Romans 3
ROMANS 3
MADE RIGHT BY TRUSTING CHRIST (1:18–5:11), cont.
God’s Faithfulness (3:1–8)
It is not God who has broken the covenant, Paul insists (3:1–8). Ancient writers often used rhetorical questions, and some of these, like some of the questions here, could be objections supplied by an imaginary interlocutor, a straw man to be refuted.1 The interlocutor here raises the obvious objection to Paul’s argument: if ethnic Jewishness and outward circumcision did not guarantee covenant membership (2:25–29), what was the value of these matters (3:1)?2 Paul replies that Israel’s benefit is a greater opportunity, although this opportunity also entailed (as Paul has been noting, 1:16; 2:9–10) greater responsibility. The opportunity involved their role in salvation history (a role Paul continues to assign to ethnic Israel, 9:4–5; 11:12, 15) and their greater access to God’s clearest revelation in Scripture (an access today shared also with Christians). God “entrusted” them with his oracles (3:2). (Although Paul says “first” in 3:2, he does not get beyond this initial benefit here [cf. 1:8]; many think he picks the subject up in 9:4–5. Certainly he revisits the present issues more fully in chs. 9–11.)
The interlocutor again objects in 3:3: surely Israel’s lack of faith does not negate God’s faithfulness to his covenant, does it? (Unbelief and faithfulness in this verse are both cognates of “entrusted” in 3:2.) Indeed, some Jewish teachers were at great pains to show that no matter how Israel behaved, God always counted them as his children.3 Paul exclaims, essentially, “No way!” (3:4).4 But he identifies God’s covenant faithfulness with his righteousness (see comment on 1:17), and insists that it is God as Israel’s judge, rather than disobedient Israel, who will be shown righteous.5 (That his righteousness and faithfulness also include a continuing plan for Israel will be clarified later in 11:1–32, esp. 11:25–32.)
“Everyone is a liar” (3:4) comes from Ps 116:11 (115:2 LXX), anticipating Paul’s texts for human sinfulness in 3:10–18 (esp. 3:13). Because it comes from the “Hallel” psalms used in festivals (at least in Jerusalem), its wording may have been familiar. But Paul more explicitly cites Ps 51:4, where the psalmist admits his guilt and God’s righteousness. Because the current version of the psalm already identified it with David’s repentance, Paul probably anticipates here God’s forgiveness of David without works in Rom 4:6–8.
Reducing the now desperate objections of his imaginary interlocutor to the absurd, Paul poses the objection that since Israel’s sin and falsehood reveal God’s righteousness and truth,6 such misbehavior ought not be judged harshly (3:5, 7).7 But God, who is righteous to judge the world (i.e., all nations; 3:6), is also righteous to judge his disobedient people. (Even the interlocutor accepts the premise that God will judge the world.) In fact, one who tries to justify sinners on account of God’s glory may as well argue, “Let us commit evil because the result will be good” (3:8). But God’s glory would be displayed in his righteous judgment of such sinners, not by exonerating them!8 Presumably by twisting Paul’s argument about justification by faith, some had insisted9 that Paul essentially taught that one may as well sin—a perversion of the doctrine also popular today. This conception entirely misses Paul’s point, as his letter will go on to make clear: one truly “righteoused” by faith is not only put in right relationship with God, but now has new power to live righteously (by faith that God has made them share Christ’s victory over sin; Rom 6; cf. Gal 2:17–21; 5:5–6, 24).
All under Sin (3:9–20)
While God has been faithful to the covenant (3:1–8), Israel has not (3:9–20). Paul graphically underlines the sinfulness of Jews as well as Gentiles, but the point he makes by itself would not be controversial. Jewish sources concur that all, or virtually all, sinned.10 What is striking about Paul is the conclusion he draws: those who sin are lost, even if they belong to the chosen people.
