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Act_13:38-39. Διὰ τούτου ] through this one, i.e. through His being announced to you.
καὶ ἀπὸ πάντων … δικαιοῦται ] and that from all things, from which ( ὧν = ἀφʼ ὧν , see on Act_13:2) ye were unable to be justified in the law of Moses, every one who believes in this One is justified.
ἀπὸ πάντων ] is pregnant: justified and accordingly freed (in respect of the bond of guilt) from all things. Rom_6:7; Sir_26:29; Test. XII. patr. p. 540.
ἐν τῷ νόμῳ and the emphatic ἐν τούτῳ represent the δικαιωθῆναι as causally grounded, not in the law, but in Christ. But the proposition that one becomes justified in Christ by means of faith from all things (i.e. from all sins; comp. before ἄφεσις ἁμαρτιῶν ), from which one cannot obtain justification in the law, is not meant to affirm that already in the law there is given a partial attainment of justification and the remainder is attained in Christ (Schwegler, nachapost. Zeitalt. II. p. 96 f.; admitted also by Zeller, p. 299), which would be un-Pauline and contrary to the whole of the N.T. On the contrary, Paul, when laying down that proposition in itself entirely correct, leaves the circumstance, that man finds in the law justification from no kind of sins, still entirely out of account, with great prudence not adopting at once an antinomistic attitude, but reserving the particulars of the doctrine of justification in its relation to the law for eventually further Christian instruction. The proposition is of a general, theoretic nature; it is only the major proposition of the doctrine of justification (from all things from which a man is not justified in the law, he is justified in Christ by faith); the minor proposition (but in the law a man can be justified from nothing) and the conclusion (therefore only in Christ can all justification be obtained) are still kept back and reserved for further development. Therefore the shift of Neander, I. p. 145, is entirely unnecessary, who (comp. also Schneckenburger, p. 131, and Lekebusch, p. 334) very arbitrarily assumes that πάντων is designed to denote only the completeness of the removal of guilt, and that, properly speaking, Paul has had it in view to refer the relative to the whole idea of δικαιωθῆναι , but by a kind of logical attraction has referred it to πάντων .
We may add that the view (Wolf and others, following the Vulgate), according to which καὶ … δικαιοῦται is taken as an independent proposition (as it is also by Lachmann, who has erased καί , after A C* à ), is also admissible, although less in keeping with the flow of the discourse, which connects the negative element ( ἄφεσις ἁμαρτ .) and the positive correlative to it ( δικαιοῦται ) with one another; therefore καί is the simple and, not: and indeed. But it is contrary to the construction to attach καὶ ἀπὸ … δικαιωθῆναι to the preceding; so Luther, also Bornemann, who, however, with D, inserts μετάνοια after καί . Lastly, that neither, with Luther, is ἐν τούτῳ to be connected with πιστεύων , nor, with Morus, is ἐν τούτῳ πᾶς ὁ πιστ . δικαιοῦται to be taken as a proposition by itself, is evident from the close reciprocal relation of ἐν τῷ νόμῳ and ἐν τούτῳ .
On the idea of δικαιοῦσθαι , the essence of which here already, by πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων , most definitely emerges as the Pauline justitia fidei, see on Rom_1:17.