Romans 3:21–5:21

And now the way lies open for the gospel. The shutting of man's mouth opens God's. The exhaustion of man's resources throws the full burden of his salvation onto the arm of God. There is no righteousness in man. The gospel cannot reopen that question; it is closed forever.

God's righteousness means God maintaining all His rights in a right way. This must come first, because sin is lawlessness — man asserting his own will against God's rights. It is fitting, then, that the gospel opens this way. After the terrible unfolding of man's sin, its first word is "the righteousness of God."

It is God's, not man's. It has its character, quality, and source from God, not from man… It comes from God for man, not from man for God. So it carries the character and qualities of its source, whoever may be given to benefit from it.

It is natural for a convicted sinner to dread the righteousness of God. He argues that if a holy God deals rightly with a guilty sinner, it can only be to judge him for his sins. It never occurs to the sinner that God can righteously forgive his sins. But when we learn what the righteousness of God is, we discover something else. The very quality in God that we think is against us is the very quality that, above all others, is for us as sinners. It is the solid foundation of our peace as believers.

The law demanded righteousness from man that he was unable to give. The gospel declares God's righteousness to man, without making any demand on man. It is now clear that God, in righteousness, is proclaiming the forgiveness of sins to the sinner, and justifying the ungodly who believe in Jesus.

Romans 3:21 does not deny that law exists or that it matters. It shows that God's righteousness is now manifested apart from law.

The law and the prophets did not display the righteousness of God. Yet the law, in various forms, pointed to another righteousness that was coming. The prophets brought it out, if possible, still more clearly in their words. The one supplied types, the others assured that the Lord's righteousness was near to come. But now the gospel tells us it has come. Now divine righteousness is a revealed fact… There is no veil now. There was once, but the death of Christ tore it from top to bottom.

It is not merely that this righteousness exists; it is now manifested. It existed long before in the purposes of God, since God never justified anyone in any other way. But He did not display it until the gospel was brought out and preached… From Adam onward, no sinner ever stood, or ever could stand, in God's presence except in God's righteousness. But God had not displayed it until now.

If this righteousness were man's, it would have to come by the law. The law is the perfect measure of man's righteousness. So it would be only for the Jews, who alone had that law. But it is God's, and by faith, and so for all.

This righteousness of God is made known in the gospel, entirely apart from the law. The law demanded righteousness from man that he was unable to render. The gospel declares God's righteousness to man, without making any demand upon man... It is now clear that God is righteously proclaiming the forgiveness of sins to the sinner, and justifying the ungodly who believe in Jesus.

It is the righteousness of God by faith in Jesus Christ. Man has not accomplished it, man has not procured it. It is of God, it is His righteousness; by believing in Jesus Christ we come to share in it. Had it been a human righteousness, it would have been by the law, which is the rule of that righteousness — a law given to the Jews only... It is a righteousness of God for man, because no man had any for God. Wherever there is faith, there it is applied. The believer possesses it.

The manuscripts differ here. Some of the most ancient ones leave out "and upon all." But I agree with those who keep the longer reading. I have little doubt that the words were dropped because the eye or ear caught one "all" and missed the other... The first phrase marks the direction of God's righteousness. It is not, like the law, restricted to a single nation; it addresses itself "unto all" men without exception; but the benefit depends on faith in Jesus Christ, and so it only reaches and takes effect "upon all that believe."

God's righteousness, so to speak, stretches out its hands kindly towards all men instead of frowning on them. And for those who believe, it comes down on them like a robe, so that they stand dressed in it in God's presence. All this happens without righteousness losing its own proper character in any way, or ceasing to be what it is.

The only standard for measuring men is "the glory of God." All have fallen short of it — the best as well as the worst — so there is no difference. If it were only a question of conscience, or of human righteousness, there might be some difference. If the standard were only human, some shades of distinction could easily be drawn. But it is not so. All must be ruled by the glory of God, and ruled that way, all fall short alike.

Grace meets us just as and where we are, and meets all men alike, whether Jew or Gentile, philosopher or simple... All are alike in the ruin — all are alike the objects of the remedy.

It does not say this righteousness is upon those who have this or that experience, or who feel saved. But if you can say, dear reader, that you are one of those who believe, you have God's word that His "righteousness" is upon you. And if "God's righteousness" is upon you, you are fit to dwell in His presence without a spot.

Language this wide leaves no one a way out. It puts the whole human family under God's judgement. And nobody can lift themselves out of that condition. No amount of human effort — reforming your life, giving to the poor, and so on — can wash away a single sin.

The basic truth of the gospel is that there is no difference between one person and another. That does not mean everyone has sinned the same number of times, or as seriously. The day of judgment will bring out that difference. It will put each person who is not saved by the gospel in his place according to his works. So degrees of sin are real, and God will judge them all with perfect fairness. But that is not a question of salvation. As to that, everybody is precisely on the same footing.

God measures people by one standard only: "the glory of God." All have fallen short of it, the best as well as the worst. So there is no difference. If the question were conscience, or human righteousness, there might be some difference. A human standard would let you draw fine distinctions between people. But that is not the standard. God measures everyone by His glory, and by that measure all fall short alike.

There has been only one man in this world whom the glory could own as worthy of it. To Him there came a voice from the excellent glory: "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased" (2 Peter 1:17). In Him, then, we see what the glory of God requires in a man. Do we match Him? Here alone is the true standard by which we can measure ourselves correctly. Suppose a young man wanted to join the royal guards. There is no point in him arguing that he is the tallest person in town. If he is below the fixed height, he is out.

Not only have all sinned. Notice the wording too: "all do come short of the glory of God." The correct reading is "do come short," not "have come short." What a standard God gives! God does not say, "You have come short of what you ought to be." Most would admit that; but He says, "You have come short of my glory."

Nothing will meet their case except being "justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (v. 24). But who asked for this? Who pleaded for it? No one. God in His grace, and in keeping with His love, has given what no creature, aware of its own failure, would ever have asked for. You can imagine a cry going up for forgiveness, so that the deserved punishment might be turned aside. But imagine a sinner who really feels how serious his guilt is. Who could dream of him asking the Judge of all the earth to justify him freely by His grace?

Does this apply to the believer? On the contrary, no believer comes "short of the glory of God." And how is this? Because there is One in the glory who bore my sins on the cross. And He who is in the glory of God is my life and my righteousness.

The word translated "propitiation" here should certainly read "mercy-seat." Hebrews 9:5 uses the same word and translates it that way. That explains the term "set forth." In the tabernacle, no one saw the mercy-seat in the holiest place except the high priest, and only on the day of atonement. So it was a hidden mercy-seat. By contrast, Christ as the mercy-seat stands in the open — open to everyone in this day of grace, in the preaching of the gospel. Everyone is free, and indeed invited, to approach.

The word "propitiatory" is the one the Greek Old Testament uses for the "mercy-seat." ... The mercy-seat was the place in Israel where atonement, or propitiation, stood "set forth." It was the formal basis on which God dwelt in relationship with a sinful people. It was the throne of God, where He dwelt between the cherubim, and the blood sprinkled on it made it a "mercy-seat."

This passage is hard to translate, as you can see from the different views people have put forward... The question is this. Do we link "in His blood" with faith? Or do we connect "in His blood" with propitiation, as the means by which propitiation has been made? We adopt the second view without any hesitation. What happened on the day of atonement makes it very clear: the blood sprinkled on the mercy-seat was the propitiation. If that reading is right, faith is how we take hold of Christ, whom God has set forth as the propitiation.

Propitiation is what we may call the Godward side of the death of Christ. It deals with the most basic matter of all: meeting God's claims against sin. Meeting the sinner's need must come second. So when Paul unfolds the Gospel in the letter to the Romans, he first mentions the death of Christ as "a propitiation through faith in His blood" (Romans 3:25). Paul does not state substitution plainly until Romans 4:25, where we read of Him as "delivered for our offences."

paresis (from pariemi, "to let pass, relax") occurs only in Romans 3:25. There the Authorised Version renders it "remission." That misses the distinction the passage makes between God's ways with the sins of those before the Cross and after it, now that propitiation has been made through faith in His blood... here we must read "for the passing over of sins done beforehand, through the forbearance of God." The Cross declared God's righteousness in passing over the sins of past ages. At the same time it laid the ground for Him now to be "just and the justifier of him that believes in Jesus."

In the first case He showed His righteousness in passing by the sins that had gone before. Strictly speaking, He could not have remitted their sins in justice, because the atoning work was not yet done. But He did pass them over, and this through His forbearance. In the second case He shows His righteousness in the present time. Forbearance is no longer the question, because the work of atonement is done. For who speaks of a creditor's "forbearance" when the debt is paid in full?

May I not ask any fair mind, Who is meant here? "That He might be just and the justifier," etc. — that who might be just? Answer honestly. "That He might be just." Who is He? Is it Christ just? Or is it not God just by virtue of Christ? There can be no doubt in the world... It is by virtue of Christ, or God could not be righteous in this way on behalf of the sinner. Redemption is the righteous groundwork. The blood of Christ deserves at God's hands that the believer should be justified. And God Himself is just in justifying him.

The phrase "the sins that are past" in our translation does not mean what the wording may suggest. It is not the sins of a man's past life, up to the moment of his justification. It is the sins committed in the ages before Christ, while God held back. But the ground of His forbearance was not yet made clear. Now, "in the present season" of gospel grace, God does not just hold back or "pass over." He justifies: He pronounces righteous. The cross, the blood of atonement, now declares His righteousness both as to the past and in the present.

Christ took my place in death and judgment on the cross, and now I get Christ's place before God, by faith in His blood. Is this right? Clearly so... So God, against whom I have sinned, is "just" when He now justifies me. Jesus was delivered up and condemned for my sin. God then raised Him, to prove His satisfaction and delight in Him and in His work of redemption for me. I might go further and say He would be unjust to Christ to condemn me for those very sins for which He condemned His Son... He judges sin, and justifies the sinner who believes in Jesus.

The sinner feared God's righteousness. He imagined that justice was against him. Now he finds it is for him. Instead of being against him to condemn him, it is the very thing that witnesses for him. God shows His righteousness by justifying the believer in Jesus — by justifying the ungodly. I am a poor sinner with all my sin on me. I am a wretched, guilty soul standing before a righteous God. And I find that His very righteousness is my friend. It is the thing that justifies me.

It is the believer, and the believer only, whom God justifies... But someone may answer that in the next chapter we read of God justifying "the ungodly." True — but not in his ungodliness. The next words add, "his faith is counted as righteousness." So the word describes his state up to the time when he became a believer. God justified him not as ungodly at that moment, but as a believer.

What comfort, what deep peace it brings into a life! What stability it gives to faith to understand that it is God who justifies! He is "just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Rom. 3:26). In this bright gospel day He can take to Himself the title of "Him who justifies the ungodly" (4:5). Yes, this title is His glory, the righteous triumph of His grace in a world where sin abounded.

All boasting on our part is shut out. Our blessing depends entirely on the work of another, and we have received the report of that work by faith. If that is so, we clearly have nothing to boast in, as if our own works had secured the blessing. So the Apostle says we reach the conclusion that a man is justified by faith, apart from works of law.

All boasting on man's part is shut out. God's work and God's grace justify man. This is clearly not by a law of works, for then man would have his boasting. It is by the law of faith, which simply receives, through grace, the effect of another's work. We may see here that law is used for a regularly acting principle: the law of faith, the law of works. We shall find this again. There are two principles here: gaining a thing by working, and receiving a thing by faith. What faith receives is indeed another thing — God's righteousness, not man's. We cannot mix the two, so one of them excludes the other.

The Jews boasted a great deal over the Gentiles. Self-righteousness always boasts. It is not a law of works that can shut it out. A man justifying himself by his works would have something to boast in. It is this law of faith, this divine principle on which we are placed, that shuts it out.

The law of faith excludes boasting. If a man is justified by faith, he has nothing to boast of over his neighbour. The greatest sinner in the world may be justified on the same principle. If a man were justified by works he would have much to boast of, for it would be seen that he was so much better than others. But justification on the principle of faith puts boasting out of court.

There is, then, no room for man to boast, not even for the Jew, despite all his privileges. Man, whoever he may be, occupies the place of a sinner. Grace, and grace only, avails for all in the same way.

But the Christian has a just ground of boasting. There is One in whom we may and ought to boast — not self, but the Lord... To boast in the Lord is due to Him and good for us; to boast elsewhere is a danger as well as a delusion. It connects more or less directly with self. The approved man is not the one who commends himself, but the one whom the Lord commends.

Justification, then, must be on another principle. "For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law." What else could Scripture conclude? All are guilty. And justification is not what we are to God, but what He is to us, set forth in Christ. Do not mix these two things together. Let your salvation rest entirely on the principle of faith — what God is to you.

To justify a man is to reckon him righteous. No one can ever bring a charge against such a person. Before the throne of judgement he stands acquitted for ever. To justify someone who has done no wrong is simple. Every court in the world can do it. But to justify a sinner is another matter altogether. Only God can solve that problem. Long ago Job and his friend Bildad both asked how a man can be just with God, and both knew that man is fallen and guilty.

All boasting on man's part is shut out. God justifies man by His own work and His own grace. It is not by a law of works, for then man would have something to boast of. It is by the law of faith, which simply receives, through grace, the effect of another's work. Here "law" means a principle that acts in a regular way — the law of faith, the law of works. So we cannot mix the two principles: gaining a thing by working, and receiving a thing by faith (and, indeed, receiving another thing — God's righteousness, not man's). One of them excludes the other. And we conclude not only that a man is justified by faith through Christ's blood by grace, but that it is without works of law — wholly apart from them, to the exclusion of them.

Works of the law are not only works aimed at keeping the law of Moses. They are works aiming at keeping any law at all (literally: "works of law"). The people of Israel proved this in the case of the law of Moses. But it is a general principle. There are no works, there is nothing that man can do, which would make him just or righteous before God.

The law of faith excludes boasting. If a man is justified by faith he has nothing to boast of over his neighbour, since the greatest sinner in the world may be justified on the same principle. If a man were justified by works he would have much to boast of, for it would be seen that he was so much better than others. But justification on the principle of faith puts boasting out of court.

By no means. The three expressions convey different thoughts, but they all refer to the same act. The grace of God is the source of our every blessing, the blood of Christ is the channel by which it reaches us, while faith is simply how we take it all for ourselves.

