians 1:14 ; Titus 2:14 ; Galatians 1:4 ; 1 Peter 1:18-19 . Romans 3:22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Romans 3:24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Romans 3:25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; Romans 3:25-26 . Whom God hath set forth — Before angels and men: hath in his infinite mercy exhibited to us in the gospel, to be a propitiation — Greek, ?????????? , a propitiatory, or mercy-seat, where mercy may be found by the penitent, in a way consistent with divine justice. The reader will observe, the cover of the ark, in the tabernacle and temple of the Israelites, was called the mercy-seat, or propitiatory, and is termed by the LXX., Exodus 25:17 , ?????????? ??????? , a propitiatory cover, “because it was the throne on which the glory of the Lord was wont to be displayed, and received the atonements made by the high-priest on the day of expiation, and from which God dispensed pardon to the people. In allusion to this ancient worship, the apostle represents Christ as a propitiatory, or mercy-seat, set forth by God for receiving the worship of men, and dispensing pardon to them. Or, if a propitiatory is, by a common metonymy, put for a propitiatory sacrifice, the apostle’s meaning will be, that, by the appointment of God, Christ died as a sacrifice for sin, and that God pardons sin through the merit of that sacrifice. Hence Christ is called ??????? , a propitiation, 1 John 2:2 ; 1 John 4:10 . By teaching this doctrine, the apostle removed the great objection of Jews and heathen against the gospel, that it had neither a priest nor a sacrifice.” — Macknight. Through faith in his blood — Through believing that Christ’s blood was shed to expiate our sins, and trusting therein for pardon and acceptance with God, and all other benefits which he has thereby procured for us: to declare, ??? ???????? , for a demonstration of his, God’s, own righteousness: both his justice and mercy, especially the former, that thereby it might appear he could pardon sin, without any impeachment of his righteousness, in that he did not pardon it without full satisfaction made to the law by the sufferings of Christ, who was wounded for our transgressions, and on whom was laid that chastisement of sin which was necessary to procure our peace, and render our acceptance with God consistent with the divine perfections, and the equity of his government. For the remission of sins that are past — All the sins antecedent to their believing. Or the expression, ??? ??? ??????? ??? ???????????? ??????????? , may be properly rendered, on account of the passing by, or not instantly and adequately punishing, sins which were before committed, that is, before the coming of Christ: the sins of which both Jews and Gentiles had been guilty before the gospel was promulgated, and on account of which both deserved destruction, and were unworthy of the blessings of God’s covenant. Now God’s righteousness or justice might have appeared doubtful, on account of his having so long, in his great forbearance, thus passed by the sins of men, unless in the mean time he had made a sufficient display of his hatred to sin. But such a display being made in the death of Christ, his justice is thereby fully proved. Doddridge thus paraphrases the passage: “The remission extends not only to the present but former age, and to all the offences which are long since past, according to the forbearance of God, who has forborne to execute judgment upon sinners for their repeated provocations, in reference to that atonement which he knew should in due tinge be made.” To declare, ???? ???????? , for a demonstration of his righteousness (see the former verse) at this time — ?? ?? ??? ????? , at this period of his showing mercy to sinners. As if he had said, When he most highly magnified his mercy in finding out this way of reconciliation, he did also most eminently declare his justice, in requiring such satisfaction for the transgression of his law: that he might be just — Might evidence himself to be strictly and inviolably righteous in the administration of his government, even while he is the merciful justifier of the sinner that believeth in Jesus — Who so believes in Jesus, as to embrace this way of justification, renouncing all merit in himself, and relying entirely on the sacrifice and intercession of Christ, for reconciliation with God, and all the blessings of the new covenant. The attribute of justice must be preserved inviolate; and inviolate it is preserved, if there was a real infliction of punishment on Christ. On this plan all the attributes harmonize; every attribute is glorified, and not one superseded, nor so much as clouded. By just, indeed, in this verse, Taylor would understand merciful, and Locke, faithful to his promises; but “either of these,” as Doddridge observes, “makes but a very cold sense, when compared with that here given. It is no way wonderful that God should be merciful, or faithful to his promises, though the justifier of believing sinners; but that he should be just in such an act, might have seemed incredible, had we not received such an account of the atonement.” This subject is set in a clear and striking light by a late writer: “The two great ends of public justice