The life and work of St. Paul

EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 473
!< the righteousness of God," both in itself and as an objective gift of justification
to man, " has been manifested, being witnessed to by the Law and the Prophets."
The nature of that witness he will show later on ; at present he pauses to give a
fuller, and indeed an exhaustive, definition of what he means "
by the righteousness
of God." "
I mean the righteousness of God accepted by means of faith in Jesug
Christ, coming to and upon all believers all, for there is no difference. For all
sinned, and are failing to attain the glory of God, being justified freely by His
grace, by means of the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as
1
a propitiation, by means of faith in His blood, for the manifestation of His own
righteousness" which righteousness might otherwise have been doubted or misunderstood
"
because of the pretermission of past sins in God's forbearance; with
a view (I say) to the manifestation of this righteousness at this present epoch, that
He might, by a divine paradox, and by a new and divinely predestined righteousness,
be just and the justifier of him whose life springs from faith in Jesus." a
Lot us pause to enumerate the separate elements of this great statement.
It brings before us in one view
1. Justification, the new relation of reconcilement between man and God.
2. Faith, man's trustful acceptance of God's gift, rising to absolute self-
surrender, culminating in personal union with Christ, working within him as
a spirit of new life.
3. The universality of this justification by faith, a possibility offered to,
because needed by, all.
4. This means of salvation given, not earned, nor to be earned ; a free gift
due to the free favour or grace of God.
5. The object of this faith, the source of this possibility of salvation, the
life and death of Christ, as being (i.) a redemption that is, a ransom of
mankind from the triple bondage of the law, of sin, and of punishment ;
(ii.) a propitiatory victim, 8 not (except by a rude, imperfect, and most mis-
1 Ver. 25. This verse is " the Acropolis of the Christian faith " (Olshausen).
'AffoAvTpwero (not inLXX.) implies i., bondage ; ii., ransom; iii., deliverance (Eph. i. 7).
Many most eminent theologians (Origen, Theodoret, Theophylact, Augustine, Erasmus,
Luther, Calvin, Grotius, Calovius, Olshausen, Tholuck, &c.) make i\ac(u$.
It is, therefore, difficult to suppose how Hellenist readers of this Epistle could attach
any other meaning to it. The capporeth between the Shekinah and the Tables of the
Law, sprinkled with atoning blood by the High Priest as he stood behind the rising
incense, is a striking image of Christ (Heb. ix. 25). I quite agree with Lange in calling
Fritzsche's remark, "Valeat absurda explicatio," an "ignorantly contemptuous one;"
but as Christ is nowhere else in the New Testament compared to the mercy-seat, and
the comparison would here be confined to the single word, I cannot help thinking that
the word, though ambiguous, must here bear an analogous meaning to iAj>ibs, also
rendered " a propitiation " in 1 John iv. 10.
2 iii. 22 27. Bengel points out the grandeur of this evangelic paradox. In the Law
God is just and condemns; in the Gospel He is just and forgives. God's judicial
righteousness both condemns and pardons. On God's " pretermission " of past sins
(iii. 25, jra'pem?, praetcrmissio, not a^co-is, remissio) compare Ps. Ixxxi. 12 Acts ; xiv. 16 ;
xvii. 30 ; Lev. xvi. 10. Tholuck calls the Atonement "the divine theodicy for the past
history of the world."
3 "Here is a foundation for the Anselmic theory of satisfaction, but not for its
grossly anthropopathic execution." Schaff. ad loc. (Lange's Romans, 27). And this is
only the external aspect of the death of Christ, the merely judicial aspect pertaining to