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COMMENTARY ON ROMANS

3:1 f.: "Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way."

In this profound passage, Paul gives an unexpected, but absolutely necessary, answer to the question, "Then what advantage has the Jew?" Instead of replying, "He has no advantage" (In vs. 9 below this is precisely the answer he does giveIgive), he answers, "Much in every way." The significance of his reply is that it points to the curious relationship between the sovereign and transcendent God who refuses to be bound and the instruments which He employs to bring men to Himself. When, as a matter of plain historical fact, some thing, event, or person becomes the means whereby God lays His hand upon us, nothing subsequent to such a happening can undo that fact. Even though afterwards the particular vehicle of His grace be absolutized, even though men actually use it to their own condemnation and by its means separate themselves from Him, from their neighbors, and from themselves, the fact still remains that God has met men therein and still does so to the extent that the means of grace in question is truly and appropriately received. Paul rightly says (vss. 3 f.) that the faithlessness of men cannot affect the fact that the latter abides as a token of the unconditioned (i.e., "prevenient") love of God by means of which He has spoken and also now seeks to speak to them.

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Above (2:17-25), Paul clearly seems to see salvation as contingent upon obedience to the Law, while here he seems to contradict this by saying that "the promise to Abraham and his descendants, that they should inherit the world, did not come through the Law." The apparent contradiction is to be resolved, not, as Knox suggests, by treating 2:17 ff. as the discussion of a "largely hypothetical" case (although it is that!), but rather by interpreting Paul as saying that, although the fulfillment of individual life does turn upon obedience (i.e., "radical obedience"), it does not depend upon the performance of certain works of obedience for the simple reason that the attempt to provide the latter is itself simply another form (the "radical" form!) of disobedience. In other " words the Law is in itself ambiguous, i.e., it may be understood in two senses: 1) as requiring "radical obedience" (or "faith"; cf. 1:5 16: 26); and 2) as requiring the realization of certain "works" which are in themselves unconditionally and unambiguously good. It is Paul's profound doctrine that insofar as man is a sinner he inevitably understands the Law in the latter sense, and it is for this reason that he can say "the Law brings wrath" (vs. 15) and, in general, can speak of "bondage to the law" as equivalent to "bondage to the sin," etc. On the other hand, he sees that insofar as the Law is understood in the first (i.e., in its intended or authentic) sense -- insofar, in short, as one sees it demanding faith or trust in God's unconditional love and a radical turning away from oneself to Him who is the Creator of all good -- one must reply to the question "Do we then overthrow the Law by this faith?" with an emphatic "By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the Law" (3:31). Thus Knox rightly observes that "there can be no Question question that the Pauline emphasis upon humble trust in God's mercy and power, as distinguished from reliance on good works, is in line with the deepest element in Hebrew-Jewish life and thought, and that the attitude of the Pharisee in Jesus' parable (Luke 18:9-14) is as false to the true spirit of Judaism as it is to Christ's own teaching or to the gospel of Paul" (IB, ix, 447).

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It is by no means necessary to assume that the use of the future tense here (or, for that matter, in vss. 5 and 8!) points to a future "eschatological" state. of affairs. For, quite apart from the prospects of a remote· remote future, the future tense (like the imperatives in vss. 12 ff.) is appropriate simply because the unconditional gift of grace offered in justification is not a secure possession, but something which must be laid hold of in every concrete situation. God wills to give us life and does give us life quite independently of our goodness or our merit. he we are called upon simply to accept His gift, to submit ourselves to Him as the Creator, to let Him be God for us. Because of our capacity for self-transcendence, or for "otherness" present and future are for us indissolubly linked. To live as a creature (or as a "new creature") always means to be disposed in a certain way towards the future – and, in a genuine sense, what the present is is only realized in the future. It is by no means possible to eliminate the "futuristic" eschatological elements from Paul's thought without doing violence to it. On the other hand, however, a too facile use of the "in principle, but not in fact" formula tends always to give more weight to the "futuristic" elements than Paul himself is disposed to give to them. This verse should not be interpreted to mean: "For sin will have no dominion over you,· since you are not (= "will not be") under law but under grace." Rather, it should read: "For sin will have no dominion over you (now -- in this now which is always also futurel), since you (now!) are not under law but under grace." Knox's suggestion that Paul can speak in the indicative about the present primarily because he sees the future to be so imminent as to be in some sense already real stands in irreconcilable tension with his other profound insight that hope with respect to the future is so certain for Paul precisely because of God's (past-present!) deed in Christ and the living presence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts (5:5).

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In these verses, the difficulties which are involved in stating the precise relation between law and Gospel abound to the embarrassment and confusion of interpreters; but in that strange way which the Bible so often has the complex and profound truth of the matter here receives one of its classic statements. Because "faith," as Paul understands it is obedience (Bultmann), and, moreover, is precisely the obedience which the Law itself requires, it is impossible for him not to speak of it in ways which seem only to describe a new legalism. The attempt to write off Paul's analogy as "not too fortunately chosen [because] the natural opposite of slavery to sin is emancipation" (Knox, IB, ix, 484) overlooks the profound insight that emancipation in any true sense (and anything less than emancipation in this sense is in reality still slavery to sinlsin!) is, paradoxically, also slavery -- namely slavery to God (or to "obedience" [vs. 16], or to "righteousness" [vs. 18]). But precisely because emancipation is slavery, Paul rightly sees that it may (and indeed must!) also be described as "obedien[ce] from the heart to the standard of teaching [i.e., the Law] to which you were committed." The important thing about such obedience, however (and this is why the obedience of faith is not a new legalism and is not "impersonal and sub-Christian" [Dodd]) is that it is "from the heart," i.e., is in every sense of the word "radical" (Bultmann).

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