are the glory of God, and in connection with it, the general good of his creatures. It is essentially necessary to the attainment of these ends, that the authority of the government of God should be supported, in all its extent, as inviolably sacred; — that one jot or tittle should in no wise pass from the law; — that no sin, of any kind, or in any degree, should appear as venial; — that if any sinner is pardoned, it should be in such a way, as, while it displays the divine mercy, shall at the same time testify the divine abhorrence of his sins. All this is gloriously effected in the gospel, by means of atonement; — by the substitution of a voluntary surety, even of him whose name is Immanuel, to bear the curse of the law, in the room of the guilty. In his substitution we see displayed, in a manner unutterably affecting and awful, the holy purity of the divine nature; for no testimony can be conceived more impressive, of infinite abhorrence of sin, than the sufferings and death of the Son of God. Here too we behold the immutable justice of the divine government, inflicting the righteous penalty of a violated law. It is to be considered as a fixed principle of the divine government, that sin must be punished; that if the sinner is pardoned, it must be in a way that marks and publishes the evil of his offence. This is effected by substitution; and, as far as we can judge, could not be effected in any other way. In inflicting the sentence against transgression on the voluntary and all-sufficient Surety, Jehovah, while he clears the sinner, does not clear his sins; — although clothed with the thunders of vindictive justice against transgression, he wears, to the transgressor, the smile of reconciliation and peace; — he dispenses the blessings of mercy from the throne of his holiness; and, while exercising grace to the guilty, he appears in the character — equally lovely and venerable — of — the sinner’s friend, And sin’s eternal foe! “In this way, then, all the ends of public justice are fully answered. The law retains its complete unmitigated perfection; is ‘magnified and made honourable:’ the dignity and authority of the divine government are maintained, and even elevated: all the perfections of Deity are gloriously illustrated and exhibited in sublime harmony. While the riches of mercy are displayed, for the encouragement of sinners to return to God, the solemn lesson is at the same time taught, by a most convincing example, that rebellion cannot be persisted in with impunity; and motives are thus addressed to the fear of evil, as well as to the desire of good. Such a view of the Divine Being is presented in the cross as is precisely calculated to inspire and to maintain (to maintain, too, with a power which will increase in influence the more closely and seriously the view is contemplated) the two great principles of a holy life — the LOVE, and the FEAR OF GOD; — filial attachment, freedom, and confidence, combined with humble reverence and holy dread.” See Mr. Ralph Wardlaw’s Discourses on the Principal Points of the Socinian Controversy, pp. 211-213. Romans 3:26 To declare, I say , at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Romans 3:27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Romans 3:27 . Where is boasting then? — The boasting of the Gentiles in their philosophy, or of the Jews in the rites of the law of Moses, as sufficient for their salvation. Or the boasting of the Jews against the Gentiles, or that of any one in his own righteousness, or on account of any peculiar privileges he may enjoy. It is excluded — This way of justification by free grace, through faith, leaves no room to any one for boasting of what he is, or has, or does, or can do. By what law? Of works? — By that of Moses, or any other law, promising life only to perfect obedience, and threatening all disobedience with inevitable death? Nay; this, if the fulfilling of it had been practicable, and a man could have been justified thereby, would have left him room for boasting, even that he had procured his justification by his own virtue and goodness. But by the law of faith — “The law of faith here, as opposed to the law of works, is that gracious covenant which God made with mankind immediately after the fall. I

Expositor's Bible Commentary Romans 3:1 What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Chapter 8 JEWISH CLAIMS: NO HOPE IN HUMAN MERIT Romans 3:1-20 As the Apostle dictates, there rises before his mind a figure often seen by his eyes, the Rabbinic disputant. Keen, subtle, unscrupulous, at once eagerly in earnest yet ready to use any argument for victory, how often that adversary had crossed his path, in Syria, in Asia Minor, in Macedonia, in Achaia! He is present now to his consciousness, within the quiet house of Gaius; and his questions come thick and fast, following on this urgent appeal to his, alas! almost impenetrable conscience. "What then is the advantage of the Jew? Or what is the profit of circumcision? If some did not believe, what of that? Will their faithlessness cancel God’s good faith?" "But if our unrighteousness sets off God’s righteousness, would God be unjust, bringing His wrath to bear?" We group the questions together thus, to make it the clearer that