One could not counter Paul’s argument in 3:1–8 with the objection that Jews were morally superior11 to Gentiles (3:9). While on points like sexual immorality Jews generally were morally superior, Paul holds those with greater knowledge of the law to a higher standard (2:12), and includes sins of the heart (cf. 2:16), which are stirred all the more by repressing them (7:7–8). Paul notes in 3:9 that he has already established that both Jews and Gentiles are under sin; there was little point claiming to be superior to another when both were under sin’s dominion. While Paul has already offered a general argument to this effect based on a hypothetical Jewish sinner (2:17–29), he now argues more generally from Scripture.12
In 3:10–18 Paul piles up texts (most of them from the Psalms) about the common sinfulness of humanity.13 Apart from a few collections of ancient texts (such as at Qumran), few directly linked texts at such great length as here, and even the longer collections often addressed sections of Scripture rather than topics, and rarely “blended” diverse texts into a medley. Yet just as Jewish midrash regularly linked texts based on a common key word or concept, Paul links all these texts not only by their reference to sin but by other means as well. First, some of these texts allude somehow to death (3:13ac, 15–17), a theme that will recur (5:12, 14, 17, 21; 6:16, 21, 23; 7:5, 10, 13, 24; 8:6).14 Second, most allude to body parts: eyes (3:18), feet (3:15–17), and perhaps appropriately first and at greatest length, the mouth (3:13–14).15 Mention of parts of the body might prepare for Paul’s later treatment of “flesh” (cf. 6:6; 7:5, 24–25; 8:10, 13; Col 3:5).16
Paul first quotes Ps 14:1–3 (13:1–3 LXX); because it has two identical lines (“there is no one who does kindness,” 14:1, 3), Paul changes the first to “no one righteous” (probably based on Eccl 7:20), underlining the link with his own larger argument.17 Then Paul quotes Pss 5:9; 140:3; 10:7; Isa 59:7–8; and finally Ps 36:1. Only Paul’s use of Isa 59:7–8 in Rom 3:15–17 in its original context applied to Israel as a whole (at least in Isaiah’s generation); perhaps the midrashic linking of these texts allows Paul to apply that principle to the other references as well. While the psalm texts contextually addressed the psalmist’s enemies, Paul uses them to indict Israel as a whole on the principle that Scripture proclaims these matters to those who are under the law (3:19). Again, it especially indicts those who have the greatest knowledge and responsibility (cf. Amos 3:2).
Because the law condemns those under it,18 every mouth, including Jewish ones, will be silenced (3:19). Like the rest of the world, the hypothetical objector of 3:5–8 will have nothing to argue in the day of judgment, when God will be shown righteous in his judgment (3:4, 6, 8).19 The law is not meant to transform sinners into righteous people (cf. 8:3), but to reveal God’s righteous standard (3:20; though see also comment on 3:21; 8:2). That is, the law shows people their sinfulness, as Paul has just exemplified in 3:10–18. Paul’s words also allude to Ps 143:2, which pleads for God’s mercy because “no one living [here, no flesh] will be reckoned righteous” in his sight.20
Scholars today debate the precise sense of “works of the law” in 3:20. Some argue that it indicates specifically Jewish identity markers such as circumcision (cf. chs. 4, 14), while others contend that the phrase should include obedience to all the law unless specified otherwise. (The precise sense of the parallel phrase in the Qumran text 4QMMT is similarly debated; cf. 1QS 6.18.) Given biblical texts about “doing” the law, “works” of the law presumably may encompass the whole.21 Nevertheless, Jewish distinctives would emphasize Paul’s case particularly well, as his point here is to emphasize that the written law does not make Jewish people more righteous before God than Gentiles (3:9, 22–23, 29–30). It is also such distinctives that Gentiles joining Israel in the traditional way would be most compelled to adopt (as exemplified in the emphasis on circumcision in Gal 2:3–12; 5:2–11; 6:12–15), advantages Jews inherited as part of their culture.
God’s Solution for All (3:21–31)
Humanity has sinned and merited judgment (3:9–20), but God remains faithful and righteous (3:21–31; cf. 3:1–8), so that people can also be set right with him through faith. The law revealed sin but did not make people righteous (3:20). We should not take this limitation to mean that the law itself is bad (7:7, 14). The problem is not the law, but using it in a way that it was never intended to be used. The law teaches right from wrong but does not provide, nor does it claim to provide, self-justification by one’s own religious achievement. The law and the prophets do in fact teach the right way to be put in right relationship with God and made righteous (3:21): not by boasting in one’s achievement, but by faith, i.e., depending on God (3:27, 31). Paul will go on to specify that at this stage in salvation history the faith must be in God’s ultimate work, Jesus the Messiah (3:26).
