Romans 4:16

Therefore, &c. Lit. Therefore out of faith, that according to grace; a singularly terse sentence even in Gr. "Therefore:" q. d., "such being the case under Law, the Divine mercy acted accordinglyon our behalf." The clause may be expanded: "Therefore God took faith as the one condition of justification, so that justification might stand clear of the conditions laid down necessarily in His Law; i.e. those of perfect obedience, outward and inward. That is to say, the justification was -according to grace," for it treated man as having what he had notmeritorious righteousness." We might of course supply "the promise," or "the inheritance," instead of "justification," as the subject in these clauses. But the latter idea is so much the more prominent, that it is the safer suggestion.

sure i.e. not imperilled by the conditions of the Law for the Jewish believer, and by the lack of its privileges for the Gentile believer.

not to that only The Gr. has grammatical difficulties, but the sense is practically as in E. V. The "seed" is regarded as in its two great divisions; and here first, that which is "of the law," i.e. Jewish believers, not as really having a claim from the law, but taken as having one, to bring out the validity of the claim of faith on the Gentiles" part.

the faith of Abraham Abraham is here the example of manifestly extra-legalfaith, and therefore the case in point for the Gentile. Not that the Jewish believer (Romans 4:12) did not equally need "Abraham's faith," but the stresshere is on the case of the Gentile.

us all i.e. all believers; the "nations of the saved" (cp. Galatians 3:7). Here first St Paul seems distinctly to turn from his Jewish opponents to his co-believers, Jewish or Gentile. Henceforth there is little if any anti-Jewish reasoning. Wonderful was the triumph of the Gospel, which made it not only possible but profoundly naturalfor former Pharisees and former idolaters to unite as "we" and "us" in Christ.