we do enter here, at this opening of the third chapter, upon a brief controversial dialogue; perhaps the almost verbatim record of many a dialogue actually spoken. The Jew, pressed hard with moral proofs of his responsibility, must often have turned thus upon his pursuer, or rather have tried thus to escape from him in the subtleties of a false appeal to the faithfulness of God. And first he meets the Apostle’s stern assertion that circumcision without spiritual reality will not save. He asks, where then is the advantage of Jewish descent? What is the profit, the good, of circumcision? It is a mode of reply not unknown in discussions on Christian ordinances; "What then is the good of belonging to a historic Church at all? What do you give the divine Sacraments to do?" The Apostle answers his questioner at once; Much, in every way; first, because they were entrusted with the Oracles of God. "First," as if there were more to say in detail. Something, at least, of what is here left unsaid is said later, Romans 9:4-5 , where he recounts the long roll of Israel’s spiritual and historical splendours; "the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the law giving, and the worship, and the promises, and the Fathers, and the Christ." Was it nothing to be bound up with things like these, in a bond made at once of blood relationship, holy memories, and magnificent hopes? Was it nothing to be exhorted to righteousness, fidelity, and love by finding the individual life thus surrounded? But here he places "first" of even these wonderful treasures this, that Israel was "entrusted with the Oracles of God," the Utterances of God, His unique Message to man "through His prophets, in the Holy Scriptures." Yes, here was something which gave to the Jew an "advantage" without which the others would either have had no existence, or no significance. He was the trustee of Revelation. In his care was lodged the Book by which man was to live and die; through which he was to know immeasurably more about God and about himself than he could learn from all other informants put together. He, his people, his Church, were the "witness and keeper of Holy Writ." And, therefore, to be born of Israel and ritually entered into the covenant of Israel, was to be born into the light of revelation, and committed to the care of the witnesses and keepers of the light. To insist upon this immense privilege is altogether to St. Paul’s purpose here. For it is a privilege which evidently carries an awful responsibility with it. What would be the guilt of the soul, and of the Community, to whom those Oracles were-not given as property, but entrusted-and who did not do the things they said? Again the message passes on to the Israel of the Christian Church. "What advantage hath the Christian? What profit is there of Baptism?" "Much, in every way; first, because to the Church is entrusted the light of revelation." To be born in it, to be baptised in it, is to be born into the sunshine of revelation, and laid on the heart and care of the Community which witnesses to the genuineness of its Oracles and sees to their preservation and their spread. Great is the talent. Great is the accountability. But the Rabbinist goes on. For if some did not believe, what of that? Will their faithlessness cancel God’s good faith? These Oracles of God promise interminable glories to Israel, to Israel as a community, a body. Shall not that promise hold good for the whole mass, though some (bold euphemism for the faithless multitudes!) have rejected the Promiser? Will not the unbelieving Jew, after all, find his way to life eternal for his company’s sake, for his part and lot in the covenant community? "Will God’s faith," His good faith, His plighted word, be reduced to empty sounds by the bad Israelite’s sin? Away with the thought, the Apostle answers. Anything is more possible than that God should lie. Nay, let God prove true, and every man prove liar; as it stands written, { Psalm 51:4 } "That Thou mightest be justified in Thy words, and mightest overcome when Thou impleadest." He quotes the Psalmist in that deep utterance of self-accusation, where he takes part against himself, and finds himself guilty "without one plea," and, in the loyalty of the regenerate and now awakened soul, is jealous to vindicate the justice of his condemning God. The whole Scripture contains no more impassioned, yet no more profound and deliberate, utterance of the eternal truth that God is always in the right or He would be no God at all; that it is better, and more reasonable, to doubt anything than to doubt His righteousness, whatever cloud surrounds it, and whatever lightning bursts the cloud. But again the caviller, intent not on God’s glory, but on his own position, takes up the word. But if our unrighteousness exhibits, sets off, God’s righteousness, if our sin gives occasion to grace to abound, if our guilt lets the generosity of God’s Way of Acceptance stand out the more wonderful by contrast-what shall we say? Would God be unjust, bringing His ( ??? ) wrath to bear on us, when our pardon would illustrate His free grace? Would He be unjust? Would He not be unjust? We struggle, in our paraphrase, to bring out the bearing, as it seems to us, of a passage of almost