Paul has been addressing God’s righteousness to some degree since the key statement in 1:17, where God’s righteousness was also “revealed” (despite the different term) in terms of faith.22 His development of the concept will, however, cluster here (3:22, 25, 26); repetition was a standard way of driving home a theme. The cognate verb dikaioō also appears repeatedly (3:24, 26, 28, 30), providing an alternative for the lack of justification provided by works of the law in 3:20. Paul shows how at this juncture in salvation history (“now,” 3:21) God’s righteousness has been revealed through faith (in contrast to attempts to be “righteoused” by law; 3:20).
God’s righteousness is through the “faith of Jesus Christ” (3:22; also 3:26)—an expression that has occasioned enormous debate. The Greek construction can mean Jesus’s own faith(fulness), or it can mean faith in Jesus, and scholars have offered compelling arguments for both positions. Greek authors before and after Paul felt free to use genitives both subjectively (i.e., here “faith of Jesus”) and objectively (i.e., here “faith in Jesus”).23 In favor of it referring to Jesus’s own faith(fulness)24 is the centrality of his work (3:24–25); the parallel expression regarding God’s faithfulness earlier in the chapter (3:3); and most compellingly, the precisely parallel expression to believers being of the faith of Jesus (3:26) and the faith of Abraham (4:16).
In favor of the reading, “faith in Jesus” (the objective genitive),25 the noun is plainly connected with the verb in 3:22, where it involves believers’ faith (also Gal 2:16).26 Although cognate nouns and verbs do not always carry the same significance, it seems likelier than not that they do here (the verb appears six times in ch. 4), and in Romans Jesus is always the object of this verb rather than its example. In forty-two uses of the verb in Romans we regularly read of believers’ faith in Jesus, yet we nowhere in unambiguous terms read of Jesus’s own faith. Although Paul could have written “faith in Jesus” more obviously, the genitive construction allowed for a more obvious contrast with “works of law.” The church fathers, many of whom knew the language particularly intimately, also generally understood this particular phrase as an objective genitive.
In light of such evidence, I am currently inclined to agree with the conventional “faith in Jesus” understanding, despite the popularity of and many strong arguments for the currently more fashionable “faith of Jesus” interpretation. Because for Paul such faith also entails obedience (cf. 1:5), however, “faith in Jesus” need not be as far from the theological convictions of “faith of Jesus” as some interpreters have contended.
In any case, the emphasis on faith (3:22) rather than dependence on the law (3:20) annuls a distinction between Jew and Gentile with respect to salvation (3:22; cf. 10:12): all have likewise sinned (3:23), hence they can receive righteousness solely through God’s gift in Christ (3:24–25). The aorist tense of “sinned” in 3:23 need not allude specifically to Adam (2:12, where both Jew and Gentile also sinned), but Paul later unfolds this idea in terms of Adam’s fall (5:12, 14, 16). Humanity formed in God’s image lost his glory through Adam’s fall (cf. 1:23; 1 Cor 11:7; Ps 8:5), and it would be restored in Christ (Rom 8:18, 21, 29). (Most commentators here cite the Jewish tradition of Adam’s glory lost at the fall; the present tense here could denote continuing effects of that fall. On what Adam lost, see comment on 5:12–21.) Most Jewish people agreed that virtually all have sinned (see comment on 3:9).
Many scholars take some or all of Paul’s comments about the solution in 3:24–25 to be Paul’s adaptation of an early Christian tradition (typically a creed or a hymn).27 While it would be precarious to rule out the possibility (there are many terms rare in Paul), we should note that the grammatical elements cited by NT scholars as characteristic of such creeds characterize exalted prose more generally, and could simply signal Paul’s rhetorical shift. In any event, the passage reflects Paul’s view, whether or not it is original with him.28
Believers are set right and made righteous as a gift (3:24; through the new Adam in 5:15, 17) by grace (3:24; contrasted with works of the law in 4:4, 16; 11:6; associated with the new Adam in 5:15, 17, 20, 21). For an ancient audience, the mention of either “gift” or “grace” (favor or generosity) would imply benefaction; their coupling here underlines the emphasis on the divine initiative on which believers can depend. The content of the benefaction involves “redemption,” a term denoting the liberation of slaves, as in the exodus.29 (The cognate verb in the LXX sometimes, but not always, includes a ransom price, as typically in earlier Greek; the context here might suggest Jesus’s blood as such a price.)30 This experience of redemption is completed in the future (Rom 8:23; cf. Eph 1:14; 4:30; Luke 21:38; 1QM 15.1–2), but here involves what Christ has already done, filled out in the freedom from slavery image of 6:6–23 (cf. 7:25; 8:15, 21).