There is really no difficulty to get out of. In James the whole point is what is valid before man, as verse 18 of that chapter shows. A man has the right to ask that we display our faith in our works, so justifying ourselves and our faith before him. In Romans the whole point is what is valid before God. Our faith is quite plain to His all-seeing eye. He does not have to wait for works, the fruit of faith, to be sure that the faith is real.

The summing up is therefore in verse 28. A person is justified by faith, without works of law. And the moment we think who God is, this is plain. If the law justified, it could justify only Jews, and only if they kept the whole law. Is He the God of the Jews alone? Thanks be to His name, He is the God of the Gentiles also. So the blessing of justification must rest on some other ground than keeping the law, which was, strictly speaking, given to the Jew alone.

Once we admit that this is God's approved way, He is clearly not God of Jews more than of Gentiles. He is one and the same to both. He will justify circumcised people not by law, as they expect, but by faith. And if uncircumcised people have faith, He will justify them through it too.

And is God a limited God — the God of the Jews only? No, He is also the God of the Gentiles. And how? In grace. One God justifies the Jews, who seek after righteousness, on the principle of faith. And since justification is on the principle of faith, He justifies believing Gentiles by faith too.

He created all men. Will He deny some of them the possibility of being justified from their sins, while granting this blessing to others? Impossible! "God shows no partiality." If "all have sinned," the gospel is for all. If some do not receive it, that is another matter; they will die in their sins. But God's offer is to all, without partiality.

If we give up the principle of law, and grace is shown by the pure goodness of God, then the apostle's question has only one answer: "Is He the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also?" Will such goodness keep itself inside the limits of a weak and scattered people? Or will it go out to meet the need of the whole world?

If God is the justifier, and justifies on the principle of faith, there can be no boasting. The principle of faith excludes it absolutely. No one can claim a better right to be justified than another. The privilege of faith cannot be offered to any without offering it to all. It is free in every case. No one has a claim upon God for His grace.

And then the joyful question arises: "Is He the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also?" Our need of salvation, and our dependence on the sovereignty and grace of God, put us all on the same level. God is one, "who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith." The Jew must come in on the very same mercy that saves the Gentile.

If a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law, this would favour Gentiles as much as Jews. This very fact has been a great stumbling block to the Jews ever since Christianity has been preached. But "Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also?" He created all men. Would He deny some of them the possibility of being justified from their sins, while granting this blessing to others? Impossible! God shows no partiality. If "all have sinned," the gospel is for all. If some do not receive it, that is another matter; they will die in their sins. But God's offer is to all, without partiality.

That is what He must be, and that is what He was even in the Old Testament. It is true that when every race on earth had sunk into idolatry, He chose Israel out from among them, in Abraham, to keep the knowledge of the one God alive on the earth. But now in grace He has taken His place as God over all men, according to the truth of His unchanging right. For it is one and the same God who justifies the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

"By" means on the principle of faith; "through" means by means of the faith a person actually has. The Jew sought righteousness on a wrong principle. The gospel revealed the true one — faith. If the Gentile had the faith, he had the justification which was given on that principle.

Justifying the circumcised "out of faith," or on that principle, matters greatly. It shuts out works of law, which most Jews expected. It was just as important to say that God will justify the uncircumcised through their faith, if any of them have it. But is it not strange that a scholar should claim the two phrases mean the same thing, even though the end result is much the same? … Scripture is not loose; scholars sometimes are.

The law was for one nation only. That was the boast of the Jew, and it was itself the witness that the law was not, after all, the way of blessing. Could God have forgotten the Gentile like that? … God is drawing near to men — would it be a greater and better thing to say that He is drawing near to the Jew? One might as well claim an exclusive right to sun and rain. The more necessary such blessings are, the more widely they are spread.

Our need of salvation, and our dependence on the sovereignty and grace of God, put us all on the same level. The Jew must come in on the very same mercy that saves the Gentile.

Justification is not limited to the Jew. There is "one God" who justifies the circumcised Jew on the principle of faith, and the uncircumcised Gentile by faith. So it is evident that God is acting towards all in righteousness and grace.

The last verse of our chapter answers an objection that a zealous Jew might raise. He might say this Gospel message cannot be true, because it makes the law false — and God undeniably gave that law at an earlier time. "No," says Paul, "far from making the law null and void, we establish it by putting it in the place God always intended it to occupy."

This is an unhappy expression, bringing in the name of God where it does not occur. In the Old Testament it is chalilah, "far be it." In the New Testament it is "let it not be."

Do we then make void the law, or more properly, law? No; we establish law, not Moses' law, but the principle of law. If a thief is hanging on a tree, is that making void the law? No; so far from making it void, hanging establishes it. But if after the punishment he rose, the law would have inflicted its penalty, and he would be beyond its reach. So then Christ died, and He established the law... But that does not put me under it. If I am under it, I am lost — not just as a sinner, but by the law itself. Nothing establishes the law like the death of Christ.

Law was never established so solemnly and so gloriously as when the divine Saviour bore its curse on the cross. The very thing that delivered from its penalty upheld its authority.

Justifying by faith seems to set the law aside and make it void. It does the opposite: it establishes the law. Its claims are fully recognised, and it stands in all its holiness, justness, and goodness. Justification by faith assumes what this letter has already shown. The sinner takes the place of one condemned under law, proved guilty, his mouth stopped, owning the just sentence the law pronounced on him. That establishes the law in all its force. Indeed, before we could be freed from its condemnation, the Son of God had to die. This is what faith owns.

Note that the establishing of law in Romans 3:31 has no connection at all with Christ's obeying the law, as some say, to give us active righteousness. The whole passage speaks only of Christ set forth as a mercy seat through faith in His blood. It shows God's righteousness apart from law. The only establishing of law set before our faith here is Christ's death. It says nothing about His making out righteousness for us by obeying the law in His life.

Suppose a substitute had kept the law for the offender — though that was impossible. Then no one would ever have paid the penalty the law demands for breaking it. The law would have been broken without consequence, and no sacrifice would have been needed. As Galatians 2:21 says, "if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose." Had that been possible, His life, not His death, would have met the need.

Justification by faith shuts out the law as a means of blessing. Does that make the law of no effect? On the contrary, justifying the believer on the ground of the precious blood establishes the law. God gave the law to convict men of sin, and for that purpose the law still works.

But the establishment of the law, of which the apostle speaks in Romans 3, has no reference whatever to the question of a rule by which the Christian has to walk. The chapter treats of man's ruin and God's righteousness, not of practice, and shows that faith upholds the authority of the law in the cross of Christ.

The person who pretends to stand under law without being condemned is the one who makes law void.

In Romans 3 the Apostle set out to convince the Jew of his sinfulness. He showed that the Jew, just as much as the Gentile, stood under the judgment of God. He settled that argument by quoting what the law had said. Now the point is to prove that justification is by faith, with the deeds of the law shut out, and again he appeals to the Old Testament. Long ago the faith of the Gospel already showed itself ahead of time. That was true before the law was given, as with Abraham, and after it was given, as with David.

The Apostle turns to the history of Abraham to show the righteous condition in which God sees the believer. Every Jew would boast in Abraham as the man he descended from by natural birth. So if we can prove that Abraham was justified by faith, that would stop the Jew short. Such an argument would carry great weight with him. Now Scripture does state that Abraham was justified. How then was he justified? Was it by works? If so, says the Apostle, he has something to boast about — but not before God.

For a Jew this was powerful evidence that the flesh counted for nothing in the salvation of a man's soul. It was also very humbling to his pride, because he boasted of his descent from this great man.

To meet this case, the apostle now takes up the question of Abraham's blessing. God had blessed Abraham. That blessing came to him before the revelation of Jesus Christ. So how did he get it? Abraham's natural descendants were circumcised and kept the Law. Had it not always been God's way, then, to justify and bless His people on the ground of their own righteousness? Abraham had certainly found something. He had found favour and blessing.

The beginning and the perfection of Abraham's justification was that he believed God. God spoke to Abraham. He spoke to him about Himself, as the Giver of blessing — as the God of grace, who meets the ungodly with pure and absolute promise... God's righteousness was Abraham's righteousness... Receiving the word of grace, he received God, whose word it was.

If works had justified him, he would have had something to glory in — but not before God. Weigh those last two words. They show that the point of this passage is what counts before God, not what counts before men. Here lies an essential difference between this chapter and James 2, where the word is, "Show me your faith" (verse 18). Paul shows that the works of the law must be shut out; James insists that the works of faith must be brought in.

We may call this the typical case — the case that every other case must match. It is the case of the man who is called "the father of all who believe." So Abraham's justification is the pattern for the justification of Abraham's children. The principle on which he was justified is the principle on which all believers are justified.

Romans 4 then takes up two test cases to confirm the conclusion of Romans 3:28. The first of these is Abraham. This matters most of all to Jews. He is the father of Israel, and they made him their chief boast. God gave him all the promises of blessing first — to the nation Israel above all, but also to the Gentiles.

A Jew might admit that he had failed under the law, and then claim the privilege he enjoyed as a child of Abraham. Suppose we look at Abraham in that natural way — as the man whose privileges came down to his children as an inheritance. Suppose we take our place under him in that line to enjoy them. What principle does this put us on? The same principle of faith.

Had he been justified by works he would have had something to glory in, but not before God. Note those two words, for they show plainly what this passage is about: what counts before God, not what counts before men.

Abraham, then, in one sense, has something to glory in: not before God, but before the world. In God's presence he is dust and ashes. In that light his human glory turns out to be corruption, and he admits it. But before the world he is God's witness — a justified heir of grace, on the way to glory.

If justified by works, certainly the credit would be his; but this is never found before God. And Scripture agrees. It says nothing about his goodness before his call or his acceptance. It speaks plainly of one thing he did: he believed God's word, and that faith was counted to him as righteousness (Gen. 15:6). No Jew who bowed to the divine authority of the books of Moses could dispute this.

Abraham was a great man, and God was pleased to link His name with him. Yet whatever blessing was his, he was justified on the same principle as any other poor sinner. Scripture is definite enough on that point. He had no more to glory in than anyone else. He was as empty of works of righteousness as the rest of mankind.

The religions of the world move on the principle of works, but justification before God is not on the principle of works. This is the whole argument of this chapter. At the start it says Abraham might have had something to boast of if he had been justified on the principle of works. But he was justified on the principle of faith. So all Abraham's boast was in God and His abounding goodness.

In James the whole point is what is valid before man, as James 2:18 shows. A man has the right to ask us to show our faith by our works, and so to justify ourselves and our faith before him. In Romans the whole point is what is valid before God. The very words "before God" occur in Romans 4:2. Our faith is quite plain to His all-seeing eye. He does not have to wait for the works that grow out of faith to be sure that the faith is really there.

Is faith, then, a new principle for being right with God? Was any child of Adam ever justified by works? Could human nature ever have boasted in God's presence? The apostle goes back to Abraham. How was he justified? If it had been by works, he could well have boasted. But that cannot be, for no one will boast in His presence. What then does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness." However great a man Abraham was, however much God chose to link His name with his, and whatever blessing he had, he was justified on the same principle as any other poor sinner.

Abraham believed the Lord's word, though he was then an old man, and his wife an old woman. In the eyes of man this promise was impossible; but Abraham believed God, and God counted, or reckoned, this faith to him as righteousness. So the record goes in Genesis 15:5 and 6. Nothing could be more clear and more simple. It was by simple faith in a simple statement. Abraham did not look at the impossibility of the promise. He looked at the almighty power of the One who made it. … Remember that this happened 430 years before the law was given. Abraham had never heard of the law when God reckoned him righteous. It was all by grace. It was all by faith.

Read that chapter carefully and you will notice the words counted, imputed and reckoned several times. All three have the same force. They translate the same word, and the word reckoned comes closest to its meaning. "Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness." That is, God reckoned Abraham righteous, or held him to be righteous, because of his faith. The little word "for" can mislead. It may suggest that faith is a substitute for righteousness, something that can be turned into righteousness. "Reckoned to him as righteousness" gives the sense more closely.

Eleven passages in Scripture speak of imputing righteousness, or of imputing something for righteousness. In nine of them faith is imputed for righteousness. So here it is not the value of what was done that God imputes. Otherwise our faith would be the merit… Righteousness imputed to a man means the same thing as the man being accounted righteous.

A person may be fully and securely blessed, but only by grace, and so by faith. Faith gives the glory to God, and faith itself is His gift.

"For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness." Now this comes in Abraham's history many years before he "offered up" Isaac. The first is in Genesis 15:6, the second in Genesis 22. How completely distinct, then, is justification before God from justification before men.

Abraham accepted that when he could do nothing God would do everything, and that is just what he proved. Notice, God is able. We are utterly unable — God is completely able. This is where faith rests. There is this difference between Abraham and ourselves. He believed what God would do. We believe what God has done, for "we believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification."

If a man works, the reward is not seen as a gift, but as the wages owed to him. But suppose that, instead of working, he believes on Him who justifies the ungodly. What a magnificent proof and conclusion, that his faith is counted for righteousness! This is free grace, the very opposite of a debt under law. And this was the principle of God's dealings with their great forefather, in the account Moses wrote by inspiration.

If Abraham had been justified by his works, his justification would have been owed to him for what he had done. Wages are owed to workmen in the same way. There would have been no question of grace on God's side or faith on Abraham's. But in justifying, God acts in pure grace; for let us not forget that the believer in himself is "ungodly." So the righteous standing in which God views the believer is the result of pure grace. That grace does not look for or recognise any merit in the person justified. This is a very blessed and steadying truth: it frees the believer from any troubling thought that his standing rests on anything he has done or can do.

Now one who works for a reward does not at the end consider that it is given him by grace: he has earned it and would be most resentful if anyone suggested that it was a "gift of grace": his working has made his employer his debtor. Does God so employ men on this business basis? Men may suppose so, but their work is nothing to Him. He has given them no such contract. They are like men working, with no authoritative instruction, to build a railroad where no train will ever travel.

The apostle presses further the contrast between the principles he has been comparing. "Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due." And the greatness of the reward does not change the principle involved: if you buy heaven cheap, you still buy it.

It is through grace, and through grace alone, that we come to know God. Suppose I could come to the door of heaven and ask to be let in on the ground of my own righteousness. Imagine for a moment that this were possible. How would I stand there? For "to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due." I might know God as the One who lived there. But it would be a cold entrance. I could not know Him as a God of love. What grace is shown in paying a man his wages for his work?

Verses 4 and 5 are aimed at the deep and natural link the mind makes between reward and work — between reward and debt. But Abraham did no work. "To him that works not" God reckons a reward. And what a reward! "I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward." To the believer God reveals Himself as the reward of His own work. He works the poor sinner's salvation, and places the crown of that work, in Christ Jesus, on the head of the saved!