equal grammatical difficulty and argumentative subtlety. The Apostle seems to be "in a strait" between the wish to represent the caviller’s thought, and the dread of one really irreverent word. He throws the man’s last question into a form which, grammatically, expects a "no" when the drift of the thought would lead us up to a shocking "yes." And then at once he passes to his answer. "I speak as man," man-wise; as if this question of balanced rights and wrongs were one between man and man, not between man and eternal God. Such talk, even for argument’s sake, is impossible for the regenerate soul except under urgent protest. Away with the thought that He would not be righteous, in His punishment of any given sin. "Since how shall God judge the world?" How, on such conditions, shall we repose on the ultimate fact that He is the universal Judge? If He could not, righteously, punish a deliberate sin because pardon, under certain conditions, illustrates His glory, then He could not punish any sin at all. But He is the Judge; He does bring wrath to bear!’ Now he takes up the caviller on his own ground, and goes all lengths upon it, and then flies with abhorrence from it. For if God’s truth, in the matter of my lie, has abounded, has come more amply out, to His glory, why am I too called to judgment as a sinner? And why not say, as the slander against us goes, and as some assert that we do say, "Let us do the ill that the good may come"? So they assert of us. But their doom is just, -the doom of those who would utter such a maxim, finding shelter for a lie under the throne of God. No doubt he speaks from a bitter and frequent experience when he takes this particular case, and with a solemn irony claims exemption for himself from the liar’s, sentence of death. It is plain that the charge of untruth was, for some reason or another, often thrown at St. Paul; we see this in the marked urgency with which, from time to time, he asserts his truthfulness; "The things which I say, behold, before God I lie not"; { Galatians 1:20 } "I speak the truth in Christ and lie not". { Romans 9:1 } Perhaps the manifold sympathies of his heart gave innocent occasion sometimes for the charge. The man who could be "all things to all men," { 1 Corinthians 9:22 } taking with a genuine insight their point of view, and saying things which showed that he took it, would be very likely to be set down by narrower minds as untruthful. And the very boldness of his teaching might give further occasion, equally innocent; as he asserted at different times, with equal emphasis, opposite sides of truth. But these somewhat subtle excuses for false witness against this great master of holy sincerity would not be necessary where genuine malice was at work. No man is so truthful that he cannot be charged with falsehood; and no charge is so likely to injure even where it only feigns to strike. And of course the mighty paradox of Justification lent itself easily to the distortions, as well as to the contradictions, of sinners. "Let us do evil that good may come" no doubt represented the report which prejudice and bigotry would regularly carry away and spread after every discourse, and every argument, about free Forgiveness. It is so still: "If this is true, we may live as we like; if this is true, then the worst sinner makes the best saint." Things like this have been current sayings since Luther, since Whitefield, and till now. Later in the Epistle we shall see the unwilling evidence which such distortions bear to the nature of the maligned doctrine; but here the allusion is too passing to bring this out. "Whose doom is just." What a witness is this to the inalienable truthfulness of the Gospel! This brief stern utterance absolutely repudiates all apology for means by end; all seeking of even the good of men by the way of saying the thing that is not. Deep and strong, almost from the first, has been the temptation to the Christian man to think otherwise, until we find whole systems of casuistry developed whose aim seems to be to go as near the edge of untruthfulness as possible, if not beyond it, in religion. But the New Testament sweeps the entire idea of the pious fraud away, with this short thunder peal, "Their doom is just." It will hear of no unholiness that leaves out truthfulness; no word, no deed, no habit, that even with the purest purpose belies the God of reality and veracity. If we read aright Acts 24:20-21 , with Acts 23:6 , we see St. Paul himself once, under urgent pressure of circumstances, betrayed into an equivocation, and then, publicly and soon, expressing his regret of conscience. "I am a Pharisee, and a Pharisee’s son; about the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question." True, true in fact, but not the whole truth, not the unreserved account of his attitude towards the Pharisee. Therefore, a week later, he confesses, does he not? that in this one thing there was "evil in him, while he stood before the council." Happy the Christian, happy indeed the Christian public man, immersed in management and discussion, whose memory is as clear about truth telling, and whose conscience is as sensitive! What then? are we superior? Say not so at all. Thus now he proceeds, taking the word finally from his