Romans 3:22

The new righteousness, then, being given without any legal work, what is the means by which it is conferred? Romans 3:22 answers: faith in Jesus Christ. Such is the true means opposed to the false. The δέ, now, which the translation cannot render, is explanatory, as Romans 9:30; Galatians 2:2; Philippians 2:8, etc. It takes the place of a scilicet, to wit. Osterv. and Oltram. have well rendered it by: say I: “The righteousness, I say, of God.” Here, again, the absence of the article serves to indicate the category: a righteousness of divine origin, in opposition to the legal dispensation, in which righteousness proceeds from human works.

This righteousness is granted to faith, not assuredly because of any merit inherent in it for this would be to fall back on works, the very thing which the new dispensation wishes to exclude but because of the object of faith. Therefore it is that this object is expressly mentioned: Jesus Christ. The omission of the word Jesus by Marcion is perhaps to be explained by the fact that this heretic denied the humanity of Jesus, and attached importance only to His Christship. The omission of this word in the one Mj. B, cannot bring it into suspicion. It has been attempted to make this complement: Jesus Christ, a gen. subjecti: the faith which Jesus Christ Himself had, whether His faith in God (Benecke: His fidelity to God) or His fidelity to us (Lange). The parallel, Romans 1:17, suffices to refute such interpretations. The only possible sense is this: faith in Jesus Christ; comp. Mark 11:22; Galatians 2:16; James 2:1, etc.

This clause: by faith in Jesus Christ, is the reproduction and development of the first clause: ἐκ πίστεως, by faith, Romans 1:17. The following: for and upon all them that believe, is the development of the second clause in the same verse: εἰς πίστιν, for faith. Faith, indeed, as we have seen, plays a double part in justification. It is the disposition which God accepts, and which He imputes as righteousness; and it is at the same time the instrument whereby every one may appropriate for his own personal advantage this righteousness of faith. The first office is expressed here by the clause: by faith; the second by the clause: for and upon all them that believe.

The words καὶ ἐπὶ πάντας, and upon all them, are wanting in the four Alex., but they are found in the Mjj. of the other two families (except P), and in the ancient Vss. Meyer and Morison justly remark that it would be impossible to account for their interpolation, as there was nothing in the clause: for all them, to demand this explanatory addition. It is easy to understand, on the contrary, how these words were omitted, either through a confusion of the two πάντας by the copyists the Sinaït., in particular, abounds in such omissions or because this clause seemed to be a pleonasm after the preceding. It is quite in keeping with Paul's manner thus to accumulate subordinate clauses to express by a change of prepositions the different aspects of the moral fact which he means to describe. These two aspects in this case are those of general destination (εἰς, for) and personal application (ἐπί, upon): “As to this righteousness, God sends it for thee that thou mayest believe in it; and it will rest on thee from the moment thou believest.” Comp. Philippians 3:9. Theodoret, Bengel, etc. have thought that the clause: for all them, applied to the Jews, and the clause: upon all them, to the Gentiles. But the very object the apostle has here in view is to efface every other distinction save that of believing. This same reason prevents us also from allowing the explanation of Morison, who, after Wetstein, Flatt, Stuart, puts a comma after εἰς πάντας, for all, that is to say, for all men, absolutely speaking, inasmuch as this righteousness is really universal in destination, and who applies the participle: them that believe, only to the second clause: upon all, inasmuch as real participation in this righteousness is granted to believers only. But in this case the second πάντας, all, should of course have been omitted. Then we shall see in Romans 3:25 that the condition of faith is included from the beginning in the very decree of redemption. Finally, these two clauses: for all them, and upon all them that believe, are plainly the unfolding of the contents of the words εἰς πίστιν, for faith, Romans 1:17; whence it follows that the words who believe belong equally to the two pronouns all.

To pronounce one righteous, God does not then any more ask: Hast thou kept the law? but: Believest thou, thou, whoever thou art? The first clause: for all, contrasts this believer, Jew or Gentile, with the Jews, who alone could attain to the righteousness of the law. The second clause: upon all, contrasts this righteousness as a gift of God fully made, with that of the law of which man himself must be the maker.

These two verses are, as we shall see, the theme which will be developed in the whole following section. But, first, Romans 3:23 sums up the preceding section by restating the ground on which every human being needs the righteousness of faith.