For they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own [righteousness], have not submitted to the righteousness of God.
Paul is explaining what went wrong with a people who worked hard at religion. He stacks three failures into one sentence: they did not know God's righteousness, they were building a righteousness of their own, and they would not bow to His.
The problem was not laziness but blindness. One writer says their ignorance ran deeper than one doctrine:
They ignored the righteousness of God, not just the doctrine of justification — though that follows too. They were ignorant of God's righteousness revealed in the gospel. Their hopes rested on human merit, topped up by God's promises, by priesthood, rites, and religious duties. They saw the Messiah as the crown and completion of their privileges. They did not see Him as a suffering substitute, or as a Saviour in the power of His resurrection after bearing their judgment on the tree.
Commentators differ on where that ignorance lies. Another writer points to God's own standard:
The Jews were ignorant of God's righteousness: that is, they were ignorant of how righteous God is. If they had realised that, they would have known they were under condemnation. They would have known that no effort of their own could meet His demands. Because they did not know how righteous God is, they set out to build a righteousness of their own.
The verse turns on this phrase. One writer rules out two common definitions of it, then says what it really is:
To turn "the righteousness of God" into His method of salvation by faith is a weak sense, and even a false one. Some theologians say the phrase means only Christ's obedience to the law, ending with His suffering on the cross. That idea is almost as unsatisfactory. The phrase means what it says: "the righteousness of God." It stands in contrast with man's righteousness, which the law demanded. Divine righteousness is a righteousness already accomplished in Christ. God gives it by faith. It justifies the ungodly, instead of condemning them, as the law must do. So this righteousness takes in not only Christ's holy obedience through all His life here below, but also God's righteous dealing "for us" in His death, resurrection, and ascension.
"Seeking to establish their own" describes effort poured into a job no one can finish. That effort, one writer says, exposes a double ignorance:
How many people in the Apostle Paul's day, and how many still today, are working to build a righteousness of their own. It cannot be done, if they only knew it. Such an effort shows they do not know themselves, and do not know God. Of themselves, for they can have no right sense of their guilt before God. Of God, because they think He can lower the standard of His holiness and righteousness to the level they imagine they have reached. That He never will.
The verse ends with a refusal. One writer traces it to the root that resists every other authority:
Romans 10:3 shows that natural pride is what keeps us from submitting to proper authority... How natural it is to want to be right without submitting to true righteousness! This is the snare of submitting to our own self-righteousness.
Another writer asks what to call a person who refuses:
They did not submit! What is a boy who will not submit to his parents? He is disobedient. What is a man who will not submit to the government? He is a rebel. But how shall we label the man who refuses to submit to God? By what name shall we call him? Can you find a name strong enough for him in your language? And having found the name, who among you does it describe?
Submitting is not one more effort of our own. One writer says what it is:
Now this is what God calls submitting to God's righteousness: finding a righteousness which is neither of us nor in us. It is finding Christ before God. It is the proud will, through grace, submitting to be saved by what is not of us or in us. It is Christ instead of self, instead of our place in the flesh.
And the verse leaves one door open, which is the same door it says they walked past:
All they need is submission to the righteousness of God, for it is the only righteousness possible of being established.
- Ignorance — They did not know how righteous God is. They did not know the righteousness the gospel reveals. Every other failure in the verse grows from that root.
- Effort — Building your own righteousness assumes God will lower His standard to your level. He never will, so the work never ends.
- Refusal — Behind all the busy religion sits pride. It wants to be right on its own terms, not right on God's.
- Meaning — God's righteousness is not His method of saving. It is not just Christ's law-keeping. It is a righteousness already finished in Christ, and God gives it by faith.
- Submission — To submit is to stop producing and start receiving. It is Christ instead of self, instead of our place in the flesh.
For Christ is [the] end of law for righteousness to every one that believes.
Paul has just said that his people's zeal for God ran ahead of their knowledge. They were busy building a righteousness of their own. Verse 4 is his answer: everything the law reached for ends in a Person, and God gives that Person to anyone who believes.
The tragedy in Israel was not indifference. It was energy aimed the wrong way. One commentator shows where it went wrong:
Their zeal aimed at man's righteousness according to the law. That zeal was the very thing that kept them from knowing God's righteousness and submitting to it. When God presented His righteousness, offering it to Israel in their own Messiah, they rejected Him.
Commentators differ over the word "end." One writer weighs the options and settles on termination:
One view, held from ancient times and perhaps even more today, is that Christ is the fulfilment of the law. But "end" and "fulfilment" are different words, and there seems no ground at all for confusing them. Others take it in the sense of "object" or "aim." But the simplest meaning, as the context decides, appears to be "termination"... "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes." The Christ of God is made righteousness to us.
Others read "end" as the goal the law aimed at all along:
The word "end" is used here, we believe, just as it is in 2 Corinthians 3:13, meaning the object in view. The law was really given with Christ in view. It paved the way for Him. If only Israel had been able to look steadily to the end of the law, they would have seen Christ. It is quite true, of course, that now Christ has come, all thought of reaching righteousness by law is finished. But that is not the primary meaning of verse 4.
Either way, the result is the same. One writer found the door of a local shop boarded up, with a notice reading "Entrance round the corner":
We did not waste time trying to force our way through that old door. We followed the plain directions, entered by the new way, and got what we wanted. Men need righteousness if they are to be at peace with God. If the law could have given that righteousness, the law would have stood as the way of blessing. But no sinful foot ever walked that road, so no one was justified, or could be justified, by the deeds of the law. Now God has closed that way for ever. He has replaced it with Christ, and through Him the worst of men may receive the blessing without works.
The verse does not say the believer receives a quality. One writer presses the difference:
Scripture nowhere says that Christ's righteousness is credited to us, but that He Himself is our righteousness... We are not justified because of a righteousness the Lord Jesus worked out in His life. That righteousness was entirely His own. We are justified because He Himself is our righteousness. Better to have Christ as your righteousness than ten thousand righteousnesses of your own.
A holy law cannot just be set aside. How can believers go free without bearing the penalty? One writer answers:
Look for the answer at that central cross on Calvary. Hanging there is One who did no sin, who had kept the law in every detail, and who delighted to do so. The law had no judgment for Him, and death had no claim on Him. Yet He bore the curse of the law and died for us. He met its full demands by the sacrifice of Himself. He was there as our substitute, and in our place He paid the penalty, and we died in Him.
The last phrase removes Israel's special claim. The door now stands open to all:
So it is a matter of believing on the Lord Jesus and confessing Him, and we are saved. But this lets in everyone who does so, and the national relationship drops away... Before, we had "no difference," because all have sinned. Now we have "no difference," because the same Lord is rich toward all who call on Him. Sin levelled everyone alike before God. Grace raises everyone alike through faith.
Ending the law for righteousness raises an obvious question. One writer answers it:
Is the believer then lawless? No. As risen with Christ, he is to live to God, and Christ is his law in the new resurrection sphere. The grace that came by Christ teaches us to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age... Grace gives the driving power to fulfil the righteousness of the law. The law itself never could do that, and was never meant to.
- Wrong target. Israel's zeal was real, but aimed at a righteousness of their own. It blinded them to God's righteousness, offered in their own Messiah.
- The word "end." Commentators differ. Some read it as termination: the law is finished as a way to righteousness. Others read it as the goal the law pointed to all along.
- The cost. God did not cancel the law's claims. Christ paid them. He bore its curse in our place, so the ending is just.
- The gift. Righteousness is not a quality handed over. It is a Person: Christ Himself is the believer's righteousness.
- The reach. "Everyone who believes" levels the ground. Sin made no difference; now grace makes none either.