supposed antagonist. Who are the "we," and with whom are "we" compared? The drift of the argument admits of two replies to this question. "We" may be "we Jews"; as if Paul placed himself in instinctive sympathy, by the side of the compatriot whose cavils he has just combated, and gathered up here into a final assertion all he has said before of the (at least) equal guilt of the Jew beside the Greek. Or "we" may be "we Christians," taken for the moment as men apart from Christ; it may be a repudiation of the thought that he has been speaking from a pedestal, or from a tribunal. As if he said, "Do not think that I, or my friends in Christ, would say to the world, Jewish or Gentile, that we are holier than you. No; we speak not from the bench, but from the bar. Apart from Him who is our peace and life, we are ‘in the same condemnation.’ It is exactly because we are in it that we turn and say to you, ‘Do not ye fear God?"’ On the whole, this latter reference seems the truer to the thought and spirit of the whole context. For we have already charged Jews and Greeks, all of them, with being under sin; with being brought under sin, as the Greek bids us more exactly render, giving us the thought that the race has fallen from a good estate into an evil; self-involved in an awful super-incumbent ruin. As it stands written, that there is not even one man righteous; there is not a man who understands, not a man who seeks his ( ??? ) God. All have left the road; they have turned worthless together. There is not a man who does what is good, there is not. even so many as one. A grave set open is their throat, exhaling the stench of polluted words; with their tongues they have deceived; asp’s venom is under their lips; (men) whose mouth is brimming with curse and bitterness. Swift are their feet to shed blood; ruin and misery for their victims are in their ways; and the way of peace they never knew. There is no such thing as fear of God before their eyes. Here is a tesselation of Old Testament oracles. The fragments, hard and dark, come from divers quarries; from the Psalms, { Psalm 5:9 ; Psalm 10:7 ; Psalm 14:1-3 ; Psalm 36:1 ; Psalm 140:3 } from the Proverbs, { Proverbs 1:16 } from Isaiah. { Isaiah 59:7 } All in the first instance depict and denounce classes of sins and sinners in Israelite society; and we may wonder at first sight how their evidence convicts all men everywhere, and in all time, of condemnable and fatal sin. But we need not only, in submission, own that somehow it must be so, for "it stands written" here; we may see, in part, now it is so. These special charges against certain sorts of human lives stand in the same Book which levels the general charge against "the human heart," { Jeremiah 17:9 } that it is "deceitful above all things, hopelessly diseased," and incapable of knowing all its own corruption. The crudest surface phenomena of sin are thus never isolated from the dire underlying epidemic of the race of man. The actual evil of men shows the potential evil of man. The tiger strokes of open wickedness show the tiger nature, which is always present, even when its possessor least suspects it. Circumstances infinitely vary, and among them those internal circumstances which we call special tastes and dispositions. But everywhere amidst them all is the human heart, made upright in its creation, self-wrecked into moral wrongness when it turned itself from God. That it is turned from Him, not to Him, appears when its direction is tested by the collision between His claim and its will And in this aversion from the Holy One, who claims the whole heart, there lies at least the potency of "all unrighteousness." Long after this, as his glorious rest drew near, St. Paul wrote again of the human heart, to "his true son" Titus. { Titus 3:3 } He reminds him of the wonder of that saving grace which he so fully unfolds in this Epistle; how, "not according to our works," the "God who loveth man" had saved Titus, and saved Paul. And what had he saved them from? From a state in which they were "disobedient, deceived, the slaves of divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another." What, the loyal and laborious Titus, the chaste, the upright, the unutterably earnest Paul? Is not the picture greatly, lamentably exaggerated, a burst of religious rhetoric? Adolphe Monod tells us that he once thought it must be so; he felt himself quite unable to submit to the awful witness. But years moved, and he saw deeper into himself, seeing deeper into the holiness of God; and the truthfulness of that passage grew upon him. Not that its difficulties all vanished, but its truthfulness shone out, "and sure I am," he said from his death bed, "that when this veil of flesh shall fall I shall recognise in that passage the truest portrait ever painted of my own natural heart." Robert Browning, in a poem of terrible moral interest and power, confesses that, amidst a thousand doubts and difficulties, his mind was anchored to faith in Christianity by the fact of its doctrine of Sin: "I still, to suppose it true, for my part See reasons and reasons; this, to begin; ‘Tis the faith that launched point-blank her dart At the head of a lie; taught Original Sin, The Corruption of Man’s Heart." Now we know that