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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Romans 3:8 - 3:8
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
And why not (kai mē). We have a tangled sentence which can be cleared up in two ways. One is (Lightfoot) to supply genētai after mē and repeat ti (kai ti mē genētai, deliberative subjunctive in a question): And why should it not happen? The other way (Sanday and Headlam) is to take mē with poiēsōmen and make a long parenthesis of all in between. Even so it is confusing because hoti also (recitative hoti) comes just before poiēsōmen. The parenthesis is necessary anyhow, for there are two lines of thought, one the excuse brought forward by the unbeliever, the other the accusation that Paul affirms that very excuse that we may do evil that good may come. Note the double indirect assertion (the accusative and the infinitive hēmās legein after phasin and then the direct quotation with recitative hoti after legein, a direct quotation dependent on the infinitive in indirect quotation.
Let us do evil that good may come (poiēsōmen ta kaka hina elthēi ta agatha). The volitive aorist subjunctive (poiēsōmen) and the clause of purpose (hina and the aorist subjunctive elthēi). It sounds almost uncanny to find this maxim of the Jesuits attributed to Paul in the first century by Jews. It was undoubtedly the accusation of Antinomianism because Paul preached justification by faith and not by works.