Romans

The argument turns at 3:21: “But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested.” Sinners are “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood” (3:24–25). Christ is the propitiation, and God himself sets him forth: men do not offer it to him. The word, hilastērion, is the one Hebrews uses for the mercy seat over the ark (Hebrews 9:5), where the blood of the sin offering was sprinkled (Leviticus 16:15). God had passed over “sins that are past, through the forbearance of God” (3:25). The cross declares that he did so justly, “that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (3:26). Those “justified by his blood” are “saved from wrath through him” (5:9).

Chapter 4 proves the point from Abraham: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness” (4:3), quoting Genesis 15:6. The word is a reckoning. To him that works, the reward is “not reckoned of grace, but of debt” (4:4); but to him “that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (4:5). David’s blessing in Psalm 32:1–2 follows: “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin” (4:8). Abraham was counted righteous while uncircumcised, “that he might be the father of all them that believe” (4:11). It was “not written for his sake alone,” but for all who believe on him that raised up Jesus, “Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (4:23–25).

Romans never makes the law the fault. “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law” (3:31). By the law is “the knowledge of sin” (3:20), and it “entered, that the offence might abound” (5:20). So “the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good” (7:12); the fault is sin, which “by the commandment might become exceeding sinful” (7:13). The Fathers read the man of 7:14–25 two ways. Diodorus heard Paul describing the common lot of mankind, which he sees in himself; Augustine heard one who is now under grace but still battling against his own lust. Either way the answer is the same: what the law “could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh,” God did, “sending his own Son” (8:3).

Chapters 9–11 ask whether God’s word to Israel has failed. Paul answers: “Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel” (9:6). The promise ran through Isaac, and through Jacob rather than Esau. Israel sought righteousness “by the works of the law” and stumbled (9:32), yet there is “a remnant according to the election of grace” (11:5). Blindness in part has happened “until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved” (11:25–26). The Fathers read that phrase two ways. Cyril of Alexandria held that Israel will be saved in its own time and will be called at the end, after the calling of the Gentiles. Theodoret took it as all those who believe, whether Jews by nature or Gentiles related to Israel by faith.