Romans 3:27-30 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? No: but by the law of faith.… 1. The term "law" may mean more than an authoritative rule; it may signify the method of succession by which one event follows another; and it is thus that we speak of a law of nature, or of mind. Both the law of works and the law of faith may be understood here in this latter sense. The one is that by which a man's justification follows upon his having performed the works; the other is that by which a man's justification follows upon his faith — just as the law of gravitation is that upon which everybody above the surface of the earth, when its support is taken away, will fall toward its centre. 2. Now the aim of the apostle is to prove that by the law of works none is justified, and I want you to notice how those who dislike the utter excluding of works endeavour to evade this. I. THEY HOLD THAT THE AFFIRMATION OF PAUL IS OF THE CEREMONIAL AND NOT OF THE MORAL LAW. They are willing enough to discard obedience to the former, but not to the latter. All rites, be they Jewish or Christian, have a greatly inferior place in their estimation to the virtues of social life, or to the affections of an inward and enlightened piety in a man, even though a stranger to the puritanical rigours of the Sabbath and of the sacrament. 1. We are far from disputing the justness of their preference; but we would direct them to the use that they should make of it when applying to it the statement that from justification all boasting is excluded. Does not the statement point the more to that of which men are inclined to boast the more? To set aside the law of works is not to exclude boasting, if only those works are set aside which beget no reverence when done by others, and no complacency when done by themselves. The exclusion of boasting might appear to an old Pharisee as that which swept away the whole ceremonial in which he gloried. But for the same reason should it appear to the tasteful admirer of virtue to sweep away the moral accomplishments in which he glories. In a word, this verse has the same force now that it had then. It then reduced the boastful Jew to the same ground of nothingness before God with the Gentile whom he despised. And it now reduces the boastful moralist to the same ground with the slave of rites, whom he so thoroughly despises. 2. But that Paul means the moral law is plain, because in the theft and adultery and sacrilege of chap. Romans 2, and in the impiety and deceit and slander and cruelty of chap. Romans 3, we see that it was the offence of a guilty world against it which the apostle chiefly had in his eye; and when he says that by the law is the knowledge of sin, how could he mean the ceremonial law, when they were moral sins that he had all along been specifying? 3. This distinction between the moral and ceremonial is, in fact, a mere device for warding off a doctrine by which alienated nature feels herself to be humbled. It is an opiate by which she would fain regale the lingering sense that she so fondly retains of her own sufficiency. It is laying hold of a twig by which she may bear herself up, in her own favourite attitude of independence of God. But this is a propensity to which the apostle grants no quarter whenever it appears; and never will your mind and his be at one till reduced to a sense of your own nothingness, and leaning your whole weight on the sufficiency of another, you receive justification as wholly of grace, and feel on this ground that every plea of boasting is overthrown. II. THEY AT TIMES ALLOW JUSTIFICATION TO BE OF FAITH WHOLLY, BUT MAKE A VIRTUE OF FAITH. All the glorifying to the law associated with obedience they would now transfer to acquiescence in the gospel. The docility, attention, love of truth, and preference of light to darkness confer a merit upon believing; and here would they make a last and a desperate stand for the credit of a share in their own salvation. 1. Now if this verse be true, there must be an error in this also. It eaves the sinner nothing to boast of at all; and should he continue to associate any glorying with his faith, then is he turning this faith to a purpose directly the reverse of that which the apostle intends by it. There is no glory, you will allow, in seeing the sun with your eyes open, whatever glory may accrue to Him who arrayed this luminary in his brightness and endowed you with that wondrous mechanism which conveys the perception of it. And be assured that in every way there is just as little to boast of on the part of him who sees the truth of the gospel, or who relies on its promises after he perceives them to be true. His faith, which has been aptly termed the hand of the mind, may apprehend the offered gift and may appropriate it; but there is just as little of moral praise to be rendered on that account, as to the beggar for laying hold of the offered alms. 2. And to cut away all pretensions to glorying, the faith itself is a gift. The gospel is like an offer made to one who has a withered hand; and power must go forth with the offer ere the hand can be extended to take hold of it. It is not enough for God to present an object, He must also awaken the eye to the perception of it. (T. Chalmers, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. |
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