whatever things the Law says, it speaks them to those in the Law, those within its range, its dominion; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may. prove guilty with regard to God. "The Law"; that is to say, here, the Old Testament Revelation. This not only contains the Mosaic and Prophetic moral code, but has it for one grand pervading object, in all its parts, to prepare man for Christ by exposing him to himself, in his shame and need. It shows him in a thousand ways that "he cannot serve the Lord," { Joshua 24:19 } on purpose that in that same Lord he may take refuge from both his guilt and his impotency. And this it does for "those in the Law"; that is to say here, primarily, for the Race, the Church, whom it surrounded with its light of holy fire, and whom in this passage the Apostle has in his first thoughts. Yet they, surely, are not alone upon his mind. We have seen already how "the Law" is, after all, only the more full and direct enunciation of "law"; so that the Gentile as well as the Jew has to do with the light, and with the responsibility, of a knowledge of the will of God. While the chain of stern quotations we have just handled lies heaviest on Israel, it yet binds the world. It "shuts every mouth." It drags man in guilty before God. "That every mouth may be stopped." Oh, solemn silence, when at last it comes! The harsh or muffled voices of self-defence, of self-assertion are hushed at length. The man, like one of old, when he saw his righteous self in the light of God, "lays his hand on his mouth". { Job 11:4 } He leaves speech to God, and learns at last to listen. What shall he hear? An external repudiation? An objurgation, and then a final and exterminating anathema? No, something far other, and better, and more wonderful. But there must first be silence on man’s part, if it is to be heard. "Hear-and your souls shall live." So the great argument pauses, gathered up into an utterance which at once concentrates what has gone before, and prepares us for a glorious sequel. Shut thy mouth, O man, and listen now: Because by means of works of law there shall be justified no flesh in His presence; for by means of law comes moral knowledge of sin. Romans 3:21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Chapter 9 THE ONE WAY OF DIVINE ACCEPTANCE Romans 3:21-31 So then "there is silence" upon earth, that man may hear the "still, small voice," "the sound of stillness," { 1 Kings 19:12 } from the heavens. "The Law" has spoken, with its heart-shaking thunder. It has driven in upon the soul of man, from many sides, that one fact-guilt; the eternity of the claim of righteousness, the absoluteness of the holy Will of God, and, in contrast, the failure of man, of the race, to meet that claim and do that will. It has told man, in effect, that he is "depraved," that is to say, morally distorted. He is "totally depraved," that is, the distortion has affected his whole being, so that he can supply on his own part no adequate recovering power which shall restore him to harmony with God. And the Law has nothing more to say to him, except that this condition is not only deplorable, but guilty, accountable, condemnable; and that his own conscience is the concurrent witness that it is so. He is a sinner. To be a sinner is before all things to be a transgressor of law. It is other things besides. It is to be morally diseased, and in need of surgery and medicine. It is to be morally unhappy, and an object of compassion. But first of all it is to be morally guilty, and in urgent need of justification, of a reversal of sentence, of satisfactory settlement with the offended-and eternal-Law of God. That Law, having spoken its inexorable conditions, and having announced the just sentence of death, stands stern and silent beside the now silent offender. It has no commission to relieve his fears, to allay his grief, to pay his debts. Its awful, merciful business is to say, "Thou shalt not sin," and "The wages of sin is death." It summons conscience to attention, and tells it in its now hearing ear far more than it had realised before of the horror and the doom of sin; and then it leaves conscience to take up the message and alarm the whole inner world with the certainty of guilt and judgment. So the man lies speechless before the terribly reticent Law. Is it a merely abstract picture? Or do our hearts, the writer’s and the reader’s, bear any witness to its living truthfulness? God knoweth, these things are no curiosities of the past. We are not studying an interesting phase of early Christian thought. We are reading a living record of the experiences of innumerable lives which are lived on earth this day. There is such a thing indeed in our time, at this hour, as conviction of sin. There is such a thing now as a human soul, struck dumb amidst its apologies, its doubts, its denials, by the speech and then the silence of the Law of God. There is such a thing at this hour as a real man, strong and sound in thought, healthy in every faculty, used to look facts of daily life in the face, yet broken down in the indescribable conviction that he is a poor, guilty, lost sinner, and that his overwhelming need is not now-not just now-the solution of problems of being, but the assurance that