Romans 3:27-30 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? No: but by the law of faith.… I. BOASTFULNESS WAS A JEWISH NATIONAL CHARACTERISTIC of a peculiar species, for it took the form of religious conceit. 1. They could not boast of being rich or strong; but when their fortunes were at the lowest they had one source of national pride left to them to buoy up their self-importance. In being the selected favourites of heaven, they found a consolation so flattering, that they looked down upon their conquerors as outcast aliens from God. Now, there was just sufficient foundation for this pride to make it very excusable in them, although in the case of many it took a shape which proved fatal to religious life. 2. Having reached the natural termination of his own argument, namely, that God, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, is able to justify all who trust in Him, Paul suddenly halts, as though he were looking for something that had vanished, and abruptly asks, "Where, then, is the boasting of the Jews?" Answer — There is no more room left for it. But what shuts it out? Not the law of works, which is understood to prescribe obedience as a means of reward; for if a man earned reward, then, of course, he has some ground for boasting. No; boasting is really excluded only under the new and better way of being just before God. That new principle of acceptance with God cuts self-righteousness down to the roots as nothing else does. That leaves him a debtor to sovereign grace alone. II. THIS VICIOUS BOASTFULNESS IS NOT A THING ESSENTIALLY JEWISH. AT BOTTOM, IT IS THE CHILD OF HUMAN PRIDE. No man likes to own that he has literally not an inch of ground to stand on before the judgment seat of God, nor a scruple's weight of merit to plead there. There is nothing a man dislikes more than that. However ragged our righteousness may be, or however filthy, we cannot let it go to stand in utter shame, unscreened to the light, or defenceless before the judgment that we have deserved. Can we not? Then there is no salvation for us. Salvation is for men who trust in God's way of finding mercy, and that principle shuts boasting out. Alone, naked, excuseless, condemned, a sinner simply you must feel and confess yourself to be. III. THIS SELF-JUSTIFYING BOASTFULNESS FEEDS UPON EVERY POINT OF ADVANTAGE WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO LIFT ONE SINNER A LITTLE ABOVE HIS FELLOW SINNER. It lives by making invidious comparisons. There are diversities among men in the degree of their moral depravity, and God's providence gives to some an immense advantage over others in respect of religious privilege. But when God singles out one race from other races, or one class in society before another class, or one individual from among others, for exceptional religious advantages, He certainly does not mean to puff up the favoured one with spiritual conceit. It is nothing but the abnormal working of man's own evil nature that perverts what God thus meant for a blessing. Therefore we can afford to throw no stones at ancient Israel. Do we Christians never boast of being far above the benighted Jew or heathen? Your Israelite long ago conceived himself safe for eternity, because he had been duly circumcised and observed the festivals. Does your Christian never build any hope of heaven upon his good churchmanship or his unchallenged Christian profession? The Jews toiled hard to deserve paradise by a great zeal for orthodoxy, and by leading a scrupulous life. Does no one ever hear of any Christian doing the like? For you, as well as the Jew, it is fatally easy to miss the humble road that leads to life through a lowly trust in Christ. For you, too, it is perilously easy to build your religious confidence upon a righteousness of your own. IV. AGAINST THIS ASSUMPTION SEE WHAT MIGHTY ENGINES PAUL BRINGS TO BEAR. 1. The argument is one to this effect.If I am wrong in saying that every man is to be justified apart from the law — and if you are right in thinking that the observance of Mosaic rites is the ground of your acceptance, then in that case God is only the God of the Jews, since it is only to Jews that He has given this Mosaic law. But is not this dead against the very prime point of your confession as against polytheism, that there is one living true God of all men alike? The foundation of this reasoning lies in monotheism, the doctrine of the unity of God, and His Common relation to all. The cleft which cuts the human race into Jews and Gentiles cuts far down; but it cannot cut so far as the fundamental question of the sinner's acceptance with his Maker. How shall man have peace with God? is a problem which can only have one answer — not two. The same one God, just and merciful to all His children, must justly justify every sinner in the same way. 2. But the levelling argument of the apostle is good for more than Jews. Just look at our own position in the light of this argument. We are privileged men — as Christians, as Englishmen, as the children of devout parents who saw to our being early baptized in the faith and nurture of the saints. Shall we then rest with boastful confidence in this, and deem that the gate of life is less straight for us than for idolaters or outcasts? Is not that to repeat the blunder of the Jew, to postulate, as it were, a two-faced God? — one God who apportions to ignorant and wicked people their own share of grace, as a thing that they have no claim on, out of pure regard to the work of Jesus Christ, but who receives respectable Christian people on another and easier footing altogether. I have no fear that any of you will say such things. But what I fear is that some of you may gradually harbour a self-righteous confidence in your position and character, which would substantially mean the same thing. Against such a self-confident temper, therefore, I fight with the weapon of St. Paul. God has not two ways of saving men. (J. Oswald Dykes, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. |
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