Did you ever weigh these words of the Spirit of God, dear self-righteous worker? "To the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due" (Rom. 4:4). If I work for you at £1 a week, it is only right and fair that you should pay me when the work is done; that is debt. But if I fail to do the work I should have done, and you then come and give me £5, that would be grace.

"Working" stands opposite "believing on Him who justifies the ungodly." Do I work for justification? Or do I receive it freely by God's grace through faith in His Son? It is one or the other. There is no mixture: the two are distinct. But God cannot count righteousness to my account because of my works. Why? Because they are not perfect in righteousness. They carry far too much unrighteousness in them. The value of the work of Christ is a different thing: it is perfect, faultless, unmixed. On that ground God can freely count righteousness to the account of the one who believes in Jesus.

And who are we to believe in? The God "who justifies the ungodly." Who but God could do that? A human judge could not. He might let the guilty one off, or be merciful to him; but no human judge has the power to justify a guilty criminal. To justify him, he would have to clear him of every charge against him. If the man was guilty, he could not do that. But, blessed be His name, God can, and in a way perfectly consistent with His own perfect righteousness.

In human law courts it is impossible in strict justice to justify the guilty. But the work of Christ on the cross has such power, and He took our place of judgment there so completely, that God is able to justify the UNGODLY.

"You have never yet seen God's starting point. All these years you have been striving, more or less, to be godly, believing that God justifies the godly. You have never yet believed that God justifies the ungodly; that is the starting point. Godliness will come afterwards."

Abraham is the great example of what is meant (verse 3). He — and we — are held by God as righteous in view of faith. That is its simple meaning. Faith brings in all the justifying merits of the blood of Christ. These are the great basis of that righteousness. We may also safely say this: the first right thing in anyone's life, and the start of a right course, is when he turns to God as a sinner and believes in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Many never enter into peace with God and full assurance of salvation. The reason is that they are looking inside themselves for something that would make God bless them. They admit that their works give them no claim on Him. But they think their faith might give them that claim. So the quality or quantity of their faith fills their minds. What should fill them instead is the free grace of God, the power of the work of Christ, and the Word of God that cannot fail.

This is God counting righteousness apart from works. Yet it is the only principle that produces good works as its fruit. Oh, do not let the pride of unbelief blind you to how lost you really are. May you turn to God just as you are, a poor lost sinner, and find in the grace of Christ all you need.

The apostle brings forward two great witnesses against the idea that righteousness comes on the principle of law... God made the promises to Abraham, and he was the heir of the world. The throne and kingdom belonged to David... No Jew would have disputed the testimony of these two witnesses. One lived four hundred and thirty years before God gave the law, and he declares that justification was by faith. The other lived in the age of law, and he declares that justification was without works.

"David speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works." Whoever that person may be. What qualifies someone for this blessing is not birth or any other privilege. It is simply a sinner's capacity to receive God's mercy.

Nothing is said of David's works. Instead he spoke of his sins and his wrongdoing. No man in the Old Testament records fell lower than David in his sins against God and man, and yet we learn that his sins did not exclude him from the blessing... His sins were ten thousand times worse because he knew God's mercy. Even so, they did not shut him out of the blessing of justification. It is a blessing into which the works of the best man cannot bring him, and from which the sins of the worst man need not exclude him. It is altogether of and from God.

Imputed righteousness means the character or quality in which the person appears in God's sight. It is not the cause of his appearing that way... It is not only that He does not count the sin the man has done. He does not view him as in sin, but as in righteousness... So the word used for imputed righteousness is not the word for a righteous act, but the word for righteousness itself — not an act or a sum of things done, but a state. God reckons him to be in that state.

The word for forgiveness only appears once in the whole letter. It comes when the Apostle quotes David's words from Psalm 32... This shows us, however, that counting righteousness to a person — that is, justification — comes to the same thing here as forgiveness.

David had only the dim light of foreshadowings and prophecies. He could take comfort only from the negative side: the Lord will not count sin against the believer. Paul stands in the full light of Christ's redeeming work. He gives us the comfort of the positive side: "God counts righteousness apart from works." How good it is to see the fuller light coming out.

Upon what equitable basis is He able to impute righteousness to a man apart from works? Psalm 40 will answer. There we hear the Incarnate Son saying: "Sacrifice and offering you have not desired... Behold, I have come to do your will, O God." The atoning sacrifice of Calvary has replaced for ever all the offerings of the old sacrificial system. It enables God to pardon and justify, in full righteousness, every sinner who believes in Jesus.

It is clear then that not to have sin reckoned is, in other words, to be reckoned to be in a righteous condition. God would have every believer to know the blessedness of this in his own soul.

Take again the testimony of David. Does he agree with the gospel, or contradict Moses, who gave the law? David, the sweet psalmist of Israel, confirms both. He calls blessed the very people whom the law could only curse... This is clearly justification, not by good works, but despite evil ones. It is God's grace blessing, not His law cursing, where there was no righteousness, but only lawlessness and sin.

On the other hand, David says nothing about his works. Instead he speaks of his iniquities and his sins. No man in the Old Testament record fell lower than David in his sins against God and man. Yet we learn that his sins did not exclude him from the blessing... It is a blessing into which the works of the best man cannot bring him. It is a blessing from which the sins of the worst man need not exclude him.

The transgression is FORGIVEN. Here the word means to lift away from. The great burden is removed: it no longer weighs upon the soul and conscience before God. How great is the blessedness of being forgiven! The sin is COVERED, it is concealed, blotted out of God's sight, so as to offend Him no more.

The Hebrew word employed is Kaphar, which means to cover. It is only by the death of Christ, by His atoning blood, that sin is covered, and its consequences averted. So we read, "Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered" (Psalm 32:1)... "For it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul" (Leviticus 17:11). How beautifully the New Testament answers to all this: "the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7).

But this assumes the man is a sinner, not righteous in himself. The question is what God is in grace toward such a man, not what the man is toward God... His blessedness was that God did not impute to him the sins he had committed. It was not that he was righteous in himself before God. For man, righteousness lay in the grace of God. Here that righteousness amounts to God not imputing sins to a man guilty of committing them. He imputes no sin at all.

Our first need, as sinners, is forgiveness; and there is forgiveness with God... This blessedness is a present possession: "In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses" (Ephesians 1:7). And this portion belongs to the simplest believer as much as to the most advanced. We read, "I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake" (1 John 2:12).

Abraham and David were the two men a Jew would accept as authority beyond dispute.

Nothing is said about David's works; instead, he spoke of his iniquities and his sins. No man in the Old Testament records fell lower than David in his sins against God and man. Yet his sins did not exclude him from the blessing… The works of the best man cannot bring him into this blessing, and the sins of the worst man need not shut him out of it.

But this assumes the man is a sinner and not righteous in himself. The question was what God was in grace to such a person, not what he was toward God… His blessedness was not that he was righteous in himself before God. It was that God did not charge him with the sins he had committed. Righteousness for man was found in the grace of God.

Sin was plainly there. Yet when the enemy tried to curse them, what was Balaam forced to say? "He has not looked on iniquity in Jacob, nor has He seen perverseness in Israel." The iniquity was there, but God said, "I do not look on it." The perverseness was obvious, but God said, "I do not see it." We know on what ground God could say that of Israel, and does say it of us — the blood of the Lamb.

It is not that they are counted righteous because they never sinned, for all have sinned. Their sins have been covered and their iniquities forgiven. And it is not only their past sins that Christ's atoning death has covered. Infinite grace says more, and says it in perfect righteousness: "The Lord shall not at all reckon sin."

God forsook Him during the three hours of darkness, when His soul was made an offering for sin. No doubt it was then that the great question of sin was gone into and settled forever, condemned at the cross… He bore all the judgment of God due to us and died, and therefore nothing can be imputed to us who believe.

Our failure will never in the least impair the relationships that God has established between us and Himself, because He has established them in Christ. So until sin can be imputed to Christ, it cannot be imputed to the believer.

If a believer does sin, he loses his communion and becomes very unhappy. The Lord will deal with him about that sin, as one who belongs to Him, but the sin is not counted against him in the eternal sense.

David, in the dim light of pictures and prophecies, could only take comfort from the negative: the Lord will NOT impute sin to the believer. Paul, in the full light of the redemptive work of Christ, gives us the comfort of the positive: "God imputes RIGHTEOUSNESS without works."

We get the expression, "this blessedness," in verse 9. It refers to faith being "counted for righteousness," or "reckoned for righteousness." It also refers to righteousness being "imputed." ... Whether referring to Abraham or David or to ourselves who believe today, they mean that God accounts us as righteous before Him in view of our faith. We must not imagine that all the virtue is in our faith. It is not. But faith makes contact with the work of Christ, and all the virtue is there. In that sense faith justifies.

This blessedness comes by grace, and it comes to sinners. So can circumcision give a claim to it that the uncircumcised do not have? Look once more at the history. Faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness — but when? While he was circumcised, or while he was still uncircumcised? ... His own father Abraham was an uncircumcised man when he had the faith by which God justified him. And circumcision, the sign of God's covenant with him, was the seal of that faith! ... To make his argument work, the Jew has to turn the facts of history upside down.

Eleven passages in Scripture speak of imputing righteousness, or of imputing something for righteousness. In nine of them, faith is imputed for righteousness. So here it does not mean that the value of the thing done is imputed. If it did, our faith would be the merit. ... So a person is reckoned to be in a state he is not actually in. But imputed righteousness does not mean a quantity of righteousness held outside him and put to his account. It means the state in God's sight of the person so accounted righteous. Righteousness imputed to a man is the same as the man's being accounted righteous.

Circumcision simply meant that, if God justifies a man by faith, that is the end of the flesh before God; it has no standing in His presence. ... It showed that God could not put Himself into relationship with the flesh. If He took up Abraham, and justified him, and placed him in relationship with Himself, the mark of death must be in the flesh. It must be set aside.

Here we have the best possible argument that ordinances, or what people call sacraments, have no part in giving salvation to anyone. Baptism is called "a sacrament," and ritualistic Christians hold that it is needed in order to receive the blessing of forgiveness.

We see, then, in this old and decisive example of Abraham that, by the will and declaration of God, the faith of an uncircumcised man is reckoned to him for righteousness. Circumcision was given to Abraham afterwards, as a seal of the righteousness of faith which he had while still uncircumcised. God did this so that Abraham might be the father of all who believe. He is the father of the uncircumcised, so that righteousness might be reckoned to them too, as it was to him. And he is the father of the circumcised as well.

The question raised in verse 9 is this: is this blessedness for the Jew only, or is it also for the Gentile who believes? The Apostle knew very well how firmly the bigoted Jew tried to put all the condemnation on the Gentile and keep all the blessing for himself. The answer is that the case of Abraham, in whom they so much boasted, proves that it is for ALL. Abraham was justified before he was circumcised. If the order had been reversed, the Jew might have had some ground for that claim. As things stood, he had none.

So when the Jew pointed to Abraham, the scriptural record forced him to admit something. This case shows the grace of God in justifying the nations more strongly, if that is possible, than in the case of his own circumcised descendants. God could have brought Abraham under circumcision first and justified him afterward, if He had wished. But He chose to do the exact opposite.

God counted Abraham's faith to him as righteousness (Gen. 15:6) 14 years before He gave him circumcision as a sign of separation from the world to God.

God justified Abraham without law, and also apart from that great sign of putting the flesh to death. Circumcision began with Abraham, yet it clearly had nothing to do with his righteousness. At best it was only the seal of the righteousness of faith which he already had while uncircumcised. So it could not be the source or the means of his righteousness.

A person is counted to be in a state he is not actually in. But imputed righteousness does not mean that some amount of righteousness lying outside him is credited to him. It means the state before God of the person who is counted righteous. Righteousness imputed to a man is the same as the man being counted righteous.

Circumcision meant this: if God justifies a man by faith, that is the end of the flesh before God. The flesh has no standing in His presence. Circumcision is the end of the flesh. This is what really took place at the cross. There God's judgment brought the flesh to a complete end, and circumcision was a picture of this. It showed that God could not put Himself in relationship with the flesh. If He was to take up Abraham, justify him and place him in relationship with Himself, the mark of death had to be in the flesh. It had to be set aside.

He was uncircumcised, practically a Gentile, and circumcision was a sign and seal of the righteousness of faith. All this shows the wisdom of God. God arranged it so that Abraham would be the father of all who believe without being circumcised, that is, of Gentiles, so that righteousness would be counted to them too. … Here we have the best possible argument that ordinances, or sacraments as people call them, have no part in giving salvation to anyone.

So in Abraham, of all people, we have an uncircumcised man justified by faith. Circumcision was only a seal of the righteousness he already had while uncircumcised. So he became the father of all who believe, even those who are not circumcised, like believing Gentiles, so that they too might be counted righteous through faith.

If He had pleased, God could have justified Abraham only after bringing him under the rite of circumcision. But He chose to do the exact opposite. God reckoned faith to Abraham as righteousness, and beyond dispute He did it while Abraham was still uncircumcised. Circumcision was in no way a means of the grace that justifies. It was a seal of the righteousness God reckoned to him long before He gave that sign.

God reckoned Abraham's faith to him for righteousness (Gen. 15:6). That was fourteen years before He gave him circumcision as a sign of separation from the world to God.

Circumcision was a sign, though — and only a sign. He received it as an identifying seal of the righteousness of faith he already had. It meant the cutting off of the flesh, and it taught that this righteousness was not mixed with any activity or merit of the flesh. On all such effort circumcision put the outward stamp of death.

God says, in giving Abraham circumcision, "You must carry in your body the sign that your flesh is worthless. You must have in yourself the sign that the sentence of judgment is on the flesh. You must accept a mark that means this: faith is the principle on which you stand in relationship with Me."

In Romans 4 Paul gives special attention to one point. God credited righteousness to Abraham before he received the ordinance of circumcision. This is the great principle of Scripture. Ordinances follow justification and rest on it. They never lead to it, for that would reverse God's order.

Here we have the best possible argument that ordinances — or sacraments, as people call them — have no part in giving salvation to anyone. Baptism is called "a sacrament," and ritualistic Christians hold that it is necessary to receive the blessing of forgiveness.

Here is something remarkable: a fuller revelation of God follows immediately after circumcision (Genesis 17). Abraham did not need to be circumcised first to receive mercy in forgiveness or grace in God's decree. But he did need it to walk with God as a friend, to be trusted with God's plans, and to pray for others as a priest.