God’s righteousness attested by Scripture (3:21) and involving faith in Jesus (3:22) was demonstrated in Jesus’s redemptive death (3:24–25). Whereas God had previously displayed mercy, he now demonstrated his righteousness by being both righteous (or just) and by putting believers in Jesus right with him (3:25–26; see comment on 1:17).
Paul then appeals to a different biblical image, namely, the cover of the ark of the covenant (hilastērion in 3:25; see Exod 25:17–22 and elsewhere in the LXX; Heb 9:5), a translation earlier recognized by Origen, Luther, and Tyndale, among others. God “planned”31 Jesus as the “mercy seat” or ark cover. But what is the point of Paul’s comparison? Granted, Jesus is the locus of the divine presence, but, as many have noted, the following mention of his “blood” strongly suggests an allusion to the annual consecration of this holy place through sacrificial blood on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:14–15).32 By Jesus’s own blood, God consecrated Jesus as the place where forgiven humanity can meet God. Crucifixion was not always bloody, and the Gospels use “blood” not to describe the event itself but its significance.33 In an image related to the tabernacle, “blood” likely connotes sacrificial death, as elsewhere in early Christian meditation on the point of Jesus’s death, both regarding atonement and purification (1 Pet 1:2, 19; 1 John 1:7).34 Paul’s image would be intelligible; an extant Hellenistic Jewish source suggests that some others used hilastērion figuratively, as Paul did. For them, it was a figure for atonement itself, specifically the atonement offered by a human death turning away God’s wrath from the people (4 Macc 17:22).35 In a context replete with mentions of God’s wrath (Rom 1:18; 2:5, 8; 3:5; 4:15), this function is significant: Jesus’s blood elsewhere turns away God’s anger (5:9–10) and his death may be sacrificial in 8:3.
Previously God “passed over” his people’s sins rather than punishing them justly (paresis in 3:25 means “postponing” or “neglecting” punishment),36 but now he was revealing or proving his righteousness by showing that he was both righteous and the one who would put his people right with him (his people here being those with Jesus-faith). If we take the two elements as contrasts, God was just to punish sin, yet put his people right with him by executing the sentence on another (Jesus’s atoning death being viewed like that of martyrs in Maccabean literature).37 If they are coordinated, God’s righteousness includes covenant faithfulness to put people right with him (see comment on 1:17). Because God’s righteousness likely includes both justice and covenant faithfulness (1:17–18; 3:3–8) we may be able to accommodate both alternatives.38
In light of the foregoing explanation in 3:22–26, then (oun, “therefore”; 3:27), self-boasting has no place. One might boast in one’s merit if one interpreted the goal of the law as works; but instead the law teaches the way of faith (3:27; cf. 9:31–32), as is clear throughout Paul’s argument here.39 The law attests God’s righteousness, not humanity’s (3:21–23), and faith establishes the law (3:31). Paul’s message about Jesus in fact draws on analogies in the law that make this point, such as redemption and atonement (3:24–25). Thus, one is righted by depending on God, not by merit (3:28). (Paul also contrasts approaches to the law in 8:2; 9:31–32; 10:5–8.)
Paul has never lost sight of the reason he is making this case for faith in Romans: the point that Jew and Gentile must come to God on the same terms, rather than a Jewish person starting with the advantage of knowing the law (3:9, 22). If there is one God—and that was the basic cornerstone of Judaism (Deut 6:4)40—then he must be God for all humanity, not only for Israel (Rom 3:29–30). Instead of using God’s supremacy to argue for Israel’s sole (end-time) exaltation, as many of his contemporaries did, he uses it to argue that God cares about all humanity. Does Paul, however, envision separate means of righting for these groups, Jews “by” or “from” faith(fulness) and Gentiles “through” faith(fulness) (3:30)? “By” and “from” may simply reflect stylistic variation, which was important in rhetoric.41 Paul has already been clear that for both this faith must be Jesus-faith (3:22), not dependence on law-works (3:19–20). Being God of all humanity means that God does not care only about those to whom he gave the Torah.42
In 3:31 Paul both concludes a line of argument and foreshadows what is to come.43 The law supports the faith-way of God’s righteousness (3:21–22); Paul will demonstrate this point more fully in a foundational example from the Torah, namely Abraham, in 4:1–25.44 (Paul is not using technical hermeneutical terms here, although other Jewish teachers sometimes contrasted “breaking” or “annulling” the law with “establishing” it.)
