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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadOffice and Duties of the Christian Pastor by Patrick Fairbairn: 27. Romans 10:4-9.
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Rom_10:4-9.
‘For Christ is the end of the law for (or unto) righteousness to every one that believeth. 5. For Moses describes the righteousness which is of the law, that the man who has done those things shall live in them. (The reading here is a little different in three of the older MSS. א A D and the Vulgate, which omit the ἀυτὰ (those things), and change (with the exception of D, but here B takes its place) the ἀυτοῖς at the close into αὐτῃ. But the sense is much the same, only, instead of those things, in the doing of which the righteousness consists, the righteousness itself becomes prominent; it then reads, ‘the man who has done [it] shall live in it.’) 6. But the righteousness which is of faith speaks thus, Say not in thine heart, Who shall go up into heaven? that is to bring Christ down. 7. Or, Who shall go down into the deep (abyss)? that is to bring Christ up from the dead. 8. But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart; that is, the word of faith which we preach; 9. That if thou wilt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.’
The subject which gave rise to this fresh statement respecting the law and its righteousness, as contrasted with the way of salvation by Christ, was the sad case of the unbelieving Israelites. They had sought righteousness, indeed, but sought it in the way which lies beyond the reach of fallen man the way of their own goodness; hence they had not submitted themselves to, but strenuously resisted the righteousness of God. The statement implies, that what, in such a case, is of man, and what is of God, belong to quite different categories—they are mutually antagonistic. And this is confirmed by the declaration in ver. 4 as to God’s method of making righteous, For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. The general meaning is plain enough; it affirms that Christ is set for righteousness as well as the law, and that for the believer in Christ this righteousness is made practically available—he actually attains it. But it is a matter of dispute in what sense precisely the end (τέλος) of the law is to be under stood. Does it denote simply the termination of the legal dispensation—its termination in the death of Christ, which provided the new method of justification? Or does it, along with this, indicate the aim and object of the law—as having found in the work of Christ its destined completion? There is no lack of authorities on both sides of this question (for the first, Augustine, Koppe, Rückert, De Wette, Olshausen, Meyer, Hodge, &c.; for the other, Chrysostom, Therphylact, Beza, Grotius, Wetstein, Tholuck, Alford, &c.). I am inclined to agree with the latter class, on the ground that the simple fact of the law’s termination in its provisional character as for a time forming an essential part in the revealed plan of salvation, scarcely comes up to what seems required for the occasion. Beyond all doubt, the law had an aim in this matter, as well as a period of service; nay, just because it had an aim, and that aim reached its accomplishment in Christ, in a way it never had done or could do of itself, it therefore ceased from the place it had occupied. And as the expression here quite naturally carries this idea, there seems no valid reason why it should not be included. The law, taken in its complete character, certainly aimed at righteousness; so also does Christ in His mission as the Redeemer; with this all-important difference, that what could never be properly accomplished by the one is accomplished by the other—hence, also, the provisional character of the one, while the other is permanent. The sense could scarcely be better given than it was by Chrysostom: ‘If Christ is the end of the law, he who has not Christ, though he may appear to have it, has it not; but he who has Christ, though he have not fulfilled the law, has yet obtained all. So, too, the end of the medical art is health. As, therefore, he who has proved able to give health, though haply unskilled in medicine, has every thing, while he who is unable to cure, however he may seem capable of administering the art, has altogether failed. So also in respect to the law and faith; he who has this has also attained to the end of that; but he who is destitute of the former, is an alien from both. For what did the law seek? To make a man righteous; but it was not able to do so; for no one fulfilled it. . . . . This same end, however, is better accomplished by Christ through faith.’
The verses that follow give the proof of this proposition—give it out of Moses—the lawgiver himself being called as a witness against his misguided and foolish adherents in apostolic times. For Moses describes the righteousness which is of the law, that the man who has done those things shall live in them. (The same use is made of the passage in Gal_3:12, but without any formal citation of it.) The passage referred to, and almost literally quoted, is Lev_18:5; and the those things are the statutes and judgments mentioned immediately before; for the whole passage runs thus: ‘Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein; I am Jehovah your God. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments; which if a man do, he shall live in them.’ Taken in its original connection, the passage undoubtedly points to Israel’s happy privilege as well as sacred calling. Their condition is contrasted with that of the Egyptians and Canaanites, whose ordinances and customs, especially in regard to the gratification of lust, are declared to be matters of horror and abomination before God (Lev_18:3, Lev_18:30); they are solemnly charged to avoid these, and to keep the Lord’s ordinances, statutes, and judgments, both because Jehovah is their God, and because by doing them they should find life in them, while practices of an opposite kind had brought judgment and destruction on the Canaanites. Such is the connection and the import of the original statement. And it seems, at first sight, somewhat strange, that the apostle should here refer to it in the way he does, as describing the righteousness which is obtained by doing in contradistinction to that which comes by believing, as if the way of attaining life for the members of the Theocracy were essentially different from, and in some sort antagonistic to, that under the Gospel. He has so often asserted the reverse of that, and in this very epistle (ch. Gal_2:17-21, Gal_3:19-20, Galatians 4, etc.), that it would certainly be to misunderstand the application to take it in that absolute sense. The life which Israel had, whether viewed with respect to the earthly inheritance, or to the everlasting kingdom of which that was but the shadow, unquestionably came from their relation to Jehovah in the covenant of promise, and not from what was imposed in the covenant of law; the law, with its demands of holiness, its statutes of right, and ordinances of service, was no further ordained for life than as describing the moral characteristics in which life, so far as it existed, must exhibit itself, or, when these failed, appointed what was needed to obtain cleansing and restoration. The amplest proof has been already adduced of this (in the exposition of the passages in Corinthians, Romans, and Galatians, also in Lee. III.). Yet from the prominence of law in the Theocracy—which was such that even the things which pertained to forgiveness and the promise of blessing usually took a legal form—the language employed respecting the calling of the people and their prospects of good were naturally thrown in many cases into the same form. The people were told that they should live and prosper, only if they obeyed God’s voice, or kept the statutes and ordinances imposed on them—but without intending to convey the impression, that they were actually placed under a covenant of works, and that they could attain to the good promised, and avoid the evil threatened, only if they did what was enjoined without failure or imperfection. On the contrary, those very statutes and ordinances had bound up with them pro visions of grace for all but obstinate and presumptuous offenders; by the terms of the covenant—that is, by the law in its wider sense they were called to avail themselves of these, and to make their resort to God as rich in mercy, and plenteous in redemption. Still, the language even in such parts carried a legal impress; it linked the promised good to a prescribed ritual of service; and if people were minded, in their pride and self-sufficiency, to lay the stress mainly on the legal element in the covenant—if they should imagine that every thing was to be earned by the completeness and merit of their obedience, then it must be meted to them according to their own principle, and they should have to face the sentence uttered from the sterner side of the covenant: ‘Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them.’ (Deu_27:26; Gal_3:10.)