God gave this sign and seal to Abraham as a man who already had the righteousness of faith. It made him the father of all who believe — the pattern man of faith. He is the pattern and example of all believers, whoever they are and wherever they are found. So just as God reckoned righteousness to him by faith, He reckons it to them also.

So the Jew could not appeal to Abraham without the scriptural record forcing him to admit one thing. This precedent shows the grace of God in justifying the nations even more strongly, if that is possible, than in justifying his own circumcised, direct descendants.

Even in the matter of justification by faith, Romans 4 makes this difference between Abraham and us. He believed that God was able to perform His promise. We believe on Him who raised our Lord Jesus from the dead, after He accomplished His work in death for our offence. The Old Testament had promise; we rest on accomplishment.

Abraham is here called father of circumcision, or of true separation to God. He is the father of this separation because he is the person in whom this order of separating man for God began. It was in him that God brought in this new principle of His intervention, in the middle of evil, by setting man apart for Himself. From that time on, in God's later ways with man, this principle of separation has been much developed. Abraham is the father of circumcision in the same sense in which science has made Hippocrates the father of medicine.

Romans 4:12. — The real meaning is, father of circumcision, that is, of true separation to God, not only to the persons characterised by circumcision, but also to those who walk in the steps, and so on.

In Abraham's case no one could deny that circumcision added nothing to the righteousness that was already his before it. To get his argument, the Jew must reverse the facts of history. As those facts stand, Abraham appears as the father of all who believe, even though they are uncircumcised, so that God may consistently reckon righteousness to them also. He is also the father of circumcision — the one in whom that separation to God began which circumcision implied. And he is that father to those who did not merely have the mark in the flesh, but who also walked in the steps of that faith of their father Abraham, the faith he had while still uncircumcised.

Both words are used for walking by or in the Spirit, Galatians 5:16 and Galatians 5:25; but stoicheō (from steichō, "to go in order") is restricted to walking well. In Romans 4:12 "in the steps of the faith of Abraham"; by a godly rule, Galatians 6:16; Philippians 3:16; and it is once translated "walk orderly," Acts 21:24. These passages are the only ones in which stoicheō occurs.

So Abraham is said to be "the father of all who believe", and "the father of circumcision" to all believers who "walk in the steps" of Abraham. As "the father of all who believe" he sets out the righteous condition in which God views the believer. As "the father of circumcision" he sets out the holy and separate walk that suits those who are reckoned righteous.

Circumcision was given as the "seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised". This surely shows that the one who is reckoned to be in a righteous condition before God must from now on refuse the activities of the flesh. If he is in a righteous condition before God, he must walk in a righteous way before men. Righteousness of faith before God will put a "seal" or stamp on a man, and that stamp will show in a life before men that refuses the flesh and the world. This refusal of the flesh, we know, can only be in the power of the Spirit who is given to those who believe. Separation from the world and a walk in practical righteousness will be the outcome of being in a righteous condition before God.

Law assumes obedience from man as the condition for receiving the gift in question. It was not so in God's dealings with Abraham or his seed. There was not a word about His law when God gave the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12, and to his seed in Genesis 22. The promise implies God's fulfilment of it; the law claimed man's obedience to its demands. So they are completely different, and each shuts the other out — though each is excellent for its own purpose.

Romans 4:13 is a simple case of the general rule... "through law" was the character or way of his getting the promise. So "through righteousness of faith." It was not by law. The case is a very simple one.

God promised Abraham that he would be heir of the world. That promise did not come by law, so it did not depend on his obedience to law. It came by the righteousness of faith. That is, it came as the result of a righteousness already fully settled — not a righteousness that future works still had to establish. So the promise could not be challenged. There was no possibility that it could fail.

The promise stood completely apart from law or condition. It was God speaking out of His own abundant goodness. It was a covenant with only one party to it, and that One cannot fail. He who credited righteousness to Abraham by faith gave him the promise in the same way. For what is faith? It is the confession that we have nothing and are nothing, so that we must turn to God for everything. So righteousness came to the man who knew he had none, and the promise came to the man who could promise nothing himself.

The Old Testament records no promise in these exact words, that Abraham should be "the heir of the world." But this is clearly the sense and meaning of "in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed" (Gen. 22:18). Galatians 3:16 tells us with authority that "your offspring" meant Christ. The promise then looks on to that future time when Christ will exercise His sovereignty over all the kingdoms of this world.

There can be no denying that God promised the possession of the world both to Abraham and to his seed. In Genesis 12 God said to him, "so that you will be a blessing… and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." That implied Abraham's possession of the earth — not just Canaan, but all the earth. The promise of an heir in Genesis 15 implied it too. Clearly it is through this heir, who is Christ, that Abraham inherits all that the promise involved, whether earthly things or heavenly things.

Promise, and faith in it, went together. Law was man's work, and on God's part a requirement from man, not a promise to him... But the inheritance is of faith, not of law, so that it might be by grace. Faith just believes the grace shown. So the promise is sure to all the seed. Grace can give it to a Gentile, and faith in a Gentile can receive it.

He weighed out the purchase money, four hundred shekels of silver in the currency merchants used, and handed it over. Then the sons of Heth made the field and the cave in it sure to Abraham as a possession for a burial place. And there Abraham buried Sarah. How strange a proceeding for "the heir of the world"!

A Jew would object here: "God did give the law afterward. And once He gave the law, the promise would belong only to the people who received it." The apostle's answer to this is: "For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void." But the promise is free and completely unconditional. The law, given later, could not set aside an unconditional promise. It could not disinherit those to whom God had freely given the promise. Abraham's spiritual seed — those who were of faith — were heirs to his inheritance even while under the law. It was not law that made them heirs. They were heirs by faith, not by works of law.

The promise implies God's fulfilment of it; the law claimed man's obedience to its demands. Each is admirable for its own purpose, yet the two are completely different and shut each other out. The promised inheritance does not come by law. It comes by another kind of righteousness. It was attached to faith. This is so true that if those who stand on law are the heirs, there is no room left for faith, and the promise comes to nothing.

Making Israel the only heir, as a people under the law, destroyed the principle by which Abraham had the inheritance. He had it by faith, and not by any law at all. Promise is not law. To base the inheritance on law, and give it to Israel because of the law, made the promise of no effect. Promise, and faith in it, went together. Law was man's work, and on God's part a requirement from man, not a promise to him.

Suppose, as the Jew would argue, that only those who are of the law have title to the inheritance. Then faith would be a vain, useless thing, and God's promise would be as worthless and powerless as the word of a wicked man.

The covenant of Sinai stood in direct contrast with promise. Under it the blessing depended on man's obedience, and man failed completely to keep the covenant. Man could fail under a covenant and so lose all claim on the ground of works — and he did fail. But God could not fail, therefore the promise still stands sure, to all who believe.

Faith is opposed to works, and grace is opposed to law. The grace of God who gave the promise opens the one door, and a wide one, the door of faith, for Gentiles no less than Jews. If law had been the principle, only Israel could have made an effort, and even that effort would have failed. They boasted of having the law, yet they were blind to their own breaking of it and to the greater wrath they were exposed to.

Perhaps nothing has so corrupted the truth of the gospel as the common practice of blending the law with it. Few things are more unlike, and Scripture keeps few things more distinct. Yet people today so often mix them together that they destroy the simplicity and truth of both law and gospel.

The law cannot be the ground of life for a fallen creature, and it cannot be his rule of life. It cannot be the ground of righteousness, and it cannot be the power of sanctification. "For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin" (Rom. 3:20). That one passage settles both. No one can be justified before God by the law. And how can I ever become holy by the very thing that only shows me my ungodliness? If I measure a short board with a true measure, I must prove it short. A true measure cannot make a short board the right length. It can only show what it is. It is the same with the law and the sinner. Again, "the law brings wrath" (Rom. 4:15). How is this? Because it is pure and I am impure.

Man is under the evil. The law demands good in him which is not there, and it shows him all the evil which is in him. It presses the evil on him, and its consequences in judgment. As to the good it demands in him, it only makes him aware that the good is not there. Further, it sets no good before his soul as an object. To make the difference clear: it demands good in him — loving God and his neighbour, for example. But it presents no good to him. It reveals no object that can produce good in him, or be his good in living power. So it produces wrath.

The law indeed only works wrath, as verse 15 says. There was plenty of sin before the law came in, but there was not transgression. To transgress is to offend by stepping over a clearly defined and forbidden boundary. When the law came, the boundary was drawn, and sin became transgression.

Many claim, from a wrong translation of a familiar passage, that sin is "the transgression of the law." If that were so, the apostle's words here would make no sense at all, and total moral confusion would follow. The law would then be to blame for all the sin in the world, and the law must have existed from the beginning… But the apostle says there was as yet "no law" to make the promise void — no condition attached to it that could be broken, no line drawn that could be crossed. That is exactly what transgression means: stepping over a line that has been drawn. Sin is a deeper thing.

But this is not all, for law brings wrath. So it is impossible to inherit any blessing under it. Where there is no law, there might be an inheritance; but not where there is law, if law is to have its force. Where there is no law there is no transgression — that is, no breaking of a given commandment; but where law is laid on people, the flesh is certain to transgress, and wrath follows. To inherit under wrath is impossible.

The promise by itself does not raise the question of sin. God has promised; He will do it. But it must all be done by grace. So between the promise given and the promise fulfilled, God brings in the law. The law raises the question of sin and righteousness, and this gives grace its occasion.

By giving the law, then, God was shutting man up to mercy. He was running the plowshare into the soil to prepare it for the seed of the gospel. He was not by it saving: He was convicting and condemning.

"That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace." Had it been by works, it would have been a matter of debt and not grace, as verse 4 told us. On the principle of faith and grace the blessing is "guaranteed to all his offspring" — that is, Abraham's true spiritual offspring, in other words, true believers. For Abraham is "the father of us all." Note it: US all — ALL true believers.

Promise depended on God alone, and God gave it to Abraham long before the law. So it could not come through the law. It came through the righteousness of faith. The covenant of Sinai was the direct opposite of promise. There the blessing depended on man's obedience, and man failed completely to keep it. Man could fail under covenant, and so forfeit all claim on the ground of works; and he did fail. But God could not fail, therefore the promise still stands sure, to all who believe.

The promise stood completely apart from law or condition. It was God speaking out of His own abundant goodness — a covenant with only one party to it, and that One cannot fail... For what is faith but the confession of having and being nothing, so that we turn to God of necessity for all? Righteousness came to the man who knew he had none. The promise came to the man who could promise nothing himself.

Faith stands opposed to works, and grace stands opposed to law. The God who gave the promise opens by His grace the one door of faith — and it is a wide door — to Gentiles just as much as to Jews. If law had been the principle, only Israel could have tried, and tried in vain. Israel boasted of having the law, yet was blind to their breaking of it and to their own greater exposure to wrath. But grace goes out to the Gentile just as much as to the Jew, who could hardly limit Abraham's fatherhood of "many nations" to his own people.

None of Abraham's true seed is left out. Some would be, if the promise came on the principle of law. Faith is the only ground on which all the seed could be blessed. At the same time, this principle leaves them all depending on the grace of God as the only source of blessing.

So Abraham is the father of all who are counted righteous on the principle of faith (verse 11). He is the father of all the justified who walk in true separation to God (verse 12). And he is the father of all who inherit the promises by grace on the principle of faith (verse 16).

By faith we receive all the promises in Christ. By faith we find everything done. It is only to believe... Your believing produces joy and gladness in your heart, no doubt. But of course it does nothing to pay off the debt. So it is with salvation. The debt is paid, Christ has finished the work, and the believing soul enters into all the blessed results... None of the glory goes to man. It is a person depending on the truth of God.

"Have made," when Abraham had no children — what did that mean? It was God who spoke and wrote it, and all was according to His settled counsel, and plan, and promise.

People around Abraham might jeer at him for his readiness to believe. But Abraham knew the ground he was standing on, and took God at His word. The decree of God's word is sure ground for faith to rest on. Abraham looked away from himself and his circumstances to God, to His power and His truthfulness.

Faith stands against works, and grace stands against law. The God who gave the promise gives grace, and grace opens the one wide door of faith to Gentiles as much as to Jews. If law had been the principle, only Israel could have made an effort, and even that effort would have been useless. Israel boasted of having the law, but was blind to breaking it and to its own greater exposure to wrath. But grace goes out to the Gentile as much as to the Jew — and the Jew could not limit Abraham's fatherhood of "many nations" to his own people.

"And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness." God credits righteousness to Abraham here because he believed in the Lord as the One who gives life to the dead. This is the character in which He reveals Himself in a world where death reigns. When a soul believes in Him as such, God counts that soul righteous. This shuts man out of any co-operation, for what can he do in a scene of death? Can he raise the dead? Can he open the gates of the grave?

God had justified Abraham, separated him from the world, and given him the promise of a glorious inheritance. Yet in reality, death stood between the justified Abraham and the inheritance of glory.

When Abraham received the promise, he was as good as dead. The God in whom he believed is above human failure and weakness... Now power comes in — God's power. He does not deal with man according to any good or capacity in him. He is the God who raises the dead, and by that power He calls things that are not as though they were. He can make them to be as He calls them. This applies to Abraham's case, to the Gentiles, and, as to the nature of the power, to Christ's resurrection.

Abraham believed God before he had the son. He was completely sure that God could do what He had promised, and so God counted it to him as righteousness. But we believe on Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. It is done already. Here it is not believing on Jesus, but believing on God. He has proved what He is to us by raising from the dead the One who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

He "calls into existence the things that do not exist." He chooses "things that are not." Things which do not exist for us, exist for Him. We are glorified in the purpose of God. The thing is as good as done, for His purpose is never overturned by any hostile power.

Contrary to all natural hope, he "believed in hope." That is, he fully trusted God, even though this faith could only look forward. The word "hope" does not suggest the least thought of doubt. He bowed to the spoken word of God and took it simply as that.

Abraham was old and well advanced in years. As far as any hope of children was concerned, his own body was dead, and so was Sarah's womb. He had no natural hope. But God came in and promised that in his offspring all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Now he receives a hope given by God. And so against hope he believes in hope. Against natural impossibility he became divinely certain, standing on the sure ground of "what was spoken" — the sure word of God.

Long before the time God spoke, Abraham against hope believed in hope. What a pattern of faith! On the human side all was hopeless; on God's part there was simply His word. But Abraham believed, hoped, and was not ashamed. God could not fail to make good what He said: "So shall your offspring be."