1. Scholars debate exactly which rhetorical questions imply an interlocutor; indeed, one could simply anticipate potential objections (e.g., Rhet. Alex. 18, 1432b.11–1433b.16; 36, 1442b.4–6; Cicero Rosc. Amer. 18.52) or answer one’s own questions (Cicero De or. 40.137). Though “What, then?” (Rom 3:1, 9) could belong to interlocution (e.g., Cicero Tusc. 3.20.46; Seneca Dial. 3.6.1; 3.8.7), it sometimes offered a summation or advancing of the argument (e.g., Musonius Rufus 5, p. 50.21; Dio Chrysostom Or. 31.55, 60; Menander Rhetor 2.1–2, 376.4). Nevertheless, we need not doubt the presence of an interlocutor in at least some of them. There can be no question that ancient sources used unmarked interlocutors as well as marked ones (e.g., Cicero Sull. 19.54–20.56; 22.62; idem Scaur. 9.18; 18.41; idem Phil. 3.6.15, 16; Virgil Aen. 10.67; Dio Chrysostom Or. 23; 31.12). See here e.g., Stowers 1994: 162–66, 232; idem 1984: 707–22.
2. Considering the benefit or profit of a matter was a primary consideration both in rhetoric and ethics (e.g., Musonius Rufus 8, p. 60.10–12; Arius Didymus Epit. 2.7.5d, pp. 28–29.17–29; for a number of sources, see Keener 2003b: 856).
3. R. Meir (against R. Judah) in Sipre Deut. 96.4.1 (cf. similarly Sipre Deut. 308.1.2). These rabbis taught in the late second century, but may reflect earlier ideas.
4. Like interlocutors, such a negation is familiar in diatribe, with this phrase in the late first-century Stoic Epictetus (Malherbe 1989: 25–26; also Demosthenes Aristog. 1.30; Gen 44:7, 17; Josh 22:29; 24:16); but in other language also elsewhere (e.g., Plato Charm. 175A; Cicero Rosc. Amer. 1.2; Seneca Ep. Lucil. 94.32; Dio Chrysostom Or. 55.3).
5. Cf. Ps. Sol. 8:23, 26; perhaps Gen 18:25; Sir 18:2. That God is “true” (cf. Pss 25:10; 31:5) means that he is “faithful”; the same Hebrew conception stands behind both Greek terms (the Hebrew term elsewhere translated “faithful” is rendered “true” in the Greek version of Psalms; so Dunn 1988: 1:133; e.g., Ps 40:10–11). For theodicy arguing that deity is not responsible for sin, see e.g., Jas 1:13–14; Aeschines Tim. 190. “What shall we say?” (3:5; cf. 4:1; 6:1; 7:7; 8:31; 9:14, 30) was a common expression (e.g., Fronto Ad M. Caes. 3.17).
6. These contrasts echo the contrasts between Israel’s faithlessness and God’s faithfulness in 3:3, and their deception and God’s truth in 3:4 (see Hays 2005: 54). On reductio ad absurdum, see the note on Rom 2:17–24.
7. One could argue that a good outcome mitigated one’s wrongdoing (Hermogenes Issues 38.20–25), or occasionally even declare sinners righteous because God brought their acts about (Tg. Neof. 1 on Gen 38:25). Moralists would demur (e.g., Seneca Ep. Lucil. 87.22, 25).
8. Their behavior in fact causes God to be blasphemed (2:24), not glorified.
9. Both Jewish and Gentile sources denounce slander as a terrible sin; it appears in Paul’s list in Rom 1:30. Rumors apparently spread about Paul in the Jerusalem church (Acts 21:21). Attributing the slander to “certain persons” might follow the common practice of damning some opponents with anonymity. That sin “demonstrated” God’s righteousness (3:5) may be a perversion of Paul’s teaching that God “demonstrated” love toward sinners (5:8).