his sin is forgiven. He must be justified, or he dies. The God of the Law must somehow say He has no quarrel with him, or he dies a death which he sees, as by an intuition peculiar to conviction of sin, to be in its proper nature a death without hope, without end. Is this "somehow" possible? Listen, guilty and silent soul, to a sound which is audible now. In the turmoil of either secular indifference or blind self-justification you could not hear it; at best you heard a meaningless murmur. But listen now; it is articulate, and it speaks to you. The earthquake, the wind, the fire, have passed: and you are indeed awake. Now comes "the sound of stillness" in its turn. But now, apart from Law, God’s righteousness stands displayed, attested by the Law and the Prophets; but-though attested by them, in the Scriptures which all along, in word and in type, promise better things to come, and above all a Blessed One to come-(it is) God’s righteousness, through faith in Jesus Christ, prepared for all and bestowed upon all who believe in Him. For there is no distinction; for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God, being justified giftwise, gratuitously, by His grace, through the redemption, the ransom rescue, which is in Christ Jesus. Yes, it resides always in Him, the Lord of saving Merit, and so is to be found in Him alone; whom God presented, put forward, as Propitiation, through faith in His blood, His blood of death, of sacrifice, of the altar; so as to demonstrate, to explain, to clear up, His righteousness, His way of acceptance and its method. The Father "presented" the Son so as to show that His grace meant no real connivance, no indulgence without a lawful reason. He "presented" Him because of His passing by of sins done before; because the fact asked explanation that, while He proclaimed His Law, and had not yet revealed His Gospel, He did nevertheless bear with sinners, reprieving them, condoning them, in the forbearance of God, in the ages when He was seen to "hold back" His wrath, but did not yet disclose the reason why. It was with a view, he says again, to this demonstration of His righteousness in the present period, the season, the ?????? , of the manifested Gospel; that He may be, in our view, as well as in divine fact, at once just, true to His eternal Law, and Justifier of him who belongs to faith in Jesus. This is the voice from heaven, audible when the sinner’s mouth is shut, while his ears are opened by the touch of God. Without that spiritual introduction to them, very likely they will seem either a fact in the history of religious thought, interesting in the study of development, but no more; or a series of assertions corresponding to unreal needs, and in themselves full of disputable points. Read them in the hour of conviction of sin; in other words, bring to them your whole being, stirred from above to its moral depths, and you will not take them either indifferently, or with opposition. As the key meets the lock they will meet your exceeding need. Every sentence, every link of reasoning, every affirmation of fact, will be precious to you beyond all words. And you will never fully understand them except in such hours, or in the life which has such hours amongst its indelible memories. Listen over again, in this sacred silence, thus broken by "the pleasant voice of the Mighty One." "But now"; the happy "now" of present fact, of waking certainty. It is no daydream. Look, and see; touch, and feel. Turn the blessed page again; ????????? , "It stands written." There is indeed a "Righteousness of God," a settled way of mercy which is as holy as it is benignant, an acceptance as good in eternal Law as in eternal Love. It is "attested by the Law and the Prophets"; countless lines of prediction and foreshadowing meet upon it, to negative forever the fear of illusion, of delusion. Here is no fortuitous concourse, but the long-laid plan of God. Behold its procuring Cause, magnificent, tender, divine, human, spiritual, historic. It is the beloved Son of the Father; no antagonist power from a region alien to the blessed Law and its Giver. The Law Giver is the Christ Giver; He has "set Him forth," He has provided in Him an expiation which-does not persuade Him to have mercy, for He is eternal Love already, but liberates His love along the line of a wonderfully satisfied Holiness, and explains that liberation (to the contrite) so as supremely to win their worship and their love to the Father and the Son. Behold the Christ of God; behold the blood of Christ. In the Gospel, He is everywhere, it is everywhere; but what is your delight to find Him, and it, here upon the threshold of your life of blessing? Looking upon the Crucified, while you still "lay your hand upon your mouth," till it is removed that you may bless His Name, you understand the joy with which, age after age, men have spoken of a Death which is their life, of a Cross which is their crown and glory. You are in no mood, here and now, to disparage the doctrine of the Atoning Blood; to place it in the background of your Christianity; to obscure the Cross behind even the roofs of Bethlehem. You cannot now think well of any Gospel that does not say, "First of all, Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures". { 