The word of promise never mentions Abraham's dead body or Sarah's barren womb. So the heart of faith never takes them into account. Abraham believed God, and so he hoped. The promise spoke of life, and he looked for its fulfilment to the living God.

Abraham's faith had this peculiarity, that it was centred in God as the One who was able to raise the dead. If we turn to Genesis 15 we discover that he believed God when the promise was made about the birth of Isaac. He believed that God would raise up a living child from parents who were dead as far as having children was concerned. He believed in hope when it was against all natural hope that such a thing should be.

Faith stands opposed to works, and grace stands opposed to law. The God who gave the promise gave it in grace, and that grace opens the one door of faith — a wide door, open to Gentiles no less than to Jews. If law had been the principle, only Israel could even have made the attempt, and it would have been in vain. Israel boasted of having the law, yet was blind to how often they broke it and to the greater wrath they were exposed to because of it. But grace goes out to the Gentile no less than to the Jew, who could hardly limit Abraham's fatherhood of "many nations" to his own people.

But is it true that the cases recorded in holy Scripture are so special and extraordinary that they give us no precedent? By no means. If any case could be regarded that way, it is surely Abraham's. Yet of him we read: "It was not written for his sake alone, that righteousness was counted to him; but for us also, to whom it will be counted, if we believe in Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification."

The word has a passive, or rather a neutral, sense as well as an active one. It does not simply mean deadness. It is not the state of death, but the act of dying. In Romans 4 it is not simply death, as if Sarah were dead. It is the loss of the power of life that had taken place: he did not think about Sarah's womb losing its vital powers.

"Abraham believed God." Here was divine faith. It was not a question of feeling. Indeed, if Abraham had let his feelings guide him, he would have been a doubter instead of a believer. For what did he have to build on in himself? "His own body now dead." That was a poor ground on which to build his faith in the promise of countless descendants. But we are told, "He considered not his own body now dead." What, then, did he consider? He considered the word of the living God, and on that he rested.

If he reasoned from himself and Sarah, the promise of God was beyond hope, and even contrary to it. Yet he believed in hope, because God had said he would have descendants as many as the stars and the sand. Faith reasons from God and His word, not from self or circumstances.

He was not weak in faith. He accepted the Word of God as true and unbreakable, without weighing the circumstances at all — whether his own dead body or "the deadness of Sarah's womb." He knew that God did not depend on natural strength, either in himself or in anyone else he might be inclined to lean on. Faith in the living God always means refusing all confidence in flesh.

"His own body now dead and the deadness of Sarah's womb" must have weighed on his mind a great deal, even though, in the main, "he considered them not."

Abraham believed that God could bring life from the dead. He believed that God had the power to touch a grave and bring life out of it… From Genesis we know that he was also weak in faith and that he acted in unbelief. But God graciously passes this by. He had, so to speak, forgotten his unbelief and remembered it no more.

If they were really his children, they must receive everything from God, on a ground that guarantees the promise to all the seed, Gentile as well as Jewish. This is all the more clear because in his case and Sarah's they were as good as dead, and they could not fulfil the promise themselves. So God alone could be looked to as the One able to give life to the dead. We Christians believe in the same way: not simply on Jesus, but on Him who raised Jesus our Lord from among the dead, who was delivered for our offences and raised for our justification.

Abraham was called to believe in the power of God that can raise the dead. The believer today is called to believe in the power of God that has raised the dead. God has shown this mighty power by raising Jesus our Lord.

"Abraham believed God." Here was divine faith. It was not a question of feeling. Indeed, if Abraham had been influenced by his feelings, he would have been a doubter instead of a believer. For what had he to build upon in himself? "His own body now dead." A poor ground surely on which to build his faith in the promise of an innumerable seed. But, we are told, "He considered not his own body now dead." What, then, did he consider? He considered the word of the living God, and on that he rested. Now this is faith. And note what the apostle says: "He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief" (for unbelief is always a staggerer).

"He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief". He did not doubt or limit the grace of God, and say, "This is too good to be true".

Had Abraham been weak in faith he would have considered all the circumstances, which were against it. He would have felt that the promise was too great and so would have staggered at it. He did neither. He took God at His word with the simplicity of a little child... And this, note it, is what here is called strong faith. Strong faith, then, is not so much the faith that performs miracles. It is the faith that simply trusts God to do what He has said, even though all appearances, reason and precedent are against it.

If οὐ is an addition, the meaning would be that Abraham, instead of ignoring the obstacles, took full account of them all (Gen. 17:17), yet as regards the promise of God had no hesitation through unbelief, but on the contrary was inwardly strengthened in faith. If the ordinary reading is right, the meaning is that, far from being weak in faith, he paid no attention to the facts before his eyes whether in himself or in his wife, nor staggered at the promise of God through unbelief, but found strength in faith, giving glory to Him and satisfied that He was able also to perform the promise.

Only unbelief, and limiting God to what man can do, would have made Abraham hesitate. Instead, he "was strong in faith, giving glory to God." What blessed simplicity! What blessed reality! Yet it is the only proper attitude for any creature, let us note it well. To "give glory to God" is the very reason for our existence. If we do not practise "the obedience of faith," we are robbing God of His glory: we neither take our own proper place, nor give Him His.

God never calls it lowliness and meekness to doubt the truth of His word, or the effectiveness of Christ's work. On the contrary, He counts it pride and presumption... Abraham was commended, not because he questioned God's truth, but because he trusted it... And what was the effect? Did it puff him up? Just the opposite. Because he was "strong in faith" he gave "glory to God." The very fact that there was no power in himself only magnified God's grace.

From Genesis we know that he was also weak in faith and that he acted in unbelief. But this is graciously passed by. God, so to speak, had forgotten his unbelief and remembered it no more.

In Abraham's case he believed that God would raise up life out of death. We are not asked to believe that God will do it, but that He has done it, by raising up Jesus our Lord from the dead. How much simpler to believe that He has done it, when He has done it, than to believe that He will do it, when as yet He has not done it.

Scripture says of Abraham that he was "fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised." And again: "Let each one be fully convinced in his own mind." The moment the soul has laid hold of Jesus it is set free from itself. It ought to be fully convinced that everything it needs is found in the object set before it — Jesus Himself.

Abraham was called to believe in the power of God that can raise the dead. The believer today is called to believe in the power of God that has raised the dead. God displayed that mighty power when He raised Jesus our Lord... Now we have the power of God that will bring those He has justified into the glorious inheritance.

"Abraham believed God." Here was divine faith. It was not a question of feeling. Indeed, if Abraham had been influenced by his feelings, he would have been a doubter instead of a believer. For what had he to build on in himself? "His own body now dead." A poor ground surely on which to build his faith in the promise of countless descendants. But we are told, "He considered not his own body now dead." What, then, did he consider? He considered the word of the living God, and on that he rested.

God never calls it humility or gentleness to doubt the truth of His word, or the effectiveness of Christ's work. On the contrary, He counts it pride and presumption... Abraham was commended, not because he questioned God's truth, but because he trusted it... And what was the effect? Did it puff him up? Just the opposite. Because he was "strong in faith" he gave "glory to God." The very fact that there was no power in himself only magnified God's grace.

Isaac was a son given to Abraham by God's promise in his old age. Could he ever have expected that God would one day call him to give that son back, by offering him up as a burnt offering?... As at Isaac's birth he was "fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised," so now he could go forth, "accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead."

Abraham believed God's promise about his descendants — "So shall your offspring be." So he trusted God as the God who can give life to the dead. We are to believe God's testimony about the death and resurrection of His Son, having faith in Him as the One who raises the dead... God counted righteousness to Abraham. He counts righteousness to us on the same principle — the principle of faith.

Notice how God said, "I have made you the father of many nations," even before Abraham had a child at all. The thing is so sure with God that He, with whom future things are as though present, could speak of it as a fact. Abraham believed God "in hope." That is, the promise was still future. His eye was not on himself, or upon Sarah, but upon God. So we read that he believed, he did not consider, he did not waver, he was fully persuaded. The power of nature could not make the promise good. Still he believed God, and counted on God's own power to keep it.

Does it mean a set quantity of righteousness moved over into a man's account? Or does it mean holding a man to be righteous — reckoning or accounting him such? I say that in Scripture it always means the second... There is no question at all of a quantity of righteousness existing and then put to their account. The point is that righteousness itself is reckoned to them. This is clearer still, because all the apostle's reasoning rests on one sentence: "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness"... that is, God accounted him righteous because of his faith. This passage governs the rest — every other use of the phrase comes from it.

Faith counted as righteousness means one thing for Abraham, for David, and for us who believe today. It means that God accounts us as righteous before Him in view of our faith. We must not imagine that all the virtue resides in our faith. It does not. But faith establishes contact with the work of Christ, in which all the virtue does reside. In that sense faith justifies.

In this explanation it is something of our own — "our faith" — that God accepts. In the word it is not so. God has accepted Christ, and the work He has accomplished, and it is believing that... God raised Christ from the dead for our justification. That is a very different thing from accepting our faith.

What characterizes faith in Abraham, then, is his laying hold upon God as the One who gives life to the dead. Believing in Him as the God of resurrection, he believed He was able to perform what He promised. The character of God was the guarantee of His word.

God imputes righteousness to him. As Judge He declares that the man is not only no longer in his sins, but is in righteousness. He sets him before His face in righteousness. Because righteousness is imputed in this way, he is never to be charged with his sins. God never will charge them to him, nor will He listen to anyone who would presume to do it. Abraham is from now on before the face of God in unchangeable righteousness.

Abraham accepted that when he could do nothing God would do everything, and that is just what he proved. Notice, God is able. We are utterly unable — God is completely able. This is where faith rests. There is this difference between Abraham and ourselves — he believed what God would do; we believe what God has done, for "we believe in Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification."

Our apostle now tells us that the record of God's imputing faith to Abraham for righteousness was not written for him merely. It was written for him surely, but it was written for his seed as well — for "all who believe" — for those who have his faith. So the apostle goes on to say, "but for us also."

Are we to be satisfied with just admiring Abram and praising his faith? Are we to read his history as something that does not concern us? No... The gospel of the grace of God was no afterthought in God's mind. When Moses, by the Holy Spirit, wrote that chapter of the patriarch's life, God was looking on to the death and resurrection of His Son.

There are eleven passages in Scripture which speak of imputing righteousness or for righteousness. In nine of them faith is imputed for righteousness. So here it does not mean that the value of the thing done is imputed, or our faith would be the merit... A person may be reckoned to be in a state he is not in fact in. Even so, imputed righteousness does not mean a quantity of righteousness lying ready outside him and put to his account. It means the state in God's sight of the person so accounted righteous. Righteousness imputed to a man is the same as the man being accounted righteous.

There is however one important difference. In Abraham's case he believed that God would raise up life out of death. We are not asked to believe that God will do it, but that He has done it, by raising up Jesus our Lord from the dead. How much simpler to believe that He has done it, when He has done it, than to believe that He will do it, when as yet He has not done it.

If we were in prison, and the authorities gave us the promise of setting us free at a certain time, we could no doubt enjoy that promise with assurance. But how different our condition would be once we were free!

"Now it was not written for his sake alone... but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if" — if what? If we feel, realise, or experience something in ourselves? No, but "if we believe on Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead."

Abraham believed God. This is faith in its groundwork. God is believed. Next, in its object, not only did he believe in the resurrection, but in the God who raised. So with us; we do not merely believe in Jesus, who rose from the dead, but in the God who raised Him.

Apply that principle as widely as Scripture will let you. You come to a promise — a statement of the believer's blessing, of present grace and of future glory — and you can say, "It was written for my sake." It reminds one of Ruth, who gathered leftover grain in the fields of Boaz, never guessing that the handfuls of golden grain had been "let fall on purpose" for her.

Should we be satisfied with only admiring Abram and praising his faith, while we read his history as something that does not concern us? No. The gospel of the grace of God was no afterthought in God's mind. Moses wrote that chapter of Abraham's life by the Holy Spirit. Even then God was looking on to the death and resurrection of His Son, and to the coming of the Holy Spirit. After that, the gospel could be preached.

The same principles apply exactly. There is, however, one important difference. In Abraham's case he believed that God would raise up life out of death. We are not asked to believe that God will do it, but that He has done it, by raising up Jesus our Lord from the dead. How much simpler it is to believe that He has done it, now that He has done it. That is far easier than believing He will do it, while He has not yet done it.

The gospel is not promise, but accomplishment. It is so complete that if the work were not already done in the cross, in the death and resurrection of Him who hung there, it never can be done — not even by Him.

The same faith shall be counted to us also for righteousness: faith in God as the One who raised up Jesus from the dead. Faith here is not faith in Jesus, but in Him who came in power into the realm of death. Jesus lay there because of our sins, and God brought Him out by His power. This was the mighty activity of the love of God. Jesus had already borne all the punishment of our sins, and God brought Him out from under all their consequences. So by believing God who has done this, we take in the whole extent of His work, with the grace and power shown in it. We come to know God. Our God is the God who has done this.

I know the love of God in giving Christ. I know that all my sins are gone, and that God Himself is my Saviour. He is not here in the character of Judge. This is not faith in Christ before God. It is faith in God Himself, who has raised Christ from the dead. So it takes in everything between myself and God.

If we want settled peace, we must believe in God as the One who raised up Jesus from the dead. In doing so He proved Himself friendly to us. He also proved His infinite satisfaction in the work of the cross. Jesus was delivered up for our offences. He could not be where He now is if a single one of those offences remained unatoned for.

A person can be reckoned to be in a state that he is not in fact in. Even so, imputed righteousness does not mean a stock of righteousness lying outside him and credited to him. It means the state, in God's sight, of the person who is accounted righteous. To impute righteousness to a man is the same as to account that man righteous.

If righteousness is imputed, it needs no argument to prove that the one to whom it is imputed had no hand in it. It comes by faith, and not by works.

Now God Himself comes forth to raise from the dead the One who was, as believers can say, "delivered for our offences." By the very act of raising Him from the dead, God shows that our sins have been put away for ever… Believing in God, and receiving the testimony He gives to His beloved Son, we are justified. Faith is reckoned for righteousness. God not only clears away our sins; He also counts every believer as a righteous person. That is justification… Abraham was justified when he believed that God would do what He had promised. We are justified when we believe what God has done in raising Jesus our Lord from the dead.

"Was delivered": He was given up to death and judgment. Who delivered Him? God… It was an act of God on our behalf.