10. 1 Esd 4:37; 1QS 11.9–10; 1QH 4.29–30; 16.11; cf. Jub. 21:21; Moore 1971: 467–68; Bonsirven 1964: 114. Greeks also regarded genuinely good persons as few (Epictetus Disc. 2.19.26–27; Dio Chrysostom Or. 13.13; Lucian Tim. 25; Diogenes Laertius 1.88; Malherbe 1989: 17; cf. Rom 5:7). Some held that only virtually all sinned, sometimes exempting some famous patriarchs (Pr Man 8; T. Ab. 10 A; Bray 1998: 149 cites Theodoret of Cyr Interp. Rom. on Rom 5:19) or others (’Abot R. Nat. 14A); some others attributed sin even to the patriarchs (e.g., T. Ab. 9, Rec. A).
11. Technically, Paul’s use of the middle here probably signifies protecting oneself rather than superiority, hence might involve the notion of protection from God’s wrath (BDAG). Alternatively, if read as a passive, the interlocutor objects that Paul’s argument puts Jews at a disadvantage, but Paul equalizes all.
12. Others also used quotations to argue that sin was widespread (Seneca Ben. 5.15.3; Nat. 4.pref. 19), though Paul’s argument here seems more forceful. An argument claiming “all” when it proved only “most” could be technically defective (Rhet. Her. 2.20.32), though hyperbole would stand in both diatribe and polemical rhetoric.
13. In rhetoric, repeating a thought reinforced it.
14. Graves’ uncleanness might also suggest defiling speech; on the danger of tongues like serpents, e.g., Pliny Nat. 18.1.4; Rhet. Her. 4.49.62; perhaps Ps 58:3–4.
15. Paul has just mentioned slander (3:8)! Significant for rhetorical effect, Paul also links some texts with an initial “there is not” (six lines) and a closing “their” in Greek (four lines; Jewett 2007: 254), though in some cases he adapts the wording slightly (as was common) to fit the rhetorical pattern.
16. Cf. this use of body parts in Maximus of Tyre Or. 7.7; Porphyry Marc. 33.506–7; Amoraim in Urbach 1979: 1:473. In the rhetorical figure synecdoche, a part could stand for the whole (Anderson 2000: 112).
17. Some manuscripts of our current Greek translation of Ps 14:3 are considerably longer than a normal verse and essentially include the rest of Paul’s quotation, in contrast to the Hebrew version; but this expanded version presumably reflects Christian scribes’ knowledge of Paul’s quotation here.
18. The law’s speech reflects the rhetorical device prosōpopoiia.
19. Cf. also the mouths in 3:13–14 (and slander in 3:8), but the silencing of humanity before God’s judgment is a wider motif (Isa 41:1; Zeph 1:7; 2:13; cf. Beale 1999: 446–52). The view that Paul addresses only Gentiles here runs precisely counter to Paul’s point (3:9, 19–20).
20. As Hays (1989: 51–52) points out, the context in Ps 143:1 appeals to God’s righteousness and faithfulness, relevant to this context (Rom 3:3, 5), and especially to Scripture revealing God’s righteousness in Rom 3:21 (see also Hays 1980: 114–15).
21. Cf. Gathercole 2002: 92–93, 238; Watson 2007: 19, 128, 212.
22. Paul’s likely conclusion suggests that Gentiles’ salvation is an important part of God’s righteousness now revealed from Scripture (16:26), inverting traditional expectations of what his righteousness involved (3:3–5).
23. Harrisville 2006; objective genitives are more common with God’s name. Thus, e.g., “knowledge of Jesus” is objective in Phil 3:8, allowing the same approach to “faith of Jesus” in Phil 3:9 (Schreiner 1998: 183); but subjective genitives with faith dominate the context of Rom 3–4 (3:3; 4:12, 16).
24. See e.g., K. Barth, J. Dunnill, J. Gager, K. Grieb, R. Hays, M. Hooker, L. Johnson, L. Ramaroson, S. Stowers, C. Talbert, S. Tonstad, N. T. Wright.
25. See e.g., Origen, Augustine, Abelard, T. Aquinas, M. Luther, B. Byrne, J. Dunn, J. Fitzmyer, A. Hultgren, R. B. Matlock, D. Moo, T. Schreiner, T. Tobin; cf. F. Watson. Some believe that Paul included both senses, though inclining toward the objective reading (e.g., A. Schlatter, L. Morris, M. Reasoner, R. Jewett); another option is a genitive of origin (faith enabled by Christ; D. Rusam; cf. Gal 2:20). For one history of views, see Reasoner 2005: 7, 24, 27, 30, 38.