Now, keeping these considerations in mind, it is not difficult to understand how St Paul should have singled out the brief passage under examination as being, when looked at merely by itself, descriptive of the righteousness which is won by obedience to precepts of law, while yet it was not meant that Israel were expected to attain to such righteousness, or were, in the strict and absolute sense, dependent on the attainment of it for life and blessing. It set before them the ideal which they should earnestly endeavour to realize—which also to a certain extent they must realize as partakers, if only in an incipient state, of the Divine life; but not unless they were minded (as the unbelieving Jews of the apostle’s day certainly were) to stand simply upon the ground of law, and be in no respect debtors of grace, was a complete and faultless doing to form the condition of receiving the promised heritage of life. In this case, it assuredly was. The words must then be pressed in the full rigour and extent of their requirement; for life could only be ministered and maintained on a legal basis, if the condition of perfect conformity to law had been made good. That Moses, however, no more than the apostle, intended to assert for Israel such a strictly legal basis as the condition of life, is evident, not only from the connection in which that particular declaration stands, but also from other parts of his writings, in which the evangelical element comes distinctly into view, in his words to the covenant people. To one of these, the apostle now turns (vers. Rom_10:6-9) for a proof of the righteousness of faith; for it must be held with Meyer, Fritzsche, and others, that it is Moses himself who speaks in the words contained in these verses. ‘The δὲ in ver. 6 places the righteousness of faith over against the just-mentioned righteousness of the law, for both of which kinds of righteousness the testimony of the lawgiver himself is adduced. The expression, “for Moses describes,” in Rom_10:5, does not merely apply to the word in that verse, but also stretches over vers. Rom_10:6-8; and so the objection is not to be urged against our view of the want of a citation formula at these verses.’ (Meyer.) The passage quoted, though with some freedom, is in Deu_30:10-14. And it is to be noticed, as a confirmation of the explanation we have given of the preceding passage from Leviticus, that this also, though embodying the evangelical element, and for that very purpose quoted, also carries the form of law. In the original it stands thus, ‘For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven that thou shouldst say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldst say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.’ The general import is here again quite plain; namely, that the way of peace and blessing had been made alike clear and accessible; no one could justly say it was difficult to be understood, or mocked their efforts with impossibilities, as if, in order to reach it, heaven had to be scaled, or the boundless ocean to be crossed:—no, the word was nigh them, and every thing provided to their hand which was needed to secure what it set before them. But commentators are divided on the points, whether the passage as spoken by Moses properly bears the spiritual sense put upon it by the apostle, or has this sense infused into it by giving it a kind of secondary prophetical bearing—whether the questions, also, considered with regard to this spiritual sense, are questions of unbelief, questions of embarrassment, or questions of anxiety. It is not necessary for our immediate purpose to go into the examination of such points; and for any purpose of a strictly expository nature, it appears to me that very little depends on them. A somewhat too specific or realistic view is taken of the words by those who chiefly raise the questions. The description, in itself, is so far general, that it might be applied to the calling of the church of God in every age. Moses applied it, in the first instance, to the members of the old covenant; Paul, on the ground of this original application, points to Moses as a witness of the way of salvation by faith; but in doing so, intersperses comments by way of guiding its application to Christian times. He takes for granted that those to whom he wrote looked for salvation, or the righteousness connected with it, only in Christ; to them, if Christ was near or remote, salvation would be accessible or the reverse. And the original import of the word, with this fresh application of it, amounts to nothing more than the following: God’s method of salvation is such, so easy, so accessible, that no one needs to speak about climbing heaven on the one hand, or diving into the lowest depths on the other, in order to have the Saviour brought near to him—He is already near, yea, present, with all His fulness of life and blessing, in the word of His Gospel; and all that is necessary for the sinner is to receive this word with an implicit faith, and give evidence of his hearty appropriation of it, in order to his finding righteousness and salvation. Between the case of believers, in this respect, under the old, and that of believers under the new covenant, there is no other difference than that now the way of salvation by faith is more gloriously displayed and more easily apprehended by those who are in earnest to find it.