1 Corinthians 15:3 } You are a sinner, and you know it; "guilty before God"; and for you as such the Propitiation governs your whole view of man, of God, of life, of heaven. For you, however it may be for others, "Redemption" cannot be named, or thought of, apart from its first precious element, "remission of sins," justification of the guilty. It is steeped in ideas of Propitiation; it is red and glorious with the Redeemer’s blood, without which it could not have been. The all-blessed God, with all His attributes, His character, is by you seen evermore as "just, yet the Justifier of him that believeth in Jesus." He shines on you through the Word, and in your heart’s experience, in many another astonishing aspect. But all those others are qualified for you by this, that He is the God of a holy Justification; that He is the God who has accepted you, the guilty one, in Christ. All your thoughts of Him are formed and followed out at the foot of the Cross. Golgotha is the observatory from which you count and watch the lights of the moving heaven of His Being, His Truth, His Love. How precious to you now are the words which once, perhaps, were worse than insipid, "Faith," "Justification," "the Righteousness of God"! In the discovery of your necessity, and of Christ as the all-in-all to meet it, you see with little need of exposition the place and power of Faith. It means, you see it now, simply your reception of Christ. It is your contact with Him, your embrace of Him. It is not virtue; it is absolutely remote from merit. But it is necessary; as necessary as the hand that takes the alms, or as the mouth that eats the unbought meal. The meaning of "Justification" is now to you no riddle of the schools. Like all the great words of scriptural theology it carries with it in divine things the meaning it bears in common things, only for a new and noble application; you see this with joy, by the insight of awakened conscience. He who "justifies" you does exactly what the word always imports. He does not educate you, or inspire you, up to acceptability. He pronounces you acceptable, satisfactory, at peace with Law. And this He does for Another’s sake; on account of the Merit of Another, who has so done and suffered as to win an eternal welcome for Himself and everything that is His, and therefore for all who are found in Him, and therefore for you who have fled into Him, believing. So you receive with joy and wonder "the righteousness of God," His way to bid you, so deeply guilty in yourself, welcome without fear to your Judge. You are "righteous," that is to say, satisfactory to the inexorable Law. How? Because you are transfigured into a moral perfectness such as could constitute a claim? No, but because Jesus Christ died, and you, receiving Him, are found in Him. "There is no difference." Once, perhaps, you resented that word, if you paused to note it. Now you take all its import home. Whatever otherwise your "difference" may be from the most disgraceful and notorious breakers of the Law of God, you know now that there is none in this respect-that you are as hopelessly, whether or not as distantly, remote as they are from "the glory of God." His moral "glory," the inexorable perfectness of His Character, with its inherent demand that you must perfectly correspond to Him in order so to be at peace with Him-you are indeed "short of" this. The harlot, the liar, the murderer, are short of it; but so are you. Perhaps they stand at the bottom of a mine, and you on the crest of an Alp; but you are as little able to touch the stars as they. So you thankfully give yourself up, side by side with them, if they will but come too, to be "carried" to the height of divine acceptance, by the gift of God, "justified gift-wise by His grace." Where then is our boasting? It is shut out. By means of what law? Of works? No, but by means of faith’s law, the institute, the ordinance, which lays it upon us not to deserve, but to confide. And who can analyse or describe the joy and rest of the soul from which at last is "shut out" the foul inflation of a religious "boast"? We have praised ourselves, we have valued ourselves, on one thing or another supposed to make us worthy of the Eternal. We may perhaps have had some specious pretexts for doing so; or we may have "boasted" (such boastings are not unknown) of nothing better than being a little less ungodly, or a little more manly, than someone else. But this is over now forever, in principle; and we lay its practice under our Redeemer’s feet to be destroyed. And great are the rest and gladness of sitting down at His feet, while the door is shut and the key is turned upon our self-applause. There is no holiness without that "exclusion"; and there is no happiness where holiness is not. For we reckon, we conclude, we gather up our facts and reasons thus, that man is justified by faith, apart from, irrespective of, works of law. In other words, the meriting cause lies wholly in Christ, and wholly outside the man’s conduct. We have seen, implicitly, in the passage above, verses 10-18 ( Romans 3:10-18 ), what is meant here by "works of Law," or by "works of the Law." The thought is not of ritual prescription, but of moral rule. The law breakers of verses 1