26. Far from being superfluous on the objective genitive reading, it is emphatic (in Rom 3:22; Gal 3:22; Phil 3:9).
27. E.g., Hunter 1961: 120; Meyer 1983: 198–208; Stuhlmacher 1994: 58; Dunn 1988: 1:163–64. Talbert (1966) even viewed it as an interpolation (though this is no longer his view).
28. See Haacker 2003: 108–9; Talbert 2002: 106–8; Young 1974.
29. In 1 Cor 1:30 Paul may associate redemption with other salvific concepts; the different term in Gal 3:13 and 4:5 might carry a similar sense, except emphasizing the cost. Eph 1:7 and Col 1:14 (which I treat as Pauline, and which are otherwise our earliest extant interpretation of Paul) associate redemption with forgiveness.
30. Cf. redemption by Jesus’s sacrificial blood in Heb 9:14–15; 1 Pet 1:18–19; perhaps Rev 1:5; 5:9. Many church fathers viewed Christ’s death as a ransom from the devil, but this interpretation seems inconsistent with the sacrificial connotations of Jesus’s death in this context (which they also could recognize).
31. The same term appears with this sense in Rom 1:13; Eph 1:9; the term also means “display publicly.” Although some suggest levitical connotations (Exod 29:23; 40:4, 23; Lev 24:8; 2 Macc 1:8), it has a broader sense.
32. Cf. Jesus’s death and cognate atonement language in Heb 2:17 (in view of Heb 7:27; 9:26; 10:10–12); 1 John 2:2; 4:10. It might also allude to the eschatological re-consecration (Ezek 43:20). Against Dodd and those who have followed him, who doubt that the LXX used cognate language for genuinely propitiating God’s wrath, as in pagan Greek, Scripture spoke both of God’s wrath and of particular offerings propitiating it, a nuance probably evoked here (see Rom 5:9; 8:3; cf. Gosling 2001).
33. The covenant sacrifice (Mark 14:24) and blood guilt (Matt 23:35/Luke 11:50–51).
34. For Jesus’s sacrificial blood inaugurating a covenant, in light of Exod 24:5, 8, see 1 Cor 11:25; Mark 14:24; Heb 9:18–20; 10:29; 12:24; 13:20.
35. This image also connects with ransom (4 Macc 17:21), hence perhaps with “redemption” (Rom 3:24); without this term, martyr-atonement also appears in 2 Macc 7:37–38; 4 Macc 6:27–29. Scholars also point to Josephus Ant. 16.182; Gen 6:16 Symm. While less compelling, they reinforce the observation that the LXX term’s cognates had influenced its figurative application.
36. For God overlooking sins, at least temporarily, cf. Wis 11:23; Acts 14:16; 17:30.
37. When not enforced, laws could be said to lose their validity (Aeschines Tim. 36, 192). Later rabbis portrayed God’s attributes of justice and mercy competing (Urbach 1979: 1:448–61; cf. Jas 2:13); Paul may resolve such tension here.
38. Paul’s repetition of “demonstrate his righteousness” might be rhetorical reinforcement (by anadiplosis); it is surely rhetorical commitment to maintain the clarity of syntax (by dilogia). See Anderson 2000: 18, 37; idem 1999: 228.
39. Insofar as “law” translates tora, it can include all of God’s gracious instruction in Scripture, or focus more narrowly on that instruction in the Pentateuch. Translating “law” here as “principle” (niv; omitted altogether in NLT), however, ignores the obvious context (3:19–21, 28, 31), perhaps in favor of theological bias.
40. For its regular recitation, see e.g., m. Ber. 1:1–4; 2:1, 3; Tamid 5:1; and the earlier Nash papyrus.
41. Cf. Campbell 1992.
42. Some ancient writers did emphasize God as God of all humanity (e.g., Josephus Ag. Ap. 2.193), but the emphasis on God caring about Gentiles, while present in some ancient sources, is far more pervasive in modern Judaism.
43. Ancient writers could use transitions (e.g., Rhet. Her. 4.26.35).
44. See especially the approach of Rhyne 1981 (e.g., 75).