Propitiation is what we may call the Godward side of the death of Christ. It deals with the most basic matter of all: meeting God's claims against sin. Meeting the sinner's need must come second to that. So when Paul unfolds the gospel in his letter to the Romans, the first mention of the death of Christ is "a propitiation through faith in His blood" (Romans 3:25). We do not find substitution stated plainly until Romans 4:25, where we read of Him as "delivered for our offences."

Now let us ask, for what was the precious Saviour delivered? "For our offences." For how many? For all, most surely. When Jesus hung on the cross, all the believer's offences were laid on Him and charged to Him. Yes, all. Every one of them was still future when Christ bore them. Yet with Him who spans eternity as a moment, there is no such distinction as past, present or future… Christ forsaken on the cross because our sins were laid on Him. Christ crowned on the throne because our sins are put away.

The death of Christ paid the mighty debt of sin. God's raising Him from the dead is God's acknowledgement that the debt is paid. The resurrection of Christ proves to the believer that his sins are gone for ever, for He was "raised for our justification." In 1 Corinthians 15:17 we find the opposite: "if Christ has not been raised… you are still in your sins." It does not say, "If Christ has not died," but "if Christ has not been raised." But He is raised. Then what is the blessed conclusion for believers to draw? You are not in your sins.

As surely as He was nailed to that cross to bear our sins, for our offences, so surely God raised Him from the dead for our justification. (It is not correct to say on account of our justification. That would imply we were justified before we believed God. It would contradict the word, "all that believe are justified.")… The title deed of his justification is this: God raised up his Substitute from the dead, to be his righteousness and his justification.

"For our justification": these words give the bearing of His resurrection on us who believe. Keep in mind that He represents us, if you want to grasp their meaning. Has He come out free from the dominion of death? Then we are free. Is He cleared in triumph from the burden of our offences? Then we are clear — as clear as He is. We stand or fall by our Representative. His position is our position. If death and judgment are behind Him, they are behind us.

The right of admittance to this favour we have by Christ Jesus. What we could not have in ourselves He has secured to us, so that no one can take it away. The form of the phrase used implies that the access is ours all the time, not now and then, as it well might be if it depended on ourselves. And He is our Introducer.

This is not experience, but the position into which every believer is brought in Christ Jesus — a position of perfect acceptance, in which the full favour of God rests on him. It does not rest on what he is in himself, or on any experience he may have, or any progress he has made. It rests only on what Christ is and has done for him.

What is this favour in which we stand? The answer is, in one word — Christ. Christ has gone back to God as the risen Man. He glorified God on the earth and finished the work God gave Him to do. Now He is before God in the most perfect acceptance and favour, and we, as believers, are brought into the same place — "my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." (John 20:17.) His place is ours... God never hides His face from a true believer, because He never hides His face from Christ.

Not only do we stand in favour, but we have access by faith into it. That is, by faith we enter now into what is our unchanging standing before God in Christ. We do not have to wait until we reach glory to enjoy it; we enter into it now by faith.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ we also have the title of access into this favour in which we stand. It is a permanent blessing, already given to us... Blessed be God! it is grace that reigns there. Not a breath is there except of favour toward us. Sad to say, we deserved to be cast out and despised for our unworthy ways, even since He brought us to God. We do not stand under law. That would be to fall from grace. Such a fall is the sure forerunner of falling into sin. It also denies the Saviour, His precious redemption, and our own blessing.

It is well known that the words "rejoice," "glory," and "joy," in these verses represent the same word in the original. The true rendering is "boast." The needless change our translators made disturbs the beautiful connection in the apostle's argument, to say the least... So the apostle adds, "and 'boast' in the hope of the glory of God." We are not in it yet, but having the sure and certain hope of having it, we can boast of it as a prospect.

But who could have imagined this? The glory of God, whose light convicts us as sinners in Romans 3, has become the hope of the believer in Romans 5:2. We may well say of ourselves, even more than of Jacob and Israel long ago, "What has God wrought!" (Num. 23:23)

Although we have all these blessings now, we still have these lowly bodies... still there is something bright ahead — the glory of God, and we rejoice in hope of that... It is not a hope in the sense that there is any uncertainty about it; but when Scripture speaks of something future that we do not yet have, it calls it a hope. We do not hope to be justified, for we are justified; but we hope for the glory, because we have not got it yet.

The first effect, then, of tribulations is patience or endurance. (The Greek word, hupomone, seems to mean both bearing up patiently under the present evil and holding out to the end.) But patience and endurance produce experience, or being approved. The Greek word here (dokime) seems to show both. If we are impatient in our troubles, we gain only human experience. That kind is necessary, but it humbles us and tends to weigh us down — and it should. But if we learn in God's school to be still and patient under His hand, and to listen to His voice, we gain divine experience that lifts us up. We learn what God is.

Again, "patience [works out] experience." This is not yet the experience of what is inside us. The letter takes that up fully later, from Romans 5:12 through to Romans 8. Here endurance works out what God is along the road, and we miss it as far as we allow impatience.

The result of enduring in tribulation is that we gain experience. Endurance gives us real proof that God cares for us and takes an interest in us, keeping the soul through tribulation. So in tribulation we come to know God by experience. We prove for ourselves the grace, the tender sympathy and the mercy of our God.

See what trouble produces — "tribulation works patience." My will needs to be broken. I will expect to get something and never have it. I may have to cry to God for three weeks and fast, as Daniel did. I have to learn patience, and in it learn how rash my heart is, wanting everything at once… [Moses] was learning experience, and experience works hope. What blocked the hope and dimmed it is broken away in the process. Earthly hope has died away, and the heavenly hope has become more real and bright. And in it I learn what God is.

In His dealings with us God is surrounded by cloud and darkness. Here faith should find its opportunity, yet it often finds confusion and perplexity instead. Even so, this forces us to admit that we are nothing, and to creep close to the side of the One who still walks with us. Forced to let God be God, we then experience a moral government that is a Father's… [His ways] produce no fear and no doubt, but a brightening hope that steadies as it brightens.

We are next told that "experience works hope." On the path that leads to the glory we experience what the God of glory is — and how that glory brightens! By patient endurance we learn for ourselves the love, the care and the tender mercies of Christ, who never fails to care for us as He guides us on our way. How it makes us say, "What will it be to be with Him!"

When a tested believer experiences Christ's faithfulness and sufficiency, hope flows more strongly in the soul. And hope, stirred like this, works back again to renew patience… So these three — patience, experience and hope — each produce or support the other. They work side by side, and together they confirm the confidence and the rejoicing of the child of God.

The result of tribulation is experience, and that works hope. Experience in affliction is an inner thing, and it does produce experience, but this inner feeling is not what we can lean on. The only support given to our faith is the love of God — the love He showed us in Christ. It is there that experience and faith meet.

Romans 5:5. — The love of God to us, not ours to Him. Our love is so weak and unworthy that it makes every renewed soul ashamed; but His love is so full and rich that even the hope of His glory does not put us to shame. If the Holy Spirit, given to us, has poured that love into our hearts, then such a hope fits it well. It is the natural completion of the love that has already done such great things for us.

So in verse 5 we have the love of God in us — His love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. In verse 6 we have the love of God for us, because when we had no strength at all, "Christ died for us." What a picture for faith to look at! What a treasure for the heart to keep! What a stronghold in the day of trial! This love has come into our hearts through the presence of the Holy Spirit there. It is also shown openly in the gift, the work, the resurrection, and the glory of the Saviour.

I have said God's love is not a doctrine but a fact. It is not for the head but for the heart, as the next mention of it in this letter proves. It is too beautiful to pass by lightly: "the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." It is for the heart and in the heart. But if it fills the heart, it warms and spreads through the whole being. The head and hands and feet come under its influence. As the sun flooding a house with its rays drives out all darkness and chill, so the love of God acts on a life that opens to it.

This verse is remarkable as the first one that speaks either of the Spirit given to us, or of the love of God which is poured into us by Him. We have His righteousness fully displayed and applied before there is any mention of either… It is good that the soul should be shut up to what is absolutely perfect outside ourselves, on God's part. This rests not on the Spirit's work in us, but on Christ's work for us… Had it come in before this, the heart would readily have turned from Christ and God's righteousness to its own workings and affections.

Here we see the Holy Spirit as the seal given to the believer. He seals to him the value of the blood of Christ, and the perfect cleansing he shares in through that blood. Washed from his sins, he becomes the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. He is the anointing, the believer's seal, and the down payment of glory… And here, in this passage, we learn that by Him also the love of God is poured into our hearts.

People often read these words as meaning the exact opposite of what they say. They take them to mean that we must have this experience first, so that God may then pour His love into our hearts. They think that if we pray much and are very diligent in patience, experience, and hope, then we may hope for the gift of the Holy Spirit. No words can tell how utterly wrong all this is… To think God gives the Holy Spirit because of our own efforts, or experience, or devotedness, is to set aside the perfect work of Christ.

In the end it will make me hope, "because the love of God has been poured into my heart." This gives me the key to all the tribulation, and lets me glory in it. It is the fruit of God's own love. I trust Him. How do I get this? By the Holy Spirit who is within me… It is not mine but His, God's love poured out; God, who is love, is in me — God's own love. This brings us back to a strength of hope that nothing can shake.

God makes His love good in our hearts. But we are not left to look inside our hearts to find that love expressed. Christ's death is the witness of God's righteousness in chapter 3, and of God's power in chapter 4. In chapter 5 it comes forward as the witness of God's love.

A man may say in the face of all this, But suppose I do not feel it? Well, then, you are going back from faith, and looking to your feelings. How do I know that I have it? Am I perfect? No. The love is enjoyed within, but in His grace God has put the proof of it outside me. I know it, because I believe that Christ died for the ungodly. I am simply an ungodly one and have no strength at all, no feeling at all, and Christ died when I had no feeling at all.

We were completely helpless, unable to do anything for God. We were ungodly, unwilling to do anything for God. Then it was that love made the great sacrifice by dying for us.

People now apply the word to outward conduct, and so its real meaning has been lost. In the Scriptures it covers the state of the heart as well as actions. It means "godless" — to be without God, to feel and to act apart from God, without reference to Him or to His will.

First, we were ungodly. That is the first thing we find out. But many know they are ungodly who have not yet found out that they are without strength… "I am determined to change my ways, or I will be lost. I will turn over a new leaf." The new leaf is turned, and all may go well for a time. But soon temptations come, and one resolution after another is broken. He thinks, "It is no use my trying to be a Christian. I have tried again and again, and the more I try to give up my sins, the more I seem to fail."

For four thousand years, from the time that Adam sinned, God was testing man. He was looking to see if any good could be found in the race of the first Adam. God weighed man in His balances and found him completely wanting. He tried him without law, and under law. Last of all, God presented His Son to the world, to see if they would receive Him. But no; they rejected Him!… It is important therefore to see that now God is not looking for improvement from man.

Yes, it is no more wonderful than it is true: while we were still without strength, Christ died for ungodly persons. Such are fallen men. Jew or Gentile made no difference as to man's nature. The law gave no power; religious form is not godliness. And because man is what he became through sin, in due time Christ died for us, powerless and ungodly persons. This was beyond all creature love.

God gave the greatest thing in heaven for the worst thing on earth: a sinner. I am a sinner, therefore Christ died for me… This is what makes God's love different from man's. A man must have some motive to act on, something to draw out his love. God's love, on the other hand, springs from Himself, for God could find no motive in us.

"A righteous man" is one strictly accurate in his dealings with others — both paying and demanding all that justice requires. It is hardly thinkable that another man would consider dying for his sake. "A good man" is one not exacting, but generous toward others: for him "some might even dare to die." But who would die for an evil enemy? Or who would offer a son to die for his enemy?

This is not the way the creature — man — loves. "One will scarcely die for a righteous person." We respect and value righteousness. But it does not draw out love enough for anyone to die for a merely righteous person. It is not that man's heart cannot feel strong affection. "Perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die." None among the sons of Adam could surpass such love as this.

God has been pleased to let men test and prove His love. And the proof He gave is the one men count as most convincing. The fullest proof of love is to lay down your own life. No sacrifice can go beyond this. But Christ laid down His life, as He said, "I lay down My life for the sheep." Among men, though, we can hardly imagine such a sacrifice for anyone but a friend or a benefactor. "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends."

Take a Howard, a Peabody, or any philanthropist who spent his life helping others. For such a man, the apostle says, "perhaps ... one would dare even to die." He is not sure about it.

God's love differs from man's love in this: man must have something to draw out his love. As it is said, "perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." God's love has no motive. There is nothing attractive in the one it rests on to call it out... God's love sees no good in us. The cross gave the brightest proof of God's love and of man's hatred.

A righteous man has some merit, and a good man more. It would be surprising, yet it might be possible, that someone would be willing to give his life for such a man. But who will die for a sinner? Who will die for a wretch who is neither righteous nor good? He has no merit at all. He has come short of God's glory and is only fit for His just judgment. Who will die for such a one as that? … CHRIST. He will; He has done it.

You will notice that righteousness is not called a fruit of the Spirit. You remember the Word says, "One will scarcely die for a righteous person." Yet "perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die." So it is goodness, not righteousness, that is a fruit of the Spirit. The Christian is, of course, to be righteous as well as good.

Notice something more. We enjoy this love by the Holy Spirit living in us. But the knowledge and proof of it lie in a work done outside us, one we had no part in. It was done for us while we were evil and completely helpless. "For," the apostle continues, "when we were yet without strength in due time Christ died for the ungodly." Ungodly, and without strength — that was our state when the glorious work of God's love was accomplished for us.

That is why it is called His love — because it is a love that belongs to God alone. With us, there must always be something in another person to draw out our love. There must be something to love. But God loved us when there was nothing in us to love, when our hearts were hostile toward Him and we were nothing but a mass of sin.

When I come to the proof, I turn away from myself to God. This is the teaching of God's love, and it was all on God's side. The result is that I can count on what that love produces.

If God had found any sign of love in us toward Him, or any willingness to obey Him, His love would not have been perfect. He would have found a motive in us for His love. But what was our real state? We were ungodly, without strength, sinners, enemies. Our open hostility, seen in these four words, only gave His perfect love its deepest occasion to show itself.

A righteous man has some merit, and a good man more. It would be surprising, but someone might still be willing to give his life for such a person. But who will die for a sinner? Who will die for someone who is neither righteous nor good, who has no merit at all, who has fallen short of God's glory and deserves nothing but His just judgment? Who will die for someone like that? … CHRIST. He will; He has done it.

The reasoning is not at all from divine purposes about us or promises made to us, but from what God is; and He is love — love proved in Christ's dying for us, while we were yet sinners. "Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God." The conclusion is sound and certain.

