Bible Commentaries

III.

(1-8) Continuing the subject, but with a long digression in Romans 3:3 et seq. The Apostle asks, What is the real value of these apparent advantages? He is about to answer the question fully, as he does later in Romans 9:4-5; but after stating the first point, he goes off upon a difficulty raised by this, and does not return to complete what he had begun. This, again, is characteristic of his ardent and keenly speculative mind. Problems such as those which he discusses evidently have a fascination for him, and lead him, here as elsewhere, at once to leave the immediate subject before him, and to enter eagerly into the discussion of them. A more lethargic or timid brain would be under no such temptation.

One real and solid advantage on the part of the Jew was that he was made the direct recipient of the divine revelation. This privilege of his is not annulled by the defection of a part of the people. It rests not upon the precarious fidelity of men, but upon the infallible promise of God. Yet is not the ultimate triumph of that promise any excuse for those who have set it at nought. They will be punished just the same, and rightly. Otherwise there could be no judgment at all. The casuistical objection that sin loses its guilt if it redounds to God’s glory, or, in other words, that the end justifies the means, carries with it its own condemnation.

(2) Chiefly.—In the first place; “secondly,” &c., was to follow, but does not, as the Apostle is drawn away to other topics (see above).

Unto them were committed.—This is paraphrastic. “Oracle” is the object, and not the subject, of the sentence. “They were entrusted with.”

Oracles.—A good translation; the Scriptures of the Old Testament as containing a revelation of God.

(3) For what if.-What (follows) if, &c. Or we may take the first two words by themselves, and throw the next two clauses together. How stands the case? If some rejected the faith, shall their rejection make void or defeat the faithfulness of God?

The Apostle considers an objection that might be brought against his argument that the divine revelation vouchsafed to them was a special privilege of the Jewish people. It might be said that they had forfeited and cancelled this privilege by their unbelief. He first reduces the objection to its proper limits; it was not all, but some, who were unbelievers. But granting that there were some who did not believe this fact would have no power to shake the eternal promises of God.

(4) Impossible! Rather let God be seen to be true though all mankind should be proved false, even as the Psalmist looked upon his own sin as serving to enhance the triumph of God’s justice. Speaking of that justice for the moment as if it could be arraigned before the bar of a still higher tribunal, he asserts its absolute and complete acquittal.

That thou mightest be justified.—Strictly, in order that, here as in the Hebrew of the Psalm. Good is, in some way inscrutable to us, educed out of evil, and this is clearly foreseen by God, and forms part of His design, though so as not to interfere with the free-will of man. Religion assumes that the two things, free-will and omnipotence, are reconcilable, though how they are to be reconciled seems an insoluble problem. The same difficulty attaches to every system but one of blank fatalism and atheism. But the theory of fatalism if logically carried out would simply destroy human society.

Psalms 51, in which the quotation occurs, is commonly (in accordance with the heading), though perhaps wrongly, ascribed to David after his sin with Bathsheba. The effect of this sin is to throw out into the strongest relief the justice of the sentence by which it is followed and punished. The original is, “That thou mightest be just in thy speaking; that thou mightest be pure in thy judging.” St. Paul adopts the rendering of the LXX., who make the last word passive instead of active, thus making it apply, not to the sentence given by God, but to the imaginary trial to which by a figure of speech that sentence itself is supposed to be submitted.

(5) But if our unrighteousness.—A new and profound question suggests itself to the mind of the Apostle, and his keen intellect will not let it go: “If the sin (here the unbelief) of man only tends to vindicate (commends or establishes) the righteousness of God, why should that sin be punished?” The mere raising of such a question requires an apology; it is only as a man might speak about man that he dares to utter such a thought. That, too, is an impossible objection, for if it held good there could not be any judgment. No sin would be punishable, for all sin would serve to emphasise the strict veracity of God in His denunciations of it, and therefore would ultimately conduce to His glory. It would thus cease to be sinful, and there would be nothing to hinder us from adopting the principle that is so calumniously attributed to us—that it is lawful to do evil that good may come. A calumny it is, and any such principle with all that appertains to it—i.e., with the whole of the preceding argument,—is justly condemned.

(6) For then how shall God judge the world?—St. Paul considers it a sufficient answer merely to propound this question. He and those to whom he was writing all assumed that there must be a future judgment.

The way in which Bishop Butler deals with the argument from necessity is very similar to this, substituting only present for future judgment. “It is fact that God does govern even brute creatures by the method of rewards and punishments in the natural course of things. And men are rewarded and punished for their actions—punished for actions mischievous to society as being so, punished for vicious actions as such—by the natural instrumentality of each other under the present conduct of Providence,” &c. Hence the necessitarian is in this dilemma: either his opinion is not true, or else it must be capable of being harmonised with these facts. The facts themselves are postulated.

(7) The truth of God.—In the first instance His veracity as involved in His threats and promises, and then those other attributes, especially justice, that are intimately connected with this. “Truth” is leaning towards its moral sense. (See Note on Romans 2:8.)

My lie.—The Apostle puts his supposed case in the first person. “Lie,” suggested as an antithesis to the word “truth,” just used, has also a moral signification. It is the moral deflection that follows upon unbelief.

(8) And not rather.—And (why should we) not (say), as some persons slanderously affirm that we say, Let us do evil that good may come. Some such phrase as “Why should we say” must be supplied; “why” from the previous clause, “say” from that which follows. Or “(Why should we) not (do evil), as some persons slanderously affirm that we say, Let us do evil,” &c. The latter, perhaps, is best, as we might then suppose the word for “let us do” repeated precisely in the form in which it stands.

The Apostle does not care to answer this argument in detail; he will not dally with such a perversion of the moral sense, but simply says, “Whose condemnation is just.”

What pretext could any one possibly have for attributing such an opinion to St. Paul? The charge was no doubt utterly false as applied to him, but we know that his teaching was made an excuse for Antinomian excesses, which would not unnaturally be fastened upon the Apostle. Or, taking his teaching as it stands, we might well imagine the Jews or the Judaizing party arguing with themselves, “This man openly breaks the Law, and yet he claims to be in the right way, and that all will go well with him; is not this doing evil that good may come? Does he think to win the Messianic kingdom by the breach of the Law, and not by its observance?”