It is no longer a question of our commending ourselves to God; but He commends His love toward us. Christ died for us while we were still sinners. And when we believe in Christ, the Holy Spirit given to us pours the love of God into our hearts. When the soul knows and enjoys this, it must have a practical effect. We love God, and we love one another.

The reasoning does not start from God's plans about us, or from promises made to us. It starts from what God is; and He is love — love proved when Christ died for us, while we were still sinners. "Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God." Nothing could be more sound or more conclusive!

The author of the "Remarks" says this passage makes it plain that salvation and justification are separate things. So, though we are justified, that does not make us sure of salvation — I suppose because of our own weakness and sinfulness and frailty. But faith sees God step in with His power, and leans on it. Faith knows it has been justified, and from that justification it concludes with certainty that it will be saved.

We may note, by the way, that Scripture speaks of justification in three ways, because man is unrighteous by nature. We are justified by His grace (Titus 3:7), if we speak of the source. We are justified by His blood (Rom. 5:9), if we look for the cause that obtained it in the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we are justified by faith, if we ask how the soul is personally brought into the blessing (Rom. 5:1).

The true believer has "now been justified by His blood." God clears him completely from every charge, and imputes righteousness to him — that is, He puts it to his account, though the believer has no righteousness of his own. It is a perfect justification, because of the perfect value God sees in the blood of Christ.

Being justified by His blood is always the same and never changes. It is not that, once justified by His blood, we need justifying again. Once we are justified, it stands forever. His blood is always the same before God, since it has atoned for all our sins. So we are always justified by His blood. There is no change.

That blood is what earns our justification before God. He needed nothing more to show Himself righteous in justifying ungodly people. So we shall be saved from wrath through Christ. God will pour out the wrath He has already revealed (Rom. 1:18) at the appointed time. But believers wait for God's Son to come from heaven, and He delivers them from the wrath to come (1 Thess. 1:10).

It is clear that salvation here is not just that a person is cleansed from guilt. It is the real application of Christ's work in all its fullness — only we do not have it yet for our bodies… salvation means more than guilt removed through His blood. It means that we ourselves are kept, and brought through every difficulty, past, present, and future.

In verse 9 the apostle has the ground of justification in mind; so he says, "justified by His blood." But if the death of Christ has provided a righteous basis for our justification, then He who died to provide it has risen from the dead… He is the living One, the source of life to us, the One by whom and in whom we live. He stands forever between us and wrath.

Nothing can go beyond this. To be an enemy of God is the most shocking picture we can have of a sinner's state. Yet that is the real condition of any reader of these lines who is not converted. He is an enemy of God. He may be likeable, polite, attractive, refined, educated, moral and even religious on the outside. He may be a church member, take communion regularly, work for God, teach Sunday School, preach or serve as a minister — and all the while be an enemy of God.

It is certainly a great mistake to think that God became our enemy when sin came in, and that the atoning death of the Son of God was meant to reconcile God to us. The following verses teach the exact opposite… His death does not reconcile God to us; it reconciles us to God.

Reconciliation, in everyday language, means making everything straight. I believe it was first used in money-changing, for making a sum come out even, so that both sides are satisfied. From there it passed into the more common sense of making everything smooth between two sides that have fallen out… It brings back to unity, peace and fellowship what was divided and estranged… but the estrangement was on our side. God was not estranged from us. What was on His side was righteous judgment against sin in His creature, and that righteousness had to be met to bring the estranged creature back into relationship with God.

Justification clears away our guilt. Reconciliation removes the hostility in our hearts and makes us so suited to God that He can look on us with divine delight. The death of Christ declares the righteousness of God that justifies us, and it also reveals the love of God that reconciles us… knowing the love of God takes away our hostility toward Him.

The work of Christ has done more than put away our sins: it has reconciled us to God. When the Spirit brings home to us the death of His Son for our sins, its persuasive power wins the heart to God. If He could reconcile us like that while we were enemies, how much more will He bring those reconciled ones through, despite every difficulty?… Paul has no thought of an unreconciled Christian, any more than of an unjustified one.

"If we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son" — by what was, so to speak, His weakness — "much more shall we be saved by his life," the mighty energy in which He lives forever. So the love of God makes peace about what we were, gives us security about our future, and makes us happy in the present too.

The salvation we need and receive as believers rests on the death of Christ, but it reaches us through His work as priest for us, as He lives for us on high. We are being "saved by His life" (Rom. 5:10), and because He always lives we shall be saved to the uttermost. We shall be saved completely, right to the furthest point of time — to the moment when the last enemy is gone and we never need saving again.

We shall never be more justified than we are today. We shall never be more reconciled than we are today, though one day we shall enjoy that finished reconciliation far more keenly. But we shall be more fully saved than we are today, when in the age to come we have glorified bodies like Christ.

The word translated joy would be better put as boast. It comes three times in this part of the chapter. We boast (or exult) in hope of the glory of God (verse 2). We boast in tribulation (verse 3). And we boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation (verse 11).

"Atonement" is the greatest blunder in Romans 5:11. We are said to be "reconciled" in verse 10. Then verse 11 speaks of "our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the reconciliation." It does not say the atonement. Atonement has nothing to do with the sins on our side; atonement is for God.

Through Him also now we received the reconciliation. That is what the apostle wrote — not the propitiation, but the "reconciliation." Without that mighty work of Christ on the cross we could not, being sinners, be reconciled to God. But this is the theme here: the complete making good of our case with God. We had been at war with Him, and our sins had left us wholly estranged from Him... The first half of Romans 5 brings in His love and therefore the reconciliation, which we have now received through Christ. His atoning death made it possible, and it goes much further in itself.

It was we who were "alienated and enemies in mind by wicked works." So every one of us needed a complete and basic change of mind and attitude towards God. His heart did not need to turn towards us. Our hearts had every need to turn towards Him... When we believed the gospel, the ministry of reconciliation took effect in us, and we could say, "we have now received the reconciliation." Because we have received it, we "joy in God." Before, we feared and even hated Him.

Higher joy than this we can never have. It is infinite, yet we have already entered into it. We joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Completed reconciliation has brought about a blessed, conscious, happy reunion with the living God... Here we have arrived at the source. We look through all the blessings given to us and rejoice in God Himself as the highest spring and object of them all. God Himself is the Christian's joy, glory, and boast! We do not rejoice now just in hope of the glory of God, nor in our tribulation... nor in the many blessings He has given us, but far better, in Himself.

We need not wait till the judgment seat of Christ to find out whether we are right with God. He has told us in this Scripture, "We have been reconciled." It is an accomplished fact. Verse 11 confirms and stresses it: "Through Whom now we have received the reconciliation." And God has not restored us to the innocence of man in Eden; that has gone for ever. He has brought us near to Himself to enjoy His love, to a far more blessed portion than Adam in innocence ever knew or ever could enjoy.

I do not know that any joy even there rises up to the boasting in God we find here. It gives the heart both the deepest rest and the fullest spiritual activity. Worship is how it speaks... We begin the new song that will never end... So the deepest inward poison that Satan put into man at the fall is not just held in check. It is defeated, to the praise of God.

At Romans 5:12 the apostle begins his teaching about sin. The difference is clear. If it is a question of sins, you, my reader, have yours, and I have mine. If it is a question of our nature, of our flesh, we are only one, one single nature, one single mass. So the apostle turns to the heads or sources of our nature, whether for good or for evil: Adam and Christ.

Many souls are greatly perplexed. Though they believe their sins are forgiven, they still find the root, sin, in the flesh. Much of this confusion comes from failing to notice carefully the distinction between sins and sin, as in this letter. As we have seen, verse 11 closes the question of sins. Verse 12 takes up sin.

The outcome of "sin" must be sins, but it is "sin" that the Apostle especially speaks of in this portion of the Letter. In chapters 1 to 5:11 the word sin occurs only twice; in this division, 5:12 to 8, it occurs thirty-four times. "Sin" is the evil principle of "lawlessness", or the creature doing his own will... Sins can be forgiven. But "sin", the evil principle that leads to sins, can only be met by death — a death that ends the life governed by sin.

God made Adam free from evil, without the knowledge of sin. This was the starting point of man's existence on earth — a life whose moral character was nothing like our life now. But Adam preferred disobedience to obedience. By exercising his will, his nature became evil. With that, the character of the source of human life changed. Innocence disappeared from the earth, and sin entered the world. This is where our sinful nature comes from. We received it through our parents, and we were born with it.

So the most solemn change ever to affect the world came in long before the Jewish people existed, and therefore before God gave their boasted law... Adam was before them both and affects all mankind, the Jews not excepted... It was not outside man, but on the contrary "by one man"; yet its effect, death, spread through the world.

Here (verse 12) the sinner's case rests not on the moral evidence of personal evil, but on the decisive testimony of death. Death is God's widespread and undeniable witness that sin, which produced it, is present throughout the world... Death is never separable from sin. So sharing in a sinful nature produces death as its necessary effect.

We are not responsible for the sin of Adam. God does not hold us responsible for a sinful nature either. We are responsible for how that nature works out, that is, for our own sins... Death comes upon us because of our sins, as this verse states.

No one doubts that infants and those without understanding die, and this through Adam's sin. But the Spirit does not exclude the consequence where personal guilt can apply. The fall left the race in ruin, and that ruin goes together with the evil workings of the fallen nature now in all men. Adam's sin is the cause, but it is not the sole account and whole case of man's bitter lot.

Death took its throne, and sin its rule over the world, by Adam's one act. His disobedience was the key that opened the door for them to enter the world. Sin still reigns, its kingdom is as wide as the world, and its end is death. But God has an answer even to this. He does not reform the old ruler or alter the kingdom. God brings in something altogether new — something so noble that the believer's heart rejoices.

The apostle answers a possible objection, and he proves that sin exists apart from law... So the Jew could not even make the sad boast (and what will a man not boast about?) that the law came before sin. The whole purpose of law is to prove that people sin. Sadly, sin is not limited to Israel; it is everywhere. "Sin was in the world," where the law was not. When God gave the law through Moses, it put sin to account. But sin was already there, and it spread far beyond the area the law had in view when it came. Law could not cure sinners. It could only record sin — it could not remove it.

The mistake is to suppose that "counted" here means the same thing as it does elsewhere in the letter. It is really a different word. The true thought is this: sin is not put on the account, the way separate items are listed on a bill.

It is still sin, and those who sin without law perish without law. But God does not call them to account for it at once in His government.

It is true that sin is not put to account where there is no law. Still, death reigned from Adam to Moses. That showed sin was there, because death is the wages of sin, and not only of breaking a law... It was clear that death reigned just the same — it struck people who were not under the law.

Sin is lawlessness, and it had been filling the earth ever since Adam's fall. But as soon as God gave the law, He drew a clear line. Step over that line and a man became a definite lawbreaker. His sin could now be put to his account in a way that was not possible before. God meant Israel to give definite proof of the fallen and sinful state that people were in.

1 John 3:4 has often been translated, "Sin is the transgression of the law." It should read, "Sin is lawlessness." If sin were the breaking of the law, there would be no sin before God gave the law; but there was... Besides, that idea lowers the standard of God's holiness. Sin is lawlessness — refusing to be under God. The very fact of having a will of our own set against God is sin.

The apostle's argument is that death proved sin was there before there was any law. You cannot limit grace to the Jews. If you do, you make grace narrower than sin. Death and sin were already there, and all had sinned. So if you shut grace up to those under law and keep out the Gentiles, you make sin a more powerful thing than the grace of God.

Moses gave the law. From Adam to Moses there was no law, and men had only their conscience to guide them; by it they knew good and evil... Adam had a commandment, and he broke it. Since there was no law till Moses, the generations after him could not sin in the same way Adam did. Sin is lawlessness... However, sin becomes transgression when there is a law.

Adam had a law, and Moses made the law known. Between them God dealt with men by neither the one nor the other. Yet men sinned, as Scripture shows again and again. So death reigned, for it is the wages (not of transgression only, but) of sin... They sinned, they did their own will, they were corrupt and violent, and later added idolatry to their evil ways. So death reigned even over them. They were sinners, though they were not transgressors, as Adam was at first and Israel later.

It is striking to follow the line of long-lived men from Adam to Noah, with the same words attached to the end of each short history: "and he died." Death was reigning, a sure proof of sin having come into the world.

The mistake is to suppose that "imputing" here means the same thing as elsewhere in this letter. It is really a different word. The true thought is that sin is not put on the account, the way separate items are put on a bill... "From Adam to Moses" covers most of the history in Genesis. It is the time before law, when sin was already in the world, but had not yet gained this added seriousness.

I think two groups are in view here. First, the Gentiles as a whole, who were never under law, while Adam was clearly under law. Second, infant children, who die all the time, though their age makes them incapable of any actual offence.

Adam is the fountain-head of a stream of fallen, sinful humanity — a race of sinners who share the disastrous results of his sinful act. Seen this way, he is a "figure" of Christ.

Adam did not become the father of a family until after his disobedience. All his offspring stand with him under condemnation and death. Christ became head of a new and heavenly race in resurrection. All who are identified with Him stand before God forever in His acceptance and blessing... In the divine thought there has been a transfer from Adam to Christ; but are we conscious of it in our own souls?

Christ comes before us in two ways: by figure and contrast. Adam, as God made him, was the figure of Christ; as he made himself in his fall, he becomes a contrast to Christ... No finer man was ever placed in finer circumstances than Adam — yet he fell. As a fallen man, he became the head of a race like himself. What can come from such a source? If the fountain is polluted we shall not expect clean waters to flow from it.

In verse 15 the word many occurs twice just as we noticed it does in verse 19. In this verse too it is more exactly "the many," that is, those who come under each headship. Adam brought death on all those under his headship, which in fact means all men without exception. Jesus Christ has brought in the grace of God and the free gift of grace to the many who are under Him. That is, to all believers.

One thing we must remember as we consider them: these two accounts are not a mere balance of results. "Not as the offence so also is the free gift." If righteousness is shown in dealing with sin, the "free gift" is measured only by the grace that has given Christ for us — though of course it must be righteous, absolutely so. So His work does not merely cancel the results of sin. It lifts us into a place altogether beyond what was originally ours.

Verse 15 points us to the source of sin and of righteousness, of guilt and of grace. This verse clearly compares two stores. Grace wins its triumph over guilt when we look to Jesus, in whom, as in a storehouse, all the fulness of grace dwells. If God condemns us for the sin of Adam, a mere creature like ourselves, will He not much more justify us by grace for the sake of the Divine One, Jesus, who is "full of grace and truth"?

The difference is an immense advantage on the side of good. How could it be otherwise, with such a source of goodness as God, and with such a channel and ground and object as the man Christ Jesus? To punish, to strike, to destroy, was a grief, so to speak, to God. To bless is His delight — and now to the full, since Christ has removed every hindrance and made that blessing righteous.

I say such a thing was a gift, a free gift; I did not earn it. How did you come to have it? It was pure grace in the person who gave it to me. One word leads me to think of it as freely given, not earned, without condition or price. The other points to what moved the person to give. The gift of righteousness is not by working or labour, or acquired fitness, or anything on my part.

Shall man's offence carry further than God's gift? Death was reigning outside the law, and by the offence of one, many were dead. Should not the grace of God much more abound to the many who are burdened by that death, instead of belonging only to the Jews who claimed it? The state of sin was universal through Adam, so grace must reach just as widely.

Now Christ gives the "free gift" to "the many" who are granted to "live by Him." For them it abounds far beyond their deliverance from death, the penalty of sin. It means for them life in the abundance of its power. It is "much more" than salvation from the death they duly and rightly deserved. It is the positive reality and blessedness of living with God.

It is not only a difference of measure but of kind. Verse 15 looked at the people affected; here the things themselves stand out. One act by the head who sinned sentenced people into condemnation. But the free gift, despite many offences, was for a state of accomplished righteousness.

There is another contrast. One sin brought in condemnation. Such was the holiness of God, and that holiness has not changed. Yet now, after people have committed many offences, His gracious gift is of a state of accomplished righteousness.

In this verse the "many offences" is there to heighten the picture… Paul says you are not going to make grace cover a narrower field than sin. Then he strengthens the argument by bringing in the "many offences" as a greater difficulty, so that grace had to be stronger and greater than the evil.

Here it goes from many offences to a sum of recognised righteousness. It is a gracious gift — a full righteousness that God weighs up and accepts as enough. Keeping the law would make righteousness a demand on man. It would be his own righteousness, measured by the law. But here it is a gracious gift. Judgment came upon men and brought condemnation. Now a gift deals with many offences, and gives us a righteousness God Himself counts as enough. It comes by God's free gift, not by man's responsibility.

One sin established a state of condemnation. The gift through Christ has established a state of righteousness that lasts. This settled state of positive righteousness is "much more" than being delivered out of the state of condemnation. The gift does deliver from that condemnation, and it takes full account of the pile of offences. But beyond the deliverance, it provides a state of positive righteousness, and that state is one of abiding acceptance.

People often misread these connected passages by making the "over-bounding" of grace a matter of breadth instead of height. If it were a question of the number reached, there could be no over-abounding of grace at all. Christ could not reach more than fell with Adam… But the real matter is one of depth and height, not of breadth.

Some have used this verse and the ones after it to teach universal salvation. But that is not what it means. We must not lose sight of the condition: faith in Christ. We are all in the first Adam by natural birth. Being identified with the second Man is only possible by the new birth. That happens when a sinner believes on Christ and in His finished work.

Verse 16 shows that grace passes on far more than guilt does. Christ justifies us not only from the guilt of this one sin, but from the heavier guilt we have run up by our "many offences" — that is, all our sins. Besides, we shared Adam's guilt because we belong to his race. We receive righteousness in Christ as "a free and gracious gift."

By Adam's one offence "death reigned through that one man." God gave Adam dominion over creation, and Adam has forfeited his rule: he has no more dominion; death reigns instead. ... While Adam reigned in Eden, death was always a danger that could take over his reign. But those who are under Christ as Head "reign in life" — a life that is eternal, and death can never interfere with it.

In verses 15-17 the apostle shows that grace far surpasses sin. Adam's sin (v. 15) did not stay with him alone; its consequences reached his descendants too. How much more, then, do the consequences of Christ's work reach those who are His! ... The overflow of grace stands out most clearly in verse 17. It says, "if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man." You would expect the matching thought to be "much more life will reign." But no: "much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ."

She brought large presents to Solomon, but she went home enriched all the same. "King Solomon gave to the Queen of Sheba all her desire … besides what Solomon gave her out of his royal bounty." In the same way, our God not only meets the actual need of the sinner who comes to Him. He at once enriches him with all the blessing of Christ Himself. So Rom. 5:17 describes Christians as "those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness." There are two things here. Righteousness is our actual need; without it we must perish. "The abundance of grace" matches the "royal bounty" of Solomon.

The "gift of righteousness" is to be "received," you notice — not earned, as many suppose. When it is received by faith, the one who has it is sure he will "reign in life."

Through the offence of the one man, a reign of death came in by that one man. It has been an absolute reign — a reign of unstoppable power. On the other hand there are those "who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness." This is not just rescue from the power of death, from its reign and triumph. It is a "much more," and by it they themselves become "more than conquerors." By the power of the life grace gives them, they themselves reign.

We might have thought the contrast to "death reigning" would be "life reigning." It is more than that, for the word is "they … reign in life." The time is coming when the saints will reign with Christ. Now grace makes it possible for the saint to reign in life by Christ. God's thought is that Christ should make us completely superior to the power of sin, lawlessness and self-will.

When that happens, and "Death is swallowed up in victory," God's work of making us alive will reach its final completion. Then the word that we "reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ" (Rom. 5:17) will be fulfilled. Not only in life, but reigning in it, and that for ever.

A Bible with cross-references shows in the margin that the words are "one righteousness." There is no doubt at all that this is the true rendering. When the Apostle wants to say "by the offence of one," he uses a different form of words. It is the correct one, and not the form he uses for "one offence." Theology may make it the righteousness of one, but not Greek.

Taken as it stands, the last clause would imply the salvation of all men. That is clearly not the teaching of Scripture. The error in the rendering lies in the preposition "upon," given as the equivalent of the Greek word eis. There is no justification at all for such a rendering. The word means "into," "unto," "towards," and so on, depending on the connection... The "offence" of Adam reached towards all men for condemnation, since all men came under the consequences of his fall. The righteousness of One (Christ), on the other hand, extended towards all men. That is because the gospel proclaiming it was to be preached to every creature under heaven. Whether souls came under its benefit and blessing depended on something else: whether the glad tidings were received.

Suppose you had only the one act of Adam by itself; it would have plunged all men into condemnation. On the other hand, the work of Christ in itself would have brought complete deliverance to all men. But that is only the tendency towards all men, not the actual effect upon them. Here, in this chapter, we have in verse 18 the tendency, and in verse 19 the effect... "The many" who had to do with the one man who disobeyed were all men, because all were children of Adam. So by the obedience of Christ "the many" — those who belong to Him — shall be made righteous.

The express purpose of what is said here is to show one thing. The effect of the work of recovery does not reach as far as the fall reached, but that is not because it lacks sufficiency for all. God is not willing that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9), so He could not leave anyone without provision made.

As to "justification of life" (Romans 5:18), it is the justification we have as being alive in Christ. It goes beyond mere forgiveness of the sins of the old man, which are put away. It is the clearing away of every charge against us, which we have as alive in Christ... not just the old sins cleared away, but a new place, given by a work of Christ which God had fully owned. He had finished the work His Father gave Him to do, and because of that He was in a new place as Man in life. Life (in us) and justification went together.

He is the last Adam, the life-giving Spirit, raised up from the dead. And the risen Christ imparts His own life to all those who have believed on Him. He has become the Head of a new race, and all who have been justified by His blood belong to that new race... The life they have, because they are joined to their glorious Head, is free from sin.

Wherever there is justification, it is the gift of God, obtained by Christ's death at the cross, entirely apart from the sinner's merit or work in any way. But it is always accompanied by "justification of life" (Romans 5:18), which is the product of divine life — divine life in action, by the power of the Spirit of God, giving right desires, affections, will.

By one man's disobedience, the many were constituted sinners. Not in act — though later acts proved it true — but in fact, in condition, in state. In the same way, by the obedience of one the many will be constituted righteous. Again, not in act, though later acts will prove it, but in fact, in condition, in state.

God had created him in His own likeness. But he had no children during his short time of innocence, when another man might also have been in God's likeness. He fell first. Only then did he have children, in his own likeness as a fallen creature… So Romans 5:19 says that "by the one man's disobedience the many were made [or, constituted] sinners." All his descendants came into the world sinners in their very constitution. That is what is meant by "original sin."

He was obedient without limit… His obedience was different in nature, and went far beyond law-keeping. "I have come to do your will, O God" — whatever that will might be. And it was to die: to give up His life for those the Father had given Him, and to suffer everything, even to the cup of wrath, to glorify God. Was that law?

Paul is contrasting the two heads, Adam and Christ. He sets the sin of the one, with all the disaster that follows it, against the righteousness, the obedience of the other, with all the blessing that follows it. It is a question of the "one offence" and the "one righteousness" (v. 18, margin). Christ's ONE righteousness was obedience even to His DEATH.

Being brought into the state of righteous includes both the justification and the life. Notice here that "the obedience of One" brings in the burnt-offering side of Christ's work, the full sweet aroma. To stand in Christ is not only to have our sins put away… it is to be accepted in all the preciousness His obedience has for God.

By "the many" we understand those, and only those, who are under the respective headships. In Adam's case "the many" does of course cover all men, for by nature we are all of his race. In the case of Christ, not all men are of His race, but only all believers. All men were constituted sinners by Adam's disobedience. All believers are constituted righteous by Christ's obedience, even to death.

The final result is what is in view here. Since this result must be limited to the household of faith, it would have been false to say "all" in the last clause.

Has your heart come to submit to this righteousness? You have none of your own. Oh, nothing is harder for the heart than to be broken down and made willing to have righteousness by the obedience of another!

The law "came in" as it were, "by the way," between the promises and their fulfilment. (It was, of course, perfect in itself.) It came to show what man's condition would be if he stood on his own ground before God. The law was not before the promises, the apostle argues (Gal. 3), "that it should make the promise of none effect." God gave the promise first.

But law did come: why it entered, and as it were, by the way, the apostle answers in verse 20. It was that (not sin, but) "the offence might abound." God forbid that we should say anything God gave creates evil! Sin was already there. The law came to bring out sin's real character — a direct breach of God's command, once He gives one.

The law made the offence abound. By forbidding sin it stirred up sin; and it added to the evil of sin by making it transgression.

Suppose I bring a right and true measure to a man who is in the habit of using a wrong measure, what do I do it for? Not to make him honest, but to prove his dishonesty. It is useless for him to say, I will change my character; the thing is already done.

Suppose He had said, "where the offence abounded grace did also abound." That would have limited grace to those under the law. But He was showing the opposite. Christ's work reached out beyond, as wide as Adam's in scope and effect. Grace overrode the whole, though people might reject it.

God has shown abounding grace, for He gave His own well-beloved Son. And He allowed sin to rise up to its full wickedness, even in putting Christ to death. Then, to show how powerless sin is in the presence of God's grace, that very act — where sin's greatest evil showed itself as hatred against God — is the thing that puts it all away. God's grace rolls over it all, yet in righteousness. So He has shown the utter helplessness of sin in His presence.

"Sin abounded" — not only in the number of its acts, but in its overwhelming force, since it overcame all human efforts to subdue it. Sin's power to overcome man is greater than man's power to resist sin. Man cannot put out the pull of the evil nature within him. But thanks be to God, "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound."

It is pure, and real, and powerful. It carries with it the perfect love and holiness of God, unstained by the human taint of self-indulgence or loose living. It does not cater to the evil of the flesh. Instead it transfers the believer out from under the authority of sin, into the freedom of being subject to Him whose yoke is easy and His burden light.

We understand the reign of sin. Its kingdom is a kingdom of bondage with death for all within it. All the activities of men within that kingdom lead to death, because God is not their end and aim. But grace reigns. That means God reigns as His own heart desires, in full and eternal agreement with His righteous character. The end of that is eternal life and the glory that belongs to it by Jesus Christ our Lord. God is greater than the devil, and grace is greater than sin.

Grace came in the Person of Christ, and as a result of His death, what do I find now? I find grace is reigning. Who is on the throne today? Christ. Later He will be the judge. The day of judgment has not come yet. Who is on the throne today? If I may use the figure — Grace. The apostle is careful in this same chapter to point out that sin and death have reigned. I might add another — Satan. There was a fearful group of three evils reigning — Satan, sin, and death — up to the coming of Jesus. What since then? They have been deposed.

It is not said that righteousness reigned. If it had, it would have been for the eternal condemnation of all. Righteousness will reign when He comes in judgment. But now grace reigns. Grace goes on despite all the neglect in men's hearts towards it — it reigns. It does not give up its ways and purposes. Grace reigns over sin. Man cannot master Christ's love, but Christ's love overcomes man. It overcame everything that stood in the way of His doing His Father's will, and His obedience overcame everything. Grace reigned on the cross, yet righteousness was there. Grace reigns in the subjection of our hearts — where sin once reigned, grace reigns. Grace means love working where there is evil. How? By the obedience of One — and so it is through righteousness.

Grace reigns on the principle of righteousness. It reigns through what God has done by the cross and resurrection of His Son. Righteousness has put grace on the throne and given it the sceptre and the right to rule. The very being of God is now glorified by the satisfaction Christ made for sin. So He sets aside nothing of the eternal claims of His throne of justice. God's heart of love can still go out in grace to the vilest of sinners and the most determined of His enemies.

In the Gospel grace not only over-abounds, it reigns. We who have believed have come under the kind rule of grace. This grace reigns through righteousness, since the cross was above all a work of righteousness. And the glorious end and completion of the story is eternal life. Here the boundless view of eternity begins to open before us. We see the river of grace. We see the channel of righteousness, cut by the work of the cross, in which it flows. We see finally the boundless ocean of eternal life, into which it flows.

Sin and death have indeed been a powerful combination, but grace has infinitely surpassed them, while remaining perfectly consistent and united with righteousness. And it is not only a two-fold cord, but three-fold. Grace and righteousness are closely connected with eternal life. Christianity has made these three stand out in matchless glory, a glory heightened by the Name of "Jesus Christ our Lord," the Name by which these things are accomplished and bound together.

God could not be indifferent about sin. His holy character has been fully exercised in putting sin away. He has dealt with Christ about it, according to all that He is. I may have to taste the bitterness of its fruits. God may make me feel the effects of my sin, because He is not going to judge me for it. Grace now reigns through righteousness, to eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. My conscience is fully cleansed through the blood of Christ, shed in perfect love. The righteousness of the One who bore my sins is mine.